IS' 
 
 iiiii 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Class Book Volume 
 
WoodbfirJ j>pe: 
 
LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 WALTEE BAGEHOT 
 
 M.A. AND FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDOl 
 
 WITH A PREFATORY MEMOIR 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 EICHAKD HOLT BUTTON 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 
 
 1884 
 
LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 YOL. I. 
 
LONDON : riilNTKI) T.Y 
 SrOTTfSWOODB AND CO , NEW STIiKKT SQUARH 
 AND TARMAMKNT SFRKIJT 
 
ADVEETISEMENT. 
 
 Several of the following Essays were published by- 
 Mr. Bagehot himself in a volume which appeared in 
 1858, entitled ' Estimates of some Englishmen and 
 Scotchmen' — a volume which has now long been out 
 of print. A good many others arc repubhshed, now 
 for the first time, from The National Review^ in which 
 they appeared, while one other, — that on Henry Crabb 
 Eobinson, — is taken, with the kind permission of the 
 Editor, from The Fortnightly Review ; two short meta- 
 physical papers are from the Contemporary Review^ and 
 three — one biographical and two political — from the 
 Economist. The Prefatory Memoir is also republished, 
 with the Editor's permission, from The Fortnightly 
 Review. In all cases the date of the first publication 
 has been appended to each Essay. The Portrait was 
 taken in photography by Monsieur Adolphe Beau, in 
 1864. It has been printed by Messrs. Locke & Whit- 
 field by the Woodbury process. 
 
 November 1878. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preliminakt Memoir • • • , • • • , . ix 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 I. The First Edinburgh Reviewers (1855) , ... 1 
 
 II. Har'jlet Coleridge (1852) . , ..... 41 
 
 III. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1856) 75 
 
 IV. Shakespeare — the Man (1853) 120 
 
 V. John INIilton (1859) ., 173 
 
 VI. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1862) . . , . 221 
 
 VII. William Cowper (1855) 255 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. Letters on the French Coup d'Etat of 1851 (1852). . 309 
 
 II. Cjesarism as it existed in 1865 361 
 
 III. Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson (1860) , , 367 
 
ME M O IE 
 
 BY THE EDIT0E.1 
 
 It is inevitable, I suppose, that the world should judge 
 of a man chiefly by what it has gained in him, and lost 
 by his death, even though a very httle reflection might 
 sometimes show that the special qualities which made 
 him so useful to the world imphed others of a yet 
 higher order, in which, to those who knew him well, 
 these more conspicuous characteristics must have been 
 well-nigh merged. And while, of course, it has given 
 me great pleasure, as it must have given pleasure to all 
 Bagehot's friends, to hear the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer's evidently genuine tribute to his financial saga- 
 city in the Budget speech of 1877, and Lord Granville's 
 eloquent acknowledgments of the value of Bagehot's 
 pohtical counsels as Editor of the Economist^ in the 
 speech dehvered at the London University on May 9, 
 1877, I have sometimes felt somewhat unreasonably 
 vexed that those who appreciated so well what I may 
 almost call the smallest part of him, appeared to know 
 so Httle of the essence of him, — of the high-spirited, 
 
 • This essay appeared in the Fortnightly Review for October 1877, and is 
 now republished, with slight alterations, by the kind permission of the editor 
 and proprietors of that Review. In most of the alterations now made, as 
 well as in a great part of the original essay, I have been greatly assisted by 
 the help of Mrs. Walter Bagehot. 
 
X 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 buoyant, subtle, speculative nature in which the ima- 
 ginative qualities were even more remarkable than the 
 judgment, and were, indeed, at the root of all that was 
 strongest in the judgment, — of the gay and dashing 
 humour which was the life of every conversation in 
 which he joined, — and of the visionary nature to which 
 the commonest things often seemed the most marvellous, 
 and the marvellous things the most intrinsically pro- 
 bable. To those who hear of Bagehot only as an 
 original political economist and a lucid political thinker, 
 a curiously false image of him must be suggested. 
 If they are among the multitude misled by Carlyle, 
 who regard all political economists as ' the dreary 
 professors of a dismal science,' they will probably 
 conjure up an arid disquisitionist on value and cost 
 of production ; and even if assured of Bagehot's ima- 
 ginative power, they may perhaps only understand by 
 the expression, that capacity for feverish preoccupation 
 which makes the mention of ' Peel's Act ' summon up 
 to the faces of certain fanatics a hectic glow, or the 
 rumour of paper currencies blanch others with the 
 pallor of true passion. The truth, however, is that the 
 best qualities which Bagehot had, both as economist 
 and as pohtician, were of a kind which the majority of 
 economists and pohticians do not specially possess. I 
 do not mean that it was in any way an accident that he 
 was an original thinker in either sphere ; far from it. 
 But I do think that what he brought to political and 
 economical science, he brought in some sense from 
 outdde their normal range, — that the man of business 
 and the financier in him fell within such sharp and 
 well-defined hmits, that he knew better than most 
 
Memoir, 
 
 xi 
 
 of his class where their special weakness lay, and where 
 their special functions ended. This, at all events, I am 
 quite sure of, that so far as his judgment was sounder 
 than other men's — and on many subjects it was much 
 sounder — it was so not in spite of, but in consequence 
 of, the excursive imagination and vivid humour which 
 are so often accused of betraying otherwise sober minds 
 into dangerous aberrations. In him both lucidity and 
 caution were directly traceable to the force of his 
 imagination. 
 
 Walter Bagehot was born at Langport on February 
 3, 1826. Langport is an old-fashioned little town in 
 the centre of Somersetshire, which in early days re- 
 turned two members to Parhament, until the burgesses 
 petitioned Edward I. to relieve them of the expense of 
 paying their members, — a quaint piece of economy of 
 which Bagehot frequently made humorous boast. The 
 town is still a close corporation, and calls its mayor by 
 the old Saxon name of Portreeve, and Bagehot himself 
 became its Deputy-Eecorder, as well as a Magistrate 
 for the County. Situated at the point where the river 
 Parret ceases to be navigable, Langport has always been 
 a centre of trade ; and here in the last century Mr. 
 Samuel Stuckey founded the Somersetshire Bank, which 
 has since spread over the entire county, and is now the 
 largest private bank of issue in England. Bagehot was 
 the only surviving child of Mr. Thomas Watson Bagehot, 
 who was for thirty years Managing Director and Vice- 
 Chairman of Stuckey's Banking Company, and was, as 
 Bagehot was fond of recalling, before he resigned that 
 position, the oldest joint-stock banker in the United 
 Kingdom. Bagehot succeeded his father as Vice-Chair- 
 
xii 
 
 man of the Bank, when the latter retired in his old age. 
 His mother, a Miss Stuckey, was a niece of Mr. Samuel 
 Stuckey, the founder of the Banking Company, and was 
 a very pretty and lively woman, who had, by her pre- 
 vious marriage with a son of Dr. Estlin of Bristol, been 
 brought at an early age into an intellectual atmosphere 
 by which she had greatly profited. There is no doubt 
 that Bagehot was greatly indebted to the constant and 
 careful sympathy in all his studies that both she and 
 his father gave him, as well as to a very studious dis- 
 position, for his future success. Dr. Prichard, the well- 
 known ethnologist, was her brother-in-law, and her 
 son's marked taste for science was first awakened in Dr. 
 Prichard's house in Park Eow, where Bagehot often 
 spent his half-holidays while he was a schoolboy in 
 Bristol. To Dr. Prichard's ' Paces of Man ' may, indeed, 
 be first traced that keen interest in the speculative side 
 of ethnological research, the results of which are best 
 seen in Bagehot's book on ' Physics and Politics.' 
 
 I first met Bagehot at University College, London, 
 when we were neither of us over seventeen. I was 
 struck by the questions put by a lad with large dark 
 eyes and florid complexion to the late Professor De 
 Morgan, who was lecturing to us, as his custom was, 
 on the great difficulties involved in what we thought 
 we all understood perfectly — such, for example, as the 
 meaning of 0, of negative quantities, or the grounds of 
 probable expectation. Bagehot's questions showed that 
 he had both read and thought more on these subjects 
 than most of us, and I was eager to make his acquaint- 
 ance, which soon ripened into an intimate friendship, 
 in wliich there was never any intermission between that 
 
Memoir. 
 
 xiii 
 
 time and his death. Some will regret that Bagehot did 
 not go to Oxford ; the reason being that his father, who 
 was a Unitarian, objected on principle to all doctrinal 
 tests, and would never have permitted a son of his to 
 go to either of the older Universities while those tests 
 were required of the undergraduates. And I am not at 
 all sure that University College, London, was not at that 
 time a much more awakening place of education for 
 young men than almost any Oxford college. Bagehot 
 himself, I suspect, thought so. Fifteen years later 
 he wrote, in his essay on Shelley : ' A distinguished 
 pupil of the University of Oxford once observed to us, 
 " The use of the University of Oxford is that no one can 
 overread himself there. The appetite for knowledge 
 is repressed." ' And whatever may have been defective 
 in University College, London — and no doubt much was 
 defective — nothing of the kind could have been said of 
 it when we were students there. Indeed, in those years 
 London was a place with plenty of intellectual stimulus 
 in it for young men, while in University College itself 
 there was quite enough vivacious and original teaching 
 to make that stimulus available to the full. It is some- 
 times said that it needs the quiet of a country town 
 remote from the capital, to foster the love of genuine 
 study in young men. But of this, at least, I am sure, 
 that Gower Street, and Oxford Street, and the New 
 Eoad, and the dreary chain of squares from Euston to 
 Bloomsbury, were the scenes of discussions as eager and 
 as abstract as ever were the sedate cloisters or the 
 flowery river-meadows of Cambridge or Oxford. Once, 
 I remember, in the vehemence of our argument as to 
 whether the so-called logical principle of identity (A is A) 
 
xiv 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 were entitled to rank as ' a law of thought ' or only as 
 a postulate of language, Bagehot and I wandered up 
 and down Eegent Street for something like two hours in 
 the vain attempt to find Oxford Street : — 
 
 * And yet what days were those, Parmenides, 
 "When we were young, when we could number friends, 
 In all the Italian cities like ourselves, 
 When with elated hearts we joined your train, 
 Ye sun-born virgins, on the road of truth ! 
 Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought 
 Nor outward things were closed and dead to us. 
 But we received the shock of mighty thoughts 
 On single minds with a pure natural joy; 
 And if the sacred load oppressed our brain. 
 We had the power to feel the pressure eased, 
 The brow unbound, the thoughts flow free ?.gain 
 In the delightful commerce of the world.' 
 
 / Bagehot has himself described, evidently from his 
 
 own experience, the kind of life we lived in those days, 
 in an article on Oxford Eeform : ' So, too, in youth, the 
 real plastic energy is not in tutors, or lectures, or in 
 books " got up," but in Wordsworth and Shelley, in the 
 books that all read because all like ; in what all talk 
 of because all are interested ; in the argumentative 
 walk or disputatious lounge ; in the impact of young 
 thought upon young thought, of fresh thought on fresh 
 thought, of hot thought on hot thought ; in mirth and 
 refutation, in ridicule and laughter ; for these are the 
 free play of the natural mind, and these cannot be got 
 
 « without a college.' ^ 
 
 The late Professor Sewell, when asked to give his 
 pupils some clear conception of the old Greek Sophists, 
 
 ' Prospective Review, No. 31, for August 1852, a paper too strictly temporary 
 and practical in its aim for republication now. 
 
Memoi7\ 
 
 XV 
 
 is said to have replied that he could not do this better 
 than by referring them to the Professors of University 
 College, London. I do not think there was much force 
 in the sarcasm, for though Professor T. Hewitt Key, 
 whose restless and ingenious mind led him many a wild 
 dance after etymological Will-of-the-wis|)s — I remember, 
 for instance, his cheerfully accepting the suggestion 
 that ' better ' and ' bad ' (melior and malus) came from 
 the same root, and accounting for it by the probable 
 disposition of hostile tribes to call everything bad which 
 their enemies called good, and everything good which 
 their enemies called bad — may have had in him much 
 of the briUiance, and something also, perhaps, of the 
 flightiness, of the old sophist, it would be hard to ima- ^ 
 gine men more severe in exposing pretentious conceits 
 and dispeUing dreams of theoretic omniscience, than 
 Professors De Morgan, Maiden, and Long. De Morgan, ' 
 who at that time was in the midst of his controversy on 
 formal logic with Sir William Hamilton, was, indeed, 
 characterised by the great Edinburgh metaphysician as 
 ' profound in mathematics, curious in logic, but wholly 
 deficient in architectonic power ; ' yet, for all that, his 
 lectures on the Theory of Limits were a far better 
 logical discipline for young men than Sir William 
 Hamilton's on the Law of the Unconditioned or the 
 Quantification of the Predicate. Professor Maiden con- ' 
 trived to imbue us with a love of that fastidious taste 
 and that exquisite nicety in treating questions of scho- 
 larship, which has, perhaps, been more needed and less 
 cultivated in Gower Street than any other of the higher 
 elements of a college education ; while Professor Long's 
 caustic irony, accurate and almost ostentatiously dry 
 
xvi 
 
 Memoir, 
 
 ' learning, and profoundly stoical temperament, were as 
 antithetic to the temper of the sophist as human qua- 
 lities could possibly be. 
 
 ' The time of our college life was pretty nearly con- 
 temporaneous with the Hfe of the Anti-Corn-Law 
 League and the great agitation in favour of Free- 
 trade. To us this was useful rather from the general 
 impulse it gave to pohtical discussion, and the literary 
 curiosity it excited in us as to the secret of true elo- 
 quence, than because it anticipated in any considerable 
 degree the later acquired taste for economical science. 
 Bagehot and I seldom missed an opportunity of hearing 
 together the matchless practical disquisitions of Mr, 
 Cobden — lucid and homely, yet glowing with intense 
 conviction, — the profound passion and careless, though 
 artistic, scorn of Mr. Bright, and the artificial and ela- 
 borately ornate periods, and witty, though somewhat 
 ad captandum^ epigrams of Mr. W. J. Fox (afterwards 
 M.P. for Oldham). Indeed, we scoured London together 
 to hear any kind of oratory that had gained a reputa- 
 tion of its own, and compared all we heard with the 
 declamation of Burke and the rhetoric of Macaulay, 
 many of whose later essays came out and were eagerly 
 discussed by us while we were together at college. Li 
 our conversations on these essays, I remember that I 
 always bitterly attacked, while Bagehot moderately 
 defended, the glorification of compromise which marks 
 
 , all Macaulay 's writings. Even in early youth Bagehot 
 had much of that ' animated moderation ' which he 
 praises so highly in his latest work. He was a vora- 
 cious reader, especially of history, and had a far truer 
 appreciation of historical conditions than most young 
 
Memoir. 
 
 xvli 
 
 thinkers ; indeed, the broad historical sense which cha- 
 racterised him from first to last, made him more ahve 
 than ordinary students to the urgency of circumstance, 
 and far less disposed to indulge in abstract moral criti- 
 cism from a modern point of view. On theology, as on - 
 all other subjects, Bagehot was at this time more Con- 
 servative than myself, he sharing his mother's ortho- 
 doxy, and I at that time accepting heartily the Unita- 
 rianism of my own people. Theology was, however, I 
 think, the only subject on which, in later life, we, to 
 some degree at least, exchanged places, though he never 
 at any time, however doubtful he may have become on 
 some of the cardinal issues of historical Christianity, 
 accepted the Unitarian position. Indeed, within the 
 last two or three years of his hfe, he spoke on one 
 occasion of the Trinitarian doctrine as probably the best 
 account which human reason could render of the 
 mystery of the self-existent mind. 
 
 In those early days Bagehot's manner was often 
 supercilious. We used to attack him for his intel- 
 lectual arrogance — his v^pi% we called it, in our college 
 slang — a quality which I beheve was not really in him, 
 though he had then much of its external appearance. 
 Nevertheless his genuine contempt for what was intel- 
 lectually feeble was not accompanied by an even ade- 
 quate appreciation of his own powers. At college, 
 however, his satirical ' Hear, hear,' was a formidable 
 sound in the debating society, and one which took the 
 heart out of many a younger speaker ; and the ironical 
 ' How much ? ' with which in conversation he would 
 meet an over-eloquent expression, was always of a 
 nature to reduce a man, as the mathematical phrase 
 TOL. I. a 
 
xviii 
 
 Memoh\ 
 
 goes, to his ' lowest terms.' In maturer life lie became 
 much gentler and mellower, and often even dehcately 
 considerate for others ; but his inner scorn for in- 
 effectual thought remained, in some degree, though 
 it was very reticently expressed, to the last. Tor in- 
 stance, I remember his attacking me for my mildness 
 in criticising a book which, though it professed to rest 
 on a basis of clear thought, really missed all its points. 
 ' There is a pale, whitey-brown substance,' he wrote to 
 me, ' in the man's books, which people who don't think 
 take for thought, but it isn't ; ' and he upbraided me 
 much for not saying plainly that the man was a muff. 
 In his youth this scorn for anything like the vain beat- 
 ing of the wings in the attempt to think, was at its 
 maximum. It was increased, I think, by that which 
 was one of his greatest qualities, his remarkable ' de- 
 tachment' of mind — in other words, his comparative 
 inaccessibihty to the contagion of blind sympathy. 
 Most men, more or less unconsciously, shrink from 
 even thinking what they feel to be out of sympathy 
 with the feelings of their neighbours, unless under some 
 strong incentive to do so ; and in this way the sources 
 of much true and important criticism are dried up, 
 through the mere diffusion and ascendancy of conven- 
 tional but sincere habits of social judgment. And no 
 doubt for the greater number of us this is much the 
 best. We are worth more for the purpose of consti- 
 tuting and strengthening the cohesive power of the 
 social bond, than we should ever be worth for the 
 purpose of criticising feebly — and with httle effect, 
 perhaps, except the disorganising effect of seeming ill- 
 nature — the various incompetences and miscarriages of 
 
Memoir, 
 
 xlx 
 
 our neighbours' intelligence. But Bagehot's intellect 
 was always far too powerful and original to render him 
 available for the function of mere social cement ; and 
 full as he was of genuine kindness and hearty personal 
 affections, he certainly had not in any high degree that 
 sen^iitive instinct as to what others would feel, which so 
 often shapes even the thoughts of men, and still oftener 
 their speech, into mild and complaisant, but unmeaning 
 and unfruitful, forms. 
 
 Thus it has been said that in his very amusing ' 
 article on Crabb Eobinson, pubHshed in the Fortnightly 
 Review for August 1869, he was more than a little 
 rough in his delineation of that quaint old friend of 
 our earher days. And certainly there is something of - 
 the naturalist's realistic manner of describing the habits 
 of a new species, in the paper, though there is not a 
 grain of malice or even depreciatory bias in it, and 
 though there is a very sincere regard manifested 
 throughout. But that essay will illustrate admirably 
 what I mean by saying that Bagehot's detachment of 
 mind, and the deficiency in him of any aptitude for 
 playing the part of mere social cement, tended to give 
 the impression of an intellectual arrogance which — 
 certainly in the sense of self-esteem or self-assertion — 
 did not in the least belong to him. In the essay I have 
 just mentioned he describes how Crabb Eobinson, when 
 he gave his somewhat famous breakfast-parties, used to 
 forget to make the tea, then lost his keys, then told a 
 long story about a bust of Wieland during the extreme 
 agony of his guests' appetites, and finally, perhaps, 
 withheld the cup of tea he had at last poured out, 
 while he regaled them with a poem of Wordsworth's 
 
 a 2 
 
XX 
 
 Mcmoii\ 
 
 or a diatribe against Hazlitt. And Bagehot adds, ' The 
 more astute of his guests used to breakfast before they 
 came, and then there was much interest in seeing a 
 steady Hterary man, who did not understand the region, 
 in agonies at having to hear three stories before 
 he got his tea, one again between his milk and his 
 sugar, another between his butter and his toast, and 
 additional zest in making a stealthy inquiry that was 
 sure to intercept the coming delicacies by bringing on 
 Schiller and Goethe.' The only ' astute ' person referred 
 to was, I imagine, Bagehot himself, who confessed to 
 me, much to my amusement, that this was always his 
 own precaution before one of Crabb Eobinson's break- 
 fasts. I doubt if anybody else ever thought of it. It 
 was very characteristic in him that he should have 
 not only noticed — for that, of course, anyone might 
 do — this weak element in Crabb Eobinson's break- 
 fasts, but should have kept it so distinctly before his 
 mind as to make it the centre, as it were, of a pohcy, 
 and the opportunity of a mischievous stratagem to 
 try the patience of others. It showed how much of 
 the social naturalist there was in him. If any race of 
 animals could understand a naturalist's account of their 
 ways and habits, and of the devices he adopted to get 
 those ways and habits more amusingly or instructively 
 displayed before him, no doubt they would think that 
 he was a cynic ; and it was this intellectual detachment, 
 as of a social naturalist, from the society in which he 
 moved, which made Bagehot's remarks often seem 
 somewhat harsh, when, in fact, they were animated not 
 only by no suspicion of malice, but by the most cordial 
 and earnest friendliness. Owing to this separateness of 
 
Memoir. 
 
 xxi 
 
 mind, he described more strongly and distinctly traits 
 which, when dehneated by a friend, we expect to find 
 painted in the softened manner of one who is half dis- 
 posed to imitate or adopt them. 
 
 Yet, though I have used the word ' naturahst ' to 
 denote the keen and solitary observation with which 
 Bagehot watched society, no word describes him worse, 
 if we attribute to it any of that coldness and stillness 
 of curiosity which we are apt to associate with scientific 
 vigilance. Especially in his youth, buoyancy, vivacity, 
 velocity of thought, were of the essence of the impres- 
 sion which he made. He had high spirits and great 
 capacities for enjoyment, great sympathies indeed with 
 the old English Cavaher. In his Essay on Macaulay he 
 paints that character with profound sympathy : — 
 
 * What historian, indeed,' he says, ' has ever estimated the Cava- 
 lier character ] There is Clarendon, the grave, rhetorical, decorous, 
 lawyer — piling words, congealing arguments — very stately, a httle 
 grim. There is Hume, the Scotch metaphysician, who has made out 
 the best case for such people as never were, for a Charles who never 
 died, for a Strafford who could never have been attainted, a saving, 
 calculating North-countryman, fat, impassive, who lived on eight- 
 pence a day. What have these people to do with an enjoying English 
 gentleman % Talk of the ways of spreading a wholesome Conserva- 
 tism throughout the country .... as far as communicating and 
 estabhshing your creed is concerned, try a little pleasure. The way 
 to keep up old customs is to enjoy old customs ; the way to be satis- 
 fied with the present state of things, is to enjoy that state of things. 
 Over the " Cavalier " mind this world passes with a thrill of delight ; 
 there is an exultation in a daily event, zest in the " regular thing," 
 joy at an old feast.' ^ 
 
 And that aptly represents himself. Such arrogance 
 as he seemed to have in early life was the arrogance as 
 
 * See volume ii., page 232, of this work. 
 
xxii 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 much of enjoyment as of detachment of mind — the in- 
 souciance of the old Cavaher as much at least as the 
 calm of a mind not accessible to the contagion of social 
 feelings. He always talked, in youth, of his spirits as 
 inconveniently high ; and once wrote to me that he did 
 not think they were quite as ' boisterous ' as they had 
 been, and that his fellow-creatures were not sorry for 
 the abatement ; nevertheless, he added, ' I am quite fat, 
 gross, and ruddy.' He was, indeed, excessively fond of 
 hunting, vaulting, and almost all muscular effort, so 
 that his hfe would be wholly misconceived by anyone 
 who, hearing of his ' detachment ' of thought, should 
 picture his mind as a vigilantly observant, far-away 
 intelligence, such as Hawthorne's, for example. He 
 liked to be in the thick of the melee when talk grew 
 warm, though he was never so absorbed in it as not to 
 keep his mind cool. 
 
 As I said, Bagehot was a Somersetshire man, with 
 all the richness of nature and love for the external 
 glow of life which the most characteristic counties of 
 the South-west of England contrive to give to their 
 most characteristic sons 
 
 * This north-west corner of Spain/ he wrote once to a newspaper 
 from the Pyrenees, * is the only place out of England where I should 
 like to live. It is a sort of better Devonshire ; the coast is of the 
 same kind, the sun is more brilliant, the sea is more brilliant, and 
 there are mountains in the background. I have seen some more 
 beautiful places and many grander, but I should not like to live in 
 them. As Mr. Emerson puts it, "I do not want to go to heaven 
 before my time." My English nature by early use and long habit is 
 tied to a certain kind of scenery, soon feels the want of it, and is apt 
 to be alarmed as well as pleased at perpetual snow and all sorts of 
 similar beauties. But here, about San Sebastian, you have the best 
 England can give you (at least if you hold, as I do, that Devonshire 
 
Memoir, 
 
 xxlii 
 
 is the finest of our counties), and the charm, the ineffable, indescrib- 
 able charm of the South too. Probably the sun has some secret effect 
 on the nervous system that makes one inclined to be pleased, but the 
 golden light lies upon everything, and one fancies that one is charmed 
 only by the outward loveliness.' 
 
 The vivacity and warm colouring of the landscapes 
 of the South of England certainly had their full share 
 in moulding his tastes, and possibly even his style. 
 
 Bagehot took the mathematical scholarship with 
 his Bachelor's degree in the University of London in ' 
 1846, and the gold medal in Intellectual and Moral 
 Philosophy with his Master's degree in 1848, in reading ^ 
 for which he mastered for the first time those principles 
 of pohtical economy which were to receive so much 
 illustration from his genius in later years. But at this 
 time philosophy, poetry, and theology had, I think, a 
 much greater share of his attention than any narrow 
 and more sharply defined science. Shakespeare, Keats, 
 Shelley and Wordsworth, Coleridge, Martineau and 
 John Henry Newman, all in their way exerted a great 
 influence over his mind, and divided, not unequally, 
 with the authors whom he was bound to study — that 
 is, the Greek philosophers, together with Hume, Kant, 
 J. S. Mill, and Sir William Hamilton — the time at his * 
 disposal. I have no doubt that for seven or eight years 
 of his fife the Eoman CathoHc Church had a great fas- 
 cination for his imagination, though I do not think that 
 he was ever at all near conversion. He was intimate 
 with all Dr. Newman's writings. And of these the 
 Oxford sermons, and the poems in the Lyra Apostolica 
 afterwards separately pubhshed — partly, I believe, on 
 account of the high estimate of them which Bagehot had 
 himself expressed — were always his special favourites. 
 
xxiv 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 The little poetry lie wrote — and it is evident that he 
 never had the kind of instinct for, or command of, 
 language which is the first condition of genuine poetic 
 genius — seems to me to have been obviously written 
 under the spell which Dr. Newman's own few but 
 finely-chiselled poems had cast upon him. If I give 
 one specimen of Bagehot's poems, it is not that I think 
 it in any way an adequate expression of his powers, 
 but for a very different reason, because it will show 
 those who have inferred from his other writings that his 
 mind never deeply concerned itself with religion, how 
 great is their mistake. Nor is there any real poverty of 
 resource in these lines, except perhaps in the awkward 
 mechanism of some of them. They were probably 
 written when he was twenty-three or twenty-four. 
 
 * To THE Roman Catholic Church. 
 * " Casta inceste." — Lucretius. 
 
 * Thy lamp of faith is brightly trimmed, 
 Thy eager eye is not yet dimmed, 
 Thy stalwart step is yet unstayed, 
 
 Thy words are well obeyed. 
 
 * Thy proud voice vaunt? of strength from heaven, 
 Thy proud foes carp, " By hell's art given 
 
 No Titan thou of earth-born bands. 
 
 Strange Chui'ch of hundred hands. 
 
 * Nursed without knowledge, born of night, 
 With hand of power and thoughts of light, 
 As Britain seas, far reach ingly 
 
 O'er-rul'st thou history. 
 
 Wild as La Pucelle in her hour, 
 
 O'er prostrate realms with awe-girt power 
 
 Thou marchest stedfast on thy path 
 
 Through wonder, love, and wrath. 
 
Memoh\ 
 
 XXV 
 
 * And will thy end be such as hers, 
 O'erpowered by earthly mail-clad powers, 
 Condemned for cruel, magic art, 
 
 Though awful, bold of heart ] 
 
 * Through thorn-clad Time's unending waste 
 With ardent step alone thou strayest, 
 
 As Jewish scape-goats tracked the wild, 
 
 Unholy, consecrate, defiled. 
 
 * Use not thy truth in manner rude 
 To iiile for gain the multitude. 
 Or thou wilt see that truth depart. 
 
 To seek some holier heart ; 
 
 * Then thou wilt watch thy en*ors lorn, 
 O'erspread by shame, o'erswept by scorn, 
 In lonely want without hope's smile, 
 
 As Tyre her weed-clad Isle. 
 
 ' Like once thy chief, thou bear'st Christ's name ; 
 Like him thou hast denied his shame. 
 Bold, eager, skilful, confident, 
 
 Oh, now like him repent !' 
 
 That has certainly no sign of the hand of the master 
 in it, for the language is not moulded and vivified by 
 the thought, but the thought itself is fine. And there is 
 still better evidence than these lines would afford, of the 
 fascination which the Eoman Catholic Church had for 
 Bagehot. A year or two later, in the letters on the 
 cou]p d'etat^ to which I shall soon have to refer, there 
 occurs the following passage. (He is trying to explain 
 how the cleverness, the moral restlessness, and in 
 tellectual impatience of the French, all tend to unfit 
 them for a genuine Parliamentary government) : — 
 
 * I do not know that I can exhibit the way these qualities of the 
 French character operate on their opinions better than by telling you 
 how the Roman Catholic Church deals with them. I have rather 
 
xxvi 
 
 Memoir, 
 
 attended to it since I came here. It gives sermons almost an interest, 
 their being in French, and to those curious in intellectual matters, it 
 is worth observing. In other times, and even now in out-of-the-way- 
 Spain, I suppose it may be true that the Catholic Church has be^ 
 opposed to inquiry and reasoning. But it is not so now and here. 
 Loudly from the pens of a hundred writers, from the tongues of a 
 thousand pulpits, in every note of thrilling scorn and exulting de- 
 rision, she proclaims the contrary. Be she Christ's workman or 
 Antichrist's, she knows her work too well. Reason, reason, reason !" 
 exclaims she to the philosophers of this world. " Put in practice 
 what you teach if you would have others believe it. Be consistent. 
 Do not prate to us of private judgment, when you are but yourselves 
 i-epeating what you heard in the nursery, ill-mumbled remnants of a 
 Catholic tradition. No; exemplify what you command; inquire 
 and make search. Seek, and we warn you that ye will never find, 
 yet do as ye will. Shut yourselves up in a room, make your mind a 
 blank, go down (as you speak) into the depth of your consciousness, 
 scrutinise the mental structure, inquire for the elements of belief, — 
 spend years, your l)est years, in the occupation, — and at length, when 
 your eyes are dim, and your brain hot, and your hands unsteady, then 
 reckon what you have gained. See if you cannot count on your 
 fingers the certainties you have reached ; reflect which of them you 
 doubted yesterday, which you may disbelieve to-morrow ; or rather, 
 make haste — assume at random some essential credenda, — write down 
 your inevitable postulates, enumerate your necessary axioms, toil on, 
 toil on, spin your spider's web, adore your own soul, or if ye prefer 
 it, choose some German nostrum ; try an intellectual intuition, or 
 the pure reason, or the intelligible ideas, or the mesmeric clair- 
 voyance, and when so, or somehow, you have attained your results, 
 try them on mankind. Don't go out into the byeways and hedges ; 
 it is unnecessary. King a bell, call in the servants, give them a 
 course of lectures, cite Aristotle, review Descartes, panegyrise Plato, 
 and see if the honne will understand you. It is you that say Vox 
 populi, vox Dei. You see the people reject you. Or, suppose you 
 succeed, — what you call succeeding. Your books are read ; for three 
 weeks or even a season you are the idol of the salons. Your hard 
 words are on the lips of women ; then a change comes— a new actress 
 appears at the Theatre FrangaLs or the Opera ; her charms eclipse 
 your theories ; or a great catastrophe occurs ; political liberty, it is 
 said, is annihilated. II faut se faire mouchard, is the observation of 
 scoffers. Anyhow you are forgotten. Fifty years may be the gesta- 
 
Memoir. 
 
 xxvii 
 
 tion of a philosophy, not three its life. Before long, before you go 
 to your grave, your six disciples leave you for some newer master, or 
 to set up for themselves. The poorest priest in the remotest region 
 of the Basses- A Ipes has more power over men's souls than human 
 cultivation. His ill-mouthed masses move women's souls — can you ? 
 Ye scoff at Jupiter, yet he at least was believed in, you never have 
 been. Idol for idol, the c^ethroned is better than the enthroned. No, 
 if you would reason, if you would teach, if you would speculate, — 
 come to us. We have our premises ready; years upon years before you 
 were bom, intellects whom the best of you delight to magnify, toiled 
 to systematise the creed of ages. Years upon years after you are 
 dead, bettei' heads than yours will find new matter there to define, to 
 divide, to arrange. Consider the hundred volumes of Aquinas. Which 
 of you desire a higher life than that ; — to deduce, to subtilise, dis- 
 ciiminate, systematise, and decide the highest truth, and to be believed % 
 Yet such was his luck, his enjoyment. He was what you would be. 
 No, no, credits, credite. Ours is the life of speculation. The cloister 
 is the home for the student. Philosophy is stationary, Catholicism 
 progressive. You call. We are heard," &c. So speaks each preacher, 
 according to his ability. And when the dust and noise of present 
 conta^oversies have passed away, and, in the interior of the night, 
 some grave historian writes out the tale of half-forgotten times, let 
 him not forget to observe that, profoundly as the mediaeval Church 
 subdued the superstitious cravings of a painful and bai-barous age, in 
 after-years she dealt more discerningly still with the feverish excite- 
 ment, the feeble vanities, and the dogmatic impatience of an over- 
 intellectual generation.' ^ 
 
 It is obvious, I think, both from the poem, and from 
 these reflections, that what attracted Bagehot in the 
 Church of Eome was the historical prestige and social 
 authority which she had accumulated in believing and 
 uncritical ages for use in the unbeheving and critical 
 age in which we Hve, — ^while what he condemned and 
 dreaded in her was her tendency to use her power over 
 the multitude for purposes of a low ambition. 
 
 And as I am on this subject, this will be, I think, 
 the best opportunity I shall have to say what I have 
 
 • See Appendix to this volume, page 335, 
 
xxviii 
 
 Memoir, 
 
 got to say of Bageliot's later religious belief, without 
 returning to it when I have to deal with a period in 
 which the greatest part of his spare intellectual energy- 
 was given to other subjects. I do not think that the 
 religious affections were very strong in Bagehot's mind, 
 but the primitive religious instincts certainly were. 
 From childhood he was what he certainly remained to 
 the last, in spite of the rather antagonistic influence of 
 the able scientific group of men from whom he learned 
 so much^ — a thorough transcendentahst, by which I 
 mean one who could never doubt that there was a real 
 foundation of the universe distinct from the outward 
 show of its superficial qualities, and that the substance is 
 never exhaustively expressed in these quahties. He often 
 repeats in his essays Shelley's fine line, 'Lift not the 
 painted veil which those who live call hfe,' and the essence 
 at least of the idea in it haunted him from his very child- 
 ^ hood. In the essay on ' Hartley Coleridge' — perhaps the 
 most perfect in style of any of his writings — he describes 
 most powerfully, and evidently in great measure from 
 his own experience, the mysterious confusion between 
 appearances and reahties which so bewildered little 
 Hartley, — the diflJculty that he complained of in dis- 
 tinguishing between the various Hartleys, — ' picture 
 Hartley,' ' shadow Hartley,' and between Hartley the 
 subject and Hartley the object, the enigmatic blending 
 of which last two Hartleys the child expressed by 
 catching hold of his own arm, and then calHng himself 
 the ' catch-me-fast Hartley.' And in dilating on this 
 bewildering experience of the child's, Bagehot borrows 
 from his own recollections : — 
 
 * All children have a world of their own, as distinct from that of 
 
Memoir. 
 
 xxix 
 
 the grown people who gravitate around them, as the dreams of gii-l- 
 hood from our prosaic life, or the ideas of the kitten that plays with 
 the falling leaves, from those of her carnivorous mother that catches 
 mice, and is sedulous in her domestic duties. But generally about 
 this interior existence children are dumb. You have warlike ideas, 
 but you cannot say to a sinewy relative, " My dear aunt, I wonder 
 when the big bush in the garden will begin to walk about ; I'm suie 
 it's a Crusader, and I was cutting it all the day with my steel sword. 
 But what do you think, aunt % for I'm puzzled about its legs, because 
 you see, aunt, it has only one stalk — and besides, aunt, the leaves." 
 You cannot remark this in secular life, but you hack at the infeli- 
 citous bush till you do not wholly reject the idea that your small 
 garden is Palestine, and yourself the most adventui'ous of knights.' * 
 
 They have a tradition in the family that this is but 
 a fragment from Bagehot's own imaginative childhood, 
 and certainly this visionary element in him was very 
 vivid to the last. However, the transcendental or in- 
 tellectual basis of rehgious behef was soon strengthened 
 in him, as readers of his remarkable paper on Bishop 
 Butler will easily see, by those moral and retributive 
 instincts which warn us of the meaning and consequences 
 of guilt : — 
 
 * The moral principle,' he wrote in that essay, * whatever may be 
 said to the contrary by complacent thinkers, is really and to most 
 
 men a principle of fear Conscience is the condemnation of 
 
 ourselves; we expect a penalty. As the Greek proverb teaches, 
 
 " Where there is shame, there is fear." How to be free from 
 
 this is the question. How to get loose from this — how to be rid of 
 the secret tie which binds the strong man and cramps his pride, and 
 makes him angry at the beauty of the universe, which will not let 
 him go forth like a great animal, like the king of the forest, in the 
 glory of his might, but which restrains him with an inner fear and a 
 secret foreboding that if he do but exalt himself he shall be abased, 
 if he do but set forth his own dignity he will offend One who will 
 deprive him of it. This, as has often been pointed out, is the source 
 of the bloody rites of heathendom.' ^ 
 
 ' See vol, i. p. 48. 
 
 2 See vol. ii, p. 66. 
 
XXX 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 And then, after a powerful passage, in which he 
 describes the sacrificial superstitions of men like 
 Achilles, he returns, with a flash of his own peculiar 
 humour, to Bishop Butler, thus : — 
 
 * Of course it is not this kind of fanaticism that we impute to a 
 prelate of the English Church ; human sacrifices are not respectable, 
 and Achilles was not rector of Stanhope. But though the costume 
 and circumstances of life change, the human heart does not; its 
 feelings remain. The same anxiety, the same consciousness of per- 
 sonal sin, which lead, in barbarous times, to what has been described, 
 show themselves in civilised life as well. In this quieter period, their 
 great manifestation is scrupulosity ; ' ^ 
 
 which he goes on to describe as a sort of inexhaustible 
 anxiety for perfect comphance with the minutest posi- 
 tive commands which may be made the condition of 
 forgiveness for the innumerable lapses of moral obliga- 
 tion. I am not criticising the paper, or I should point 
 out that Bagehot failed in it to draw out the distinction 
 between the primitive moral instinct and the corrupt 
 superstition into which it runs ; but I believe that he 
 recognised the weight of this moral testimony of the 
 conscience to a divine Judge, as well as the transcen- 
 dental testimony of the intellect to an eternal substance 
 of things, to the end of his hfe. And certainly in the 
 reahty of human free-will as the condition of all genuine 
 moral hfe, he firmly beheved. In his ' Physics and 
 Pontics'— the subtle and original essay upon which, in 
 conjunction with the essay on the ' Enghsh Constitution,' 
 Bagehot's reputation as a European thinker chiefly rests 
 — ^he repeatedly guards himself (for instance, pp. 9, 10) 
 against being supposed to think that in accepting the 
 
 • See vol. ii. p. 67. 
 
Memoir. 
 
 xxxi 
 
 principle of evolution, lie has accepted anything incon- 
 sistent either with spiritual creation, or with the free 
 will of man. On the latter point he adds, 
 
 * No doubt the modern doctrine of the " conservation of force," if 
 applied to decision, is inconsistent with free-will ; if you hold that 
 force is " never lost or gained," you cannot hold that there is a real 
 gain, a sort of new creation of it in free volition. But I have nothing 
 to do here with the universal " conservation of force." The conception 
 of the nervous organs as stores of will-made power, does not raise or 
 need so vast a discussion.' ^ 
 
 And in the same book he repeatedly uses the expres- 
 sion 'Providence,' evidently in its natural meaning, to 
 express the ultimate force at work behind the march of 
 ' evolution.' Indeed, in conversation with me on this * 
 subject, he often said how much higher a conception of 
 the creative mind, the new Darwinian ideas seemed to 
 him to have introduced, as compared with those con- 
 tained in what is called the argument from contrivance 
 and design. On the subject of personal immortality, too, 
 I do not think that Bagehot ever wavered. He often 
 spoke, and even wrote, of ' that vague sense of eternal 
 continuity which is always about the mind, and which 
 no one could bear to lose,' and described it as beinfj 
 much more important to us than it even appears to be, 
 important as that is ; for, he ^aid, ' when we think we are 
 thinking of the past, we are only thinking of a future 
 that is to be hke it.' But with the exception of these 
 cardinal points, I could hardly say how much Bagehot's 
 mind was or was not affected by the great speculative 
 controversies of later years. Certainly he became much ' 
 more doubtful concerning the force of the historical 
 
 ' Physics and Politics, p. 10. 
 
xxxii 
 
 Memoir, 
 
 evidence of Christianity than I ever was, and rejected, 
 I think, entirely, though on what amount of personal 
 study he had founded his opinion I do not know, the 
 Apostohc origin of the fourth Gospel. Possibly his mind 
 may have been latterly in suspense as to miracle alto- 
 gether, though I am pretty sure that he had not come 
 * to a negative conclusion. He belonged, in common 
 with myself, during the last years of his hfe, to a society 
 in which these fundamental questions were often dis- 
 cussed ; but he seldom spoke in it, and told me very 
 shortly before his death that he shrank from such dis- 
 cussions on religious points, feeling that, in debates of 
 this kind, they were not and could not be treated with 
 anything like thoroughness. On the whole, I think, 
 the cardinal article of his faith would be adequately 
 represented even in the latest period of his life by the 
 following passage in his essay on Bishop Butler : — 
 
 *In every step of religious argument we require tlie assumption, 
 the belief, the faith, if the word is better, in an absolutely pp.rfect 
 Being ; in and by whom we are, who is omnipotent as well as most 
 holy; who moves on the face of the whole world, and ruleth all 
 things by the word of his power. If we grant this, the diihculty of 
 the opposition between what is here called the natural and the super- 
 natural religion is removed ; and without granting it, that difficulty 
 is perhaps insuperable. It follows from the very idea and definition 
 of an infinitely perfect Being, that he is within us as well as without 
 us, — ruling the clouds of the air and the fishes of the sea, as well as 
 the fears and thoughts of men ; smiling through the smile of nature 
 as well as warning with the pain of conscience, — "sine qualitate, 
 bonum ; sine quantitate, magnum ; sine indigentia, creatorem ; sine 
 situ, praesidentem ; sine habitu, omnia continentem ; sine loco, ubique 
 totum ; sine tempore, sempiternum ; sine ulla sui mutatione, muta- 
 }>ilia facientem, nihilque patientem." If we assume this, life is 
 simple; without this, all is dark.' * 
 
 ' Volume ii. p. 71. 
 
Memoir. 
 
 xxxiii 
 
 Evidently, then, though Bagehot held that the doc- 
 trine of evolution by natural selection gave a higher 
 conception of the Creator than the old doctrine of 
 mechanical design, he never took any materiahstic view 
 of evolution. One of his early essays, written while at 
 college, on some of the many points of the Kantian 
 philosophy which he then loved to discuss, concluded 
 with a remarkable sentence, which would probably 
 have fairly expressed, even at the close of his hfe, his 
 profound behef in God, and his partial sympathy with 
 the agnostic view that we are, in great measure, in- 
 capable of apprehending, more than very dimly. His 
 mind or purposes : — ' Gazing after the infinite essence, 
 we are hke men watching through the drifting clouds 
 for a ghmpse of the true heavens on a drear November 
 day ; layer after layer passes from our view, but still 
 the same immovable grey rack remains.' 
 
 After Bagehot had taken his Master's degree, and 
 while he was still reading Law in London, and hesitat- 
 ing between the Bar and the family bank, there came 
 as Principal to University Hall (which is a hall of resi- 
 dence in connection with University College, London, 
 estabhshed by the Presbyterians and Unitarians after 
 the passing of the Dissenters' Chapel Act), the man 
 who had, I think, a greater intellectual fascination for 
 Bagehot than any of his contemporaries — ^Arthur 
 Hugh Clough, Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and 
 author of various poems of great genius, more or less 
 famihar to the pubhc, though Clough is perhaps better 
 known as the subject of the exquisite poem written on 
 his death in 1861, by his friend Matthew Arnold — the 
 poem to which he gave the name of ' Thyrsis ' — than 
 
 VOL. I. b 
 
XXXIV 
 
 Memoir, 
 
 by even the most popular of his own. Bagehot had 
 subscribed for the erection of University Hall, and took 
 an active part at one time on its council. Thus he saw 
 a good deal of Clough, and did what he could to 
 mediate between that enigma to Presbyterian parents — 
 a college-head who held himself serenely neutral on 
 almost all moral and educational subjects interesting to 
 parents and pupils, except the observance of discipH- 
 nary rules — and the managing body who bewildered 
 him and were by him bewildered. I don't think either 
 Bagehot or Clough's other friends were very success- 
 ful in their mediation, but he at least gained in Clough 
 a cordial friend, and a theme of profound intellectual 
 and moral interest to himself which lasted him his life, 
 and never failed to draw him into animated discussion 
 long after Clough's own premature death ; and I think 
 I can trace the effect which some of Clough's writings 
 had on Bagehot's mind to the very end of his career. 
 There were some points of likeness between Bagehot 
 and Clough, but many more of difference. Both had 
 the capacity for boyish spirits in them, and the florid 
 colour which usually accompanies a good deal of 
 animal vigour ; both were reserved men, with a great 
 dishke of anything hke the appearance of false senti- 
 ment, and both were passionate admirers of Words- 
 worth's poetry ; but Clough was shghtly lymphatic, 
 with a great tendency to unexpressed and unacknow- 
 ledged discouragement, and to the paralysis of silent 
 embarrassment when suffering from such feelings, while 
 Bagehot was keen, and very quickly evacuated embar- 
 rassing positions, and never returned to them. When 
 however, Clough was happy and at ease, there was a 
 
Memoir. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 calm and silent radiance in his face, and his head was 
 set with a kind of statehness on his shoulders, that gave 
 him almost an Olympian air ; but this would sometimes 
 vanish in a moment into an embarrassed taciturnity 
 that was quite uncouth. One of his friends declares 
 that the man who was said to be ' a cross between a 
 schoolboy and a bishop,' must have been hke Clough. 
 There was in Clough, too, a large Chaucerian simplicity 
 and a flavour of homehness, so that now and then, 
 when the hght shone into his eyes, there was some- 
 thing, in spite of the air of fine scholarship and 
 culture, which reminded one of the best hkenesses of 
 Burns. It was of Clough, I believe, that Emerson was 
 thinking (though, knowing Clough intimately as he did, 
 he was of course speaking mainly in joke) when he 
 described the Oxford of that day thus : — ' "Ah," says my 
 languid Oxford gentleman, " nothing new, and nothing 
 true, and no matter." ' No saying could misrepresent 
 dough's really buoyant and simple character more 
 completely than that ; but doubtless many of his sayings 
 and writings, treating, as they did, most of the greater 
 problems of hfe as insoluble, and enjoining a self-pos- 
 sessed composure under the discovery of their insolu- 
 bihty, conveyed an impression very much hke this to 
 men who came only occasionally in contact with him. 
 Bagehot, in his article on Crabb Eobinson, says that the 
 latter, who in those days seldom remembered names, 
 always described Clough as ' that admirable and accom- 
 phshed man— you know whom I mean — the one who 
 never says anything.' And certainly Clough was often 
 taciturn to the last degree, or if he opened his hps, 
 dehghted to open them only to scatter confusion by 
 
 b 2 
 
xxxvi 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 discouraging, in words at least, all that was then called 
 earnestness — as, for example, by asking, 'Was it or- 
 dained that twice two should make four, simply for the 
 intent that boys and girls should be cut to the heart 
 that they do not make five? Be content; when the 
 veil is raised, perhaps they will make five ! Who 
 knows ? ' ^ 
 
 Clough's chief fascination for Bagehot was, I think, 
 that he had as a poet in some measure rediscovered, at 
 all events reaHsed, as few ever reahsed before, the 
 enormous difficulty of finding truth — a difficulty which 
 he somewhat paradoxically held to be enhanced rather 
 than diminished by the intensity of the truest modern 
 passion for it. The stronger the desire, he teaches, 
 the greater is the danger of illegitimately satisfying that 
 desire by persuading ourselves that what we wish to 
 believe, is true, and the greater the danger of ignoring 
 the actual confusions of human things : — 
 
 * Rules baffle instincts, instincts rules, 
 Wise men are bad, and good are fools, 
 Facts evil, wishes vain appear, 
 
 We cannot go, why are we here ? 
 
 * Oh, may we, for assurance' sake, 
 Some arbitrary judgment take. 
 And wilfully pronounce it clear, 
 For this or that 'tis, we are here % 
 
 * Or is it right, and will it do 
 
 To pace the sad confusion through, 
 
 And say, it does not yet appear 
 
 What we shall be — what we are here 1 ' 
 
 This warning to withhold judgment and not cheat 
 
 ' Poems and Prosit Remains of Arthur Hugh Clongh, vol. i. p. 175. 
 
Memoir, 
 
 xxxvli 
 
 ourselves into beliefs which our own imperious desire 
 to beheve had alone engendered, is given with every 
 variety of tone and modulation, and couched in all sorts 
 of different forms of fancy and apologue, throughout 
 Clough's poems. He insists on 'the ruinous force of 
 the will ' to persuade us of illusions which please us ; 
 of the tendency of practical life to give us behefs 
 which suit that practical life, but are none the truer 
 for that ; and is never weary of warning us that a firm 
 belief in a falsity can be easily generated : — 
 
 * Action will furnish beliefs — but will that belief be the true one 1 
 This is the point, you know. However, it doesn't much matter. 
 What one wants, I suppose, is to predetermine the action, 
 So as to make it entail, not a chance belief, but the true one.* 
 
 This practical preaching, which Clough urges in season 
 and out of season, met an answering chord in Bagehot's 
 mind, not so much in relation to religious behef as in 
 relation to the over-haste and over-eagerness of human 
 conduct, and I can trace the effect of it in all his 
 writings, pohtical and otherwise, to the end of his hfe. 
 Indeed, it affected him much more in later days than 
 in the years immediately following his first friendship 
 with Clough. With all his boyish dash, there was 
 something in Bagehot even in youth which dreaded 
 precipitancy, and not only precipitancy itself, but those 
 moral situations tending to precipitancy which men 
 who have no minds of their own to make up, so often 
 court. In later life he pleased himself by insisting 
 that, on Darwin's principle, civilised men, with all 
 the complex problems of modern life to puzzle them, 
 suspend their judgment so httle, and are so eager for 
 action, only because they have inherited from the 
 
xxxviii 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 earlier, simpler, and more violent ages, an excessive 
 predisposition to action unsuited to our epoch and 
 dangerous to our future development. But it was 
 Clough, I think, who first stirred in Bagehot's mind this 
 great dread of ' the ruinous force of the will,' a phrase 
 he was never weary of quoting, and which might almost 
 be taken as the motto of his ' Physics and Pohtics,' the 
 great conclusion of which is that in the ' age of discus- 
 sion,' grand policies and high-handed diplomacy and 
 sensational legislation of all kinds will become rarer 
 and rarer, because discussion will point out all the dif- 
 ficulties of such policies in relation to a state of exist- 
 ence so complex as our own, and will in this way tend 
 to repress the excess of practical energy handed down 
 to us by ancestors to whom life was a sharper, simpler, 
 and more perilous afiair. 
 
 But the time for Bagehot's full adoption of the 
 suspensive principle in pubhc affairs was not yet. In 
 1851 he went to Paris, shortly before the coup d'etat 
 And while all England was assaihng Louis Napoleon 
 (justly enough, as I think) for his perfidy, and his im- 
 patience of the self-willed Assembly he could not 
 control, Bagehot was preparing a deliberate and very 
 masterly defence of that bloody and high-handed act. 
 Even Bagehot would, I think, if pressed judiciously in 
 later Hfe, have admitted — though I can't say he ever 
 did — that the coup d'etat was one of the best illustra- 
 tions of ' the ruinous force of the will ' in engendering, 
 or at least crystallising, a false intellectual conclusion as 
 to the political possibilities of the future, which recent 
 history could produce. Certainly he always spoke 
 somewhat apologetically of these early letters, though I 
 
Memoir, 
 
 xxxix 
 
 never heard him expressly retract their doctrine. In 
 1851 a knot of young Unitarians, of whom I was then 
 one, headed by the late Mr. J. Langton Sanford — after- 
 wards the historian of the Great EebeUion, who survived 
 Bagehot barely four months — had engaged to help for 
 a time in conducting the Inquirer^ which then was, and 
 still is, the chief Hterary and theological organ of the 
 Unitarian body. Our regime was, I imagine, a time of 
 great desolation for the very tolerant and thoughtful con- 
 stituency for whom we wrote ; and many of them, I am 
 confident, yearned, and were fully justified in yearning, 
 for those better days when this tyranny of ours should 
 be overpast. Sanford and Osier did a good deal to 
 throw cold water on the rather optimist and philan- 
 thropic pohtics of the most sanguine, because the most 
 benevolent and open-hearted of Dissenters. Eoscoe 
 criticised their literary work from the point of view of 
 a devotee of the Ehzabethan poets ; and I attempted to 
 prove to them in distinct heads, first, that their laity 
 ought to have the protection afibrded by a hturgy 
 against the arbitrary prayers of their ministers ; and 
 next, that at least the great majority of their sermons 
 ought to be suppressed, and the habit of dehvering 
 them discontinued almost altogether. Only a denomina- 
 tion of 'just men' trained in tolerance for generations, 
 and in that respect, at least, made all but 'perfect,' 
 would have endured it at all ; but I doubt if any of us 
 caused the Unitarian body so much grief as Bagehot, who 
 never was a Unitarian, but who contributed a series of 
 brilliant letters on the coujp d'etat^ in which he trod just 
 as heavily on the toes of his colleagues as he did on 
 those of the pubHc by whom the Inquirer was taken- 
 
xl 
 
 Memoir, 
 
 In those letters he not only, as I have already shown, 
 eulogised the Cathohc Church, but he supported the 
 Prince-President's mihtary violence, attacked the free- 
 dom of the Press in France, maintained that the country 
 was wholly unfit for true Parhamentary government, 
 and — worst of all perhaps — insinuated a panegyric on 
 Louis Napoleon himself, asserting that he had been 
 far better prepared for the duties of a statesman by 
 gambhng on the turf, than he would have been by 
 poring over the historical and political dissertations of 
 the wise and the good. This was Bagehot's day of 
 cynicism. The seven letters which he wrote on the 
 ./ cowp d'etat were certainly very exasperating, and yet 
 they were not caricatures of his real thought, for his 
 private letters at the time were more cynical still. 
 Crabb Eobinson, in speaking of him, used ever afterwards 
 to describe him to me as ' that friend of yours — you 
 know whom I mean, you rascal ! — who wrote those 
 \ abominable, those most disgraceful letters on the coup 
 \ d'etat — I did not forgive him for years after.' Nor do I 
 I wonder, even now, that a sincere friend of constitutional 
 freedom and intellectual hberty, like Crabb Eobinson, 
 found them difficult to forgive. They were hght and 
 airy, and even flippant on a very grave subject. They 
 made nothing of the Prince's perjury ; and they took 
 impertinent liberties with all the dearest prepossessions 
 of the readers of the Inquirer, and assumed their sym- 
 pathy just where Bagehot knew that they would be 
 most revolted by his opinions. Nevertheless, they had 
 a vast deal of truth in them, and no end of ability, and I 
 hope that there will be many to read them with interest 
 ^ now that they are here republished. There is a good 
 
Memoir. 
 
 xli 
 
 deal of the raw material of history in them, and certainly 
 I doubt if Bagehot ever again hit the satiric vein of 
 argument so well. Here is a passage that will bear 
 taking^ out of its context, and therefore not so full of 
 the shrewd malice of these letters as many others, but 
 which will illustrate their abihty. It is one in which 
 Bagehot maintained for the first time the view (which I 
 beheve he subsequently almost persuaded English poli- 
 ticians to accept, though in 1852 it was a mere flippant 
 novelty, a paradox, and a heresy) that free institutions 
 are apt to succeed with a stupid people, and to founder 
 with a ready-witted and vivacious one. After broaching 
 this, he goes on : — 
 
 * I see you are surprised. You are going to say to me as Socrates 
 did to Polus, " My young friend, of course you are right, but will 
 you explain what you mean, as you are not yet intelligible I will 
 do so as well as I can, and endeavour to make good what I say, not 
 from a prior demonstration of my own, but from the details of the 
 present and the facts of history. Not to begin by wounding any 
 present susceptibilities, let me take the Koman character, for, with 
 one great exception — I need not say to whom I allude — they are the 
 gi-eat political people of history. Now is not a ceitain dulness their 
 most visible characteristic % What is the history of their speculative 
 mind ? A blank. What their literature % A copy. They have left 
 not a single discovery in any abstract science, not a single perfect 
 or well-formed work of high imagination. The Greeks, the perfec- 
 tion of human and accomplished genius, bequeathed to mankind the 
 ideal forms of self-idolising art \ the Romans imitated and admired. 
 The Greeks explained the laws of nature ; the Romans wondered and 
 despised. The Greeks invented a system of numerals second only 
 to that now in use ; the Romans counted to the end of their days 
 with the clumsy apparatus which we still call by their name. The 
 Greeks made a capital and scientific calendar ; the Romans began 
 their month when the Pontifex Maximus happened to spy out the 
 new moon. Throughout Latin literature this is the perpetual puzzle 
 — Why are we free and they slaves % — we praetors and they barbers % 
 Why do the stupid people always win and the clever people always 
 
xlii 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 lose ? I need not say that in real sound stupidity the English people 
 are unrivalled. You'll have more wit, and better wit, in an Irish 
 street-row than would keep Westminster Hall in humour for five weeks. 
 
 These valuable truths are no discoveries of mine. They 
 
 are familiar enough to people whose business it is to know them. Hear 
 what a douce and aged attorney says of your peculiarly promising 
 barrister. Sharp % Oh ! yes, yes : he's too sharp by half. He 
 isn't safe, not a minute, isn't that young man." "What style, sir," 
 asked of an East India Director some youthful aspirant for literary 
 renown, "is most to be preferred in the composition of official 
 despatches T " My good fellow," responded the ruler of Hindostan, 
 " the style as we like, is the Humdrum." ' * 
 
 The permanent value of these papers is due to the 
 freshness of their impressions of the French capital, and 
 their true criticisms of Parisian journahsm and society ; 
 their perverseness consists in this, that Bagehot steadily 
 ignored in them the distinction between the duty of 
 resisting anarchy, and the assumption of the Prince- 
 President that this could only be done by establishing 
 his own dynasty, and deferring sine die that great con- 
 stitutional experiment which is now once more, no 
 thanks to him or his Government, on its trial ; an ex- 
 periment which, for anything we see, had at least as 
 good a chance then as now, and under a firm and 
 popular chief of the executive Hke Prince Louis, would 
 probably have had a better chance then than it has now 
 under MacMahon. I need hardly say that in later Hfe 
 Bagehot was by no means bhnd to the political short- 
 comings of Louis Napoleon's regime^ as the article re- 
 pubhshed from the Economist^ in the second appendix 
 to this volume, sufficiently proves. Moreover, he rejoiced 
 heartily in the moderation of the repubhcan statesmen 
 during the severe trials of the months which just pre- 
 
 See Appendix to this volume, page 329. 
 
Memoir. 
 
 xliii 
 
 ceded his own death, in 1877, and expressed his sincere 
 behef — confirmed by the history of the last year and a 
 half — that the existing Eepubhc has every prospect of 
 hfe and growth. 
 
 During that residence in Paris, Bagehot, though, as 
 I have said, in a somewhat cynical frame of mind, was 
 full of hfe and courage, and was beginning to feel his 
 own genius, which perhaps accounts for the air of 
 recklessness so foreign to him, which he never adopted 
 either before or since. During the riots he was a good 
 deal in the streets, and from a mere love of art helped 
 the Parisians to construct some of their barricades, 
 notwithstanding the fact that his own sympathy was 
 with those who shot down the barricades, not with 
 those who manned them. He chmbed over the rails of 
 the Palais Eoyal on the morning of December 2nd to 
 breakfast, and used to say that he was the only person 
 who did breakfast there on that day. Victor Hugo is 
 certainly wrong in asserting that no one expected Louis 
 Napoleon to use force, and that the streets were as full 
 as usual when the people were shot down, for the gates 
 of the Palais Eoyal were shut quite early in the day. 
 Bagehot was very much struck by the ferocious look of 
 the Montagnards. 
 
 * Of late,' he wrote to me, * I have been devoting my entire 
 attsntion to the science of barricades, which I found amusing. They 
 have systematised it in a way which is pleasing to the cultivated 
 intellect. We had only one good day's fighting, and I naturally kept 
 out of cannon-shot. But I took a quiet walk over the barricades in 
 the morning, and superintended the construction of three with as 
 much keenness as if I had been clerk of the works. You've seen 
 lots, of course, at Berlin, but I should not think those Germans were 
 up to a real Montagnard, who is the most homble being to the eye I 
 ever saw, — sallow, sincere, sour fanaticism, with grizzled moustaches, 
 
xliv 
 
 Memoir, 
 
 and a strong wish to shoot you rather than not. The Montagnards 
 are a scaice commodity, the real race — only three or four, if so many, 
 to a barricade. If you want a Satan any odd time, they'll do ; only 
 I hope that he don't believe in human brotherhood. It is not possible 
 to respect any one who does, and I should be loth to confound the 
 notion of our friend's solitary grandeur by supposing him to fraternise,* 
 &c. *I think M. Buonaparte is entitled to great praise. He has 
 very good heels to his boots, and the French just want treading 
 down, and nothing else — calm, cruel, business-like oppression, to take 
 the dogmatic conceit out of their heads. The spirit of generalisation 
 which, John Mill tells us, honourably distinguishes the French mind, 
 has come to this, that every Parisian wants his head tapped in order 
 to get the formulae and nonsense out of it. And it would pay to 
 perform the operation, for they are very clever on what is within the 
 limit of their experience, and all that can be " expanded " in terms of 
 
 it, but beyond, it is all generalisation and folly So I am for 
 
 any carnivorous government.' 
 
 And again, in the same letter : — 
 
 * Till the Revolution came I had no end of trouble to find con- 
 versation, but now they'll talk against everybody, and against the 
 President like mad — and they talk immensely well, and the language 
 is like a razor, capital if you are skilful, but sure to cut you if you 
 aren't. A fellow can talk German in crude forms, and I don't see it 
 sounds any worse, but this stuff is horrid unless you get it quite right. 
 A French lady made a striking remark to me : — " G'est une revolu- 
 tion qui a sauve la France. Tous mes amis sont mis en prison." She 
 was immensely delighted that such a pleasing way of saving her 
 country had been found.' 
 
 Of course the style of these famihar private letters 
 conveys a gross caricature not only of Bagehot's ma- 
 turer mind, but even of the judgment of the pubhshed 
 letters, and I quote them only to show that at the time 
 when he composed these letters on the coup d'etat, 
 Bagehot's mood was that transient mood of reckless 
 youthful cynicism through which so many men of genius 
 pass. I do not think he had at any time any keen 
 
Memoir, 
 
 xlv 
 
 sympatliy with the multitude, i.e.^ with masses of un- 
 known men. And that he ever felt what has since then 
 been termed 'the enthusiasm of humanity,' the sym- 
 pathy with ' the toihng millions of men sunk in labour 
 and pain,' he himself would strenuously have denied. 
 Such sympathy, even when men really desire to feel it, 
 is, indeed, very much oftener coveted than actually felt 
 by men as a hving motive ; and I am not quite sure that 
 Bagehot would have even wished to feel it. Neverthe- 
 less, he had not the faintest trace of real hardness about 
 him towards people whom he knew and understood. 
 He could not bear to give pain ; and when, in rare 
 cases by youthful inadvertence, he gave it needlessly, 
 I have seen how much and what lasting vexation it 
 caused him. Indeed, he was capable of great sacrifices 
 to spare his friends but a httle suffering. 
 
 It was, I think, during his stay in Paris that Bagehot 
 finally decided to give up the notion of practising at 
 the Bar, and to join his father in the Somersetshire 
 Bank and in his other business as a merchant and ship- 
 owner. This involved frequent visits to London and 
 Liverpool, and Bagehot soon began to take a genuine 
 interest in the larger issues of commerce, and main- 
 tained to the end that ' business is much more amusing 
 than pleasure.' Nevertheless, he could not five without 
 the intellectual life of London, and never stayed more 
 than six weeks at a time in the country without finding 
 some excuse for going to town ; and long before his 
 death he made his home there. Hunting was the only 
 sport he really cared for. He was a dashing rider, and 
 a fresh wind was felt blowing through his earher Hterary 
 efforts, as though he had been thinking in the saddle, 
 
xlvi 
 
 Memoir, 
 
 an effect wanting in his later essays, where you see 
 chiefly the calm analysis of a lucid observer. But most 
 of the ordinary amusements of young people he de- 
 tested. He used to say that he wished he could think 
 balls wicked^ being so stupid as they were, and all ' the 
 little blue and pink girls, so hke each other,' — a senti- 
 ment partly due, perhaps, to his extreme shortness of 
 sight. 
 
 Though Bagehot never doubted the wisdom of his 
 own decision to give up the law for the life of com- 
 merce, he thoroughly enjoyed his legal studies in his 
 friend the late Mr. Justice Quain's chambers, and in 
 those of the present Vice-Chancellor Sir Charles Hall, 
 and he learnt there a good deal that was of great use 
 to him in later hfe. Moreover, in spite of his large 
 capacity for finance and commerce, there were small 
 difficulties in Bagehot's way as a banker and merchant 
 which he felt somewhat keenly. He was always absent- 
 minded about minutice. For instance, to the last, he 
 could not correct a proof well, and was sure to leave a 
 number of small inaccuracies, harshnesses, and shpshod- 
 nesses in style, uncorrected. He declared at one time 
 that he was wholly unable to ' add up,' and in his 
 mathematical exercises in college he had habitually 
 been inaccurate in trifles. I remember Professor Maiden, 
 on returning one of his Greek exercises, saying to him, 
 with that curiously precise and emphatic articulation 
 which made every remark of his go so much farther 
 than that of our other lecturers, * Mr. Bagehot, you 
 wage an internecine war with your aspirates' — not 
 meaning, of course, that he ever left them out in pro- 
 nunciation, but that he neglected to put them in in his 
 
Memoir. 
 
 xlvil 
 
 written Greek. And to the last, even in his printed 
 Greek quotations, the slips of this kind were always 
 numerous. This habitual difficulty — due, I beheve, to a 
 preoccupied imagination — in attending to small details, 
 made a banker's duties seem irksome and formidable to 
 him at first ; and even to the last, in his most effective 
 financial papers, he would generally get some one else 
 to look after the precise figures for him. But in spite 
 of all this, and in spite of a real attraction for the study 
 of law, he was sure that his head would not stand the 
 hot Courts and heavy wigs which make the hot Courts 
 hotter, or the night-work of a thriving barrister in case 
 of success ; and he was certainly quite right. Indeed, 
 had he chosen the Bar, he would have had no leisure 
 for those two or three remarkable books which have 
 made his reputation, — books which have been a,lready 
 translated into all the Hterary and some of the unhterary 
 languages of Europe, and two of which are, I beheve, 
 used as text-books in some of the American Colleges.^ 
 Moreover, in all probabihty, his hfe would have been 
 much shorter into the bargain. Soon after his return 
 from Paris he devoted himself in earnest to banking 
 and commerce, and also began that series of articles, / 
 first for the Prospective and then for the National 
 Review (which latter periodical he edited in conjunction 
 with me for several years), the most striking of which c 
 he repubhshed in 1858, under the awkward and almost 
 forbidding title of ' Estimates of some Enghshmen and 
 Scotchmen' — a book which never attracted the at- 
 tention it deserved, and which has been long out of 
 print. In republishing most of these essays as I am 
 
 • Since the first edition of this work was published, the Oxford Board of 
 Studies have made a text-book of Mr. Bagehot's EnffUsh Constitution for that 
 University. 
 
xlviii 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 now doing, — and a later volume may, I hope, contain 
 those essays on statesmen and politicians which are for 
 the present omitted from these, — it is perhaps only fair 
 to say that Bagehot in later life used to speak ill, much 
 too ill, of his own early style. He used to declare that 
 his early style affected him like the 'jogging of a cart 
 without springs over a very rough road,' and no doubt 
 in his earhest essays something abrupt and spasmodic 
 may easily be detected. Still, this was all so inextricably 
 mingled with flashes of insight and humour which could 
 ill be spared, that I always protested against any notion 
 of so revising the essays as to pare down their ex- 
 crescences. 
 
 I have never understood the comparative failure of 
 this volume of Bagehot 's early essays ; and a compara- 
 tive failure it was, though I do not deny that, even at 
 the time, it attracted much attention among the most 
 accompHshed writers of the day, and that I have been 
 urged to repubhsh it, as I am now doing, by many of 
 the ablest men of my acquaintance. Obviously, as I'' 
 have admitted, there are many faults of workmanship in 
 it. Now and then the banter is forced. Often enough 
 the style is embarrassed. Occasionally, perhaps, the 
 criticism misses its mark, or is over-refined. But taken 
 as a whole, I hardly know any book that is such good 
 reading, that has so much lucid vision in it, so much 
 shrewd and curious knowledge of the world, so sober 
 a judgment and so dashing a humour combined. Take 
 this, for instance, out of the paper on ' The First Edin- 
 burgh Eeviewers,' concerning the judgment passed by 
 Lord Jeffrey on the poetry of Bagehot's favourite poet, 
 Wordsworth : — 
 
Memoir.. 
 
 xlix 
 
 *The world has given judgment. Both Mr. Wordsworth and 
 Lord Jeffrey have received their rewards. The one had his own 
 generation — the laughter of men, the applause of drawing-rooms, the 
 concurrence of the crowd; the other, a succeeding age, the fond 
 enthusiasm of secret students, the lonely raptur-e of lonely minds. 
 And each has received according to his kind. If all cultivated men 
 speak differently because of the existence of Wordswoi*th and Cole- 
 ridge ; if not a thoughtful English hook has appeared for yeat s without 
 some trace for good oi* for evil of their influence ; if sermon- writers 
 subsist upon their thoughts ; if " sacred " poets thrive by translating 
 their weaker portions into the speech of women ; if, when all this is 
 over, some sufficient part of their wiiting will ever be fitting food for 
 wild musing and solitary meditation, surely this is because they pos- 
 sessed the inner natui-e — an "intense and glowing mind" — "the 
 vision and the faculty divine." But, if perchance in their weaker 
 moments the great authors of the Lyrical ballads did ever imagine 
 that the world was to pause because of their vei'ses, that " Peter Bell " 
 would be popular in drawing-rooms, that "Christabel" would be 
 perused in the City, that people of fashion would make a hand-book 
 of the " Excursion," it was well for them to be told at once that it 
 was not so. Nature ingeniously prepared a shrill artificial voice, 
 which spoke in season and out of season, enough and more than 
 enough, what will ever be the idea of the cities of the plain concern- 
 ing those who live alone among the mountains ; of the frivolous con- 
 cerning the grave ; of the gregarious concerning the recluse ; of those 
 who laugh concerning those who laugh not ; of the common concern- 
 ing the uncommon ; of those who lend on usury concerning those who 
 lend not ; the notions of the world, of those whom it will not reckon 
 among the righteous. It said, " This won't do." And so in all times 
 will the lovers of polished Liberalism speak concerning the intense 
 and lonely " prophet." ' * 
 
 I choose that passage because it illustrates so per- 
 fectly Bagehot's double vein, his sympathy with the 
 works of high imagination, and his clear insight into 
 that busy hfe which does not and cannot take note of 
 works of high imagination, and which would not do 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 » See vol. i. p. 28. 
 c 
 
Memoir, 
 
 the work it does, if it could. And this is the charac- 
 teristic of all the essays. How admirably, for instance, 
 in his essay on Shakespeare, does he draw out the in- 
 dividuality of a poet who is generally supposed to be 
 so completely hidden in his plays ; and with how keen 
 a satisfaction does he discern and display the prosperous 
 and practical man in Shakespeare — the qualities which 
 made him a man of substance and a Conservative poH- 
 tician, as well as the qualities which made him a great 
 dramatist and a great dreamer. No doubt Bagehot had 
 a strong personal sympathy with the double hfe. Somer- 
 setshire probably never believed that the imaginative 
 student, the omnivorous reader, could prosper as a 
 banker and a man of business, and it was a satisfaction 
 to him to show that he understood the world far better 
 than the world had ever understood him. Again, how 
 delicate is his dehneation of Hartley Coleridge ; how 
 firm and clear his study of ' Sir Eobert Peel ; ' ^ and how 
 graphically he paints the literary pageant of Gibbon's 
 tame but splendid geniu«^ ! Certainly the literary taste 
 of England never made a greater blunder than when it 
 passed by this remarkable volume of essays with com- 
 paratively little notice. 
 
 In 1858 Bagehot married the eldest daughter of the 
 Eight Honourable James Wilson, who died two years 
 later in India, whither he had gone as the financial 
 member of the Indian Council, to reduce to some extent 
 the financial anarchy which then prevailed there. This 
 marriage gave Bagehot nineteen years of undisturbed 
 happiness, and certainly led to the production of his 
 
 ' This essay I hope to republish with others on English Statesmen in a 
 future volume of Studies in Political Biography. 
 
Memoir, 
 
 li 
 
 most popular and original, if not in every respect his 
 most brilliant books. It connected him with the higher 
 world of pohtics, without which he would hardly have 
 studied and written as he did on the English Constitu- 
 tion ; and by making him the Editor of the Economist 
 it compelled him to give his whole mind as much to 
 the theoretic side of commerce and finance, as his own 
 duties had akeady compelled him to give it to tlie 
 practical side. But when I speak of his marriage as 
 the last impulse which determined his chief work in 
 life, I do not forget that he had long been prepared 
 both for political and for financial speculation by his 
 early education. His father, a man of firm and de- 
 liberate political convictions, had taken a very keen 
 interest in the agitation for the great Eeform Bill of 
 1832, and had materially helped to return a Liberal 
 member for his county after it passed. Probably no one 
 in all England knew the political history of the country 
 since the peace more accurately than he. Bagehot 
 often said that when he wanted any detail concerning 
 the English pohtical history of the last half-century, he 
 had only to ask his father, to obtain it. His uncle, 
 Mr. Vincent Stuckey, too, was a man of the w^orld, and 
 his house in Langport was a focus of many interests 
 during Bagehot's boyhood. Mr. Stuckey had begun life 
 at the Treasury, and was at one time private secretary 
 to Mr. Huskisson ; and when he gave up that career to 
 take a leading share in the Somersetshire Bank, he kept 
 up for a long time his house in London, and his rela- 
 tions with political society there. He was fond of his 
 nephew, as was Bagehot of him ; and there was always 
 a large field of interests, and often there were men of 
 
 c2 
 
Hi 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 eminence, to be found in his house. Thus Bagehot had 
 been early prepared for the wider field of poHtical and 
 financial thought, to which he gave up so much of his 
 time after his marriage. 
 
 I need not say nearly as much on this later aspect of 
 Bagehot's hfe as I have done on its early and more 
 purely hterary aspects, because his services in this 
 direction are already well appreciated by the pubhc. But 
 this I should hke to point out, that he could never have 
 written as he did on the English Constitution without 
 having acutely studied living statesmen and their ways 
 of acting on each other ; that his book was essentially 
 the book of a most reahstic, because a most vividly 
 imaginative, observer of the actual world of politics — 
 the book of a man who was not blinded by habit and 
 use to the enormous difficulties in the way of ' govern- 
 ment by pubhc meeting,' and to the secret of the 
 various means by which in practice those difficulties 
 had been attenuated or surmounted. It is the book of 
 a meditative man who had mused much on the strange 
 workings of human instincts, no less than of a quick 
 observer who had seen much of external life. Had 
 he not studied the men before he studied the institu- 
 tions, had he not concerned himself with individual 
 statesmen before he turned his attention to the me- 
 chanism of our Parliamentary system, he could never 
 have written his book on ' the Enghsh Constitution.' 
 
 I think the same may be said of his book on ' Physics 
 and Politics,' a book in which I find new force and depth 
 every time I take it up afresh. It is true that Bagehot 
 had a keen sympathy with natural science, that he 
 devoured all Mr. Darwin's and Mr. Wallace's books, 
 
Memoir, 
 
 liii 
 
 and many of a much more technical kind, as, for ex- 
 ample, Professor Huxley's on the ' Principles of Physi- 
 ology,' and grasped the leading ideas contained in them 
 with a firmness and precision that left nothing to be 
 desired. But after all, ' Physics and Pohtics ' could never 
 have been written without that sort of Hving insight 
 into man which was the hfe of all his earher essays. 
 The notion that a ' cake of custom,' of rigid, inviolable 
 law, was the first requisite for a strong human society, 
 and that the very cause which was thus essential for the 
 jivst step of progress — the step towards unity — was the 
 great danger of the second step — the step out of uni- 
 formity — and was the secret of all arrested and petrified 
 civihsations, hke the Chinese, is an idea which first 
 germinated in Bagehot's mind at the time he was 
 writing his cynical letters from Paris about stupidity 
 being the first requisite of a political people ; though I 
 admit, of course, that it could not have borne the fruit 
 it did, without Mr. Darwin's conception of a natural 
 selection through conflict, to help it on. Such passages 
 as the following could evidently never have been written 
 by a mere student of Darwinian hterature, nor without 
 the trained imagination exhibited in Bagehot's literary 
 essays : — 
 
 * No one will ever comprehend the arrested civilisations unless he 
 sees the strict dilemma of early society. Either men had no law at 
 all and lived in confused tribes, hardly hanging together, or they had 
 to obtain a fixed law by processes of incredible difficulty. Those 
 who surmounted that difficulty soon destroyed all those that lay in 
 their way who did not. And then they themselves were caught in 
 their own yoke. The customary discipline which could only be im- 
 posed on any early men by terrible sanctions, continued with those 
 sanctions, and killed out of the whole society the propensities to 
 variation which are the principle of progress. Experience shows 
 
liv 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 how incredibly difficult it is to get men really to encourage the prin- 
 ciple of originality ; ' * 
 
 and, as Bagehot held, for a very good reason, namely, 
 that without a long accumulated and inherited tendency 
 to discourage originality, society would never have 
 gained the cohesion requisite for effective common 
 action against its external foes. No one, I think, who 
 had not studied as Bagehot had in actual life, first, the 
 vast and unreasoning Conservatism of politically strong 
 societies, Hke that of rural England, and next, the 
 perilous mobihty and impressibihty of pohtically weak 
 societies, like that of Paris, would ever have seen as 
 he did the close connection of these ideas with Mr. 
 Darwin's principle of natural selection by conflict. 
 And here I may mention, by way of illustrating this 
 point, that Bagehot dehghted in observing and ex- 
 pounding the bovine slowness of rural England in ac- 
 quiring a new idea. Somersetshire, he used to boast, 
 would not subscribe 1,000/. ' to be represented by an 
 archangel ;' and in one letter which I received from him 
 during the Crimean War, he narrated with great gusto 
 an instance of the tenacity with which a Somersetshire 
 rustic stuck to his own notion of what was involved in 
 conquering an enemy. ' The Somersetshire view,' he 
 wrote, ' of the chance of bringing the war to a success- 
 ful conclusion is as follows : — Countryman : ' How old, 
 zir, be the Zar ? ' — Myself: ' About sixty-three.' — 
 Countryman : ' Well, now, I can't think however they 
 be to take he. They do tell I that Eooshia is a very 
 big place, and if he doo goo right into the middle of 'n, 
 you could not take he, not nohow." I talked till the 
 
 * Physics and Politics, p. 57, 
 
Memoir. 
 
 Iv 
 
 train came (it was at a station), and endeavoured to 
 show how the war might be finished without capturing 
 the Czar, but I fear without effect. At last he said, 
 " Well, zir, I hope, as you do say^ zir, we shall take 
 he," as I got into the carriage.' It is clear that the 
 humorous dehght which Bagehot took in this tenacity 
 and density of rural conceptions, was partly the cause 
 of the attention which he paid to the subject. No 
 doubt there was in him a vein of purely instinctive 
 sympathy with this density, for intellectually he could 
 not even have understood it. Writing on the intole- 
 rable and fatiguing cleverness of French journals, he 
 describes in one of his Paris letters the true enjoyment 
 he felt in reading a thoroughly stupid article in the 
 Herald (a Tory paper now no more), and I believe he 
 was quite sincere. It was, I imagine, a real pleasure to 
 him to be able to preach, in his last general work, that 
 a ' cake of custom,' just sufficiently stiff to make inno- 
 vation of any kind very difficult, but not quite stiff 
 enough to make it impossible, is the true condition of 
 durable progress. 
 
 The coolness of his judgment, and his power of 
 seeing both sides of a question, undoubtedly gave 
 Bagehot's political opinions considerable weight with 
 both parties, and I am quite aware that a great ma- 
 jority of the ablest pohtical thinkers of the time would 
 disagree with me when I say, that personally I do not 
 rate Bagehot's sagacity as a practical pohtician nearly 
 so highly as I rate his wise analysis of the growth and 
 rationale of pohtical institutions. Everything he wrote 
 on the pohtics of the day was instructive, but, to my 
 mind at least, seldom decisive, and, as I thought, often 
 
IvI 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 not true. He did not feel, and avowed that he did not 
 feel, much sympathy with the masses, and he attached 
 far too much relative importance to the refinement 
 of the governing classes. That, no doubt, is most 
 desirable, if you can combine it with a genuine con- 
 sideration for the interests of ' the toiling milhons of 
 men sunk in labour and pain.' But experience, I think, 
 sufficiently shows that they are often, perhaps even 
 generally, incompatible ; and that democratic govern- 
 ments of very low tone may consult more adequately 
 the leading interests of the ' dim common populations ' 
 than aristocratic governments of very high calibre. 
 Bagehot hardly admitted this, and always seemed to 
 me to think far more of the intellectual and moral 
 tone of governments, than he did of the intellectual and 
 moral interests of the people governed. 
 
 Again, those who felt most profoundly Bagehot's 
 influence as a political thinker, would probably agree 
 with me that it was his leading idea in politics to dis- 
 courage anything hke too much action of any kind, 
 legislative or administrative, and most of all anything 
 like an ambitious colonial or foreign policy. This was 
 not owing to any doctrinaire adhesion to the principle 
 of laissez-faire. He supported, hesitatingly no doubt, 
 but in the end decidedly, the Irish Land Bill, and never 
 belonged to that straitest sect of the Economists who 
 decry, as contrary to the laws of economy, and httle 
 short of a crime, the intervention of Government in 
 matters which the conflict of individual self-interests 
 might possibly be trusted to determine. It was from 
 a very different point of view that he was so anxious to 
 deprecate ambitious policies, and curb the practical 
 
Memoir, 
 
 Ivii 
 
 energies of the most energetic of peoples. Next to 
 Clough, I think that Sir George Cornewall Lewis had 
 the most powerful influence over him in relation to 
 pohtical principles. There has been no statesman in 
 our time whom he hked so much or regretted so 
 deeply ; and he followed him most of all in deprecating 
 the greater part of what is called pohtical energy. 
 Bagehot held with Sir George Lewis that men in 
 modern days do a great deal too much ; that half the 
 pubhc actions, and a great many of the private actions 
 of men, had better never have been done ; that modern 
 statesmen and modern peoples are far too willing to 
 burden themselves with responsibihties. He held, too, 
 that men have not yet sufficiently verified the princi- 
 ples on which action ought to proceed, and that till 
 they have done so, it would be better far to act less. 
 Lord Melbourne's habitual query, ' Can't you let it 
 alone ? ' seemed to him, as regarded all new responsi- 
 bihties, the wisest of hints for our time. He would 
 have been glad to find a fair excuse for giving up India, 
 for throwing the Colonies on their own resources, and 
 for persuading the Enghsh people to accept dehberately 
 the place of a fourth or fifth-rate European power — 
 which was not, in his estimation, a cynical or unpatriotic 
 wish, but quite the reverse, for he thought that such a 
 course would result in generally raising the cahbre of 
 the national mind, conscience, and taste. In his ' Physics 
 and Pohtics ' he urges generally, as I have before pointed 
 out, that the practical energy of existing peoples in the 
 West is far in advance of the knowledge that would 
 alone enable them to turn that energy to good account. 
 He wanted to see the Enghsh a more leisurely race, 
 
Iviii 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 taking more time to consider all their actions, and 
 suspending their decisions on all great poHcies and 
 enterprises till either these were well matured, or, as he 
 expected it to be in the great majority of cases, the 
 opportunity for sensational action was gone by. He 
 quotes from Clough what really might have been taken 
 as the motto of his own poHtical creed : — 
 
 * Old things need not be therefore true, 
 O brother men, nor yet the new ; 
 Ah, still awhile, th' old thought retain, 
 And yet consider it again.' 
 
 And in all this, if it were advanced rather as a prin- 
 ciple of education than as a principle of political prac- 
 tice, there would be great force. But when he apphed 
 this teaching, not to the individual but to the State, not 
 to encourage the gradual formation of a new type of 
 character, but to warn the nation back from a multi- 
 tude of practical duties of a simple though arduous 
 kind, such as those, for example, which we have under- 
 taken in India- — duties, the value of which, performed 
 even as they are, could hardly be overrated, if only 
 because they involve so few debatable and doubtful 
 assumptions, and are only the elementary tasks of the 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water for the civilisa- 
 tion of the future — I think Bagehot made the mistake 
 of attaching far too Httle value to the moral instincts of 
 a sagacious people, and too much to the refined deduc- 
 tions of a singularly subtle intellect. I suspect that 
 the real efiect of suddenly stopping the various safety- 
 valves, by which the spare energy of our nation is 
 diverted to the useful work of roughly civilising other 
 lands, would be, not to stimulate the deliberative 
 
Memoir. 
 
 Hx 
 
 understanding of the English people, but to stunt its 
 thinking as well as its acting powers, and render it 
 more frivolous and more vacant-minded than it is. 
 
 In the field of economy there are so many thinkers 
 who are far better judges of Bagehot's invaluable work 
 than myself, that I will say a very few words indeed 
 upon it. It is curious, but I believe it to be almost 
 universally true, that what may be called the primitive 
 impulse of aU economic action., is generally also strong 
 in great economic thinkers and financiers — I mean the 
 saving, or at least the anti-spending, instinct. It is very 
 diflSicult to see why it should be so, but I think it is so. 
 No one was more large-minded in his view of finance 
 than Bagehot. He preached that, in the case of a rich 
 country hke England, efficiency was vastly more impor- 
 tant than the mere reduction of expenditure, and held 
 that Mr. Gladstone and other great Chancellors of the 
 Exchequer made a great deal too much of saving for 
 saving's sake. None the less he himself had the anti- 
 spending instinct in some strength, and he was evidently 
 pleased to note its existence in his favourite economic 
 thinker, Eicardo. Generous as Bagehot was — and no 
 one ever hesitated less about giving largely for an 
 adequate end — he always told me, even in boyhood, 
 that spending was disagreeable to him, and that it took 
 something of an efibrt to pay away money. In a letter 
 before me, he tells his correspondent of the marriage of 
 an acquaintance, and adds that the lady is a Dissenter, 
 ' and therefore probably rich. Dissenters don't spend, 
 and quite right too' I suppose it takes some feeling of 
 this kind to give the intellect of a man of high capacity 
 that impulse towards the study of the laws of the 
 
Ix 
 
 Memoir, 
 
 increase of wealth, without wliich men of any imagina- 
 tion would be more likely to turn in other directions. 
 Nevertheless, even as an economist, Bagehot's most 
 original writing was due less to his deductions from the 
 fundamental axioms of the modern science, than to that 
 deep insight into men which he had gained in many 
 different fields. The essays, pubhshed in the ForU 
 nightly Review for February and May 1876^ — ^in which 
 he showed so powerfully how few of the conditions of 
 the science known to us as ' pohtical economy ' have 
 ever been really apphcable to any large portion of the 
 globe during the longest periods of human history — 
 furnish quite an original study in social history and in 
 human nature. His striking book, ' Lombard Street,' is 
 quite as much a study of bankers and bill-brokers as of 
 the principles of banking. Take, again, Bagehot's view 
 of the intellectual position and value of the capitahst 
 classes. Every one who knows his writings in the 
 Economist^ knows how he ridiculed the common impres- 
 sion that the chief service of the capitahst class — that 
 by which they earn their profits — is merely what the 
 late Mr. Senior used to call ' abstinence,' that is, the 
 practice of deferring their enjoyment of their savings 
 in order that those savings may multiply themselves ; 
 and knows too how inadequate he thought it, merely to 
 add that when capitahsts are themselves managers, they 
 discharge the task of ' superintending labour ' as well. 
 Bagehot held that the capitahsts of a commercial 
 country do — not merely the saving, and the work of 
 foremen in superintending labour, but all the difficult 
 intellectual work of commerce besides, and are so httle 
 
 * The Postulates of Political Economy , 
 
Memoir, 
 
 Ixi 
 
 appreciated as they are, chiefly because they are a 
 dumb class who are seldom equal to explaining to 
 others the complex processes by which they estimate 
 the wants of the community, and conceive how best to 
 supply them. He maintained that capitahsts are the 
 great generals of commerce, that they plan its whole 
 strategy, determine its tactics, direct its commissariat, 
 and incur the danger of great defeats, as well as earn, 
 if they do not always gain, the credit of great victories. 
 
 Here again is a new illustration of the hght which 
 Bagehot's keen insight into men, taken in connection 
 with his own intimate understanding of the commercial 
 field, brought into his economic studies. He brought 
 life into these dry subjects from almost every side ; for 
 instance, in writing to the Spectator^ many years ago, 
 about the chff scenery of Cornwall, and especially 
 about the petty harbour of Boscastle, with its fierce 
 sea and its two breakwaters — which leave a mere 
 ' Temple Bar ' for the ships to get in at — a harbour of 
 which he says that ' the principal harbour of Liliput 
 probably had just this look,' — he goes back in imagina- 
 tion at once to the condition of the country at the time 
 when a great number of such petty harbours as these 
 were essential to such trade as there was, and shows 
 that at that time the Liverpool and London docks not 
 only could not have been built for want of money, but 
 would have been of no use if they had been built, since 
 the auxiliary facihties which alone make such emporia 
 useful did not exist. ' Our old gentry built on their 
 own estates as they could, and if their estates were 
 near some wretched httle haven, they were much 
 pleased. The sea was the railway of those days. It 
 
Ixil 
 
 Memoir. 
 
 brought, as it did to EUangowan, in Dirk Hatteraick's 
 time, brandy for the men and pinners for the women, 
 to the lonehest of coast castles.' It was by such vivid 
 illustrations as this of the conditions of a very different 
 commercial life from our own, that Bagehot ht up the 
 'dismal science,' till in his hands it became both pic- 
 turesque and amusing. 
 
 Bagehot made two or three efforts to get into Par- 
 liament, but after an illness which he had in 1868 he 
 deliberately abandoned the attempt, and held, I believe 
 rightly, that his pohtical judgment was all the sounder, 
 as well as his health the better, for a quieter life. In- 
 deed, he used to say of himself that it would be very 
 difficult for him to find a borough which would be 
 wilhng to elect him its representative, because he was 
 ' between sizes in pohtics.' Nevertheless in 1866 he 
 was very nearly elected for Bridgewater, but was by no 
 means pleased that he was so near success, for he stood 
 to lose, not to win, in the hope that if he and his party 
 were really quite pure, he might gain the seat on peti- 
 tion. He did his very best, indeed, to secure purity, 
 though he failed. As a speaker, he did not often 
 succeed. His voice had no great compass, and his 
 manner was somewhat odd to ordinary hearers ; but 
 at Bridgewater he was completely at his ease, and his 
 canvass and pubhc speeches were decided successes. 
 His examination, too, before the Commissioners sent 
 down a year or two later to inquire into the corruption 
 of Bridgewater was itself a great success. He not only 
 entirely defeated the somewhat eagerly pressed efforts 
 of one of the Commissioners, Mr. Anstey, to connect 
 him with the bribery, but he drew a most amusing 
 
Memoir. 
 
 Ixiii 
 
 picture of the bribable electors whom he had seen only 
 to shun. I will quote a Httle bit from the evidence he 
 gave in reply to what Mr. Anstey probably regarded as 
 home-thrusts ;— 
 
 * 42,018. {Mr. Anstey^ Speaking from your experience of those 
 streets, when you went down them canvassing, did any of the people 
 say anything to you, or in your hearing, about money ? — Yes, one I 
 recollect standing at the door, who said, " I won't vote for gentlefolks 
 unless they do somethmg for I. Gentlefolks do not come to I unless 
 they want something of I, and I won't do nothing for gentlefolks, 
 unless they do something for me." Of course, I immediately retired 
 out of that house. 
 
 * 42,019. That man did not give you his promise? — I retired 
 immediately ; he stood in the doorway sideways, as these rustics do. 
 
 * 42,020. Were there many such instances % — One or two, I re- 
 member. One suggested that I might have a place. I immediately 
 retired from him. 
 
 '42,021. Did anybody of a better class than those voters, privately, 
 of course, expostulate with you against your resolution to be pure % — 
 No, nobody ever came to me at all. 
 
 * 42,022. But those about you, did any of them say anything of 
 this kind : " Mr. Bagehot, you are quite wrong in putting purity of 
 principles forward. It will not do if the other side bribes % " — I might 
 have been told that I should be unsuccessful in the stream of con- 
 versation; many people may have told me that; that is how I 
 gathered that if the other side was impure and we were pure, I 
 should be beaten. 
 
 ' 42,023. Can you remember the names of any who told you that % 
 ■ — No, I cannot, but I daresay I was told by as many as twenty 
 people, and we went upon that entire consideration.' 
 
 To leave my subject without giving some idea of 
 Bagehot's racy conversation would be a sin. He in- 
 herited this gift, I believe, in great measure from his 
 mother, to whose stimulating teaching in early life he 
 probably owed also a great deal of his rapidity of 
 thought. A lady who knew him well, says that one 
 seldom asked him a question without his answer 
 
Ixiv 
 
 Memoir, 
 
 making you either think or laugh, or both think and 
 laugh together. And this is the exact truth. His 
 habitual phraseology was always vivid. He used to 
 speak, for instance, of the minor people, the youths or 
 admirers who collect round a considerable man, as his 
 ' fringe.' It was he who invented the phrase ' padding,' 
 to denote the secondary kind of article, not quite of the 
 first merit, but with interest and value of its own, with 
 which a judicious editor will fill up perhaps three- 
 quarters of his review. If you asked him what he 
 thought on a subject on which he did not happen to 
 have read or thought at all, he would open his large 
 eyes and say, 'My mind is "to let" on that subject, 
 pray tell me what to think ; ' though you soon found 
 that this might be easier attempted than done. He 
 used to say banteringly to his mother, by way of put- 
 ting her ofi* at a time when she was anxious for him to 
 marry, ' A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife 
 is his fault.' He told me once, at a time when the 
 Spectator had perhaps been somewhat more eager or 
 sanguine on pohtical matters than he approved, that he 
 always got his wife to ' break ' it to him on the Saturday 
 morning, as he found it too much for his nerves to 
 encounter its views without preparation. Then his 
 familiar antitheses not unfrequently reminded me of 
 Dickens's best touches in that line. He writes to a 
 
 friend, ' Tell that his pohcies went down in the 
 
 Colombo^ but were fished up again. They are dirty ^ 
 hut valid' I remember asking him if he had enjoyed 
 a particular dinner which he had rather expected to 
 enjoy, but he replied, ' No, the sherry was bad ; tasted 
 as if L had dropped his h's into it.' His practical 
 
Memoir. 
 
 Ixv 
 
 illustrations, too, were full of wit. In his address to 
 the Bridgewater constituency, on the occasion when he 
 was defeated by eight votes, he criticised most happily 
 the sort of bribery which ultimately resulted in the 
 disfranchisement of the place. 
 
 * I can make allowance,' he said, ' for the poor voter ; he is most 
 likely ill- educated, certainly ill-off, and a little money is a nice treat 
 to him. What he does is wrong, but it is intelligible. What I do 
 not understand is the position of the rich, respectable, vii-tuous 
 members of a party which countenances these things. They are like 
 the man who stole stinking fish ; they commit a crime, and they get 
 no benefit.' 
 
 But perhaps the best illustration I can give of 
 his more sardonic humour was his remark to a friend 
 who had a church in the grounds near his house : — 
 ' Ah, you've got the church in the grounds ! I like 
 that. It's well the tenants shouldn't be quite sure that 
 the landlord's power stops with this world.' And his 
 more humorous exaggerations were very happy. I 
 remember his saying of a man who was excessively 
 fastidious in rejecting under-done meat, that he once 
 sent away a cinder ' because it was red ; ' and he coi i- 
 fided gravely to an early friend that when he was in 
 low spirits, it cheered him to go down to the bank, and 
 dabble his hand in a heap of sovereigns. But his talk 
 had finer qualities than any of these. One of his most 
 intimate friends — both in early hfe, and later in Lin- 
 coln's Inn — Mr. T. Smith Osier, writes to me of it 
 ^ thus : — 
 
 ^ As an instrument for arriving at truth, I j knew anything 
 like a talk with Bagehot. It had just the quality which the farmers 
 desiderated in the claret, of which they complained that though it was 
 very nice, it brought them "no forrader;" for Bagehot's conversation 
 VOL. I. d 
 
Ixvi 
 
 Memoh\ 
 
 did get you forward, and at a most amazing pace. Several ingredients 
 went to this ; the foi'emost was his power of getting to the heart of 
 the subject, taking you miles beyond your starting point in a sentence, 
 generally by dint of sinking to a deeper stratum. The next was his 
 instantaneous appreciation of the bearing of everything you yourself 
 said, making talk with him, as Koscoe once remarked, "like riding a 
 horse with a perfect mouth." But most unique of all was his power 
 of keeping up animation without combat. I never knew a power of 
 discussion, of co operative investigation of truth, to approach to it. 
 It was all stimulus, and yet no contest.' 
 
 But I must have done; and, indeed, it is next to im- 
 possible to convey, even faintly, the impression of 
 Bagehot's vivid and pungent conversation to anyone 
 who did not know him. It was full of youth, and yet 
 had all the wisdom of a mature judgment in it. The 
 last time we met, only five days before his death, I 
 remarked on the vigour and youthfulness of his look, 
 and told him he looked less like a contemporary of my 
 own than one of a younger generation. In a pencil- 
 note, the last I received from him, written from bed on 
 the next day but one, he said, ' I think you must have 
 had the evil eye when you complimented me on my ap- 
 pearance. Ever since, I have been sickening, and am 
 now in bed with a severe attack on the lungs.' Indeed, 
 well as he appeared to me, he had long had dehcate 
 health, and heart disease was the immediate cause of 
 death. In spite of a heavy cold on his chest, he went 
 down to his father's for his Easter visit the day after I 
 last saw him, and he passed away painlessly in sleep on 
 the 24th March 1877, aged 51. It was at Herds Hill, 
 the pretty place west of the river Parret, that flows 
 past Langport, which his grandfather had made some 
 fifty years before, that he breathed liis last. He had 
 
Memoir. 
 
 Ixvii 
 
 been carried thither as an infant to be present wlien 
 the foundation stone was laid of the home which he 
 was never to inherit ; and now very few of his name 
 survive. Bagehot's family is believed to be the only 
 one remaining that has retained the old spelhng of the 
 name, as it appears in Doomsday Book, the modern 
 form being Bagot. The Gloucestershire family of the 
 same name, from whose stock they are supposed to 
 have sprung, died out in the beginning of this century. 
 
 Xot very many perhaps, outside Bagehot's own 
 inner circle, will carry about with them that hidden 
 pain, that burden of emptiness, inseparable from an 
 image which has hitherto been one full of the sug- 
 gestions of life and power, when that life and power are 
 no longer to be found ; for he was intimately known 
 only to the few. But those who do will hardly find 
 again in this world a store of intellectual sympathy of 
 so high a stamp, so wide in its range and so full of 
 original and fresh suggestion, a judgment to lean on so 
 real and so sincere, or a friend so frank and constant, 
 with so vivid and tenacious a memory for the happy 
 associations of a common past, and so generous in 
 recognising the independent value of divergent convic- 
 tions in the less pliant present. 
 
 E. H. H. 
 
 I^ovtmher 1, 1878. 
 
LITERAEY 
 
 STUDIES 
 
 TEE FIRST EDINBURGH REVIEWERS,' 
 (1855.) 
 
 It is odd to hear that the Edinburgh Eeview was once 
 thought an incendiary publication. A young generation, which 
 has always regarded the appearance of that periodical as a 
 grave constitutional event (and been told that its composition 
 is intrusted to Privy Councillors only), can scarcely believe, 
 that once grave gentlemen kicked it out of doors — that the 
 dignified classes murmured at 'these young men ' starting such 
 views, abetting such tendencies, using such expressions — that 
 aged men said, * Very clever, but not at all sound.' Venerable 
 men too exaggerate. People say the Eeview was planned in a 
 garret, but this is incredible. Merely to take such a work into 
 a garret would be inconsistent with propriety ; and the tale 
 that the original conception, the pure idea to which each num- 
 ber is a quarterly aspiration, ever was in a garret is the 
 evident fiction of reminiscent age — striving and failing to 
 remember. 
 
 ! A Memmr of the Rev. Sydney Smith. By his Daughter, Lady Holland. 
 With a Selection from his Letters. Edited by Mrs. Austin. 2 vols. Longmans. 
 
 Lord Jeffrey's Contnhutions to the Edinburgh Review. A new Edition in 
 one volume. Longmans. 
 
 Lord Brougham/ s Colleeted Worhs. Vols. I. IL III. Lives of PhilosfljJhers 
 of the Reign of George ILL. Lives of Men of Letters of tlie Reign of George 
 III. Historical Sketcltes of the Statesmen mho flourished in the Reign of George 
 TIT. Griffin. 
 
 TJie Rev. Sydney Smith's Miscellaiieous Works. Including his Coitributions 
 to the Edinhuryh Review. Longmans. 
 VOL. I. B 
 
2 The First Edmhn^gh Reviewers. 
 
 Eeview writing is one of the features of modern literature. 
 Many able men really give themselves up to it. Comments on 
 ancient writings are scarcely so common as formerly ; no great 
 part of our literary talent is devoted to the illustration of the 
 ancient masters ; but what seems at first sight less dignified, 
 annotation on modern writings was never so frequent. Hazlitt 
 started the question, whether it would not be as well to review 
 works which did not appear, in lieu of those which did — wishing, 
 as a reviewer, to escape the labour of perusing print, and, as a 
 man, to save his fellow-creatures from the slow torture of 
 tedious extracts. But, though approximations may frequently 
 be noticed — though the neglect of authors and independence of 
 critics are on the increase — this conception, in its grandeur, 
 has never been carried out. We are surprised at first sight, 
 that writers should wish to comment on one another ; it appears 
 a tedious mode of stating opinions, and a needless confusion of 
 personal facts with abstract arguments ; and some, especially 
 authors who have been censured, say that the cause is laziness 
 — that it is easier to write a review than a book — and that re- 
 viewers are, as Coleridge declared, a species of maggots, inferior 
 to bookworms, living on the delicious brains of real genius. 
 Indeed it looulcl be very nice, but our world is so imperfect. 
 This idea is wholly false. Doubtless it is easier to write one 
 review than one book : but not, which is the real case, many 
 reviews than one book. A deeper cause must be looked for. 
 
 In truth, review-writing but exemplifies the casual character 
 of modern literature. Everything about it is temporary and 
 fragmentary. Look at a railway stall ; you see books of every 
 colour — blue, yellow, crimson, 'ring-streaked, speckled, and 
 spotted,' on every subject, in every style, of every opinion, with 
 every conceivable difference, celestial or sublunary, maleficent, 
 beneficent — but all small. People take their literature in 
 morsels, as they take sandwiches on a journey. The volumes 
 at least, you can see clearly, are not intended to be everlasting. 
 It may be all very well for a pure essence like poetry to be im- 
 
The First EdinbiLrgh Reviewo^s, 
 
 3 
 
 mortal in a perishable world ; it has no feeling ; but paper 
 cannot endure it, paste cannot bear it, string has no heart for 
 it. The race has made up its mind to be fugitive, as well as 
 minute. What a change from the ancient volume ! — 
 
 * That weight of wood, with leathern coat o'erlaid, 
 Those ample clasps, of solid metal made ; 
 The close-press'd leaves, unoped for many an age, 
 The dull red edging of the well-fill'd page ; 
 On the broad back the stubborn ridges roll'd, 
 Where yet the title stands in tarnish'd gold.' 
 
 And the change in the appearance of books has been accom- 
 panied — has been caused — by a similar change in readers. 
 What a transition from the student of former ages ! — from a 
 grave man, with grave cheeks and a considerate eye, who spends 
 his life in study, has no interest in the outward world, hears 
 nothing of its din, and cares nothing for its honours, who 
 would gladly learn and gladly teach, whose whole soul is taken 
 up with a few books of ' Aristotle and his Philosophy,' — to the 
 merchant in the railway, with a head full of sums, an idea that 
 tallow is ' up,' a conviction that teas are ' lively,' and a mind 
 reverting perpetually from the little volume which he reads to 
 these mundane topics, to the railway, to the shares, to the 
 buying and bargaining universe. We must not wonder that 
 the outside of books is so different, when the inner nature of 
 those for whom they are written is so changed. 
 
 It is indeed a peculiarity of our times, that we must instruct 
 so many persons. On politics, on religion, on all less important 
 topics still more, every one thinks himself competent to think, 
 — in some casual manner does think, — to the best of our means 
 must be taught to think rightly. Even if we had a profound 
 and far-seeing statesman, his deep ideas and long-reaching 
 vision would be useless to us, unless we could impart a confi- 
 dence in them to the mass of influential persons, to the un- 
 elected Commons, the unchosen Council, who assist at the 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 The First Edinbnrgh Reviewers. 
 
 deliberations of the nation. In religion the appeal now is not 
 to the technicalities of scholars, or the fictions of recluse school- 
 men, but to the deep feelings, the sure sentiments, the painful 
 strivings of all who think and hope. And this appeal to the 
 many necessarily brings with it a consequence. We must speak 
 to the many so that they will listen, — that tliey will like to 
 listen, — that they will understand. It is of no use addressing 
 them with the forms of science, or the rigour of accuracy, or 
 the tedium of exhaustive discussion. The multitude are im- 
 patient of system, desirous of brevity, puzzled by formality. 
 They agree with Sydney Smith : 'Political economy has become, 
 in the hands of Malthus and Eicardo, a school of metaphysics. 
 All seem agreed what is to be done ; the contention is, how the 
 subject is to be divided and defined. Meddle with no such 
 matters.^ We are not sneering at ' the last of the sciences ; ' 
 we are concerned with the essential doctrine, and not with the 
 particular instance. Such is the taste of mankind. 
 We may repeat ourselves. 
 
 There is, as yet, no Act of Parliament compelling a bona fide 
 traveller to read. If you wish him to read, you must make 
 reading pleasant. You must give him short views, and clear 
 sentences. It will not answer to explain what all the things 
 which you describe, are not. You must begin by saying what 
 they are. There is exactly the difference betv/een the books of 
 this age, and those of a more laborious age, that we feel between 
 the lecture of a professor and the talk of the man of the 
 world — the former profound, systematic, suggesting all argu- 
 ments, analysing all difficulties, discussing all doubts, — very 
 admirable, a little tedious, slowly winding an elaborate way, 
 the characteristic effort of one who has hived wisdom during 
 many studious years, agreeable to such as he is, anything but 
 agreeable to such as he is not : the latter, the talk of the mani- 
 fold talker, glancing lightly from topic to topic, suggesting 
 deep things in a jest, unfolding imanswerable arguments in an 
 absurd illustration, expounding nothing, completing nothing, 
 
The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 
 
 5 
 
 exhausting nothing, yet really suggesting the lessons of a wider 
 experience, embodying the results of a more finely tested philo- 
 sophy, passing with a more Shakesperian transition, connecting 
 topics with a more subtle link, refining on them with an acuter 
 perception, and what is more to the purpose, pleasing all that 
 hear him, charming high and low, in season and out of season, 
 with a word of illustration for each and a touch of humour in- 
 telligible to all, — fragmentary yet imparting what he says, 
 allusive yet explaining what he intends, disconnected yet im- 
 pressing what he maintains. This is the very model of our 
 modern writing. The man of the modern world is used to 
 speak what the modern world will hear; the writer of the 
 modern world must write what that world will indulgently and 
 pleasantly peruse. 
 
 In this transition from ancient writing to modern, the 
 revi ew-like essa y and the essay-like review fill a large space. 
 Thei r small bulk, their slight pretension to systematic com- 
 pleteness, their avowal, it might be said, of necessary incom- 
 pleteness, the facility of changing the subject, of selecting 
 points to attack, of exposing only the best corner for defence, 
 are great temptations. Still greater is the advantage of ' our 
 limits.' A real reviewer always spends his first and best pages 
 on the parts of a subject on which he wishes to write, the easy 
 comfortable parts which he knows. The formidable difficulties 
 which he acknowledges, you foresee by a strange fatality that 
 he will only reach two pages before the end ; to his great grief 
 there is no opportunity for discussing them. As a young 
 gentleman, at the India House examination, wrote ' Time up ' 
 on nine unfinished papers in succession, so you may occasionally 
 read a whole review, in every article of which the principal 
 difficulty of each successive question is about to be reached at 
 the conclusion. Nor can any one deny that this is the suitable 
 skill, the judicious custom of the craft. 
 
 Some may be inclined to mourn over the old days of syste- 
 matic arguments and regular discussion. A ' field-day ' coutro- 
 
6 
 
 The First Edinbui^gh Reviewers. 
 
 versy is a fine thing. These skirmishes have much danger and 
 no glory. Yet there is one immense advantage. The appeal 
 now is to the mass of sensible persons. Professed students are 
 not generally suspected of common sense ; and though they 
 often show acuteness in their peculiar pursuits, they have not 
 the various experience, the changing imagination, the feeling 
 nature, the realised detail which are necessary data for a 
 thousand questions. Whatever we may think on this point, 
 however, the transition has been made. The Edinburgh Eeview 
 was, at its beginning, a material step in the change. Unques- 
 tionably, the Spectator and Tatler, and such-like writings, had 
 opened a similar vein, but their size was too small. They 
 could only deal with small fragments, or the extreme essence of 
 a subject. They could not give a view of what was compli- 
 cated, or analyse what was involved. The modern man must 
 be told what to think — shortly, no doubt — but he must be told 
 it. The essay-like criticism of modern times is about the 
 length which he likes. The Edinburgh Eeview, which began 
 the system, may be said to be, in this country, the commence- 
 ment on large topics of suitable jiews for sensible persons. ^ 
 The circumstances of the time were especially favourable to 
 such an undertaking. Those years were the commencement of 
 what is called the Eldonine period. The cold and haughty Pitt 
 had gone down to the grave in circumstances singularly con- 
 trasting with his prosperous youth, and he had carried along 
 with him the inner essence of half-liberal principle, which had 
 clung to a tenacious mind from youthful associations, and was 
 all that remained to the Tories of abstraction or theory. As 
 for Lord Eldon, it is the most difficult thing in the world to 
 believe that there ever was such a man. It only shows how 
 intense historical evidence is, that no one really doubts it. He 
 believed in everything which it is impossible to believe in — in 
 the danger of Parliamentary Eeform, the danger of Catholic 
 Emancipation, the danger of altering the Court of Chancery, 
 the danger of altering tlie Courts of Law, the danger of abolish- 
 
The First Edinbu7^gh Reviewers. 
 
 7 
 
 ing capital punishment for trivial thefts, the danger of making 
 landowners pay their debts, the danger of making anything 
 more, the danger of making anything less. It seems as if he 
 maturely thought, ' Now I know the present state of things to 
 be consistent with the existence of John Lord Eldon ; but if we 
 begin altering that state, I am sure I do not know that it will 
 be consistent.' As Sir Kobert Walpole was against all com- 
 mittees of inquiry on the simple ground, ' If they once begin 
 that sort of thing, who knows who will be safe ? ' — so that great 
 Chancellor (still remembered in his own scene) looked plea- 
 santly down from the woolsack, and seemed to observe, ' Well, 
 it is a queer thing that I should be here, and here I mean to 
 stay.' With this idea he employed, for many years, all the 
 abstract intellect of an accomplished lawyer, all the practical 
 hoiihomie of an accomplished courtier, all the energy of both 
 professions, all the subtlety acquired in either, in the task of 
 maintaining John Lord Eldon in the cabinet, and maintaining 
 a cabinet that would suit John Lord Eldon. No matter what 
 change or misfortunes happened to the Royal house, — whether 
 the most important person in court politics was the old King 
 or the young King, Queen Charlotte or Queen Caroline — 
 whether it was a question of talking grave business to the 
 mutton of G-eorge the Third, or queer stories beside the cham- 
 pagne of G-eorge the Fourth, there was the same figure. To the 
 first he was tearfully conscientious, and at the second the old 
 northern circuit stories (how old, what outlasting tradition shall 
 ever say ?) told with a cheerful bonhomie, and a strong con- 
 viction that they were ludicrous, really seemed to have pleased 
 as well as the more artificial niceties of the professed wits. He 
 was always agreeable, and always serviceable. No little 
 peccadillo offended him : the ideal, according to the satirist, of 
 a ' good-natured man,' he cared for nothing until he was him- 
 self hurt. He ever remembered the statute which absolves 
 obedience to a king de facto. And it was the same in the 
 political world. There was one man who never changed. No 
 
8 
 
 The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 
 
 matter what politicians came and went — and a good many^ 
 including several that are now scarcely remembered, did come 
 and go, — the ' Cabinet-maker,' as men called bin, still re- 
 mained. ' As to Lord Liverpool being Prime Minister,' con- 
 tinued Mr. Brougham, ' he is no more Prime Minister than I 
 am. I reckon Lord Liverpool as a sort of member of opposi- 
 tion ; and after what has recently passed, if I were required, I 
 should designate him as " a noble lord with whom I have the 
 honour to act." Lord Liverpool may have collateral influence, 
 but Lord Eldon has all the direct influence of the Prime 
 Minister. He is Prime Minister to all intents and purposes, 
 and he stands alone in the full exercise of all the influence of 
 that high situation. Lord Liverpool has carried measures 
 against the Lord Chancellor ; so have 1. If Lord Liverpool 
 carried the Marriage Act, I carried the Education Bill,' &c. &Cc 
 And though the general views of Lord Eldon may be described, 
 — though one can say at least negatively and intelligibly that 
 he objected to everything proposed, and never proposed anything 
 himself, — the arguments are such as it would require great 
 intellectual courage to endeavour at all to explain. What 
 follows is a favourable specimen. 'Lord . Grrey,' says his 
 biographer, ' having introduced a bill for dispensing with the 
 declarations prescribed by the Acts of 25 and 30 Car. II., against 
 the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the Invocation of Saints, 
 moved tlie second reading of it on the 10th of June, when the 
 Lord Chancellor again opposed the principle of such a measure, 
 urging that the law which had been introduced under Charles 
 11. had been re-enacted in the first Parliament of William III.^ 
 the founder of our civil and religious liberties. It had been 
 thought necessary for the preservation of these, that papists 
 should not be allowed to sit in Parliament, and some test was 
 necessary by which it might be ascertained whether a man was 
 a Catholic or Protestant. The only possible test for such a 
 purpose was an oath declaratory of religious belief, and, as Dr, 
 Paley had observed, it was perfectly just to have a religious test 
 
The First Eclinbttrgh Reviewers. 
 
 9 
 
 of a political creed. He entreated the House not to commit 
 the crime against posterity of transmitting to them in an im- 
 paired and insecure state the civil and religious liberties of 
 England.' And this sort of appeal to Paley and King William 
 is made the ground — one can hardly say the reason — for the 
 most rigid adherence to all that was established. 
 
 It may be asked, How came the English people to endure 
 this ? They are not naturally illiberal ; on the contrary, though 
 slow and cautious, they are prone to steady improvement, and 
 not at all disposed to acquiesce in the unlimited perfection of 
 their rulers. On a certain imaginative side, unquestionably, 
 there is or was a strong feeling of loyalty, of attachment to 
 what is old, love for what is ancestral, belief in what has been 
 tried. But the fond attachment to the past is a very different 
 idea from a slavish adoration of the present. Nothing is 
 more removed from the Eldonine idolatry of the status quo 
 than the old cavalier feeling of deep idolatry for the ancient 
 realm — that half-mystic idea that consecrated what it touched ; 
 the moonlight, as it were, which 
 
 * Silver'd the walls of Cumnor Hall, 
 And many an oak that grew thereby.' 
 
 Why, then, did the English endure the everlasting Chan- 
 cellor ? 
 
 The fact is, that Lord Eldon's rule was maintained a great 
 deal on the same motives as that of Louis Napoleon. One can 
 fancy his astonishment at hearing it said, and his cheerful 
 rejoinder, ' That whatever he was, and Mr. Brougham was in 
 the habit of calling him strange names, no one should ever 
 make him believe that he was a Bonaparte,^ But, in fact, he 
 was, like the present Emperor, the head of what we call the 
 party of order. Everybody knows what keeps Louis Napoleon 
 in his place. It is not attachment to him, but dread of what 
 he restrains — dread of revolution. The present may not be 
 good, and having such newspapers, — you might say no news- 
 
lo The First Edinbttrgh Reviewers. 
 
 papers, — is dreadful ; but it is better than no trade, bankrupt 
 banks, loss of old savings ; your mother belieaded on destruc- 
 tive principles ; your eldest son shot on conservative ones. 
 Very similar was the feeling of Englishmen in the year 1800. 
 They had no liking at all for the French system. Statesmen 
 saw its absurdity, holy men were shocked at its impiety, mer- 
 cantile men saw its effect on the 5 per cents. Everybody was 
 revolted by its cruelty. That it came across the Channel was 
 no great recommendation. A witty writer of our own time 
 says, that if a still Mussulman, in his flowing robes, wished to 
 give his son a warning against renouncing his faith, he would 
 take the completest, smartest, dapperest French dandy out of 
 the streets of Pera, and say, ' There, my son, if ever you come 
 to forget Grod and the Prophet, you may come to look like 
 tkai^ Exactly similar in old conservative speeches is the use 
 of the French Kevolution. If you proposed to alter anything, 
 of importance or not of importance, legal or social, religious or 
 not religious, the same answer was ready : ' You see what the 
 French have come to. They made alterations ; if we make 
 alterations, who knows but we may end in the same way ? ' It 
 was not any peculiar bigotry in Lord Eldon that actuated him, 
 or he would have been powerless ; still less was it any affected 
 feeling which he put forward (though, doubtless, he was aware 
 of its persuasive potency, and worked on it most skilfully to 
 his own ends) ; it was genuine, hearty, craven fear ; and he ruled 
 naturally the commonplace Englishman, because he sympa- 
 thised in his sentiments, and excelled him in his powers. 
 
 There was, too, another cause beside fear which then in- 
 clined, and which in similar times of miscellaneous revolution 
 will ever incline, subtle rather than creative intellects to a 
 narrow conservatism. Such intellects require an exact creed ; 
 they want to be able clearly to distinguish themselves from 
 those around them, to tell to each man where they differ, and 
 wl)y they differ ; they cannot make assumptions ; they cannot, 
 like the merely practical man, be content with rough and 
 
The First Edhiburgk Reviewers. 1 1 
 
 obvious axioms; they require a theory. Such a want it is 
 difficult to satisfy in an age of confusion and tumult, when old 
 habits are shaken, old views overthrown, ancient assumptions 
 rudely questioned, ancient inferences utterly denied, when each 
 man has a different view from his neighbour, when an intel- 
 lectual change has set father and son at variance, when a man's 
 own household are the special foes of his favourite and self- 
 <idopted creed. A bold and original mind breaks through 
 these vexations, and forms for itself a theory satisfactory to 
 its notions, and sufficient for its wants. A weak mind yields 
 a passive obedience to those among whom it is thrown. But 
 a mind which is searching without being creative, which is 
 Accurate and logical enough to see defects, without being 
 combinative or inventive enough to provide remedies, — which, 
 in the old language, is discriminative rather than discursive, 
 — is wholly unable, out of the medley of new suggestions, 
 to provide itself with an adequate belief; and it naturally falls 
 back on the status quo. This is, at least, clear and simple 
 and defined ; you know at any rate what you propose — 
 where you end — why you pause ; — an argumentative defence 
 it is, doubtless, difficult to find ; but there are arguments on 
 all sides ; the world is a medley of arguments ; no one is 
 agreed in which direction to alter the world ; what is pro- 
 posed is as liable to objection as what exists ; nonsense for non- 
 sense, the old should keep its ground : and so in times of 
 convulsion, the philosophic scej>ticism — the ever-questioning 
 hesitation of Hume and Montaigne — the subtlest quintessence 
 of the most restless and refining abstraction — becomes allied to 
 the stupidest, crudest acquiescence in the present and concrete 
 world. We read occasionally in conservative literature (the 
 remark is as true of religion as of politics) alternations of sen- 
 tences, the first an appeal to the coarsest prejudice, — the next a 
 subtle hint to a craving and insatiable scepticism. You may 
 trace this even in Vesey junior. Lord_Eldon never read I^ume 
 or Montaigne, but sometimes, in the interstices of cumbrous 
 
12 The Fii^st Edinburgh Reviewers. 
 
 law, you may find sentences with their meaning, if not in their 
 manner ; ' Dumpor's case always struck me as extraordinary ; 
 but if you depart from Dumpor's case, what is there to prevent 
 a departure in every direction ? ' 
 
 L^' The glory of the Edinburgh Review is that from the first it 
 steadily set itself to oppose this timorous acquiescence in the 
 actual system. On domestic subjects the history of the first 
 thirty years of the nineteenth century is a species of duel 
 between the Edinburgh Eeview and Lord Eldon. All the 
 ancient abuses which he thought it most dangerous to impair, 
 they thought it most dangerous to retain. ' To appreciate the 
 value of the Edinburgh Review,' says one of the founders, ' the 
 state of England at the period when that journal began should 
 be had in remembrance. The Catholics were not emancipated. 
 The Corporation and Test Acts were unrepealed. The game- 
 laws were horribly oppressive ; steel-traps and spring-guns were 
 set all over the country ; prisoners tried for their lives could 
 have no counsel. Lord Eldon and the Court of Chancery pressed 
 heavily on mankind. Libel was punished by the most cruel 
 and vindictive imprisonments. The principles of political 
 economy were little understood. The laws of debt and con- 
 spiracy were on the worst footing. The enormous wickedness 
 of the slave-trade was tolerated. A thousand evils were in ex- 
 istence which the talents of good and noble men have since 
 lessened or removed : and these efforts have been not a little 
 assisted by the honest boldness of the Edinburgh Review.' And 
 even more characteristic than the advocacy of these or any 
 other partial or particular reforms is the systematic opposition 
 of the Edinburgh Review to the crude acquiescence in the 
 status quo ; the timorous dislike to change because it was 
 change ; to the optimistic conclusion, ' that what is, ought to 
 be ; ' the sceptical query, ' How do you know that what you 
 say will be any better ? ' 
 
 In this defence of the principle of innovation, a defence 
 which it requires great imagination (or, as we suggested, the 
 
The First EdinbiLrgh Reviezvers. 
 
 13 
 
 looking across the Channel) to conceive the efficacy of (aow, 
 the Edinburgh Eeview was but the doctrinal organ of the 
 Whigs. A great deal of philosophy has been expended in en- 
 deavouring to fix and express theoretically the creed of that 
 party : various forms of abstract doctrine have been drawn out, 
 in which elaborate sentence follows hard on elaborate sentence, 
 to be set aside, or at least vigorously questioned by the next 
 or succeeding inquirers. In truth Whiggism is not a creed, it 
 is a character. Perhaps as long as there has been a political 
 history in this country there have been certain men of a cool, 
 moderate, resolute firmness, not gifted with high imagination, 
 little prone to enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of large theories 
 and speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism ; with a clear 
 view of the next step, and a wise intention to take it ; a strong- 
 conviction that the elements of knowledge are true, and a 
 steady belief that the present world can, and should be, quietly 
 improved. 
 
 These are the Whigs. A tinge of simplicity still clings to 
 the character ; of old it was the Country Party. The limita- 
 tion of their imagination is in some sort an advantage to such 
 men ; it confines them to a simple path, prevents their being- 
 drawn aside by various speculations, restricts them to what is 
 clear and intelligible, and at hand. 'I cannot,' said Sir S. 
 Eomilly, ' be convinced without arguments, and I do not see 
 that either Burke or Paine advance any.' He was unable to 
 see that the most convincing arguments, — and some of those 
 in the work of Burke, which he alludes to, are certainly sound 
 enough, — may be expressed imaginatively, and may work a far 
 firmer persuasion than any neat and abstract statement. Nor 
 are the intellectual powers of the characteristic element in 
 this party exactly of the loftiest order ; they have no call to 
 make great discoveries, or pursue unbounded desigrs, or amaze 
 the world by some wild dream of empire and renown. That 
 terrible essence of daring genius, such as we see it in Napoleon, 
 and can imagine it in some of the conquerors of old time, is 
 
14 The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 
 
 utterly removed from their cool and placid judgment. In taste 
 they are correct, — that is, better appreciating the complete 
 compliance with explicit and ascertained rules, than the un- 
 conscious exuberance of inexplicable and unforeseen beauties. 
 In their own writings, they display the defined neatness of the 
 second order, rather than the aspiring hardihood of the first 
 excellence. In action they are quiet and reasonable rather 
 than inventive and overwhelming. Their power indeed is 
 scarcely intellectual ; on the contrary, it resides in what Aris- 
 totle would have called their r]Qos^ and we should call their 
 nature. They are emphatically pure-natured and firm-natured. 
 Instinctively casting aside the coarse temptations and crude 
 excitements of a vulgar earth, they pass like a September breeze 
 across the other air, cool and refreshing, unable, one might 
 fancy, even to comprehend the many offences with which all 
 else is fainting and oppressed. So far even as their excellence 
 is intellectual, it consists less in the supereminent possession 
 of any single talent or endowment, than in the simultaneous 
 enjoyment and felicitous adjustment of many or several ; — in a 
 certain balance of the faculties which we call judgment or sense, 
 which placidly indicates to them what should be done, and 
 which is not preserved without an equable calm, and a patient, 
 persistent watchfulness. In such men the moral and intel- 
 lectual nature half become one. Whether, according to the 
 Greek question, manly virtue can be taught or not, assuredly 
 it has never been taught to them ; it seems a native endow- 
 ment; it seems a soul — a soul of honour — as we speak, within 
 the exterior soul; a fine impalpable essence, more exquisite 
 than the rest of the being ; as the thin pillar of the cloud, 
 more beautiful than the other blue of heaven, governing and 
 guiding a simple way through the dark wilderness of our 
 world. 
 
 To descend from such elevations, among "people Sir Samuel 
 Eomilly is the best-known type of this character. The ad- 
 mirable biography of him made public his admirable virtues. 
 
The First Edinbin^gh Rcvieivers. 
 
 ^5 
 
 Yet it is probable that among- the aristocratic Whigs, persons 
 as typical of the character can be found. This species of noble 
 nature is exactly of the kind which hereditary associations tend 
 to purify and confirm ; just that casual, delicate, placid virtue, 
 which it is so hard to find, perhaps so sanguine to expect, in a 
 rough tribune of the people. Defects enough there are in thi> 
 character, on which we shall say something ; yet it is wonderful 
 to see what an influence in this sublunary sphere it gains and 
 preserves. The world makes an oracle of its judgment. There 
 is a curious living instance of this. You may observe that when 
 an ancient liberal. Lord John Eussell, or any of tlie essential 
 sect, has done anything very queer, the last thing you would 
 imagine anybody would dream of doing, and is attacked for 
 it, he always answers boldly, ' Lord Lansdowne said I might ; ' 
 or if it is a ponderous day, the eloquence runs, ' A noble friend 
 with whom I have ever had the inestimable advantage of being 
 associated from the commencement (tlie infantile period, I 
 might say) of my political life, and to whose advice,' &c. &c. 
 &c. — and a very cheerful existence it must be for 'my noble 
 friend ' to be expected to justify — (for they never say it excej^t 
 they have done something very odd) — and dignify every aber- 
 ration. Still it must be a beautifid feeling to have a man like 
 Lord John, to have a stiff, small man bowing down before you. 
 And a good judge certainly suggested the conferring of this 
 authority. ' Why do they not talk over the virtues and excel- 
 lences of Lansdowne ? There is no man who performs the 
 duties of life better, or fills a high station in a more becoming 
 manner. He is full of knowledge, and eager for its acquisition. 
 His remarkable politeness is the result of goodnature, regulated 
 by good sense. He looks for talents and qualities among all 
 ranks of men, and adds them to his stock of society, as a botan- 
 ist does his plants ; and while other aristocrats are yawning 
 among stars and garters, Lansdowne is refreshing his soul with 
 the fancy and genius which he has found in odd places, and 
 gathered to the marbles and pictures of his palace. Then he 
 
1 6 The First Edinburgh Reviewers, 
 
 is an honest politician, a wise statesman, and has a philosophic 
 mind,' &c. &c.^ Here is devotion for a carping critic ; and 
 who ever heard before of honJiomie in an idol ? 
 
 It may strike some that this equable kind of character is 
 not the most interesting. Many will prefer the bold felicities of 
 daring genius, the deep plans of latent and searching sagacity^ 
 the hardy triumphs of an overawing and imperious will. Yet 
 it is not unremarkable that an experienced and erudite French- 
 man, not unalive to artistic effect, has just now selected this 
 very species of character for the main figure in a large portion 
 of an elaborate work. The hero of M. Villemain is one to 
 whom he delights to ascribe such things as bon sens, esprit 
 juste^ coeuT excellent. The result, it may be owned, is a little 
 dull, yet it is not the less characteristic. The instructed 
 observer has detected the deficiency of his country. If France 
 had more men of firm will, quiet composure, with a suspicion 
 of enormous principle and a taste for moderate improvement : 
 if a Whig party, in a word, were possible in France, France 
 would be free. And though there are doubtless crises in affairs, 
 dark and terrible moments, when a more creative intellect is 
 needful to propose, a more dictatorial will is necessary to carry 
 out, a sudden and daring resolution ; though in times of inex- 
 tricable confusion — perhaps the present is one of them^ — a 
 more abstruse and disentangling intellect is required to untwist 
 the ravelled perplexities of a complicated world ; yet England 
 will cease to be the England of our fathers, when a large share 
 in great affairs is no longer given to the equable sense, the 
 composed resolution, the homely purity of the characteristic 
 Whigs. 
 
 It is evident that between such men and Lord Eldon there 
 could be no peace ; and between them and the Edinburgh 
 Eeview there was a natural alliance. Not only the kind of 
 reforms there proposed, the species of views therein maintained, 
 
 * Sydney Smith, Memoirs, vol. i. p. 489. 
 
 * This was published in October, 1855. 
 
The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 
 
 17 
 
 but the very manner in which those views and alterations are 
 put forward and maintained, is jnst what they would like. The 
 kind of writing suitable to such minds is not the elaborate, 
 ambitious, exhaustive dii-cussion of former ages, but the clear, 
 simple, occasional writing (as we just now described it) of the 
 present times. The opinions to be expressed are short and 
 simple ; the innovations suggested are natural and evident ; 
 neither one nor the other require more than an intelligible 
 statement, a distinct exposition to the world ; and their recep- 
 tion would be only impeded and com23licated by operose and 
 cumbrous argumentation. The exact mind which of all others 
 dislikes the stupid adherence to the status quo^ is the keen, 
 quiet, improving Whig mind ; the exact kind of writing most 
 adapted to express that dislike is the cool, pungent, didactic 
 essay. 
 
 (^Equally common to the Whigs and the Edinburgh Review 
 is the enmity to the sceptical, over-refining Toryism of Hume 
 and Montaigne^ The Whigs, it is true, have a conservatism of 
 their own, but it instinctively clings to certain practical rules 
 tried by steady adherence, to appropriate formulae verified by 
 the regular application and steady success of many ages. 
 Political philosophers speak of it as a great step when the idea 
 of an attachment to an organised code and system of rules and 
 laws takes the place of the exclusive oriental attachment to the 
 person of the single monarch. This step is natural, is instinc- 
 tive to the Whig mind ; that cool impassive intelligence is 
 little likely to yield to ardent emotions of personal loyalty; 
 but its chosen ideal is a body or collection of wise rules fitly 
 applicable to great affairs, pleasing a placid sense by an evident 
 propriety, gratifying the capacity for business by a constant 
 and clear applicability. The Whigs are constitutional by 
 instinct, as the Cavaliers were monarchical by devotion. It has 
 been a jest at their present leader that he is over familiar with 
 public forms and parliamentary rites. The first wish of the 
 Whigs is to retain the constitution ; the second — and it is of 
 
 VOL. I. c 
 
i8 
 
 The First Edinburzh Reviewers, 
 
 almost equal strength — is to improve it. They think the body 
 of laws now existing to be, in the main and in its essence, 
 excellent ; but yet that there are exceptional defects which 
 should be remedied, superficial inconsistencies that should be 
 corrected. The most opposite creed is that of the sceptic, who 
 teaches that you are to keep what is because it exists ; not from 
 a conviction of its excellence, but from an uncertainty that 
 anything better can be obtained. The one is an attachment to 
 precise rules for specific reasons ; the other an acquiescence in 
 the present on grounds that would be equally applicable to its 
 very opposite, from a disbelief in the possibility of improve- 
 ment, and a conviction of the uncertainty of all things. And 
 equally adverse to an unlimited scepticism is the nature of 
 popular writing. It is true that the greatest teachers of that 
 creed have sometimes, and as it were of set purpose, adopted 
 that species of writing ; yet essentially it is inimical to them. 
 Its appeal is to the people ; as has been shown, it addresses the 
 elite of common men, sensible in their affairs, intelligent in 
 their tastes, influential among their neighbours. What is 
 absolute scepticism to such men ? ~a dream, a chimera, an 
 inexplicable absurdity. Tell it to them to-day, and they will 
 have forgotten it to-morrow. A man of business hates elabo- 
 rate trifling. ' If you do not believe your own senses,' he will 
 say, ' there is no use in my talking to you.' As to the multi- 
 plicity of arguments and the complexity of questions, he feels 
 them little. He has a plain, simple, as he would say, practical 
 way of looking at the matter ; and you will never make him 
 comprehend any other. He knows the world can be improved. 
 And thus what we may call the middle species of writing — 
 which is intermediate between the light, frivolous style of 
 merely amusing literature, and the heavy, conscientious elabo- 
 rateness of methodical philosophy — the style of the original 
 Edinburgh — is, in truth, as opposed to the vague, desponding 
 conservatism of the sceptic as it is to the stupid conservatism 
 of the crude and uninstructed ; and substantially for the same 
 
The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 
 
 19 
 
 reason — that it is addressed to men of cool, clear, and practical 
 understandings. 
 
 ^ It is, indeed, no wonder that the Edinburgh Eeview should 
 be agreeable to the Whigs, for the people who founded it were 
 
 and Syd ney Sm ith. Other men of equal ability may have con- 
 tributed — and a few did contribute — to its pages ; but tliese 
 men were, more than any one else, the first Edinburgh Eeview. 
 
 Francis Horner's was a short and singular life. He was the 
 son of an Edinburgh shopkeeper. He died at thirty-nine ; and 
 when he died, from all sides of the usually cold House of 
 Commons great statesmen and thorough gentlemen got up to 
 deplore his loss. Tears are rarely parliamentary ; all men are 
 arid towards young Scotchmen; yet it was one of that in- 
 clement nation whom statesmen of the species Castlereagh, 
 and statesmen of the species Whitbread — with all the many 
 kinds and species that lie between the two — rose in succession 
 to lament. The fortunes and superficial aspect of the man 
 make it more singular. He had no wealth, was a briefless 
 barrister, never held an office, was a conspicuous member of 
 the most unpopular of all oppositions — the opposition to a 
 glorious and successful war. He never had the means of 
 obliging any one. He was destitute of showy abilities : he had 
 not the intense eloquence or overwhelming ardour which 
 enthral and captivate popular assemblies : his powers of ad- 
 ministration were little tried, and may possibly be slightly 
 questioned. In his youthful reading he was remarkable for 
 laying down, for a few months of study, enormous plans, such 
 as many years would scarcely complete ; and not especially 
 remarkable for doing anything wonderful towards accomplish- 
 ing those plans. Sir Walter Scott, who, though not illiberal in 
 his essential intellect, was a keen partisan on superficial 
 matters, and no lenient critic on actual Edinburgh Whigs, 
 used to observe, ' I cannot admire your Horner ; he always 
 reminds me of Obadiah's bull, who, though he never certainly 
 
 W^igs J Among these, three stand pre-eminent — Horner, J^^ffrey, 
 
 c 2 
 
20 The First Edinhtro-Ji Reviewers. 
 
 did produce a calf, nevertheless went about his business with so 
 much gravity, that he commanded the respect of the whole 
 parish.' It is no explanation of the universal regret, that he 
 was a considerable political economist : no real English gentle- 
 man, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a 
 political economist : he is much more likely to be sorry for his 
 life. There is an idea that he has something to do with 
 statistics; or, if that be exploded, that he is a person who 
 writes upon ' value : ' says that rent is — you cannot very well 
 make out what ; talks excruciating currency ; he may be useful 
 as drying machines are useful ; * but the notion of crying 
 about him is absurd. The economical loss might be great, 
 but it will not explain the mourning for Francis Horner. 
 
 The fact is that Horner is a striking example of the advan- 
 tage of keeping an atmosphere. This may sound like non- 
 sense, and yet it is true. There is around some men a kind of 
 circle or halo of influences, and traits, and associations, by 
 which they infallibly leave a distinct and uniform impression on 
 all their contemporaries. It is very difficult, even for those 
 who have the best opportunities, to analyse exactly what this 
 impression consists in, or why it was made — but it is made. 
 There is a certain undefinable keeping in the traits and 
 manner, and common speech and characteristic actions of some 
 men, which inevitably stamps the same mark and image. It is 
 like a man's style. There are some writers who can be known 
 by a few words of their writing ; each syllable is instinct with 
 a certain spirit : put it into the hands of any one chosen at 
 random, the same impression will be produced by the same 
 casual and felicitous means. Just so in character, the air and 
 atmosphere, so to speak, which are around a man, have a deli- 
 cate and expressive power, and leave a stamp of unity on the 
 interpretative faculty of mankind. Death dissolves this as- 
 
 ' ' Horner is ill. He was desired to read amusing books : upon searching 
 his library, it appeared he had no amusing books ; the nearest approach to a 
 work of that description being tlie Indian Tradcr'^s Complete Guide.^ — Sydney 
 Smith'' s Letter to Lady Holland. 
 
The First Edinburgh Reviewers, 
 
 21 
 
 sociation, and it becomes a problem for posterity what it was 
 that contemporaries observed and reverenced. There is Lord 
 Somers. Does any one know why he had such a reputation ? 
 He was Lord Chancellor, and decided a Bank case, and had an 
 influence in the Cabinet ; but there have been Lord Chancellors, 
 and Bank cases, and influential Cabinet ministers not a few, 
 that have never attained to a like reputation. There is little 
 we can connect specifically with his name. Lord Macaulay, 
 indeed, says that he spoke for five minutes on the Bishops' 
 trial ; and that when he sat down, his reputation as an orator 
 and constitutional lawyer was established. But this must be a 
 trifle eloquent; hardly any orator could be fast enough to 
 attain such a reputation in five minutes. The truth is, that 
 Lord Somers had aroimd him that inexpressible attraction and 
 influence of which we speak. He left a sure, and if we may 
 trust the historian, even a momentary impression on those who 
 saw him. By a species of tact they felt him to be a great 
 man. The ethical sense — for there is almost such a thing in 
 simple persons — discriminated the fine and placid oneness of 
 his nature. It was the same on a smaller scale with Horner. 
 After he had left Edinburgh several years, his closest and most 
 confidential associate writes to him : — ' There is no circum- 
 stance in your life, my dear Horner, so enviable as the univer- 
 sal confidence which your conduct has produced among all 
 descriptions of men. I do not speak of your friends, who 
 have been near and close observers ; but I have had some occa- 
 sions of observing the impression which those who are distant 
 spectators have had, and I believe there are few instances of 
 any person of your age possessing the same character for inde- 
 pendence and integrity, qualities for which very little credit is 
 given in general to young men.' ^ Sydnej_Smith said, ' the Ten 
 Commandments were written on his countenance.' Of course 
 he was a very ugly man, but the moral impression in fact con- 
 veyed was equally efficacious ; ' I have often,' said the same 
 ' Letter from Lord Murray. 
 
2 2 The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 
 
 most just observer, ' told him, that there was not a crime he 
 might not commit with impunity, as no judge or jury who saw 
 him would give the smallest credit to any evidence against 
 him. There was in his look a calm settled love of all that was 
 honourable and good — an air of wisdom and of sweetness. You 
 saw at once that he was a great man, whom nature had in- 
 tended for a leader of human beings ; you ranged yourself 
 willingly under his banners, and cheerfully submitted to his 
 sway.' From the somewhat lengthened description of what we 
 defined as the essential Whig character, it is evident how 
 agreeable and suitable such a man was to their quiet, composed, 
 and aristocratic nature. His tone was agreeable to English 
 gentlemen : a firm and placid manliness, without effort or pre- 
 tension, is what they like best ; and therefore it was that the 
 House of Commons grieved for his loss — unanimously and 
 without distinction. 
 
 Some friends of Horner's, in his own time, mildly criticised 
 him for a tendency to party spirit. The disease in him, if real, 
 was by no means virulent ; but it is worth noticing as one of 
 the defects to which the proper Whig character is specially 
 prone. It is evident in the quiet agreement of the men. 
 Their composed, unimaginative nature is inclined to isolate it- 
 self in a single view ; their placid disposition, never prone to 
 self-distrust, is rather susceptible of friendly influence ; their 
 practical habit is concentrated on what should be done. They 
 do not wish — they do not like to go forth into various specula- 
 tion ; to put themselves in the position of opponents ; to 
 weigh in a refining scale the special weight of small objections. 
 Their fancy is hardly vivid enough to explain to them all the 
 characters of those whom they oppose ; their intellect scarcely 
 detective enough to discover a meaning for each grain in 
 opposing arguments. Nor is their temper, it may be, always 
 prone to be patient with propositions which tease, and persons 
 who resist them. The wish to call down fire from heaven is 
 rarely absent in pure zeal for a pure cause. 
 
The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 23 
 
 A good deal of praise has naturally been bestowed upon the 
 Whigs for adopting such a man as Horner, with Komilly and 
 others of that time ; and much excellent eulogy has been ex- 
 pended on the close boroughs, which afforded to the Whig 
 leaders a useful mode of showing their favour. Certainly the 
 character of Horner was one altogether calculated to ingratiate 
 itself with the best and most special W^hig nature. But as for 
 the eulogy on the proprietary seats in Parliament, it is certain 
 that from the position of the Whig party, the nomination sys- 
 tem was then most likely to show its excellences, and to conceal 
 its defects. Nobody but an honest man would bind himself 
 thoroughly to the Whigs. It was evident that the reign of 
 Lord Eldon must be long ; the heavy and common Englishman 
 (after all, the most steady and powerful force in our political 
 constitution) had been told that Lord Grrey was in favour of the 
 ' Papists,' and liked Bonaparte ; and the consequence was a 
 long, painful, arduous exile on ' the other side of the table,' — 
 the last place any political adventurer would wish to arrive at. 
 Those who have no bribes will never charm the corrupt ; those 
 who have nothing to give will not please those who desire that 
 much shall be given them. There is an observation of Niel 
 Blane, the innkeeper, in ' Old Mortality,' ' " And what are we 
 to eat ourselves, then, father," asked Jenny, " when we hae 
 sent awa the haile meal in the ark and the girnel ? " " We 
 maun gaur wheat flour serve us for a blink," said Niel, witli an 
 air of resignation. " It is not that ill food, though far frae 
 being sae hearty and kindly to a Scotchman's stomach as the 
 curney aitmeal is : the Englishers live amaist upon it," ' &c. It 
 was so with the Whigs; they were obliged to put up with 
 honest and virtuous men, and they wanted able men to carry on 
 a keen opposition ; and after all, they and the ' Englishers ' like 
 such men best. 
 
 In another point of view, too, Horner's life was characteristic 
 of those times. It might seem, at first sight, odd that the Eng- 
 lish Whigs should go to Scotland to find a literary represen- 
 
24 
 
 The First Ediitbitrgh Reviewers. 
 
 tative. There was no place where Toryism was so intense. 
 The constitution of Scotland at that time has been, described as 
 the worst constitution in Europe. The nature of the represen- 
 tation made the entire country a government borough. In the 
 towns, the franchise belonged to a close and self-electing cor- 
 poration, who were always carefully watched : the county 
 representation, anciently resting on a property qualification, 
 had become vested in a few titular freeholders, something like 
 lords of the manor, only that they might have no manor ; and 
 these, even with the addition of the borough freeholders, did 
 not amount to three thousand. The whole were in the hands 
 of Lord Eldon's party, and the entire force, influence, and 
 patronage of Government were spent to maintain and keep it 
 so. By inevitable consequence. Liberalism, even of the most 
 moderate kind, was thought almost a criminal offence. The 
 mild Horner was considered a man of ' very violent opinions.' 
 Jeffrey's father, a careful and discerning parent, was so anxious 
 to shield him from the intellectual taint, as to forbid his 
 attendance at Stewart's lectures. This seems an odd place to 
 find the eruption of a liberal review. Of course the necessary 
 effect of a close and common-place tyranny was to engender a 
 strong reaction in searching and vigorous minds. The Liberals 
 of the north, though far fewer, may perhaps have been stronger 
 Liberals than those of the south ; but this will hardly explain 
 the phenomenon. The reason is an academical one; the 
 teaching of Scotland seems to have been designed to teach men 
 to write essays and articles. There are two kinds of education, 
 into all the details of which it is not now pleasant to go, but which 
 may be adequately described as the education of facts, and the 
 education of speculation. The system of facts is the English 
 system. The strength of the pedagogue and the agony of the 
 pupil are designed to engender a good knowledge of two lan- 
 guages ; in the old times, a little arithmetic ; now also a know- 
 ledge, more or less, of mathematics and mathematical physics. 
 The positive tastes and tendencies of the English mind confine 
 
The First Edinbttrgh Reviewers. 
 
 25 
 
 its training to ascertained learning and definite science. In 
 Scotland the case has long been different. The time of a man 
 like Horner was taken up with speculations like these : ' I have 
 long been feeding my ambition with the prospect of accom- 
 plishing, at some future period of my life, a work similar to 
 that which Sir Francis Bacon executed about two hundred years 
 ago. It will depend on the sweep and turn of my speculations, 
 whether they shall be thrown into the form of a discursive com- 
 mentary on the " Instauratio Magna " of that great author, or 
 shall be entitled to an original form, under the title of a " View 
 of the Limits of Human Knowledge and a System of the 
 Principles of Philosophical Inquiry." I shall say nothing at 
 present of the audacity,' &c. &c. And this sort of planning, 
 which is the staple of his youthful biography, was really ac- 
 companied by much application to metaphysics, history, poli- 
 tical economy, and such like studies. It is not at all to our 
 present purpose to compare this speculative and indeterminate 
 kind of study with the rigorous accurate education of England. 
 The fault of the former is sometimes to produce a sort of 
 lectm-er in vacuo^ ignorant of exact pursuits, and diffusive of 
 vague words. The English now and then produce a learned 
 creature like a thistle, prickly with all facts, and incapable of 
 all fruit. But passiog by this general question, it cannot be 
 doubted that, as a preparation for the writing of various articles, 
 the system of Edinburgh is enormously superior to that of Cam- 
 bridge. The particular, compact, exclusive learning of England 
 is inferior in this respect to the general, diversified, omni- 
 present information of the North ; and what is more, the specu- 
 lative, dubious nature of metaphysical and such like pursuits 
 tends, in a really strong mind, to cultivate habits of inde- 
 pendent thought and original discussion. A bold mind so 
 trained will even wish to advance its peculiar ideas, on its own 
 account, in a written and special form ; that is, as we said, to 
 write an article. Such are the excellences in this respect of 
 the system of which Horner is an example. The defects tend 
 
26 
 
 The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 
 
 the same way. It tends, as is said, to make a man fancy he 
 knows everything. ' Well then, at least,' it may be answered, 
 ' I can write an article on everything.' 
 
 The facility and boldness of the habits so produced were 
 curiously exemplified in Lord Jeffrey. During the first six 
 years of the Edinburgh Eeview he wrote as many as seventy- 
 nine articles ; in a like period afterwards he wrote forty. Any 
 one who should expect to find a pure perfection in these mis- 
 cellaneous productions, should remember their bulk. If all his 
 reviews were reprinted, they would be very many. And all the 
 while he was a busy lawyer, was editor of the Eeview, did the 
 business, corrected the proof sheets ; and more than all, what 
 one would have thought a very strong man's work, actually 
 managed Henry Brougham. You must not criticise papers 
 like these, rapidly written in the hurry of life, as you would the 
 painful words of an elaborate sage, slowly and with anxious 
 awfulness instructing mankind. Some things, a few things, 
 are for eternity ; some, and a good many, are for time. We do 
 not expect the everlastingness of the Pyramids from the vibra- 
 tory grandeur of a Tyburnian mansion. 
 
 The truth is, that Lord__Jeffrey was something of a Whig 
 critic. We have hinted, that among the peculiarities of that 
 character, an excessive partiality for new, arduous, overwhelm- 
 ing, original excellence, was by no means to be numbered. 
 Their tendency inclining to the quiet footsteps of custom, they 
 like to trace the exact fulfilment of admitted rules, a just 
 accordance with the familiar features of ancient merit. But 
 they are most averse to mysticism. A clear, precise, discrimi- 
 nating intellect shrinks at once from the symbolic, the un- 
 bounded, the indefinite. The misfortune is that mysticism is 
 true. There certainly are kinds of truth, borne in as it were 
 instinctively on the human intellect, most influential on the 
 character and the heart, yet hardly capable of stringent state- 
 ment, difficult to limit by an elaborate definition. Their course . 
 is shadowy ; the mind seems rather to have seen than to see 
 
The First EdmbiLrgh Reviewers. 
 
 27 
 
 tliem, more to feel after than definitely apprehend them. They 
 commonly involve an infinite element, which of course cannot 
 be stated precisely, or else a first principle — an original ten- 
 dency — of our intellectual constitution, which it is impossible 
 not to feel, and yet which it is hard to extricate in terms and 
 words. Of this latter kind is what has been called the religion 
 of nature, or more exactly, perhaps, the religion of the imagi- 
 nation. This is an interpretation of the world. According to 
 it the beauty of the universe has a meaning, its grandeur a 
 soul, its sublimity an expression. As we gaze on the faces of 
 those whom we love ; as we watch the light of life in the 
 dawning of their eyes, and the play of their features, and the 
 wildness of their animation; as we trace in changing lineaments 
 a varying sign ; as a charm and a thrill seem to run along the 
 tone of a voice, to haunt the mind with a mere word ; as a tone 
 seems to roam in the ear ; as a trembling fancy hears words 
 that are unspoken ; so in nature the mystical sense finds a 
 motion in the mountain, and a power in the waves, and a 
 meaning in the long white line of the shore, and a thought in 
 the blue of heaven, and a gushing soul in the buoyant light, an 
 unbounded being in the vast void air, and 
 
 * Wakeful watchings in the pointed stars/ 
 
 There is a philosophy in this which might be explained, if 
 explaining were to our purpose. It might be advanced that 
 there are original sources of expression in the essential grandeur 
 and sublimity of nature, of an analogous though fainter kind, 
 to those familiar, inexplicable signs by which we trace in the 
 very face and outward lineaments of man the existence and 
 working of the mind within. But be this as it may, it is cer- 
 tain that Mr. Wordsworth preached this kind of religion, and 
 that Lord Jeffrey did not believe a word of it. His cool, sharp, 
 collected mind revolted from its mysticism ; his detective in- 
 telligence was absorbed in its apparent fallaciousness ; his light 
 humour made sport with the sublimities of the preacher. His 
 
28 The First Edinburgh Reviewers, 
 
 love of perspicuity was vexed by its indefiniteness ; the precise 
 philosopher was amazed at its mystic unintelligibility. Finding 
 a little fault was doubtless not unpleasant to him. The re- 
 viewer's pen — <f>6vos rjpoosaaLv — has seldom been more poignantly 
 wielded. ' If,' he was told, ' you could be alarmed into the 
 semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody ; but re- 
 member my joke against you' (Sydney Smith loquitur) ' about 
 the moon. D — n the solar system — bad light — ^planets too 
 distant — pestered with comets : feeble contrivance ; could make 
 a better with great ease.' Yet we do not mean that in this 
 great literary feud, either of the combatants had all the right, 
 or gained all the victory. The world has given judgment. 
 Both Mr. Wordsworth and Lord Jeffrey have received their 
 reward. The one had his own generation ; the laughter of men, 
 the applause of drawing-rooms, the concurrence of the crowd : 
 the other a succeeding age, the fond enthusiasm of secret 
 students, the lonely rapture of lonely minds. And each has 
 received according to his kind. If all cultivated men speak 
 differently because of the existence of Wordsworth and Cole- 
 ridge ; if not a thoughtful English book has appeared for forty 
 years, without some trace for good or evil of their influence ; if 
 sermon-writers subsist upon their thoughts ; if ' sacred poets ' 
 thrive by translating their weaker portion into the speech of 
 women ; if, when all this is over, some sufficient part of their 
 writing will ever be fitting food for wild musing and solitary 
 meditation, surely this is because they possessed the inner 
 nature — ' an intense and glowing mind,' ' the vision and the 
 faculty divine.' But if, perchance, in their weaker moments, 
 the great authors of the ' Lyrical Ballads ' did ever imagine 
 that the world was to pause because of their verses : that Peter 
 Bell would be popular in drawing-rooms ; that Christabel would 
 be perused in the City ; that people of fashion would make a 
 handbook of the Excursion, — it was well for them to be told 
 at once that this was not so. Nature ingeniously prepared a 
 shrill artificial voice, which spoke in season and out of season, 
 
The First Edindtirg/i Reviewe7^s. 
 
 29 
 
 enongh and more than enough, what will ever be the idea of 
 the cities of the plain concerning those who live alone among 
 the mountains ; of the frivolous concerning the grave ; of the 
 gregarious concerning the recluse ; of those who laugh con- 
 cerning those who laugh not ; of the common concerning the 
 uncommon ; of those who lend on usury concerning those who 
 lend not ; the notion of the world of those whom it will not 
 reckon among the righteous — it said,^ ' This won't do ! ' And 
 so in all time will the lovers of polished Liberalism speak, con- 
 cerning the intense and lonely prophet. 
 
 Yet, if Lord Jeffrey had the natural infirmities of a Whig 
 critic, he certainly had also its extrinsic and political advan- 
 tages. Especially at Edinburgh the Whigs wanted a literary 
 man. The Liberal party in Scotland had long groaned under 
 political exclusion ; they had suffered, with acute mortification, 
 the heavy sway of Henry Dundas, but they had been compen- 
 sated by a literary supremacy ; in the book-world they enjoyed 
 a domiDation. On a sudden this was rudely threatened. The 
 fame of Sir Walter Scott was echoed from the southern world, 
 and appealed to every national sentiment — to the inmost heart 
 of every Scotchman. And what a ruler ! a lame Tory, a jocose 
 Jacobite, a laugher at Liberalism, a scoffer at metaphysics, an 
 unbeliever in political economy ! What a gothic ruler for the 
 modern Athens ; — was this man to reign over them ? It would 
 not have been like human nature, if a strong and intellectual 
 party had not soon found a clever and noticeable rival. Poets, 
 indeed, are not made ' to order ; ' but Byron, speaking the 
 sentiment of his time and circle, counted reviewers their equals. 
 If a Tory produced ' Marmion,' a Whig wrote the best article 
 upon it ; Scott might, so ran Liberal speech, be the best living 
 writer of fiction ; Jeffrey, clearly, was the most shrewd and 
 accon^plished of literary critics. 
 
 And though this was an absurd delusion. Lord Jeffrey was 
 
 ' The first words of Jeffrey's review of he Excursion are, < This will 
 never do.' 
 
30 The First EdinhtLrgh Reviewers, 
 
 no every-day man. He invented the trade of editorship. Be- 
 fore him an editor was a bookseller's drudge ; he is now a dis- 
 tinguished functionary. If Jeffrey was not a great critic, he 
 liad, what very great critics have wanted, the art of writing 
 what most people would think good criticism. He might not 
 know his subject, but he knew his readers. People like to read 
 ideas which they can imagine to have been their own. ' Why 
 does Scarlett always persuade the jury ? ' asked a rustic gentle- 
 man. ' Because there are twelve Scarletts in the j ury-box,' 
 replied an envious advocate. What Scarlett was in law, Jeffrey 
 was in criticism ; he could become that which his readers could 
 not avoid being. He was neither a pathetic writer nor a pro- 
 found writer ; but he was a quick-eyed, bustling, black-haired, 
 sagacious, agreeable man of the world. He had his day, and 
 was entitled to his day ; but a gentle oblivion must now cover 
 his already subsiding reputation. 
 
 Sydnej_^Smith was an after-dinner writer. His words have 
 a flow, a vigour, an expression, which is not given to hungry 
 mortals. You seem to read of good wine, of good cheer, of 
 beaming and buoyant enjoyment. There is little trace of 
 labour in his composition ; it is poured forth like an unceasing 
 torrent, rejoicing daily to run its course. And what courage 
 there is in it ! There is as much variety of pluck in writing 
 across a sheet, as in riding across a country. Cautious men 
 have many adverbs, ' usually,' ' nearly,' ' almost : ' safe men 
 begin, ' it may be advanced : ' you never know precisely what 
 their premises are, nor what their conclusion is ; they go tremu- 
 lously like a timid rider ; they turn hither and thither ; they 
 do not go straight across a subject, like a masterly mind. A 
 few sentences are enough for a master of sentences. A practical 
 topic wants rough vigour and strong exposition. This is the 
 writing of ' Sydney Smith.' It is suited to the broader kind 
 of important questions. For anything requiring fine nicety 
 of speculation, long elaborateness of deduction, evanescent 
 sharpness of distinction, neither his style nor his mind was fit. 
 
The First EdinbtLrgh Reviewers. 
 
 31 
 
 He had no patience for long argument, no acuteness for delicate 
 precision, no fangs for recondite research. Writers, like teeth, 
 are divided into incisors and grinders. Sydney Smith was a 
 ' molar.' He did not run a long sharp argument into the 
 interior of a question ; he did not, in the common phrase, go 
 deeply into it ; but he kept it steadily under the contact of a 
 strong, capable, heavy, jaw-like understanding, — pressing its 
 surface, effacing its intricacies, grinding it down. Yet as we 
 said, this is done without toil. The play of the ' molar ' is 
 instinctive and placid ; he could not help it ; it would seem 
 that he had an enjoyment in it. 
 
 The story is, that he liked a bright light ; that when he 
 was a poor parson in the country, he used, not being able to 
 afford more delicate luminaries, to adorn his drawing-room with 
 a hundred little lamps of tin metal and mutton fat. When 
 you know this, you see it in all his writings. There is the same 
 preference of perspicuity throughout them. Elegance, fine 
 savour, sweet illustration, are quite secondary. His only ques- 
 tion to an argument was, ' Will it tell ? ' as to an example, 
 ' Will it exemplify ? ' Like what is called ' push ' in a practical 
 man, his style goes straight to its object ; it is not restrained 
 by the gentle hindrances, the delicate decorums of refining 
 natures. There is nothing more characteristic of the Scandi- 
 navian mythology, than that it had a god with a hammer. You 
 have no better illustration of our English humour, than the 
 great success of this huge and healthy organisation. 
 
 There is something about this not exactly to the Whig 
 taste. They do not like such broad fun, and rather dislike 
 unlimited statement. Lord Melbourne, it is plain, declined to 
 make him a bishop. In this there might be a vestige of 
 Canningite prejudice, but on the whole, there was the dis- 
 tinction between the two men which there is between the loud 
 wit and the recherche thinker — between the bold controversialist 
 and the discriminative statesman. A refined noblesse can 
 hardly respect a humorist ; he amuses them, and they like 
 
32 The First Edinhtrgh Reviewers. 
 
 bim, but tbey are puzzled to know wbetber be does not laugb 
 at tbem as well as witb tbem ; and tbe notion of being laugbed 
 at, ever, or on any score, is alien to tbeir sby decorum and 
 suppressed pride. But in a broader point of view, and taking 
 a wider range of general cbaracter, tbere was a good deab in 
 common. More tban any one else, Sydney Smitb was Liberalism 
 in life. Somebody bas defined Liberalism as tbe spirit of tbe 
 world. It represents its genial enjoyment, its wise sense, its 
 steady judgment, its preference of tbe near to tbe far, of tbe 
 seen to tbe unseen ; it represents, too, its sbrinking from diffi- 
 cult dogma, from stern statement, from imperious superstition. 
 What bealtb is to tbe animal, Liberalism is to tbe polity. It 
 is a principle of fermenting enjoyment, running over all tbe 
 nerves, inspiring tbe frame, bappy in its mind, easy in its 
 place, glad to bebold tbe sun. All tbis Sydney Smitb, as it 
 were, personified. Tbe biograpby just published of bim will be 
 very serviceable to bis fame. He bas been regarded too mucb 
 as a fasbionable jester, and metropolitan wit of society. We 
 bave now for tbe first time a description of bim as be was, — 
 equally at bpme in tbe crude world of Yorkshire, and amid tbe 
 quintessential refinements of Mayfair. It is impossible to 
 believe that be did not give the epithet to bis parish : it is now 
 called Foston le Clay. It was a ' mute inglorious ' Sydney of 
 the district, that invented tbe name, if it is really older tban 
 the century. Tbe place has an obtuse soil, inhabited by stiff- 
 clayed Yorkshiremen. There was nobody in the parish to 
 speak to, only peasants, farmers, and such like (what the clergy 
 call 'parishioners') and an old clerk who thought every one 
 who came from London a fool, 'but you I do zee, Mr. Smitb, 
 be no fool.' This was the sort of life. 
 
 I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could not afford 
 to send hira to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress, to educate 
 my girls, as I could not afford a governess. I turned farmer, as I 
 could not let my land. A man-servant was too expensive; so I 
 caught up a little garden-girl, made like a milestone, christened her 
 
The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 33 
 
 Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The 
 girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her 
 morals. Bunch became the best butler in the county. 
 
 * I had little furniture, so I bought a cart-load of deals ; took a 
 carpenter (who came to me for parish relief, called Jack Robinson) 
 with a face like a full-moon, into my service ; established him in a 
 bam, and said, ' Jack, furnish my house.' You see the result ! 
 
 ' At last it was sug-jjested that a carriage was much wanted in the 
 establishment. After diligent seai'ch, I discovered in the back settle- 
 ments of a York coach- maker an ancient green chariot, supposed to 
 have been the earliest invention of the kind. I brought it home in 
 triumph to my admiring family. Being somewhat dilapidated, the 
 village tailor lined it, the village blacksmith repaired it ; nay, (but 
 for Mrs. Sydney's earnest entreaties,) we believe the village painter 
 would have exercised his genius upon the exterior ; it escaped this 
 danger however, and the result was wonderful. Each year added to 
 its charms : it grew younger and younger ; a new wheel, a new 
 spring; I christened it the Immortal; it was known all over the 
 neighbourhood; the village boys cheered it, and the village dogs 
 barked at it ; but ' JFaber mese fortunse ' was my motto, and we had 
 no false shame. 
 
 * Added to all these domestic cares, I was village parson, village 
 doctor, village comforter, village magistrate, and Edinburgh Reviewer ; 
 so you see I had not much time left on my hands to regret London.* 
 
 It is impossible that this should not at once remind us of the 
 life of Sir Walter Scott. There is the same strong sense, the 
 same glowing, natural pleasure, the same power of dealing with 
 men, the same power of diffusing common happiness. Both 
 enjoyed as much in a day, as an ordinary man in a month. 
 The term ' animal spirits ' peculiarly expresses this bold enjoy- 
 ment ; it seems to come from a principle intermediate between 
 the mind and the body ; to be hardly intellectual enough for the 
 soul, and yet too permeating and aspiring for crude matter. 
 Of course, there is an immense imaginative world in Scott's 
 existence to which Sydney Smith had no claim. But they met 
 upon the present world ; they enjoyed the spirit of life ; 'they 
 loved the world, and the world them ; ' they did not pain 
 themselves with immaterial speculation — roast beef was an 
 
 TOL. I. D 
 
34 The First Ediiihtrgh Reviezvers. 
 
 admitted fact. A certain, even excessive practical caution 
 which is ascribed to the Englishman, Scott would have been 
 the better for. Yet his biography would have been the worse. 
 There is nothing in the life before us comparable in interest to 
 the tragic, gradual cracking of the great mind ; the overtasking 
 of the great capital, and the ensuing failure ; the spectacle of 
 heaving genius breaking in the contact with misfortune. The 
 anticipation of this pain increases the pleasure of the reader ; 
 the commencing threads of coming calamity shade the woof of 
 pleasure ; the proximity of suffering softens the v^pis^ the ter- 
 rible, fatiguing energy of enjoyment. 
 
 A great deal of excellent research has been spent on the 
 difference between 'humour' and 'wit,' into which metaphysical 
 problem ' our limits,' of course, forbid us to enter. There is, 
 liowever, between them, the distinction of dry sticks and green 
 sticks ; there is in humour a living energy, a diffused potency, 
 a noble sap ; it grows upon the character of the humorist. 
 Wit is part of the machinery of the intellect ; as Madame de 
 Stael says, ' La gaieU de Uesprit est facile a tons les hommes 
 d'esprit.^ We wonder Mr. Babbage does not invent a 
 punning-engine ; it is just as possible as a calculating one. 
 Sydney Smith's mirth was essentially humorous ; it clings to 
 the character of the man ; as with the sayings of Dr. Johnson, 
 there is a species of personality attaching to it ; the word is 
 more graphic because Sydney Smith — that man being the 
 man that he was, — said it, than it would have been if said by 
 any one else. In a desponding moment, he would have he was 
 none the better for the jests which he made, any more than a 
 bottle for the wine which passed through it : this is a true de- 
 scription of many a wit, but he was very unjust in attributing 
 it to himself. 
 
 Sydney Smith is often compared to Swift ; but this only 
 shows with how little thought our common criticism is written. 
 The two men hayg^really nothing in common, except that they 
 were both high in the Church, and both wrote amusing letters 
 
The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 
 
 35 
 
 about Ireland. Of course, to the great constructive and elabo- 
 rative power displayed in Swift's longer works, Sydney Smith 
 has no pretension ; he could not have written ' Grulliver's 
 Travels ; ' but so far as the two series of Irish letters goes, it 
 seems plain that he has the advantage. Plymley's letters are 
 true; the treatment may be incomplete — the Catholic religion 
 may have latent dangers and insidious attractions which are not 
 there mentioned — but the main principle is sound ; the com- 
 mon sense of religious toleration is hardly susceptible of better 
 explanation. Drapier's letters, on the contrary, are essentially 
 absurd; they are a clever appeal to ridiculous prejudices. 
 Who cares now for a disputation on the evils to be apprehended 
 a hundred years ago from adulterated halfpence, especially when 
 we know that the halfpence were not adulterated, and that if 
 they had been, those evils would never have arisen ? Any one, 
 too, who wishes to make a collection of currency crotchets, will 
 find those letters worth his attention. No doubt there is a 
 clever affectation of common-sense as in all of Swift's political 
 writings, and the style has an air of business ; yet, on the other 
 hand, there are no passages which any one would now care to 
 quote for their manner and their matter ; and there are many 
 in ' Plymley ' that will be constantly cited, so long as existing 
 controversies are at all remembered. The whole genius of the 
 two writers is emphatically opposed. Sydney Smith's is the 
 ideal of popular, buoyant, riotous fun ; it cries and laughs with 
 ' boisterous mirth ; it rolls hither and thither like a mob, with 
 elastic and commonplace joy. Swift was a detective in a dean's 
 wig ; he watched the mob ; his whole wit is a kind of dexterous 
 indication of popular frailties ; he hated the crowd ; he was a 
 spy on beaming smiles, and a common informer against genial 
 enjoyment. His whole essence was a soreness against mortality. 
 Show him innocent mirth, he would say. How absurd ! He was 
 painfully wretched, no doubt, in himself: perhaps, as they say, 
 he had no heart ; but his mind, his brain had a frightful 
 
 D 2 
 
36 The First Edinhui^gh Reviewers. 
 
 capacity for secret pain ; his sharpness was the sharpness of 
 disease; his power the sore acumen of morbid wretchedness. 
 It is impossible to fancy a parallel more proper to show the 
 excellence, the unspeakable superiority of a buoyant and 
 bounding writer. 
 
 At the same time, it is impossible to give to Sydney Smith 
 the highest rank, even as a humorist. Almost all his humour 
 has reference to the incongruity of special means to special 
 ends. The notion of Plymley is want of conformity between 
 the notions of ' my brother Abraham,' and the means of which 
 he makes use ; of the quiet clergyman, who was always told he 
 was a bit of a goose, advocating conversion by muskets, and 
 stopping Bonaparte by Peruvian bark. The notion of the 
 letters to Archdeacon Singleton is, a bench of bishops placidly 
 and pleasantly destroying the Church. It is the same with 
 most of his writings. Even when there is nothing absolutely 
 practical in the idea, the subject is from the scenery of 
 practice, from concrete entities, near institutions, superficial 
 facts. You might quote a hundred instances. Here is one : 
 ' A gentleman, in speaking of a nobleman's wife of great rank 
 and fortune, lamented very much that she had no children. A 
 medical gentleman who was present observed, that to have no 
 children was a great misfortune, but he had often observed it 
 was hereditary in families.' This is what we mean by saying 
 his mirth lies in the superficial relations of phenomena (some 
 will say we are pompous, like the medical man) ; in the rela- 
 tion of one external fact to another external fact; of one 
 detail of common life to another detail of common life. But 
 this is not the highest topic of humour. Taken as a whole, 
 the universe is absurd. There seems an unalterable contradic- 
 tion between the human mind and its employments. How can 
 a soul be a merchant ? What relation to an immortal being 
 have the price of linseed, the fall of butter, the tare on tallow, 
 or the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit 
 ' petty expenses,' and charge for ' carriage paid ' ? All the 
 
The First Edinburgh Reviewers, 37 
 
 world's a stage ; — ' the satchel, and the shining morning face ' — 
 the ' strange oaths ; ' — ' the bubble reputation ' — the 
 
 * Eyes severe and beard of formal cut, 
 Full of wise saws and modern instances.' 
 
 Can these things be real ? Surely they are acting. What re- 
 lation have they to the truth as we see it in theory ? What 
 connection with our certain hopes, our deep desires, our 
 craving and infinite thought ? ' In respect of itself, it is a 
 good life ; but in respect it is a shepherd's life, it is nought.' 
 The soul ties its shoe ; the mind washes its hands in a basin. 
 All is incongruous. 
 
 Shallow. Certain, 'tis certain ; very sure, very sure ; death, as the 
 Psalmist saith, is certain to all ; all shall die. How a good yoke of 
 bullocks at Stamford fair ? 
 
 Silence. Truly, cousin, I was not there. 
 
 Shallow. Death is certain. — Is old Double, of your town, living 
 yet? 
 
 Silence. Dead, sir. 
 
 Shallow. Dead. See ! See ! He drew a good bow, — and dead. 
 He shot a fine shoot. John of Gaunt loved him well, and betted 
 much money on' his head. — Dead ! He would have clapped i' the 
 clout at fourscore, and carried you a forehandshaft, a fourteen and 
 fourteen and-a-half, that it would have done a man's heart good to see. 
 ■ — How a score of ewes now 1 
 
 Silence. Thereafter as they be ; a score of ewes may be worth ten 
 pounds. 
 
 Shallow. And is Double dead ! — • 
 
 It is because Sydney Smith had so little of this Shakes- 
 pearian humour, that there is a glare in his pages, and that in 
 the midst of his best writing, we sigh for the soothing supe- 
 riority of quieter writers. 
 
 ^ Sydney Smith was not only the wit of the first Edinburgh, 
 but likewise the divine?^ He was, to use his own expression, 
 the only clergyman who m those days ' turned out ' to fight the 
 battles of the Whigs. In some sort this was not so important. 
 A curious abstinence from religious topics characterises the 
 
38 
 
 The First Edinburgh Reviewers. 
 
 original Eeview. There is a wonderful omission of this most 
 natural topic of speculation in the lives of Horner and Jeffrey. 
 In truth, it would seem that, living in the incessant din of a 
 Calvinistic country, the best course for thoughtful and serious 
 men was to be silent — at least they instinctively thought so. 
 They felt no involuntary call to be theological teachers them- 
 selves, and gently recoiled from the coarse admonition around 
 them. Even in the present milder time, few cultivated persons 
 willingly think on the special dogmas of distinct theology. 
 They do not deny them, but they live apart from them : they 
 do not disbelieve them, but they are silent when they are 
 stated. They do not question the existence of Kamschatka, 
 but they have no call to busy themselves with Kamschatka; 
 they abstain from peculiar tenets. Nor in truth is this, 
 though much aggravated by existing facts, a mere accident of 
 this age. There are some people to whom such a course of 
 conduct is always natural: there are certain persons who do 
 not, as it would seem cannot, feel all that others feel ; who 
 have, so to say, no ear for much of religion : who are in some 
 sort out of its reach. 'It is impossible,' says a late divine 
 of the Church of England, 'not to observe that innumerable 
 persons (may we not say the majority of mankind ?) who have 
 a belief in Grod and immortality, have, nevertheless, scarcel}^ 
 any consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of the Grospel. 
 They seem to live aloof from them in the world of business or 
 of pleasure, ' the common life of all men,* not without a sense 
 of right, and a rule of truth and honesty, yet insensible ' to 
 much which we need not name. 'They have never in their 
 whole lives experienced the love of God, the sense of sin, or the 
 need of forgiveness. Often they are remarkable for the purity 
 of their morals ; many of them have strong and disinterested 
 attachments and quick human sympathies ; sometimes a stoical 
 feeling of uprightness, or a peculiar sensitiveness to dishonour. 
 It would be a mistake to say that they are without religion. 
 They join in its public acts ; they are offended at profaneness or 
 
The First Edinbitrgh Reviewers, 
 
 39 
 
 impiety ; they are thankful for the blessings of life, and do not 
 rebel against its misfortunes. Such men meet us at every step. 
 They are those whom we know and associate with ; honest in 
 their dealings, respectable in their lives, decent in their conver- 
 sation. The Scripture speaks to us of two classes, represented 
 by the church and the world, the wheat and the tares, the sheep 
 and the goats, the friends and enemies of Grod. We cannot say 
 in which of these two divisions we should find a place for them.' 
 They believe always a kind of ' natural religion.' Now these 
 are what we may call, in the language of the past. Liberals. 
 Those who can remember, or who will re-read our delineation of 
 the Whig character, may observe its conformity. There is the 
 same purity and delicacy, the same tranquil sense ; an equal 
 want of imagination, of impulsive enthusiasm, of shrinking 
 fear. You need not speak like the above writer of ' peculiar 
 doctrines ; ' the phenomenon is no speciality of a particular 
 creed. Glance over the whole of history. As the classical world 
 stood beside the Jewish ; as Horace beside St. Paul ; like the 
 heavy ark and the buoyant waves, so are men in contrast with 
 one another. You cannot imagine a classical Isaiah ; you 
 cannot fancy a Whig St. Dominic ; there is no such thing as a 
 Liberal Augustine. The deep sea of mysticism lies opposed to 
 some natures ; in some moods it is a sublime wonder ; in otliers 
 an 'impious ocean,' — they will never put forth on it at any 
 time. 
 
 All this is intelligible, and in a manner beautiful as a cha- 
 racter ; but it is not equally excellent as a creed. A certain 
 class of Liberal divines have endeavoured to petrify into a 
 theory, a pure and placid disposition. In some respects 
 Sydney Smith is one of these ; his sermons are the least excel- 
 lent of his writings; of course they are sensible and well- 
 intentioned, but they have the defect of his school. With 
 misdirected energy, these divines have laboured after a plain 
 religion ; they have forgotten that a quiet and definite mind is 
 confined to a placid and definite world ; that religion has its 
 
40 The First EdinbiLrgh Reviewers, 
 
 essence in awe, its charm in infinity, its sanction in dread ; 
 that its dominion is an inexplicable dominion ; that mystery is 
 its power. There is a reluctance in all such writers ; they 
 creep away from the unintelligible parts of the subject : they 
 always seem to have something behind ; — not to like to bring 
 out what they know to be at hand. They are in their nature 
 apologists ; and, as Greorge the Third said, ' I did not know the 
 Bible needed an apology.' As well might the thunder be 
 ashamed to roll, as religion hesitate to be too awful for man- 
 kind. The invective of Lucretius is truer than the placid 
 patronage of the divine. Let us admire Liberals in life, but 
 let us keep no terms with Paleyans in speculation. 
 
 And so we must draw to a conclusion. We have in some 
 sort given a description of, with one great exception, the most 
 remarkable men connected at its origin with the Edinburgh 
 Review, And that exception is a man of too fitful, defective, 
 and strange greatness to be spoken of now. Henry Brougham 
 must be left to after-times. Indeed, he would have marred the 
 unity of our article. He was connected with the Whigs, but 
 he never was one. His impulsive ardour is the opposite of 
 their coolness ; his irregular, discursive intellect contrasts with 
 their quiet and perfecting mind. Of those whom we have 
 spoken, let us say, that if none of them attained to the highest 
 rank of abstract intellect ; if the disposition of none of them 
 was ardent or glowing enough to hurry them forward to the ex- 
 treme point of daring greatness; if only one can be said to 
 have a lasting place in real literature, it is clear that they 
 vanquished a slavish cohort; that they upheld the name of 
 freemen in a time of bondmen ; that they applied themselves 
 to that which was real, and accomplished much which was very 
 difficult ; that the very critics who question their inimitable 
 excellence will yet admire their just and scarcely imitable 
 example. 
 
 / 
 
41 
 
 HARTLEY COLERIDGE} 
 (1852.) 
 
 Hartley Coleridge was not like the Duke of Wellington.® 
 Children are urged by the example of the great statesman and 
 warrior just departed — not indeed to neglect ' their book ' as 
 he did — but to be industrious and thrifty ; to ' always perform 
 business,' to ' beware of procrastination,' to ' never fail to do 
 their best : ' good ideas, as may be ascertained by referring to 
 the masterly despatches on the Mahratta transactions — ' great 
 events,' as the preacher continues, ' which exemplify the efficacy 
 of diligence even in regions where the very advent of our reli- 
 gion is as yet but partially made known.' But 
 
 ' What a wLlderness were this sad world, 
 If man were always man and never child ! * 
 
 And it were almost a worse wilderness if there were not some, 
 to relieve the dull monotony of activity, who are children 
 through life : who act on wayward impulse, and whose will has 
 never come ; who toil not and who spin not ; who always have 
 'fair Eden's simpleness : ' and of such was Hartley Coleridge. 
 ' Don't you remember,' writes Grray to Horace Walpole, when 
 Lord B. and Sir H. C. and Viscount D., who are now great 
 statesmen, were little dirty boys playing at cricket ? For my 
 part I do not feel one bit older or wiser now than I did then.' 
 For as some apply their minds to what is next them, and labour 
 ever, and attain to governing the Tower, and entering the 
 
 * HaHley Coleridge's Lives of the Northern Worthies. A new Edition. 
 3 vols. Moxon. 
 
 2 This essay was published immediately after the death of the Duke of 
 Wellington, 4> 
 
 \ 
 
42 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 Trinity House, — to commanding armies, and applauding pilots, 
 — so there are also some who are ever anxious to-day about 
 what ought only to be considered to-morrow ; who never get 
 on ; whom the earth neglects, and whom tradesmen little 
 esteem; who are where they were; who cause grief, and are 
 loved ; that are at once a by-word and a blessing ; who do not 
 live in life, and it seems will not die in death : and of such was 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 A curious instance of poetic anticipation was in this in- 
 stance vouchsafed to Wordsworth. When Hartley was six years 
 old, he addressed to him these verses, perhaps the best ever 
 written on a real and visible child : — 
 
 ' 0 thou, whose fancies from afar are brought, 
 Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel 
 And fittest to unutterable thought 
 The breeze-like motion and the self born carol ; 
 Thou fairy voyager, tjhat dost float 
 In such clear water that thy boat 
 May rather seem 
 
 To brood on air than on an earthly stream ; 
 
 0 blessed vision, happy child. 
 Thou art so exquisitely wild, 
 
 1 think of thee with many fears 
 
 For what may be thy lot in future years. 
 ****** 
 
 0 too industrious folly ! 
 
 O vain and causeless melancholy ! 
 
 Nature will either end thee quite. 
 
 Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, 
 
 Preserve for thee by individual right 
 
 A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks/ 
 
 And so it was. As often happens, being very little of a boy 
 in actual childhood. Hartley preserved into manhood and age 
 all of boyhood which he had ever possessed — its beaming 
 imagination and its wayward will. He had none of the natural 
 roughness of that age. He never played — partly from weak- 
 
 ) 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 43 
 
 ness, for he was very small, but more from awkwardness. His 
 imcle Southey used to say he had two left hands, and might 
 have added that they were both useless. He could no more 
 have achieved football, or mastered cricket, or kept in with the 
 hounds, than he could have followed Charles's Wain or played 
 pitch and toss with Jupiter's satellites. Nor was he very ex- 
 cellent at school-work. He showed, indeed, no deficiency. 
 The Coleridge family have inherited from the old scholar of 
 Ottery St, Mary a certain classical facility which could not 
 desert the son of Samuel Taylor. But his real strength was in 
 his own mind. All children have a world of their own, as dis- 
 tinct from that of the grown people who gravitate around them 
 as the dreams of girlhood from our prosaic life ; as the ideas of 
 the kitten that plays with the falling leaves, from those of her 
 carnivorous mother that catches mice and is sedulous in her 
 domestic duties. But generally about this interior existence, 
 children are dumb. You have warlike ideas, but you cannot 
 say to a sinewy relative, ' My dear aunt, I wonder when the big 
 bush in the garden will begin to walk about ; I'm sure it's a 
 crusader, and I was cutting it all the day with my steel sword. 
 But what do you think, aunt, for I'm puzzled about its legs, 
 because you see, aunt, it has only one stalk ; and besides, aunt, 
 the leaves.' You cannot remark this in secular life ; but you 
 hack at the infelicitous bush till you do not altogether reject 
 the idea that your small garden is Palestine, and yourself the 
 most adventurous of knights. Hartley had this, of course, like 
 any other dreamy child, but in his case it was accompanied 
 with the faculty of speech, and an extraordinary facility in con- 
 tinuous story- telling. In the very earliest childhood he had 
 conceived a complete outline of a country like England, 
 whereof he was king himself, and in which there were many 
 wars, and rumours of wars, and foreign relations and statesmen, 
 and rebels and soldiers. ' My people, Derwent,' he used to 
 begin, ' are giving me much pain ; they want to go to war.' 
 This faculty, as was natural, showed itself before he we] 
 
44 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 school, but he carried on the habit of fanciful narration even 
 into that bleak and ungenial region. ' It was not,' says his 
 brother, * by a series of tales, but by one continuous tale, regu- 
 larly evolved, and possessing a real unity, that he enchained 
 the attention of his auditors, night after night, as we lay in 
 bed, for a space of years, and not unfrequently for hours 
 together.' . . . . < There was certainly,' he adds, * a great 
 variety of persons sharply characterised, who appeared on the 
 stage in combination and not in succession.' Connected, in 
 Hartley, with this premature development of the imagination, 
 there was a singular deficiency in what may be called the sense 
 of reality. It is alleged that he hardly knew that Ejuxrea, 
 which is the name of his kingdom, was not as solid a terra 
 firma as Keswick or Ambleside. The deficiency showed itself 
 on other topics. His father used to tell a story of his meta- 
 physical questioning. When he was about five years old, he 
 was asked, doubtless by the paternal metaphysician, some ques- 
 tion as to why he was called Hartley. ' Which Hartley ? ' 
 replied the boy. ' Why, is there more than one Hartley ? ' 
 'Yes, there is a deal of Hartleys; there is Picture Hartley 
 (Hazlitt had painted a picture of him), and Shadow Hartley, 
 and there's Echo Hartley, and there's Catchmefast Hartley,' 
 seizing his own arm very eagerly, and as if reflecting on the 
 'summjectand ommject,' which is to say, being in hopeless 
 confusion. We do not hear whether lie was puzzled and per- 
 plexed by such difficulties in later life ; and the essays which 
 we are reviewing, though they contain much keen remark on 
 the detail of human character, are destitute of the Grermanic 
 profundities ; they do not discuss how existence is possible, nor 
 enumerate the pure particulars of the soul itself. But con- 
 sidering the idle dreaminess of his youth and manhood, we 
 doubt if Hartley ever got over his preliminary doubts — ever 
 properly grasped the idea of fact and reality. This is not non- 
 '^ense. If you attend acutely, you may observe that in few 
 s do people differ more than in their perfect and imperfect 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 45 
 
 realisation of this earth. To the Duke of Wellington a coat 
 was a coat; 'there was no mistake ;' no reason to disbelieve it; 
 and he carried to his grave a perfect and indubitable persuasion 
 that he really did (what was his best exploit), without fluctu- 
 ation, shave on the morning of the battle of Waterloo. You 
 could not have made him doubt it. But to many people who 
 will never be Field Marshals, there is on such points, not 
 rational doubt, but instinctive questioning. ' Who the devil,' 
 said Lord Byron, ' could maize, such a world ? No one, I 
 believe.' ' Cast your thoughts,' says a very different writer, 
 ' back on the time when our ancient buildings were first reared. 
 Consider the churches all around us ; how many generations 
 have passed since stone was put upon stone, till the whole 
 edifice was finished ! The first movers and instruments of its 
 erection, the minds that planned it, and the limbs that wrought 
 at it, the pious hands that contributed to it, and the holy lips 
 that consecrated it, have long, long ago been taken away, yet 
 we benefit by their good deed. Does it not seem strange that 
 men should be able, not merely by acting on others, not by a 
 continued influence carried on through many minds in succes- 
 sion, but by a single direct act, to come into contact with us, 
 and, as if with their own hand, to benefit us who live centuries 
 later ? ' Or again, speaking of the lower animals : ' Can any- 
 thing be more marvellous or startling, than that we should have 
 a race of beings about us, whom we do but see, and as little 
 know their state, or can describe their interests or their destiny, 
 as we can tell of the inhabitants of the sun and moon ? It is 
 indeed a very overpowering thought, that we hold intercourse 
 with creatures who are as much strangers to us, as mysterious 
 as if they were the fabulous, unearthly beings, more powerful 
 than man, and yet his slaves, which Eastern superstitions hav*^ 
 invented Cast your thoughts abroad on the whole num- 
 ber of them, large and small, in vast forests, or in the water, or 
 in the air, and then say whether the presence of such countless 
 multitudes, so various in their natures, so strange and wild in 
 
46 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 their shapes, is not ' as incredible as anything can be. We go 
 into a street, and see it thronged with men, and we say, Is it 
 true^ are there these men ? We look on a creeping river, till 
 we say, Is there this river ? We enter the law courts : we 
 watch the patient Chancellor: we hear the droning wigs: — 
 surely this is not real, — this is a dream, — nobody would do 
 tkat^ — it is a delusion. We are really, as the sceptics insinuate, 
 but ' sensations and impressions,' in groups or alone, that float 
 up and down ; or, as the poet teaches, phantoms and images, 
 whose idle stir but mocks the calm reality of the ' pictures on 
 the wall.' All this will be called dreamy ; but it exactly be- 
 cause it is dreamy that we notice it. Hartley Coleridge was a 
 dreamer : he began with Ejuxrea, and throughout his years, he 
 but slumbered and slept. Life was to him a floating haze, a 
 disputable mirage : you must not treat him like a believer in 
 stocks and stones — you might as well say he was a man of 
 business. 
 
 Hartley's school education is not worth recounting ; but 
 beside and along with it there was another education, on every 
 side of him, singularly calculated to bring out the peculiar 
 aptitudes of an imaginative mind,' yet exactly, on that very ac- 
 count, very little likely to bring it down to fact and reality, to 
 mix it with miry clay, or define its dreams by a daily reference 
 to the common and necessary earth. He was bred up in the 
 house of Mr. Southey, where, more than anywhere else in all 
 England, it was held that literature and poetry are the aim 
 and object of every true man, and that grocery and other affairs 
 lie beneath at an wholly immeasurable distance, to be attended 
 to by the inferior animals. In Hartley's case the seed fell on 
 fitting soil. In youth, and even in childhood, he was a not 
 unintelligent listener to the unspeakable talk of the Lake 
 poets. 
 
 * It was so,' writes his brother, ' rather than by a regular 
 course of study, that he was educated ; by desultory reading, 
 by the living voice of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 47 
 
 Lloyd, Wilson, and De Quincey ; and again, by homely famili- 
 arity with townsfolk and countryfolk of every degree ; lastly, 
 by daily recm-ring hours of solitude — by lonely wanderings with 
 the murmur of the Brathay in his ear.' 
 
 Thus he lived till the time came that he should go to 
 Oxford, and naturally enough, it seems, he went up with much 
 hope and strong excitement ; for, quiet and calm as seem those 
 ancient dormitories, to him, as to many, the going among them 
 seemed the first entrance into the real world — the end of tor- 
 pidity — the beginning of life. He had often stood by the white 
 Eydal Water, and thought it was coming, and now it was come 
 in fact. At first his Oxford life was prosperous enough. An 
 old gentleman, who believes that he too was once an under- 
 graduate, well remembers how Hartley's eloquence was admired 
 at wine parties and breakfast parties. ' Leaning his head on 
 one shoulder, turning up his dark bright eyes, and swinging 
 backwards and forwards in his chair, he would hold forth by 
 the hour, for no one wished to interrupt him, on whatever sub- 
 ject might have been started — either of literature, politics, or 
 religion — with an originality of thought, a force of illustration, 
 which,' the narrator doubts, ' if any man then living, except his 
 father, could have surpassed.' The singular gift of continuous 
 conversation — for singular it is, if in any degree agreeable — 
 seems to have come to him by nature, and it was through life 
 the one quality which he relied on for attraction in society. 
 Its being agreeable is to be accounted for mainly by its singu- 
 larity ; if one knew any respectable number of declaimers — if 
 any proportion of one's acquaintance should receive the gift of 
 the English language, and ' improve each shining hour ' with 
 liquid eloquence, how we should regret their present dumb and 
 torpid condition ! If we are to be dull — which our readers will 
 admit to be an appointment of providence — surely we will be 
 dull in silence. Do not sermons exist, and are they not a 
 warning to mankind ? 
 
 In fact, the habit of common and continuous speech is a 
 
48 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing 
 what is going on in other people's minds. S. T. Coleridge, it 
 is well known, talked to everybody, and to everybody alike ; 
 like a Christian divine, he did not regard persons. ' That is a 
 fine opera, Mr. Coleridge,' said a young lady, some fifty years 
 back. ' Yes, ma'am ; and I remember Kant somewhere makes 
 a very similar remark for, as we know, the idea of philosophical 
 infinity — .' Now, this sort of talk will answer with two sorts 
 of people — with comfortable, stolid, solid people, who don't 
 imderstand it at all — who don't feel that they ought to under- 
 stand it — who feel that they ought not — that they are to sell 
 treacle and appreciate figs — but that there is this transcendental 
 superlunary sphere, whicli is known to others — which is now 
 revealed in the spiritual speaker, the unmitigated oracle, the 
 evidently celestial sound. That the dreamy orator himself has 
 no more notion what is passing in their minds than they have 
 what is running through his, is of no consequence at all. If he 
 did know it, he would be silent; he would be jarred to feel how 
 utterly he was misunderstood ; it would break the flow of his 
 everlasting words. Much better that he should run on in a 
 never-pausing stream, and that the wondering rustics should 
 admire for ever. The basis of the entertainment is that neither 
 should comprehend the other. — But in a degree yet higher is 
 the society of an omniscient orator agreeable to a second sort of 
 people, — generally young men, and particularly — as in Hartley's 
 case — clever undergraduates. All young men like what is 
 theatrical, and by a fine dispensation all clever young men like 
 notions. They want to hear about opinions, to know about 
 opinions. The ever-flowing rhetorician gratifies both propen- 
 sions. He is a notional spectacle. Like the sophist of old, he 
 is something and says something. The vagabond speculator 
 in all ages will take hold on those who wish to reason, and want 
 premises — who wish to argue, and want theses — who desire 
 demonstrations, and have but presumptions. And so it was 
 acceptable enough that Hartley should make the low tones of 
 
Hartley Cole^ddge, 
 
 49 
 
 his musical voice glide sweetly and spontaDeously through the 
 cloisters of Merton, debating the old questions, the ' fate, free- 
 will, foreknowledge,' — the points that Ockham and Scotus pro- 
 pounded in these same enclosures — the common riddles, the 
 everlasting enigmas of mankind. It attracts the scorn of 
 middle-aged men (who depart irpos ra Ispd, and fancy they are 
 wise), but it is a pleasant thing, that impact of hot thought 
 upon hot thought, of young thought upon young thought, of 
 new thought upon new thought. It comes to the fortunate 
 once, but to no one a second time thereafter for ever. 
 
 Nor was Hartley undistinguished in the regular studies of 
 the University, A regular, exact, accurate scholar he never 
 was ; but even in his early youth he perhaps knew much more 
 and understood much more of ancient literature than seven 
 score of schoolmasters and classmen. He had, probably, in his 
 mind a picture of the ancient world, or of some of it, while the 
 dry literati only know the combinations and permutations of 
 the Grreek alphabet. There is a pleasant picture of him at this 
 epoch, recorded by an eye-witness. ' My attention,' he narrates, 
 ' was at first aroused by seeing from a window a figure flitting 
 about amongst the trees and shrubs of the garden with quick 
 and agitated motion. This was Hartley, who, in the ardour of 
 preparing for his college examination, did not even take his 
 meals with the family, but snatched a hasty morsel in his own 
 apartment, and only sought the free air when the fading day- 
 light prevented him from seeing his books. Having found who 
 he was that so mysteriously flitted about the garden, I was 
 determined to lose no time in making his acquaintance, and 
 through the instrumentality of Mrs. Coleridge I paid Hartley 
 a visit in what he called his den. This was a room afterwards 
 converted by Mr. Southey ' — as what chink was not ? — ' into a 
 supplementary library, but then appropriated as a study to 
 Hartley, and presenting a most picturesque and student-like 
 disorder of scattered pamphlets and folios.' This is not a 
 picture of the business-like reading man — one wonders what 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 fraction of his time he did read — but it was probably the 
 happiest period of his life. There was no coarse prosaic action 
 there. Much musing, little studying, — fair scholarship, an 
 atmosphere of the classics, curious fancies, much perusing of 
 pamphlets, light thoughts on heavy folios — these make the 
 meditative poet, but not the technical and patient-headed 
 scholar ; yet, after all, he was happy, and obtained a second 
 class. 
 
 A more suitable exercise, as it would have seemed at first 
 sight, was supplied by that curious portion of Oxford routine, 
 the Annual Prize Poem. This, he iiimself tells us, was, in his 
 academic years, the real and single object of his ambition. His 
 reason is, for an autobiographical reason, decidedly simple. ' A 
 great poet,' he says, ' I should not have imagined myself, for I 
 kuew well enough that the verses were no great things.' But 
 he entertained at that period of life — he was twenty-one — a 
 favourable opinion of young ladies; and he seems to have 
 ascertained, possibly from actual trial, that verses were not in 
 themselves a very emphatic attraction. Singular as it may 
 sound, the ladies selected were not only insensible to what is, 
 after all, a metaphysical line, the distinction between good 
 poetry and bad, but were almost indifferent to poetry itself. 
 Yet the experiment was not quite conclusive. Verses might 
 fail in common life, and yet succeed in the Sheldonian theatre. 
 It is plain that they would be read out ; it occurred to him, 
 as he naively relates, that if he should appear ' as a prizeman,' 
 ' as an intelligible reciter of poetry,' he would be an object 
 of 'some curiosity to the fair promenaders in Christchurch 
 Meadow;' that the young ladies 'with whom he was on bow- 
 ing and speaking terms might have felt a satisfaction in being 
 known to know me, which they had never experienced before.' 
 ' I should,' he adds, ' have deemed myself a prodigious lion, and 
 it was a character I was weak enough to covet more than that 
 of poet, scholar, or philosopl: er.' 
 
 In fact, he did not get the prize. The worthy East Indian, 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 51 
 
 who imagined that, in leaving a bequest for a prize to poetry, 
 he should be as sure of possessing poetry for his money as of 
 eggs, if he had chosen eggs, or of butter, if he had chosen 
 butter, did not estimate rightly the nature of poetry, or the 
 nature of the human mind. The mechanical parts of rhythm 
 and metre are all that a writer can be certain of producing, or 
 that a purchaser can be sure of obtaining ; and these an 
 industrious person will find in any collection of the Newdegate 
 poems, together with a fine assortment of similes and senti- 
 ments, respectively invented and enjoined by Shem and Japhet 
 for and to the use of after generations. And there is a 
 peculiar reason why a great poet (besides his being, as a man of 
 genius, rather more likely than another, to find a difficulty in 
 the preliminary technicalities of art) should not obtain an 
 academical prize, to be given for excellent verses to people of 
 about twenty-one. It is a bad season. ' The imagination,' 
 said a great poet of the very age, ' of a boy is healthy, and 
 the mature imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a 
 space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the 
 character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition 
 thick-sighted.' ^ And particularly in a real poet, where the 
 disturbing influences of passion and fancy are most likely to be 
 in excess, will this unhealthy tinge be most likely to be exces- 
 sive and conspicuous. Nothing in the style of Endymion 
 would have a chance of a prize ; there are no complete con- 
 ceptions, no continuance of adequate words. What is worse, 
 there are no defined thoughts, or aged illustrations. The cha- 
 racteristic of the whole is beauty and novelty, but it is beauty 
 which is not formed, and novelty which is strange and wavering. 
 Some of these defects are observable in the copy of verses on 
 the ' Horses of Lysippus,' which Hartley Coleridge contributed 
 to the list of unsuccessful attempts. It does not contain so 
 much originality as we might have expected ; on such a topic 
 we anticipated more nonsense ; a little, we are glad to say, 
 
 ' Keats in the Preface to Endymion, 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 there is, and also that there is an utter want of those even raps, 
 which are the music of prize poems, — which were the right 
 rhythm for Pope's elaborate sense, but are quite unfit for 
 dreamy classics or contemplative enthusiasm. If Hartley, like 
 Pope, had been the son of a shopkeeper, he would not have re- 
 ceived the paternal encouragement, but rather a reprimand, — 
 ' Boy, boy, these be bad rhymes ; ' and so, too, believed a 
 grizzled and cold examiner. 
 
 A much worse failure was at hand. He had been elected to 
 a Fellowship, in what was at that time the only open founda- 
 tion in Oxford, Oriel College : an event which shows more 
 exact scholarship in Hartley, or more toleration in the 
 academical authorities for the grammatical delinquencies of a 
 superior man, than we should have been inclined, a priori, to 
 attribute to either of them. But it soon became clear that 
 Hartley was not exactly suited to that place. Decorum is the 
 essence, pomposity the advantage, of tutors. These Hartley 
 had not. Beside the serious defects which we shall mention 
 immediately, he was essentially an absent and musing, and 
 therefore at times a highly indecorous man ; and though not 
 defective in certain kinds of vanity, there was no tinge in his 
 manner of scholastic dignity. A schoolmaster should have an 
 atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed 
 at being himself. But an excessive sense of the ludicrous 
 disabled Hartley altogether from the acquisition of this valu- 
 able habit ; perhaps he never really attempted to obtain it. 
 He accordingly never became popular as a tutor, nor was he 
 ever described as ' exercising an influence over young persons.' 
 Moreover, however excellently suited Hartley's eloquence might 
 be to the society of undergraduates, it was out of place at the 
 Fellows' table. This is said to be a dull place. The excite- 
 ment of early thought has passed away; the excitements of 
 active manhood are imknown. A certain torpidity seems 
 natural there. We find too that, probably for something to say, 
 he was in those years rather fond of exaggerated denunciation 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 53 
 
 of the powers that be. This is not the habit most grateful to 
 the heads of houses. ' Sir,' said a great authority, ' do you 
 deny that Lord Derby ought to be Prime Minister ? you might 
 as well say, that I ought not to be Warden of So and So.' These 
 habits rendered poor Hartley no favourite with the leading people 
 of his college, and no great prospective shrewdness was required 
 to predict that he would fare but ill, if any sufficient occasion 
 should be found for removing from the place, a person so 
 excitable and so little likely to be of use in inculcating ' safe ' 
 opinions among the surrounding youth. 
 
 Unhappily, the visible morals of Hartley offered an easy 
 occasion. It is not quite easy to gather from the narrative of 
 his brother the exact nature or full extent of his moral delin- 
 quencies ; but enough is shown to warrant, according to the 
 rules, the unfavourable judgment of the collegiate authorities. 
 He describes, probably truly, the commencement of his errors 
 — ' I verily believe that I should have gone crazy, silly, mad ' 
 with vanity, had I obtained the prize for my " Horses of 
 Lysippus." It was the only occasion in my life wherein I was 
 keenly disappointed, for it was the only one upon which I felt 
 any confident hope. I had made myself very sure of it ; and 
 the intelligence that not I but Macdonald was the lucky man, 
 absolutely stupefied me ; yet I contrived for a time to lose all 
 sense of my misfortunes in exultation for Burton's success 
 . . . . I sang, I danced, I whistled, I ran from room to room, 
 announcing the great tidings, and trying to persuade myself 
 that I cared nothing at all for my own case. But it would not 
 do. It was bare sands with me the next day. It was not the 
 mere loss of the prize, but the feeling or phantasy of an adverse 
 
 destiny I foresaw that all my aims and hopes would 
 
 prove frustrate and abortive ; and from that time I date my 
 downward declension, my impotence of will, and my melan- 
 choly recklessness. It was the first time I sought relief in 
 wine, which, as usual in such cases, produced not so much in- 
 toxication as downright madness.' Cast in an uncongenial 
 
54 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 society, requiring to live in an atmosphere of respect and 
 affection — and surrounded by gravity and distrust — miscon- 
 strued and half tempted to maintain the misconstruction ; with 
 the waywardness of childhood without the innocency of its im- 
 pulses ; with the passions of manhood without the repressive 
 vigour of a man's will, — he lived as a woman lives that is lost 
 and forsaken, who sins ever and hates herself for sinning, but 
 who sins, perhaps, more on that very account ; because she 
 requires some relief from the keenness of her own reproach ; 
 because, in her morbid fancy, the idea is ever before her ; 
 because her petty will is unable to cope with the daily craving 
 and the horrid thought — that she may not lose her own 
 identity — that she may not give in to the rigid, the distrustful, 
 and the calm. 
 
 There is just this excuse for Hartley, whatever it may be 
 worth, that the weakness was hereditary. We do not as yet 
 know, it seems most likely that we shall never know, the 
 precise character of his father. But with all the discrepancy 
 concerning the details, enough for our purpose is certain of the 
 outline. We know that he lived many and long years a prey 
 to weaknesses and vice of this very description ; and though it 
 be false and mischievous to speak of hereditary vice, it is most 
 true and wise to observe the mysterious fact of hereditary 
 temptation. Doubtless it is strange that the nobler emotions 
 and the inferior impulses, their peculiar direction or their 
 proportionate strength, the power of a fixed idea — that the 
 inner energy of the very will, which seems to issue from the 
 inmost core of our complex nature, and to typify, if anything 
 does, the pure essence of the immortal soul — that these and 
 such as these should be transmitted by material descent, as 
 though they were an accident of the body, the turn of an eye- 
 brow or the feebleness of a joint, — if this were not obvious, it 
 would be as amazing, perhaps more amazing, than any fact 
 which we know ; it looks not only like predestinated, but even 
 heritable election. But, explicable or inexplicable — to be 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 55 
 
 wondered at or not wondered at — the fact is clear ; tendencies 
 and temptations are transmitted even to the fourth generation 
 both for good and for evil, both in those who serve Grod and in 
 those who serve Him not. Indeed, the weakness before us 
 seems essentially connected — perhaps we may say on a final ex- 
 amination essentially identical — with the dreaminess of mind, 
 the inapprehensiveness of reality which we remarked upon 
 before. Wordsworth used to say, that ' at a particular stage of 
 his mental progress he used to be frequently so wrapt into an 
 unreal transcendental world of ideas, that the external world 
 seemed no longer to exist in relation to him, and he had to 
 convince himself of its existence by clasping a tree or some- 
 thing that happened to be near him.' But suppose a mind 
 which did not feel acutely the sense of reality which others 
 feel, in hard contact with the tangible universe; which was 
 blind to the distinction between the palpable and the impalp- 
 able, or rather lived in the latter in preference to, and nearly to 
 the e.Tclusion of, the former. What is to fix such a mind, what 
 is to strengthen it, to give it a fulcrum ? To exert itself, the 
 will, like the arm, requires to have an obvious and a definite 
 resistance, to know where it is, why it is, whence it comes, and 
 whither it goes. ' We are such stuff as dreams are made of,' 
 says Prospero. So, too, the difficulty of Shakespeare's greatest 
 dreamer, Hamlet, is that he cannot quite believe that his duty 
 is to be done where it lies, and immediately. Partly from the 
 natural effect of a vision of a spirit which is not, but more from 
 native constitution and instinctive bent, he is for ever speculating 
 on the reality of existence, the truth of the world. 'How,' 
 discusses Kant, ' is Nature in general possible ? ' and so asked 
 Hamlet too. With this feeling on his mind, persuasion is use- 
 less and argument in vain. Examples gross as earth exhort 
 him, but they produce no effect ; but he thinks and thinks the 
 more. 
 
 * Now whether it be 
 Bestial ohlivion, or some craven scruple 
 
56 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 Of thinking too precisely on the event, — 
 
 A thought which quarter'd hath biit one part wisdom 
 
 And ever three parts coward, — I do not know 
 
 Why yet I live to say, " This thing's to do," 
 
 Sith I have cause and will and strength and means 
 
 To do 't.' 
 
 Hartley himself well observes that on such a character the 
 likelihood of action is inversely as the force of the motive and 
 the time for deliberation. The stronger the reason, the more 
 certain the scepticism ? Can anything be so certain ? Does 
 not the excess of the evidence alleged make it clear that there 
 is something behind, something on the other side ? Search 
 then diligently lest anything be overlooked. Keflection 
 ' puzzles the will,' Necessity ' benumbs like a torpedo : ' and so 
 
 * The native hue of resolution 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment 
 With this regard, their currents turn awry, 
 And lose the name of action.' 
 
 Why should we say any more ? We do but ' chant snatches 
 of old tunes.' But in estimating men like the Coleridges — the 
 son even more than the father — we must take into account this 
 peculiar difficulty — this dreamy unbelief — this daily scepticism 
 — this haunting unreality — and imagine that some may not be 
 quite responsible either for what they do, or for what they do 
 not — because they are bewildered, and deluded, and perplexed, 
 and want the faculty as much to comprehend their difficulty as 
 to subdue it. 
 
 The Oxford life of Hartley is all his life. The failure of his 
 prospects there, in his brother's words, ' deprived him of the 
 residue of his years.' The biography afterwards goes to and 
 fro — one attempt after another failing, some beginning in much 
 hope, but even the sooner for that reason issuing in utter 
 despair. His literary powers came early to full perfection. 
 For some time after his expulsion from Oriel he was resident in 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 57 
 
 London, and the poems written there are equal, perhaps are 
 superior, to any which he afterwards produced. This sonnet 
 may serve as a specimen : — 
 
 In the gi-eat city we are met again 
 Where many souls there are, that breathe and die 
 Scarce knowing more of nature's potency 
 Than what they learn from heat or cold or rain, 
 The sad vicissitude of weary pain : — 
 For busy man is lord of ear and eye, 
 And what hath Nature, but the vast, void sky, 
 And the throng'd river toiling to the main % 
 Oh ! say not so, for she shall have her part 
 In every smile, in every tear that falls, 
 And she shall hide her in the secret heart 
 Where love persuades and sterner duty calls ; 
 But worse it were than death or sorrow's smart, 
 To Hve without a friend within these walls.' 
 He soon, however, went down to the lakes, and there, exce])fc 
 during one or two short intervals, he lived and died. This excep- 
 tion was a residence at Leeds, during which he brought out, be- 
 sides a volume containing his best poems, the book which stands 
 at the head of our article — the Lives of Northern Worthies, ^^^e 
 selected the book, we confess, with the view mainly of bringing 
 a remarkable character before the notice of our readers — but in 
 itself the work is an excellent one, and of a rare kind. 
 
 Books are for various purposes — tracts to teach, almanacs 
 to sell, poetry to make pastry, but this is the rarest sort of 
 book, a book to read. As Dr. Johnson said, ' Sir, a good book 
 is one you can hold in your hand, and take to the fire.' Now 
 there are extremely few books which can, with any propriety, 
 be so treated. When a great author, as Grrote or Gribbon, has 
 devoted a whole life of horrid indastry to the composition of a 
 large history, one feels one ought not to touch it with a mere 
 hand — it is not respectful. The idea of slavery hovers over 
 the 'Decline and Fall.' Fancy a stiffly dressed gentleman, 
 in a stiff chair, slowly writing that stiff compilation in a 
 stiff hand : it is enough to stiffen you for life. Or is poetry 
 
58 
 
 Hartley Coleridge, 
 
 readable? Of course it is rememberahle ; when you have it in 
 the mind, it clings ; if by heart, it haunts. Imagery comes 
 from it ; songs which lull the ear, heroines that waste the time. 
 But this Biographia is actually read ; a man is glad to take it 
 up, and slow to lay it down ; it is a book which is truly valu- 
 able, for it is truly pleasing ; and which a man who has once 
 had it in his library would miss from his shelves, not only in 
 the common way, by a physical vacuum, but by a mental de- 
 privation. This strange quality it owes to a peculiarity of 
 style. Many people give many theories of literary composition, 
 and Dr. Blair, whom we will read, is sometimes said to have 
 exhausted the subject; but, unless he has proved the contrary, 
 we believe that the knack in style is to write like a human 
 being. Some think they must be wise, some elaborate, some 
 concise ; Tacitus wrote like a pair of stays ; some startle as 
 Thomas Carlyle, or a comet, inscribing with his tail. But 
 legibility is given to those who neglect these notions, and are 
 willing to be themselves, to write their own thoughts in their 
 own words, in the simplest words, in the words wherein they 
 were thought ; and such, and so great, was in this book the 
 magnanimity of Hartley. 
 
 As has been said, from his youth onwards. Hartley's outward 
 life was a simple blank. Much writing, and much musing, 
 some intercourse with Wordsworth, some talking to under- 
 graduate readers or lake ladies, great loneliness, and much 
 intercourse with the farmers of Cumberland — these pleasures, 
 simple enough, most of them, were his life. The extreme plea- 
 sure of the peasantry in his conversation, is particularly re- 
 marked. 'Aye, but Mr. Coleridge talks fine,' observed one. 
 * I would go through fire and water for Mr. C.,' interjected 
 another. His father, with real wisdom, had provided (in part, 
 at least) for his necessary wants in the following manner : — 
 
 * This is a codicil to my last will and testament. 
 
 ' S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 * Most desirous to secure, as far as in me lies, for my dear son 
 
Hartley Coleridge, 
 
 59 
 
 Hartley, the tranquillity essential to any continued and successful 
 exertion of liis literary talents, and which, from the like characters of 
 our minds in this respect, I know to be especially requisite for his 
 happiness, and persuaded that he will recognise in this provision that 
 anxious affection by which it is dictated, I affix this codicil to my last 
 
 will and testament And I hereby request them (the said 
 
 trustees) to hold the sum accruing to Hartley Coleridge from the 
 equal division of my total bequest between him, his brother Derwent, 
 and his sister Sara, after his mother's decease, to dispose of the in- 
 terests or proceeds of the same portion to or for the use of my dear 
 son Hartley Coleridge, at such time or times, in such manner, or under 
 such conditions, as they, the trustees above named, kiiow to be my 
 wish, and shall deem conducive to the attainment of my object in 
 adding the codicil, namely, the anxious wish to ensure for my son the 
 continued means of a home, in which I comprise board, lodging, and 
 raiment. Providing that nothing in this codicil shall be so inter- 
 ])reted as to interfere with my son H. C.'s freedom of choice respecting 
 his place of residence, or with his power of disposing of his portion by 
 will after his decease according as his own judgments and affections 
 may decide.' 
 
 An excellent provision, which would not, however, by the Eng- 
 lish law, have disabled the ' said Hartley ' from depriving him- 
 self of ' the continued means of a home ' by alienating the 
 principal of the bequest ; since the jurisprudence of this country 
 has no legal definition of ' prodigality,' and does not consider 
 any person incompetent to manage his pecuniary affairs unless 
 he be quite and certainly insane. Yet there undoubtedly are 
 persons, and poor Hartley was one of them, who though in 
 general perfectly sane, and even with superior powers of thought 
 or fancy, are as completely unable as the most helpless lunatic 
 to manage any pecuniary transactions, and to whom it would 
 be a great gain to have perpetual guardians and compulsory 
 trustees. But such people are rare, and few principles are so 
 English as the maxim de minimis non curat lex. 
 
 He lived in this way for thirty years or nearly so, but there 
 is nothing to tell of all that time. He died January 6, 1849, 
 and was buried in Grasmere churchyard — the quietest place in 
 
6o 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 England, ' by the yews,' as Arnold says, ' that Wordsworth 
 planted, the Rotha with its big silent pools passing by.' It 
 was a shining January day when Hartley was borne to the 
 grave. ' Keep the ground for us,' said Mr. "Wordsworth to the 
 sexton ; ' we are old, and it cannot be long.' 
 
 We have described Hartley's life at length for a peculiar 
 reason. It is necessary to comprehend his character, to appre- 
 ciate his works ; and there is no way of delineating character 
 but by a selection of characteristic sayings and actions. All 
 poets, as is commonly observed, are delineated in their poems, 
 but in very different modes. Each minute event in the melan- 
 choly life of Shelley is frequently alluded to in his writings. 
 The tender and reverential character of Virgil is everywhere 
 conspicuous in his pages. It is clear th-at Chaucer was shrewd. 
 We seem to have talked with Shakespeare, though we have for- 
 gotten the facts of his life ; but it is not by minute allusion, or 
 a tacit influence, or a genial and delightful sympathy, that a 
 writer like Hartley Coleridge leaves the impress of himself, but 
 in a more direct manner, which it will take a few words to 
 describe. 
 
 Poetry begins in Impersonality. Homer is a voice — a fine 
 voice, a fine eye, and a brain that drew with light ; and this is 
 all we know. The natural subjects of the first art are the 
 scenes and events in which the first men naturally take an 
 interest. They don't care — who does ? — for a kind old man ; 
 but they want to hear of the exploits of their ancestors — of the 
 heroes of their childhood — of them that their fathers saw — of 
 the founders of their own land — of wars, and rumours of wars — 
 of great victories boldly won — of heavy defeats firmly borne — 
 of desperate disasters unsparingly retrieved. So in all countries 
 — Siegfried, or Charlemagne, or Arthur, — they are but attempts 
 at an Achilles : the subject is the same — the icKia dpBpcou 
 and the death that comes to all. But then the mist of battles 
 passes away, and the sound of the daily conflict no longer 
 hurtles in the air, and a generation arises skilled with the 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 6i 
 
 skill of peace, and refined with the refinement of civilisation, 
 yet still remembering the old world, still appreciating the old 
 life, still wondering at the old men, and ready to receive, at the 
 hand of the poet, a new telling of the old tale — a new idealisa- 
 tion of the legendary tradition. This is the age of dramatic 
 art, when men wonder at the big characters of old, as schoolboys 
 at the words of ^schylus, and try to find in their own breasts 
 the roots of those monstrous, but artistically developed imper- 
 sonations. With civilisation too comes another change : men 
 wish not only to tell what they have seen, but also to express 
 what they are conscious of. Barbarians feel only hunger, and 
 that is not lyrical ; but as time runs on, arise gentler emotions 
 and finer moods and more delicate desires which need expres- 
 sion, and require from the artist's fancy the lightest touches 
 and the most soothing and insinuating words. Lyrical poetry, 
 too, as we know, is of various kinds. Some, as the war song, 
 approach to the epic, depict events and stimulate to triumph ; 
 others are love songs to pour out wisdom, others sober to de- 
 scribe champagne ; some passive and still, and expressive of the 
 higher melancholy, as Grray's ' Elegy in a Country Churchyard.' 
 But with whatever differences of species and class, the essence 
 of lyrical poetry remains in all identical ; it is designed to ex- 
 press, and when successful does express, some one mood, some 
 single sentiment, some isolated longing in human nature. It 
 deals not with man as a whole, but with man piecemeal, with 
 man in a scenic aspect, with man in a peculiar light. Hence 
 lyrical poets must not be j udged literally from their lyrics : 
 they are discourses ; they require to be reduced into the scale 
 of ordinary life, to be stripped of the enraptured element, to be 
 clogged with gravitating prose. Again, moreover, and in course 
 of time, the advance of ages and the progress of civilisation 
 appear to produce a new species of poetry which is distinct from 
 the lyrical, though it grows out of it, and contrasted with the 
 epic, though in a single respect it exactly resembles it. This 
 kind may be called the self-delineative, for in it the poet deals 
 
62 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 not with a particular desire, sentiment, or inclination in his 
 own mind, not with a special phase of his own character, not 
 with his love of war, his love of ladies, his melancholy, but with 
 his mind viewed as a whole, with the entire essence of his own 
 character. The first requisite of this poetry is truth. It is in 
 Plato's phrase the soul * itself by itself aspiring to view and 
 take account of the particular notes and marks that distinguish 
 it from all other souls. The sense of reality is necessary to 
 (-:xcellence ; the poet being himself, speaks like one who has 
 authority ; he knows and must not deceive. This species of 
 poetry, of course, adjoins on the lyrical, out of which it historically 
 arises. Such a poem as the ' Elegy ' is, as it were, on the bor- 
 ders of the two ; for while it expresses but a single emotion, 
 meditative, melancholy, you seem to feel that this sentiment is 
 not only then and for a moment the uppermost, but (as with 
 Gray it was) the habitual mood, the pervading emotion of his 
 whole life. Moreover, in one especial peculiarity, this sort of 
 poetry is analogous to the narrative or epic. Nothing certainly 
 can, in a general aspect, be more distantly removed one from 
 another, the one dealing in external objects and stirring events, 
 the other with the stillness and repose of the poet's mind ; but 
 still in a single characteristic the two coincide. They describe 
 character as the painters say in mass. The defect of the drama 
 is, that it can delineate only motion. If a thoughtful person 
 will compare the character of Achilles, as we find it in Homer, 
 with the more surpassing creations of dramatic invention, say 
 with Lear or Othello, he will perhaps feel that character in re- 
 pose, character on the lonely beach, character in marble, 
 character in itself, is more clearly and perfectly seen in the epic 
 narrative, than in the conversational drama. It of course re- 
 quires immense skill to make mere talk exhibit a man as he is 
 srdpcov d(l)ap. Now this quality of epic poetry the self- 
 delineative precisely shares with it. It describes a character — 
 the poet's — alone by itself. And therefore, when the great 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 63 
 
 master in both kinds did not hesitate to turn aside from his 
 ' high argument ' to say — 
 
 * More safe I sing with mortal voice unchanged 
 To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,* 
 
 pedants may prose as they please about the ' impropriety ' of 
 'interspersing' species of composition which are by nature re- 
 mote ; but Milton felt more profoundly that in its treatment 
 of character the egotistical poetry is allied to the epic ; that he 
 was putting together elements which would harmoniously com- 
 bine; that he was but exerting the same faculties in either 
 case- — being guided thereto by a sure instinct, the desire of 
 genius to handle and combine every one of the subjects on 
 which it is genius. 
 
 Now it is in this self-delineative species of poetry that, in 
 om* judgment, Hartley Coleridge has attained to nearly, if not 
 quite the highest excellence ; it pervades his writings every- 
 where. But a few sonnets may be quoted to exemplify it : — 
 
 * We parted on the mountains, as two streams 
 From one clear spring pursue their several ways ; 
 And thy fleet course hath been through many a maze 
 In foreign lands, where silvery Padus gleams 
 
 To that delicious sky, whose glowing beams 
 Brightened the tresses that old poets praise, 
 Where Petrarch's patient love and ai-tful lays, 
 And Ariosto's song of many themes. 
 Moved the soft air. — But I, a lazy brook, 
 As close pent up within my native dell, 
 Have crept along from nook to shady nook. 
 Where flow'rets blow and whispering Naiads dwell. 
 Yet now we meet that parted were so wide, 
 For rough and smooth to travel side by side. 
 
 * Once I was young, and fancy v/'as my all. 
 My love, my joy, my grief, my hope, my fear, 
 And ever ready as an infant's tear, 
 Whate'er in Fancy's kingdom might befall, 
 
64 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 Some quaint device had Fancy still at call, 
 With seemly verse to greet the coming cheer; 
 Such grief to soothe, such airy hope to rear, 
 To sing the birth-song, or the funeral 
 Of such light love, it was a pleasant task ; 
 But ill accord the quirks of wayward glee 
 That weai's affliction for a wanton mask, 
 "With woes that bear not Fancy's livery ; 
 With Hope that scorns of Fate its fate to ask, 
 But is itself its own sure destiny. 
 
 * Too true it is my time of power was spent 
 In idly watering weeds of casual growth 
 That wasted energy to desperate sloth 
 Declined, and fond self-seeking discontent ; 
 That the huge debt for all that nature lent 
 I sought to cancel, — and was nothing loth. 
 To deem myself an outlaw, severed both 
 From duty and from hope, — yea, blindly sent 
 Without an errand where I would to stray : — 
 Too true it is, that knowing now my state, 
 
 I weakly mourn the sin I ought to hate, 
 Nor love the law I yet would fain obey : 
 But true it is, above all law and fate 
 Is Faith, abiding the appointed day. 
 
 * Long time a child, and still a child when years 
 Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I : 
 For yet I lived like one not born to die, 
 
 A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears ; 
 
 No hope I needed, and I knew no fears. 
 
 But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking, 
 
 I waked to sleep no more, at once o'ertaking 
 
 The vanguard of my age, with all arrears 
 
 Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man, 
 
 Nor youth, nor sage, I find ray head is grey, 
 
 For I have lost the race I never ran ; 
 
 A rathe December blights my lagging May ; 
 
 And still I am a child, tho' I be old. 
 
 Time is my debtor for my years untold.* 
 
 i 
 
Hartley Coleiddge. 
 
 65 
 
 Indeed, the whole series of sonnets with which the earliest 
 and best work of Hartley began is (with a casual episode on 
 others), mainly and essentially a series on himself. Perhaps 
 there is something in the structure of the sonnet rather adapted 
 to this species of composition. It is too short for narrative, too 
 artificial for the intense passions, too complex for the simple, 
 too elaborate for the domestic; but in an impatient world 
 where there is not a premium on self-describing, who so would 
 speak of himself must be wise and brief, artful and composed — 
 and in these respect-s he will be aided by the concise dignity of 
 tlie tranquil sonnet. 
 
 It is remarkable that in this, too, Hartley Coleridge re- 
 sembled his father. Turn over the early poems of S. T. Cole- 
 ridge, the minor poems (we exclude the ' Mariner ' and 
 ' Christabel,' which are his epics), but the small shreds which 
 Bristol worshipped and Cottle paid for, and you will be dis- 
 heartened by utter dulness. Taken on a decent average, and 
 perhaps excluding a verse here and there, it really seems to us 
 that they are inferior to the daily works of the undeserving and 
 multiplied poets. If any reader will peruse any six of the 
 several works intituled 'Poems by a Young Grentleman,' we 
 believe he will find the refined anonymity less insipid than the 
 small productions of Samuel Taylor. There will be less puff 
 and less ostentation. The reputation of the latter was caused 
 not by their merit but by their time. Fifty years ago people 
 believed in metre, and it is plain that Coleridge (Southey may 
 be added, for that matter) believed in it also ; the people in 
 Bristol said that these two were wonderful men, because they 
 had written wonderfully small verses ; — and such is human 
 vanity, that both for a time accepted the creed. In Coleridge, 
 who had large speculative sense, the hallucination was not per- 
 manent — there are many traces that he rated his Juvenilia at 
 their value ; but poor Southey, who lived with domestic women, 
 actually died in the delusion that his early works were perfect, 
 except that he tried to ' amend ' the energy out of Joan of Arc, 
 VOL. I. F 
 
66 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 whicli was the only good thing in it. His wife did not doubt 
 that he had produced stupendous works. Why, then, should 
 he ? But experience has now shown that a certain metrical 
 facility, and a pleasure in the metrical expression of certain 
 sentiments, are in youth extremely common. Many years ago, 
 Mr. Moore is reported to have remarked to Sir Walter Scott, 
 that hardly a magazine was then published, which did not con- 
 tain verses that would have made a sensation when they were 
 young men, ' Confound it, Tom,' was the reply, ' what luck it 
 was we were born before all these fellows.' And though neither 
 Moore nor Scott are to be confounded with the nameless and 
 industrious versifiers of the present day, yet it must be allowed 
 that they owed to their time and their position — to the small 
 quantity of rhyme in the market of the moment, and the extra- 
 vagant appreciation of their early productions — much of that 
 popular encouragement which induced them to labour upon 
 more excellent compositions and to train themselves to write 
 what they will be remembered by. But, dismissing these con- 
 siderations, and returning to the minor poems of S. T, Cole- 
 ridge, although we fearlessly assert that it is impossible for 
 any sane man to set any value on — say the Religious Musings 
 — an absurd attempt to versify an abstract theory, or the essay 
 on the Pixies, who had more fun in them than the reader of it 
 could suspect — it still is indisputable that scattered here and 
 there through these poems, there are lines about himself (lines, 
 as he said in later life, ' in which the subjective object views 
 itself subjectivo-objectively,') which rank high in that form of 
 art. Of this kind are the Tombless Epitaph, for example, or 
 the lines, — 
 
 * To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned 
 Energic Reason and a shaping mind, 
 The daring ken of truth ; the Patriot's part, 
 And Pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart ; 
 Sloth-jaundiced all ! and from my graspless hand 
 Drop friendship's priceless pearls, like hour-glass sand. 
 
Hartley Cole^adge. 
 
 67 
 
 I weep, yet stoop not ! the faint anguish flows, 
 A dreamy pang in morning's fev'rish doze ; ' 
 
 and so on. In fact, it would appear that the tendency to, and 
 the faculty for self-delineation are very closely connected with 
 the dreaminess of disposition and impotence of character which 
 we spoke of just now. Persons very subject to these can grasp 
 no external object, comprehend no external being; they can do 
 no external thing, and therefore they are left to themselves. 
 Their own character is the only one which they can view as a 
 whole, or depict as a reality ; of every other they may have 
 glimpses, and acute glimpses, like the vivid truthfulness of 
 particular dreams ; but no settled appreciation, no connected 
 development, no regular sequence whereby they may be ex- 
 hibited on paper or conceived in the imagination. If other 
 qualities are supposed to be identical, those will be most 
 egotistical who only know themselves ; the people who talk most 
 of themselves will be those who talk best. 
 
 In the execution of minor verses, we think we could show 
 that Hartley should have the praise of surpassing his father ; 
 but nevertheless it would be absurd, on a general view, to 
 compare the two men. Samuel Taylor was so much bigger ; 
 what there was in his son was equally good, perhaps, but then 
 there was not much of it ; outwardly and inwardly he was 
 essentially little. In poetry, for example, the father has pro- 
 duced two longish poems, which have worked themselves right 
 down to the extreme depths of the popular memory, and stay 
 there very firmly, in part from their strangeness, but in part 
 from their power. Of Hartley, nothing of this kind is to be 
 found — he could not write connectedly ; he wanted steadiness of 
 purpose, or efficiency of will, to write so voluntarily ; and his 
 genius did not, involuntarily, and out of its unseen workings, 
 present him with continuous creations ; on the contrary, his 
 mind teemed with little fancies, and a new one came before the 
 first had attained any enormous magnitude. As his brother 
 observed, he wanted ' back thought.' ' On what plan, Mr. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 Coleridge, are you arranging your books ? ' inquired a lady. 
 ' Plan, madam ? I have no plan : at first I had a principle ; but 
 then I had another, and now I do not know.' The same con- 
 trast between the ' shaping mind ' of the father, and the gentle 
 and minute genius of the son, is said to have been very plain in 
 their conversation. That of Samuel was continuous, diffused, 
 comprehensive. 
 
 ' Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless motion, 
 Nothing before and nothing behind, but the sky and the ocean.' 
 
 ' Grreat talker, certainly,' said Hazlitt, ' if you will let him start 
 from no data, and come to no conclusion.' The talk of 
 Hartley, on the contrary, though continuous in time, was de- 
 tached in meaning ; stating hints and observations on particular 
 subjects ; glancing lightly from side to side, but tin-owing no 
 intense light on any, and exhausting none. It flowed gently 
 over small doubts and pleasant difficulties, rippling for a 
 minute sometimes into bombast, but lightly recovering and 
 tailing quietly in ' melody back.' 
 
 By way, it is likely, of compensation to Hartley for this 
 great deficiency in what his father imagined to be his own forte, 
 — the power of conceiving a whole, — Hartley possessed, in a 
 considerable degree, a species of sensibility to which the former 
 wys nearly a stranger. 'The mind of S. T. Coleridge,' says one 
 who had every means of knowing and observing, ' was not in the 
 least under the influence of external objects.' Except in the 
 writings written during daily and confidential intimacy with 
 Wordsworth (an exception that may be obviously accounted for), 
 no trace can perhaps be found of any new image or metaphor 
 from natural scenery. There is some story too of his going for 
 the first time to York, and by the Minster, and never looking 
 up at it. But Hartley's poems exhibit a great sensibility to a 
 certain aspect of exterior nature, and great fanciful power of 
 presenting that aspect in the most charming and attractive 
 forms. It is likely that the London boyhood of the elder 
 
Hartley Coleridge, 
 
 69 
 
 Coleridge was, — added to a strong abstractedness which was 
 bom with him, — a powerful cause in bringing about the curious 
 mental fact, that a great poet, so susceptible to every other 
 specie? of refining and delightful feeling, should have been 
 utterly destitute of any perception of beauty in landscape or 
 nature We must not forget that S. T. Coleridge was a blue- 
 coat boy, — what do any of them know about fields ? And 
 similarly, we require in Hartley's case, before we can quite 
 estimate his appreciation of nature, to consider his position, 
 his circumstances, and especially his time. 
 
 Now it came to pass in those days that William Wordsworth 
 went up into the hills. It has been attempted in recent years 
 to establish that the object of his life was to teach Anglicanism. 
 A whole life of him has been written by an official gentleman, 
 with the apparent view of establishing that the great poet was 
 a believer in rood-lofts, an idolator of piscinae. But this is not 
 capable of rational demonstration. Wordsworth, like Coleridge, 
 began life as a heretic, and as the shrewd Pope unfallaciously 
 said, ' once a heretic, always a heretic' Sound men are sound 
 from the first ; safe men are safe from the beginning, and Words- 
 worth began wrong. His real reason for going to live in the 
 mountains was certainly in part sacred, but it was not in the 
 least Tractarian :— 
 
 * For he with many feelings, many thoughts, 
 Made up a meditative joy, and found 
 Kehgious meanings in the forms of nature.* 
 
 His whole soul was absorbed in the one idea, the one feeling, the 
 one thought, of the sacredness of hills. 
 
 * Early had he learned 
 To reverence the volume that displays 
 The mystery, the life which cannot die ; 
 But in the mountains did he feel his faith. 
 All things responsive to the writing, there 
 Breathed immortality, revolving life, 
 
70 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 And greatness still revolving \ infinite ; 
 
 There littleness was not. 
 
 * * * ■ * * * 
 
 — In the after-day 
 Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn, 
 And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags, 
 He sate, and e'en in their fixed lineaments 
 Or from the power of a peculiar eye. 
 Or by creative feeling overborne, 
 Or by predominance of thought oppressed, 
 E'en in theii* fixed and steady lineaments 
 He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind, 
 Expression ever varying ! 
 ****** 
 
 A sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man. 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things.' 
 
 The defect of this religion is, that it is too abstract for the 
 practical, and too bare for the musing. The worship of sensu- 
 ous beauty — the southern religion — is of all sentiments the one 
 most deficient in his writings. His poetry hardly even gives 
 the charm, the entire charm, of the scenery in which he lived. 
 The lighter parts are little noticed : the rugged parts protrude. 
 The bare waste, the folding hill, the rough lake, Helvellyn with 
 a brooding mist, Ulswater in a grey day : these are his subjects. 
 He took a personal interest in the corners of the universe. 
 There is a print of Eembrandt said to represent a piece of the 
 Campagna, a mere waste, with a stump and a man, and under 
 IS written ' Tacet et loquitur ; ' and thousands will pass the old 
 print-shop where it hangs, and yet have a taste for paintings, 
 and colours, and oils : but some fanciful students, some lonely 
 stragglers, some long-haired enthusiasts, by chance will come, 
 one by one, and look, and look, and be hardly able to take their 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 71 
 
 eyes from the fascination, so massive is the shade, so still the 
 conception, so firm the execution. Thus is it with Wordsworth 
 and his poetry. Tacei et loquitur. Fashion apart, the million 
 won't read it. Why should they ? — they could not understand it. 
 Don't put them out, — let them buy, and sell, and die ; — but idle 
 students, and enthusiastic wanderers, and solitary thinkers, will 
 read, and read, and read, while their lives and their occupations 
 hold. In truth, his works are the Scriptures of the intellectual 
 life ; for that same searching, and finding, and penetrating power 
 which the real Scripture exercises on those engaged, as are the 
 mass of men, in practical occupations and domestic ties, do his 
 works exercise on the meditative, the solitary, and the young. 
 
 * His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
 The silence that is in the starry sky, 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills.' 
 
 And he had more than others, 
 
 ' That blessed mood. 
 In which the burthen of the mystery, 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelhgible world 
 Is lightened : that serene and blessed mood 
 In which the affections gently lead us on. 
 Until the breath of this corporeal frame. 
 And even the motion of our human blood 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 In body, and become a living soul ; 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things.' 
 
 And therefore he has had a whole host of sacred imitators. 
 Mr. Keble, for example, has translated him for women. He 
 has himself told us that he owed to Wordsworth the tendency 
 ad sanctiora, which is the mark of his own writings ; and in 
 fact he has but adapted the tone and habit of reverence, which 
 his master applied to common objects and the course of the 
 
72 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 seasons^ to sacred objects and the course of the ecclesiastical 
 year, — diffusing a mist of sentiment and devotion altogether 
 delicious to a gentle and timid devotee. Hartley Coleridge is 
 another translator. He has applied to the sensuous beauties 
 and seductive parts of external nature the same cultus which 
 Wordsworth applied to the bare and the abstract. It is — 
 
 * That fair beauty which no eye can see, 
 Of that sweet music which no ear can measure.* 
 
 It is, as it were, female beauty in wood and water ; it is 
 Rydal Water on a shining day ; it is the gloss of the world with 
 the knowledge that it is gloss : the sense of beauty, as in some 
 women, with the feeling that yet it is hardly theirs : — 
 
 * The vale of Tempe had in vain been fair, 
 Green Ida never deemed the nurse of Jove, 
 Each fabled stream, beneath its covert grove, 
 Had idly murmured to the idle air ; 
 
 The shaggy wolf had kept his horrid lair 
 
 In Delphi's cell and old Trophonius' cave. 
 
 And the wild wailing of the Ionian wave 
 
 Had never blended with the sweet despair 
 
 Of Sappho's death-song, — if the sight inspired 
 
 Saw only what the visual organs show ; 
 
 If heaven-born phantasy no more requu-ed 
 
 Than what within the sphere of sense may grow. 
 
 The beauty to perceive of earthly things, 
 
 The mountuig soul must heavenward prune her wings. 
 
 And he knew it himself: he has sketched the essence of his 
 works ; — 
 
 * Whither is gone the wisdom and the power. 
 That ancient sages scattered with the notes 
 
 Of thought-suggesting lyres 1 The music floats 
 
 In the void air; e'en at this breathing hour. 
 
 In every cell and every blooming bower. 
 
 The sweetness of old lays is hovering still ; , 
 
 But the strong scu^, the self-con straining will. 
 
 The rugged root that bare the winsome flower, 
 
Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 73 
 
 Is weak and withered. Were we like the Fays 
 That sweetly nestle in the fox-glove bells, 
 Or lurk and murmur in the rose-lipped shells, 
 Which Neptune to the earth for quit-rent pays ; 
 Then might our pretty modern Philomels 
 Sustain our spiiits with their roundelays.' 
 
 We had more to say of Hartley : we were to show that bis 
 Prometheus was defective ; that its style bad no Greek severity, 
 no defined outline ; that be was a critic as well as a poet, though 
 in a small detached way, and what is odd enough, that be could 
 criticise in rhyme. We were to make plain bow bis heart was 
 in the right place, bow bis love affairs were hopeless, bow be was 
 misled by bis friends ; but our time is done and our space is 
 full, and these topics must * go without day ' of returning. We 
 may end as we began. There are some that are bold and strong 
 and incessant and energetic and bard, and to these is the world's 
 glory ; and some are timid and meek and impotent and cowardly 
 and rejected and obscure. ' One man esteemetb one day above 
 another, another esteemetb every day alike.' And so of Hartley, 
 whom few regarded ; be bad a resource, the stillness of thought, 
 the gentleness of musing, the peace of nature. 
 
 ^ To his side the fallow deer 
 Came and rested without fear ; 
 The eagle, lord of land and sea, 
 Stooped down to pay him fealty ; 
 And both the undying fish that swim, 
 In Bowscale-tarn did wait on him ; 
 The pair were servants of his eye. 
 In their immoi-tality ; 
 And glancing, gleaming, dark or bright, 
 Moved to and fro for his delight. 
 He knew the rocks which Angels haunt 
 Upon the mountains visitant. 
 He hath kenned them taking wing, 
 And into caves where Fairies sing 
 He hath entered ; and been told 
 By voices how men lived of old. 
 
74 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 Among the heavens his eye can see 
 
 The face of thing that is to be, 
 
 And if that men report him right 
 
 His tongue could whisper words of might. 
 
 — Now another day is come, 
 
 Fitter hope and nobler doom, 
 
 He hath thrown aside his crook, 
 
 And hath buried deep his book.' 
 
 * And now the streams may sing for others' pleasure, 
 The hills sleep on in their eternity.' 
 
 He is gone from among them. 
 
75 
 
 PERCY B7SSHE SHELLEY. 
 
 (1856.) 
 
 After the long biography of Moore, it is half a comfort to 
 think of a poet as to whom our information is but scanty. 
 The few intimates of Shelley seem inclined to go to their 
 graves without telling in accurate detail the curious circum- 
 stances of his life. We are left to be content with vain 
 ' prefaces ' and the circumstantial details of a remarkable 
 blunderer. We know something, however ; — we know enough 
 to check our inferences from his writings ; in some moods it 
 is pleasant not to have them disturbed by long volumes of 
 memoirs and anecdotes. 
 
 One peculiarity of Shelley's writing makes it natural that 
 at times we should not care to have, that at times we should 
 wish for, a full biography. No writer has left so clear an 
 image of himself in his writings ; when we remember them as 
 a whole, we seem to want no more. No writer, on the other 
 hand, has left so many little allusions which we should be glad 
 to have explained, which the patient patriarch would not per- 
 haps have endured that anyone should comprehend while he did 
 not. The reason is, that Shelley has combined the use of the 
 two great modes by which writers leave with their readers the 
 image of themselves. There is the art of self-delineation. 
 Some authors try in imagination to get outside themselves — to 
 contemplate their character as a fact, and to describe it and the 
 movement of their own actions as external forms and image?^. 
 
 ' The Poetical Woi-ks of Percy Bijsslie SJielleij. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. 1853. 
 Esmys, Letters from Abroad^ Translations, and Fragments. By Percy 
 Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley. 1854. 
 
 The Life (f Percy Bysshe SJielley, By Captain Thomas Medwin. 1847. 
 
76 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 Scarcely any one has done this as often as Shelley. There is 
 hardly one of his longer works which does not contain a 
 finished picture of himself in some point or under some 
 circumstances. Again, some writers, almost or quite un- 
 consciously, by a special instinct of style, give an idea of 
 themselves. This is not peculiar to literary men ; it is quite as 
 remarkable among men of action. There are people in the 
 world who cannot write the commonest letter on the commonest 
 affair of business without giving a just idea of themse.ves. 
 The Duke of Wellington is an example which at once occurs of 
 this. You may read a despatch of his about bullocks and 
 horseshoe-nails; and yet you will feel an interest — a great 
 interest, because somehow among the words seems to lurk the 
 mind of a great general. Shelley has this peculiarity also. 
 Every line of his has a personal impress, an unconscious in- 
 imitable manner. And the two modes in which he gives an 
 idea of himself concur. In every delineation we see the same 
 simple intense being. As mythology found a Naiad in the 
 course of every limpid stream, so through each eager line our 
 fancy sees the same panting image of sculptured purity. 
 
 Shelley is probably the most remarkable instance of the 
 pure impulsive character, — to comprehend which requires a 
 little detail. Some men are born under the law : their whole 
 life is a continued struggle between the lower principles of 
 their nature and the higher. These are what are called men of 
 principle; each of their best actions is a distinct choice 
 between conflicting motives. One propension would bear them 
 here ; another there ; a third would hold them still : into the 
 midst the living will goes forth in its power, and selects which- 
 ever it holds to be best. The habitual supremacy of conscience 
 in such men gives them an idea that they only exert their will 
 when they do right ; when they do wrong they seem to ' let 
 their nature go ; ' they say that ' they are hurried away : ' but, 
 in fact, there is commonly an act of will in both cases ; — only 
 it is weaker when they act ill, because in passably good men, if 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 77 
 
 the better principles are reasonably strong, they conquer; it is 
 only when very faint that they are vanquished. Yet the case is 
 e\T.dently not always so ; sometimes the wrong principle is of 
 itself and of set purpose definitely chosen : the better one is 
 consciously put down. The very existence of divided natures 
 is a conflict. This is no new description of human nature. 
 For eighteen hundred years Christendom has been amazed at 
 the description in St. Paul of the law of his members warring 
 against the law of his mind. Expressions most unlike in 
 language, but not dissimilar in meaning, are to be found in 
 some of the most familiar passages of Aristotle. 
 
 In extreme contrast to this is the nature which has no 
 struggle. It is possible to conceive a character in which but 
 one impulse is ever felt — in w^hich the whole being, as with a 
 single breeze, is carried in a single direction. The only exer- 
 cise of the will in such a being is in aiding and carrying out 
 the dictates of the single propensity. And this is something. 
 There are many of our powers and faculties only in a subordi- 
 nate degree under the control of the emotions; the intellect 
 itself in many moments requires to be bent to defined attention 
 by compulsion of the will; no mere intensity of desire will 
 thrust it on its tasks. But of what in most men is the cha- 
 racteristic action of the will — namely, self-control — such 
 natures are hardly in want. An ultimate case could be im- 
 agined in which they would not need it at all. They have no 
 lower desires to pull down, for they have no higher ones which 
 come into collision with them ; the very words ' lower ' and 
 ' higher,' involving the contemporaneous action and collision of 
 two impulses, are inapplicable to them ; there is no strife ; all 
 their soul impels them in a single line. This may be a quality 
 of the highest character : indeed in the highest character it will 
 certainly be found ; no one will question that the whole nature 
 of the holiest being tends to what is holy without let, struggle, 
 or strife — it would be impiety to doubt it. Yet this same 
 quality may certainly be found in a lower — a mucli lower - 
 
78 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 mind than the highest. A level may be of any elevation ; the 
 absence of intestine commotion may arise from a sluggisr^h 
 dulness to eager aspirations ; the one impulse which is felt 
 may be any impulse whatever. If the idea were completely 
 exemplified, one would instinctively say, that a being with so 
 single a mind could hardly belong to human nature. Tempta- 
 tion is the mark of our life ; we can hardly divest ourselves of 
 the idea that it is indivisible from our character. As it was 
 said of solitude, so it may be said of the sole dominion of a 
 single impulse, ' Whoso is devoted to it would seem to be 
 either a beast or a god.' 
 
 Completely realised on earth this idea will never be ; but 
 approximations may be found, and one of the closest of those 
 approximations is Shelley. We fancy his mind placed in the 
 light of thought, with pure subtle fancies playing to and fro. 
 On a sudden an impulse arises ; it is alone, and has nothing to 
 contend with; it cramps the intellect, pushes aside the fancies, 
 constrains the nature ; it bolts forward into action. Such a 
 character is an extreme puzzle to external observers. From the 
 occasionality of its impulses it will often seem silly ; from their 
 singularity, strange ; from their intensity, fanatical. It is 
 absurdest in the more trifling matters. There is a legend of 
 Shelley, during an early visit to London, flying along the street, 
 catching sight of a new^ microscope, buying it in a moment ; 
 pawning it the instant afterwards to relieve some one in the 
 same street in distress. The trait may be exaggerated, but it is 
 characteristic. It shows the sudden irruption of his impulses, 
 their abrupt force and curious purity. 
 
 The predominant impulse in Shelley from a very early age 
 was ' a passion for reforming mankind.' Mr. Newman has told 
 us in his Letters from the East how much he and his half- 
 missionary associates were annoyed at being called 'young 
 people trying to convert the world.' In a strange land, ignorant 
 of the language, beside a recognised religion, in the midst of an 
 immemorial society, the aim, though in a sense theirs, seemed 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 79 
 
 ridiculous when ascribed to them. Shelley would not have felt 
 this at all. No society, however organised, would have been too 
 strong for him to attack. He would not have paused. The 
 impulse was upon him. He would have been ready to preach 
 that mankind were to be ' free, equal, pure, and wise,' — in 
 favour of 'justice, and truth, and time, and the world's natural 
 sphere,' — in the Ottoman Empire, or to the Czar, or to 
 George III. Such truths were independent of time and place 
 and circumstance ; some time or other, something, or somebody 
 (his faith was a little vague), would most certainly intervene to 
 establish them. It was this placid undoubting confidence which 
 irritated the positive and sceptical mind of Hazlitt. ' The 
 author of the " Prometheus Unbound," ' he tells us, ' has a fire 
 in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic 
 flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosopliic fanatic. 
 He is sanguine-complex ioned and shrill-voiced. As is often 
 observable in the case of religious enthusiasts, there is a siender- 
 ness of constitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no match 
 for the spirit. His bending, flexible form appears to take no 
 stronghold of things, does not grapple with the world about 
 him, but slides from it like a river — ■ 
 
 * And in its liquid texture mortal wound 
 Receives no more than can the fluid air.' 
 
 The shock of accident, the weight of authority, make no impres-\ 
 sion on his opinions, which retire like a feather, or rise from the 
 encounter unhurt, through their own buoyancy. He is clogged 
 by no dull system of realities, no earth-bound feelings, no rooted 
 prejudices, by nothing that belongs to the mighty trunk and 
 hard husk of nature and habit ; but is drawn up by irresistible 
 levity to the regions of mere speculation and fancy,) to the 
 sphere of air and fire, where his delighted spirit floats in ' seas 
 of pearl and clouds of amber.' There is no caput mortuum 
 of worn-out threadbare experience to serve as ballast to his 
 mind ; it is all volatile, intellectual salt-of-tartar, that refuses 
 
8o Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 to combine its evanescent, inflammable essence with anything 
 solid or anything lasting. Bubbles are to him the only 
 realities : — touch them, and they vanish. Curiosity is the only 
 proper category of his mind; and though a man in knowledge, 
 he is a child in feeling.' And so on with vituperation. No 
 two characters could, indeed, be found more opposite than the 
 open, eager, buoyant poet, and the dark, threatening, un- 
 believing critic. 
 
 It is difficult to say how far such a tendency under some 
 circumstances might not have carried Shelley into positions 
 most alien to an essential benevolence. It is most dangerous 
 to be possessed with an idea. Dr. Arnold used to say that he 
 had studied the life of Eobespierre with the greatest personal 
 benefit. No personal purity is a protection against insatiable 
 zeal ; it almost acts in the opposite direction. The less a man 
 is conscious of inferior motives, the more likely is he to fancy 
 that he is doing Grod service. There is no difficulty in imagin- 
 ing Shelley cast by the accident of fortune into the Paris of the 
 Eevolution ; hurried on by its ideas, undoubting in its hopes, 
 wild with its excitement, going forth in the name of freedom 
 conquering and to conquer ; — and who can think that he would 
 have been scrupulous how he attained such an end ? It was in 
 him to have walked towards it over seas of blood. One could 
 almost identify him with St. Just, the ' fair-haired republican.' 
 
 On another and a more generally interesting topic, Shelley 
 advanced a theory which amounts to a deification of impulse. 
 ' Love,' he tells us, ' is inevitably consequent upon the percep- 
 tion of loveliness. Love withers under constraint ; its very 
 essence is liberty ; it is compatible neither with obedience, 
 jealousy, nor fear ; it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, 
 where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve. 
 
 .... A husband and wife ought to continue united only so 
 long as they love each other. Any law which should bind them 
 to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection 
 would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of 
 
 ! 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 8i 
 
 toleration. How odious an usurpation of the right of private 
 judgment should that law be considered, which should make 
 the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the 
 inconstancy, the fallibility, of the human mind ! And by so 
 much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendur- 
 able than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and 
 capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of 
 imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible 
 merits of the object.' This passage, no doubt, is from an early 
 and crude essay, one of the notes to ' Queen Mab ; ' and there 
 are many indications, in his latter years, that though he might 
 hold in theory that ' constancy has nothing virtuous in itself,' \ 
 yet in practice he shrank from breaking a tie hallowed by years 
 of fidelity and sympathy. But, though his conduct was doubt- 
 less higher than his creed, there is no evidence that his creed - 
 was ever changed. The whole tone of his works is on the other 
 side. The ' Epipsychidion ' could not have been written by a 
 man who attached a moral value to constancy of mind. And the 
 whole doctrine is most expressive of his character. A quivering 
 sensibility endured only the essence of the most refined love. It 
 is intelligible, that one who bowed in a moment to every desire 
 should have attached a kind of consecration to the most pure 
 and eager of human passions. 
 
 The evidence of Shelley's poems confirms this impression of 
 him. The characters which he delineates have all this same 
 kind cf pure impulse. The reforming impulse is especially 
 felt. In almost every one of his works there is some character, 
 of whom all we know is, that he or she had this passionate 
 disposition to reform mankind. We know nothing else about 
 them, and tliey are all the same. Laon, in the 'Kevolt of Islam,* 
 does not differ at all from Lionel, in ' Eosalind and Helen.' 
 Laon differs from Cythna, in the former poem, only as male 
 from female. Lionel is delineated, though not with Shelley's 
 greatest felicity, in a single passage : — 
 VOL. I. G 
 
82 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
 
 * Yet through those dungeon-walls there came " 
 Thy thrilling light, O liberty ! 
 
 And as the meteor's midnight flame 
 
 Startles the dreamer, sunlight truth 
 
 Flashed on his visionary youth, 
 
 And filled him, not with love, but faith, 
 
 And hope, and courage, mute in death ; 
 
 For love and life in him were twins, 
 
 Born at one birth : in every other 
 
 First life, then love its course begins, 
 
 Though they be children of one mother : 
 
 And so through this dark world they fleet 
 
 Divided, till in death they meet. 
 
 But he loved all things ever. Then 
 
 He passed amid the strife of men. 
 
 And stood at the throne of armed power 
 
 Pleading for a world of woe : 
 
 Secure as one on a rock-built tower 
 
 O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro. 
 
 'Mid the passions wild of human-kind 
 
 He stood, like a spirit calming them ; 
 
 For, it was said, his M^ords could bind 
 
 Like music the lulled crowd, and stem 
 
 That torrent of unquiet dream 
 
 Which mortals truth and reason deem, 
 
 But is revenge, and fear, and pride. 
 
 Joyous he was, and hope and peace 
 
 On all who heard him did abide, 
 
 Kaining like dew from his sweet talk, 
 
 As, where the evening star may walk 
 
 Along the brink of the gloomy seas, 
 
 Liquid mists of splendour quiver.' 
 
 Such is the description of all his reformers in calm. In times 
 of excitement, they all burst forth — 
 
 * Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever, 
 Or the priests of the bloody faith ; 
 
 They stand on the brink of that mighty river 
 Whose waves they have tainted with death ; 
 It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells, 
 Around them it fv.ams, and rages, and swells : 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 83 
 
 And tlieir swords and their sceptres I floating see, 
 Like wrecks in the surge of eternity.' 
 
 In his more didactic poems it is the same. All the world is 
 evil, and will be evil, until some unknown conqueror shall 
 appear — a teacher by rhapsody and a conqueror by words — who 
 shall at once reform all evil. Mathematicians place great 
 reliance on the unknown symbol, great X. Shelley did more ; 
 he expected it would take life and reform our race. Such 
 impersonations are, of course, not real men; they are mere 
 incarnations of a desire. Another passion, which no man has 
 ever felt more strongly than Shelley-^the desire to penetrate 
 the mysteries of existence\by Hazlitt profanely called curiosity) 
 — is depicted in ' Alastor ' as the sole passion of the only person 
 in the poem : — 
 
 * By solemn vision and bright silver dream 
 His infancy was nurtured. Every sight 
 And sound from the vast earth and ambient air 
 Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. 
 The fountains of divine philosophy 
 Fled not his thirsting lips ; and all of great, 
 Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past 
 In truth or fable consecrates, he felt 
 And knew. When early youth had past, he left 
 H is cold fire-side and alienated home 
 To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. 
 Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness 
 Has lured his fearless steps ; and he has bought 
 With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, 
 His rest and food.' 
 
 He is cheered on his way by a beautiful dream, and the search 
 to find it again mingles with the shadowy quest. It is remark- 
 able how great is the superiority of the personification in 
 ' Alastor,' though one of his earliest writings, over the reform- 
 ing abstractions of his other works. The reason is, its far 
 greater closeness to reality. The one is a description of what 
 he was ; the other of what he desired to be. Shelley had 
 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 nothing of the magic influence, the large insight, the bold 
 strength, the permeating eloquence, which fit a man for a 
 practical reformer : but he had, in perhaps an unequalled and 
 unfortunate measure, the famine of the intellect — the daily 
 insatiable craving after the highest truth which is the passion 
 of ' Alastor.' So completely did he feel it, that the introductory 
 lines of the poem almost seem to identify him with the hero ; 
 at least they express sentiments which would have been exactly 
 dramatic in his mouth : — 
 
 * Mother of this unfathomable world ! 
 Favour my solemn song ; for I have loved 
 Thee ever, and thee only ; I have watched 
 Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, 
 And my heart ever gazes on the depth 
 
 Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed 
 
 In charnels and on coffins, where black Death 
 
 Keeps records of the trophies won from thee, 
 
 Hoping to still these obstinate questionings 
 
 Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, 
 
 Thy messenger^ to render up the tale 
 
 Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, 
 
 When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness; 
 
 Like an inspired and desperate alchymist, 
 
 Staking his very life on some dark hope. 
 
 Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks 
 
 With my most innocent love ; until strange tears, 
 
 Uniting with those breathless kisses, made 
 
 • Such magic as compels the charmed night 
 
 To render up thy charge .... and though ne'er yet 
 
 Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary. 
 
 Enough from incommunicable dream. 
 
 And twilight phantasms and deep noonday thought. 
 
 Has shone within me, that serenely now, 
 
 And moveless (as a long-forgotten lyre, 
 
 Suspended in the solitary dome 
 
 Of some mysterious and deserted fane), 
 
 I wait thy breath. Great Parent, that my strain 
 
 May modulate with murmurs of the air, 
 
 A nd motions of the forests and the sea, 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 85 
 
 And voice of living beings, and woven hymns 
 Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.' 
 
 The accompaniments are fanciful ; bat the essential passion was 
 his own. 
 
 These two forms of abstract personification exhaust all 
 which can be considered characters among Shelley's poems — 
 one poem excepted. Of course, all his works contain ' Spirits,' 
 ' Phantasms,' ' Dream No. 1 ,' and ' Fairy No. 3 ; ' but these do 
 not belong to this world. The higher air seems never to have 
 been favom*able to the production of marked character ; with 
 almost all poets the inhabitants of it are prone to a shadowy 
 thinness : in Shelley, the habit of frequenting mountain-tops 
 has reduced them to evanescent mists of lyrical energy. One 
 poem of Shelley's, however, has two beings of another order ; 
 creations which, if not absolutely dramatic characters of the 
 first class — not beings whom we know better than we know 
 ourselves — are nevertheless very high specimens of the second ; 
 persons who seem like vivid recollections from our intimate 
 experience. In this case the dramatic execution is so good, 
 that it is difficult to say why the results are not quite of the 
 first rank. One reason of this is, perhaps, their extreme sim- 
 plicity. Our imaginations, warned by consciousness and out- 
 ward experience of the wonderful complexity of human nature, 
 refuse to credit the existence of beings, i ll whose actions are 
 unmodified consequences of a single principle. These two 
 characters are Beatrice Cenci and her father Count Cenci. In 
 most of Shelley's poems — he died under thirty — there is an 
 extreme suspicion of aged persons. In actual life he had 
 plainly encountered many old gentlemen who had no belief in 
 the complete and philosophical reformation of mankind. There 
 is, indeed, an old hermit in the ' Eevolt of Islam ' who is 
 praised (Captain Medwin identifies him with a Dr. Some-one 
 who was kind to Shelley at Eton) ; but in general the old 
 persons in his poems are persons whose authority it is desirable 
 to disprove : — 
 
86 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 * Old age, willi its gray liair 
 And wrinkled legends of unworthy things 
 And icy sneers, is naught.' 
 
 The less its influence, he evidently believes, the Letter. Not 
 unnaturally, therefore, he selected for a tragedy a horrible sub- 
 ject from Italian story, in which an old man, accomplished in 
 this world's learning, renowned for the 'cynic sneer of o'er 
 experienced sin,' is the principal evil agent. The character of 
 Count Cenci is that of a man who of set principle does evil for 
 evil's sake. He loves ' the sight of agony : ' 
 
 * All men delight in sensual luxury ; 
 All men enjoy revenge; and most exult 
 Over the tortures they can never feel, 
 Flattering their secret peace with others' pain : 
 But I delight in nothing else.' 
 
 If he regrets his age, it is from the failing ability to do evil : 
 
 * True, I was happier than I am while yet 
 Manhood remained to act the thing I though t ; 
 While lust was sweeter than revenge : and now 
 Invention palls.' 
 
 It is this that makes him contemplate the violation of his 
 daughter : 
 
 * There yet remams a deed to act. 
 Whose horror might make sharp an appetite 
 More dull than mine.' 
 
 Shelley, though an habitual student of Plato — the greatest 
 modern writer who has taken great pleasure in his writings — 
 never seems to have read any treatise of Aristotle ; otherwise 
 , ^ he would certainly seem to have derived from that great writer 
 ^ the idea of the aKoXaaios ; yet in reality the idea is as natural 
 ' to Shelley as any man — more likely to occur to him than to 
 
 most. Children think that everybody who is bad is very bad. 
 Their simple eager disposition only understands the doing what 
 they wish to do ; they do not refine : if they hear of a man 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 87 
 
 doing evil, they think he wishes to do it, — that he has a special 
 impulse to do evil, as they have to do what they do. Something 
 like this was the case with Shelley. His mind, impulsive and 
 childlike, could not imagine the struggling kind of character — 
 either those which struggle with their lower nature and con- 
 quer^ or those which^ struggle and are vanquished — either the 
 s^Kparrjs or the akparrjs of the old thinker ; but he could com- 
 prehend that which is in reality far worse than either, the being 
 who wishes to commit sin because it is sin, who is as it were 
 possessed with a demon hurrying him out, hot and passionate, 
 to vice and crime. The innocent child is whirled away by one 
 impulse ; the passionate reformer by another ; the essential 
 criminal, if such a being be possible, by a third. They are all 
 beings, according to one division, of the same class. An ima- 
 ginative mind like Shelley's, belonging to the second of these 
 types, naturally is prone in some moods to embody itself under 
 the forms of the third. It is, as it were, the antithesis to 
 itself. — Equally simple is the other character —that of Beatrice. 
 Even before her violation, by a graphic touch of art, she is 
 described as absorbed, or beginning to be absorbed, in the con- 
 sciousness of her wrongs ; 
 
 * Beatrice. As I have said, speak to me not of love. 
 Had you a dispensation, I have not ; 
 Nor will I leave this home of misery 
 Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady 
 To whom I owe life and these virtuous thoughts, 
 Must suffer what I still have strength to share. 
 Alas, Orsino ! all the love that once 
 I felt for you is turned to bitter pain. 
 Oiu-s was a youthful contract, which you first 
 Broke by assuming vows no Pope will loose : 
 And yet I love you still, but holily, 
 Even as a sister or a spirit might ; 
 And so I swear a cold fidelity.' 
 
 After her violation, her whole being is absorbed by one thought, — 
 how and by what subtle vengeance she can expiate the memory 
 
88 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 of her shame. These are all the characters in Shelley ; an im- 
 pulsive unity is of the essence of them all. 
 
 The same characteristic of Shelley's temperament produced 
 also most marked effects on his speculative opinions. The 
 peculiarity of his creed early brought him into opposition to 
 the world. His education seems to have been principally 
 directed by his father, of whom the only description which has 
 reached us is not favourable. Sir Timothy Shelley, according 
 to Captain Med win, was an illiterate country gentleman of an 
 extinct race ; he had been at Oxford, where he learned nothing, 
 had made the grand tour, from which he brought back 'a 
 smattering of bad French and a bad picture of an eruption at 
 Vesuvius.' He had the air of the old school, and the habit of 
 throwing it off which distinguished that school. Lord Chester- 
 field himself was not easier on matters of morality. He used 
 to tell his son that he would provide for natural children ad 
 infinitum, but would never forgive his making a mesalliance. 
 On religion his opinions were very lax. He, indeed, 'required 
 his servants,' we are told, ' to attend church,' and even on rare 
 occasions, with superhuman virtue, attended himself; but there, 
 as with others of that generation, his religion ended. He 
 doubtless did not feel that any more could be required of him. 
 He was not consciously insincere ; but he did not in the least 
 realise the opposition between the religion which he professed 
 and the conduct which he pursued. Such a person was not ' 
 likely to influence a morbidly sincere imaginative nature in 
 favour of the doctrines of the Church of England. Shelley went 
 from Eton, where he had been singular, to Oxford, where he was 
 more so. He was a fair classical scholar. But his real mind 
 was given to out-of-school knowledge. He had written a novel ; 
 he had studied chemistry ; when pressed in argument, he used 
 to ask, ' What, then, does Condorcet say upon the subject ? ' 
 This was not exactly the youth for the University of Oxford in 
 the year 1810. A distinguished pupil of that University once 
 observed to us, ' The use of the University of Oxford is, that no 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
 
 89 
 
 one can over-read themselves there. The appetite for know- 
 ledge is repressed. A blight is thrown over the ingenuous mind, 
 &c.' And possibly it may be so ; considering how small a space 
 literary knowledge fills in the busy English world, it may not 
 be without its advantages that any mind prone to bookish en- 
 thusiasm should be taught by the dryness of its appointed 
 studies, the want of sympathy of its teachers, and a rough con- 
 tact with average English youth, that studious enthusiasm must 
 be its own reward ; that in this country it will meet with little 
 other; that it will not be encouraged in high places. Such 
 discipline may, however, be carried too far. A very enthusi- 
 astic mind may possibly by it be turned in upon itself. This 
 was the case with Shelley. \Mien he first came up to Oxford 
 physics Were his favourite pursuit. On chemistry, especially, 
 he used to be eloquent. ' The galvanic battery,' said he, ' is a 
 new engine. It has been used hitherto to an insignificant ex- 
 tent : jet it has worked wonders already. What will not an 
 extraordinary combination of troughs of colossal magnitude, 
 a well-arranged system of hundreds of metallic plates, effect ? ' 
 Nature, however, like the world, discourages a wild enthusiasm. 
 ' His chemical operations seemed to an unskilful observer to 
 promise nothing but disasters. He had blown himself up at 
 Eton. He had inadvertently swallowed some mineral poison, 
 which he declared had seriously injured his health, and from 
 the effects of which he should never recover. His hands, his 
 clothes, his books, and his furniture, were stained and covered 
 by medical acids,' and so on. Disgusted with these and other 
 failures, he abandoned ^ physics for metaphysics. He rushed 
 headlong into the form of philosophy then popular. It is not 
 likely that he ever read Locke ; and it is easy to imagine the 
 dismay with which the philosopher would have regarded so 
 ' heady and skittish ' a disciple : but he continually invoked 
 Locke as an authority, and was really guided by the French 
 expositions of him then popular. Hume, of course, was not 
 vv^ithout his influence. With such teachers only to control him, 
 
90 
 
 Percy Bysske Shelley. 
 
 an excitable poet rushed in a moment to materialism, and 
 thence to atheism. Deriving any instruction from the Univer- 
 sity, was, according to him, absurd ; he wished to convert the 
 University. He issued a kind of thesis, stating by way of in- 
 terrogatory all the difficulties of the subject; called it the 
 ' necessity of atheism,' and sent it to the professors, heads of 
 houses, and several bishops. The theistic belief of his college 
 was equal to the occasion. ' It was a fine spring morning on 
 Lady Day in the year 1811, when,' says a fellow-student, ' 1 went 
 to Shelley's rooms. He was absent ; but before I had collected 
 our books, he rushed in. He was terribly agitated. I anxiously 
 inquired what had happened. ^lam expelled.' He then ex- 
 plained that he had been summoned before the Master and some 
 of the Fellows ; that as he was unable to deny the authorship 
 of the essay, he had been expelled and ordered to quit the 
 college the next morning at latest.' He had wished to be put 
 on his trial more regularly, and stated to the Master that 
 England was ' a free country ; ' but without effect. He was 
 obliged to leave Oxford : his father was very angry ; ' if he had 
 broken the Master's windows, one could have understood it : ' 
 but to be expelled for publishing a hook seemed an error in- 
 corrigible, because incomprehensible. 
 
 These details at once illustrate Shelley's temperament, and 
 enable us to show that the peculiarity of his opinions arose 
 out of that temperament. He was placed in circumstances 
 which left his eager mind quite free. Of his father we have 
 already spoken : there was no one else to exercise a subduing or 
 guiding influence over him ; nor would his mind have naturally 
 been one extremely easy to influence. Through life he followed 
 very much his own bent and his own thoughts. His most inti- 
 mate associates exercised very little control over his belief. He 
 followed his nature ; and that nature was in a singular degree 
 destitute of certain elements which most materially guide 
 ordinary men. It seems most likely that a person prone to 
 isolated impulse will be defective in the sensation of conscience. 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 91 
 
 There is scarcely room for it. When, as in common conflicting 
 characters, the whole nature is daily and hourly in a perpetual 
 struggle, the faculty which decides what elements in that 
 nature are to have the supremacy is daily and hourly appealed 
 to. Passions are contending ; life is a discipline ; there is a 
 reference every moment to the directory of the discipline — the 
 order-book of the passions. In temperaments not exposed to 
 the ordinary struggle there is no such necessity. Their im- 
 pulse guides them; they have little temptation; are scarcely 
 under the law ; have hardly occasion to consult the statute- 
 book. In consequence, simple and beautiful as such minds 
 often are, they are deficient in the sensation of duty) have no 
 haunting idea of right ox wrong; show an easy abandon in 
 place of a severe self-scrutiny. At first it might seem that 
 such minds lose little ; they are exempted from the conscious- 
 ness of a code to whose provisions they need little access. But 
 such would be the conclusion only from a superficial view of 
 human nature. The whole of our inmost faith is a series of 
 intuitions ; and experience seems to show that the intuitions 
 of conscience are the beginning of that series. Childhood has 
 little which can be called a religion ; the shows of this world, 
 the play of its lights and shadows, suffice. It is in the collision 
 of our nature, which occurs in youth, that the first real sensa- 
 tion of faith is felt. Conscience is often then morbidly acute ; 
 a flush passes over the youthful mind ; the guiding instinct is 
 keen and strong, like the passions with which it contends. At 
 the first struggle of om: nature commences our religion. Child- 
 hood will utter the words ; in early manhood, when we become 
 half-unwilling to utter them, they begin to have a meaning. 
 The result of history is similar. The whole of religion rests on 
 a faith that the universe is solely ruled by an almighty and all- 
 perfect Being. This strengthens with the moral cultivation, 
 and grows with the improvement of mankind. It is the 
 assumed axiom of the creed of Christendom ; and all that is 
 really highest in our race may have the degree of its excellence 
 
92 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 tested by the degree of the belief in it. But experience shows 
 that the belief only grows very gradually. We see at various 
 times, and now, vast outlying nations in whom the conviction 
 of morality — the consciousness of a law — is but weak ; and 
 there the belief in an all-perfect Grod is half-forgotten, faint, 
 and meagre. It exists as something between a tradition and a 
 speculation ; but it does not come forth on the solid earth ; it 
 has no place in the business and bosoms of men ; it is thrust 
 out of view even when we look upwards by fancied idols and 
 dreams of the stars in their courses. Consider the state of the 
 Jewish, as compared with the better part of the Pagan world of 
 old. On the one side we see civilisation, commerce, the arts, a 
 great excellence in all the exterior of man's life ; a sort of 
 morality sound and sensible, placing the good of man in a 
 balanced moderation within and good looks without; — in a 
 combination of considerate good sense, with the air of aristo- 
 cratic, or, as it was said, ' godlike ' refinement. We see, in a 
 word, civilisation, and the ethics of civilisation ; the firtst 
 polished, the other elaborated and perfected. But this is all ; 
 we do not see faith. We see in some quarters rather a horror 
 of the curiosus deus interfering, controlling, watching, — never 
 letting things alone, — disturbing the quiet of the world with 
 punishment and the fear of punishment. The Jewish side of 
 the picture is different. We see a people who have perhaps an 
 inaptitude for independent civilisation, who in secular pursuits 
 have only been assistants and attendants on other nations 
 during the whole history of mankind. These have no equable, 
 beautiful morality like the others; but instead a gnawing, 
 abiding, depressing — one might say, a slavish — ceremonial, 
 excessive sense of law and duty. This nation has faith. By a 
 link not logical, but ethical, this intense, eating, abiding 
 supremacy of conscience is connected with a deep daily sense of 
 a watchful, governing, and jealous Grod. And from the people 
 of the law arises the gospel. The sense of duty, when 
 awakened, awakens not only the religion of the law, but in the 
 end the other religious intuitions which lie round about it. 
 
Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 93 
 
 A'he faith of Christendom has arisen not from a great people, 
 Vbut from 'the least of all people,' — from the people whose 
 anxious legalism was a noted contrast to the easy, impulsive 
 life of pagan nations. In modern language, conscience is the 
 converting intuition, — that which turns men from the world 
 without to that within, — from the things which are seen to the 
 realities which are not seen. In a character like Shelley's, / 
 where this haunting, abiding, oppressive moral feeling is want- ( 
 ing or defective, the religious belief in an Almighty God which / 
 springs out of it is likely to be defective likewise. 
 
 In Shelley's case this deficiency was aggravated by what 
 may be called the abstract character of his intellect. We have 
 shown that no character except his own, and characters most 
 strictly allied to his own, are delineated in his works. The 
 tendency of his mind was rather to personify isolated qualities 
 o^r_impiulses — equality, liberty, revenge, and so on — than to 
 create out of separate parts or passions the single conception of 
 an entire character. This is, properly speaking, the mytho- 
 logical tendency. All early nations show this marked disposi- 
 tion to conceive of separate forces and qualities as a kind of 
 semi-persons ; that is, not true actual persons with distinct 
 characters, but beings who guide certain influences, and of 
 whom all we know is that they guide those influences. Shelley 
 evinces a remarkable tendency to deal with mythology in this 
 simple and elementary form. Other poets have breathed into 
 mythology a modern life ; have been attracted by those parts 
 which seem to have a religious meaning, and have enlarged 
 that meaning while studying to embody it. With Shelley it is 
 otherwise ; the parts of mythology by which he is attracted 
 are the bare parts — the simple stories which Dr. Johnson found 
 so tedious : — 
 
 * Arethusa arose 
 
 From her couch of snows 
 In tLe Acroceraunian mountains. 
 
 From cloud and from crag, 
 
 With many a jag, 
 Shepherding her blight fountains, 
 
94 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
 
 She leapt down the rocks 
 
 With her rainbow locks 
 Streaming among the streams ; 
 
 Her steps paved with green 
 
 The downward ravine, 
 Which slopes to the western gleams ; 
 
 And gliding and springing, 
 
 She went ever singing. 
 In murmurs as soft as sleep ; 
 
 The eai'th seemed to love her, 
 
 And heaven smiled above her, 
 As she lingered towards the deep. 
 
 Then Alpheus bold, 
 
 On his glacier cold, 
 With his trident the mountains strook/ 
 &c. &c. 
 
 Arethusa and Alpheus are not characters : they are only the 
 spirits of the fountain and the stream. When not writing on 
 topics connected with ancient mythology, Shelley shows the 
 same bent. ' The Cloud,' and the ' Skylark,' are more like 
 mythology — have more of the impulse by which the populace, 
 if we may so say, of the external world was first fancied into 
 existence — than any other modern poems. There is, indeed, no 
 habit of mind more remote from our solid and matter-of-fact 
 existence; none which was once powerful, of which the present 
 traces are so rare. In truth, Shelley's imagination achieved all 
 it could with the materials before it. The materials for the 
 creative faculty must be provided by the receptive faculty. 
 Before a man can imagine what will seem to be realities, he 
 must be familiar with what are realities. The memor}'' of 
 Shelley had no heaped-up ' store of life,' no vast accumulation 
 of familiar characters. Jlis intellect did not tend toJii£-stmng 
 gi-asj) of realities ; its taste was rather for the subtle refining of 
 theories, the distilling of exquisite abstractions.^ His imagina- 
 tion personified what his understanding presented to it. It 
 had nothing else to do. He displayed the same tendency of 
 mind — oometimes negatively and sometimes positively — in his 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 professedly religious inquiries. His belief went through three 
 stap'es — first/majteriaHsmj then a sort of NihiHsm, then a sort 
 of i^latonism. In neither of them is the rule of the universe 
 ascribed to a character : in the first and last it is ascribed to 
 animated abstractions ; in the second there is no universe at all. 
 In neither of them is there any strong grasp of fact. The 
 writings of the first period are clearly influenced by, and 
 modelled on, Lucretius. He held the same abstract theory of 
 nature — sometimes of half-personified atoms, moving hither 
 and thither of themselves— at other times of a general pervad- 
 ing spirit of nature, holding the same relation to nature, as a 
 visible object, that Arethusa the goddess bears to Arethusa the 
 stream : 
 
 ' The magic car moved on. 
 As they approached their goal 
 The coursers seemed to gather speed : 
 The sea no longer was distinguished; earth 
 Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere : 
 The sun's uncloutled orb 
 Rolled through the black concave ; 
 Its rays of rapid light 
 Parted around the chariot's swifter course, 
 And fell like ocean's feathery spray 
 Dashed from the boiling surge 
 Before a vessel's prow. 
 
 The magic car moved on. 
 Earth's distant orb appeared 
 The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens : 
 Whilst round the chariot's way 
 Innumerable systems rolled, 
 And countless spheres diffused 
 An ever-varying glory. 
 It was a sight of wonder : some 
 Were horned like the crescent moon ; 
 Some shed a mild and silver beam 
 Like Hesperus o'er the western sea ; 
 Some dash'd athwart wdth trains of flame, 
 Like worlds to death and ruin driven ; 
 Some shone like stars, and, as the chariot passed, 
 Bedimmed all other light. 
 
96 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelhy. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! here, 
 In this interminable wilderness 
 Of worlds, at whose immensity- 
 Even soaring fancy staggers, — 
 Here is thy fitting temple. 
 Yet not the lightest leaf 
 That quivers to the passing breeze 
 Is less instinct with thee : 
 Yet not the meanest worm 
 That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead 
 Less shares thy eternal breath. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! thou, 
 Imperishable as this glorious scene, — 
 Here is thy fitting temple.' 
 
 And he copied not only the opinions of Lucretius, but also his 
 tone. Nothing is more remarkable than that two poets of the 
 first rank should have felt a bounding joy in the possession of 
 opinions which, if true, ought, one would think, to move an 
 excitable nature to the keenest and deepest melancholy. That' 
 tliis life is all ; that there is no God, but only atoms and a 
 moulding breath ; are singular doctrines to be accepted with 
 joy : they only could have been so accepted by wild minds 
 bursting with imperious energy, knowing of no law, ' wreaking 
 thoughts upon expression ' of which they knew neither the 
 meaning nor the result. From this stage Shelley's mind passed 
 to another ; but not immediately to one of greater belief. On 
 the contrary, it was the doctrine of ( Hume which was called in 
 to expel the doctrine of Epicurus. His previous teachers had 
 taught him that there was nothing except matter : the Scotch 
 sceptic met him at that point with the question — Is matter 
 certain ? LIume, as is well known, adopted the negative part 
 from the theory of materialism and the theory of immaterialism, 
 but rejected the positive side of both. He held, or professed 
 to hold, that there was no substantial thing, either matter or 
 mind ; but only ' sensations and impressions ' flying about the 
 universe, inhering in nothing and going nowhere. These, he 
 said, were the only subjects of consciousness; all you felt was 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 97 
 
 your feeling, and all your thought was your thought ; the rest 
 was only hypothesis. The notion that there was any ' you ' at 
 all was a theory generally current among mankind, but not, 
 unless proved, to be accepted by the philosopher. This doctrine, 
 though little agreeable to the world in general, has an excellence 
 in the eyes of youthful disputants ; it is a doctrine which no 
 one will admit, and which no one can disprove. Shelley 
 accordingly accepted it ; indeed it was a better description of 
 his universe than of most people's ; his mind was filled with 
 a swarm of ideas, fancies, thoughts, streaming on without his 
 volition, without plan or order. He might be pardoned 
 for fancying that they were all ; he could not see the out- 
 ward world for them ; their giddy passage occupied him 
 till he forgot himself. He has put down the theory in its 
 barest form : ' The most refined abstractions of logic conduct 
 to a view of life which, though startling to the apprehen- 
 sion, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated 
 combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, 
 the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess 
 that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent 
 to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that 
 nothing exists but as it is perceived.' And again : ' The 
 view of life presented by the most refined deductions of 
 the intellectual philosophy is that of unity. Nothing exists 
 but as it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal 
 between those two classes of thought which are vulgarly dis- 
 tinguished by the names of ideas and of external objects. 
 Pursuing the same thread of reasoning, the existence of 
 distinct individual minds, similar to that which is employed 
 in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to be a 
 delusion. The words, /, you^ they^ are not signs of any actual 
 difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus 
 indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the 
 different modifications of the one mind. Let it not be sup- 
 posed that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous presumption 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
98 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 that r, the person who now write and think, am that one mind. 
 I am but a portion of it. The words, /, and you, and they^ 
 are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement,) and 
 totally devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually 
 attached to them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to 
 express so subtle a conception as that to which the intellectual 
 philosophy has conducted us. ( We are on that verge where 
 words abandon us ; and what wonder if we grow dizzy to look 
 down the dark abyss of how little we know ! 'J) On his wild 
 nerves these speculations produced a great effect. Their 
 thin acuteness excited his intellect ; their blank result appalled 
 his imagination. He was obliged to pause in the last frag- 
 ment of one of his metaphysical papers, ' dizzy from thrilling 
 horror.' In this state of mind he began to s tudy Plato ; and 
 it is probable that in the whole library of philosophy there 
 is no writer so suitable to such a reader. A common modern 
 author, believing in mind and matter, he would have put aside 
 at once as loose and popular. He was attracted by a writer 
 who, like himself, in some sense did not believe in either — 
 who supplied him with subtle realities different from either, 
 at once to be extracted by his intellect and to be glorified by 
 his imagination. The theory of Plato^that the all-apparent 
 phenomena were unreal,^e believed already ; he had a craving 
 to believe in something noble, beautiful, and difficult to under- 
 stand ; he was ready, therefore, to accept the rest of that 
 theory, and to believe that these passing phenomena were 
 imperfect types and resemblances — im23erfect incarnations, so 
 to speak — of certain immovable, eternal, archetypal realities. 
 All his later writings are coloured by that theory, though in 
 some passages the remains of the philosophy of the senses with 
 which he commenced appear in odd proximity to the philosophy 
 of abstractions with which he concluded. There is, perhaps, 
 no allusion in Shelley to the Phcedrus ; but no one can doubt 
 which of Plato's ideas would be most attractive to the nature 
 we have described. The most valuable part of Plato he did 
 
Percy Bysske Shelley. 
 
 99 
 
 not comprehend. There is in Shelley none of that unceasing 
 reference to ethical consciousness and ethical religion which 
 has for centuries placed Plato first among the preparatory pre- 
 ceptors of Christianity. The general doctrine is that 
 
 * The one remains, the many change and pass ; 
 Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly ; 
 Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
 Stains the white radiance ef eternity, 
 Until death tramples it to fragments.' 
 
 The particular worship of the poet is paid to that one spirit 
 whose 
 
 * Plastic stress 
 Sweeps through tbe dull dense world, compelling there 
 All new successions to the forms they wear ; 
 Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight 
 To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; 
 And bursting in its beauty and its might 
 From trees, and beasts, and men, into the heaven's Kght/ 
 
 It is evident that not even in this, the highest form of creed 
 to which he ever clearly attained, is there any such distinct 
 conception of a character as is essential to a real religion. The 
 conception of Grod is not to be framed out of a single attribute. 
 Shelley has changed the ' idea ' of beauty into a spirit, and this 
 probably for the purposes of poetry ; he has given it life and j 
 animal motion ; but he has done no more ; the ' spirit ' has no 
 will, and no virtue: it is animated, but unholy; alive, but un- 
 moral : it is an object of intense admiration ; it is not an object 
 of worship. 
 
 We have ascribed this quality of Shelley's writings to an 
 abstract intell ect ; and in part, no doubt, correctly. Shelley had, 
 probably by nature, such an intellect; it was self-enclosed, self- 
 absorbed, teeming with singular ideas, remote from character 
 and life ; but so involved is human nature, that this tendency to 
 abstraction, which we have spoken of as aggravating the conse- 
 
 u 2 
 
TOO 
 
 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 quences of his simple impulsive temperament, was itself aggra- 
 vated by that temperament. It is a received opinion in meta- 
 physics, that the idea of personality is identical with the idea of 
 will. A distinguished French writer has accurately expressed this : 
 * Le pouvoir,' says M. JoufFroy, ' que I'homme a de s'emparer de 
 ses capacites naturelles et de les diriger fait de lui une jper- 
 sonne ; et c'est parce que les choses n'exercent pas ce pouvoir en 
 elles-memes, qu'elles ne sont que des choses. Telle est la 
 veritable difference qui distingue les choses des personnes. 
 Toutes les natures possibles sont douees de certaines capacites ; 
 mais les unes ont repu par-dessus les autres le privilege de se 
 saisir d'elles-memes et de se gouverner : celles-la sont les per- 
 sonnes. Les autres en ont ete privees, en sorte qu'elles n'ont 
 point de part a ce qui se fait en elles : celles-la sont les choses. 
 Leurs capacites ne s'en developpent pas moins, mais c'est 
 exclusivement selon les lois auxquelles Dieu les a soumises. 
 C'est Dieu qui gouverne en elles ; il est la personne des choses, 
 comme I'ouvrier est la personne de la montre. Ici la personne 
 est hors de I'etre ; dans le sein meme des choses, comme dans 
 le sein de la montre, la personne ne se rencontre pas ; on ne 
 trouve qu'une serie de capacites qui se meuvent aveuglement, 
 sans que la nature qui en est douee sache meme ce qu'elles font. 
 Aussi ne peut-on demander compte aux choses de ce qui se fait 
 en elles ; il faut s'adresser a Dieu : comme on s'adresse a I'ou- 
 vrier et non a la montre, quand la montre va mal.' And if 
 this theory be true -and doubtless it is an approximation to 
 the truth — it is evident that a mind ordinarily moved by simple! 
 impulse will have little distinct consciousness of personality. ' 
 While thrust forward by such impulse, it is a mere instrument. 
 Outward things set it in motion. It goes where they bid ; it 
 exerts no will upon them ; it is, to speak expressively, a mere 
 conducting thing. When such a mind is free from such im- 
 pulse, there is even less will ; thoughts, feelings, ideas, emotions, 
 pass before it in a sort of dream. For the time it is a mere 
 perceiving thing. In neither case is there a trace of voluntary 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 lOI 
 
 character. If we want a reason for anything, ' il faut s'adresser 
 a Dieu.' 
 
 Shelley's political opinions were likewise the effervescence 
 of his peculiar nature. The love of liberty is peculiarly natural 
 to the simple impulsive mind. It feels irritated at the idea of 
 a law ; it fancies it does not need it : it really needs it less than 
 other men. Grovernment seems absurd - society an incubus. 
 It has hardly patience to estimate particular institutions : it 
 wants to begin again — to make a tabula rasa of all which men 
 have created or devised; for they seem to have been con- 
 structed on a false system, for an object it does not understand. 
 On this tabula rasa Shelley's abstract imagination proceeded 
 to set up arbitrary monstrosities of ' equality' and 'love,' which 
 never will be realised among the children of men. 
 
 Such a mind is clearly driven to self-delineation. Nature, 
 no doubt, in ^ome sense remains to it. A dreamy mind — a 
 mind occupied intensely with its own thoughts — will often have 
 a peculiarly intense apprehension of anything which by the 
 hard collision of the world it has been forced to observe. The 
 scene stands out alone in the memory ; is a refreshment from 
 hot thoughts ; grows with the distance of years. A mind like 
 Shelley's, deeply susceptible to all things beautiful, has many 
 pictures and images shining in its recollection which it recurs 
 to, and which it is ever striving to delineate. Indeed, in such 
 minds it is rather the picture in their mind which they describe 
 than the original object ; the ' ideation,' as some harsh meta- 
 physicians call it, rather than the reality. A certain dream- 
 light is diffused over it ; a wavering touch, as of interfering 
 fancy or fading recollection. The landscape has not the hues 
 of the real world ; it is modified in the camera obscura of the 
 self-enclosed intelligence. Nor can such a mind long endure 
 the cold process of external delineation. Its own hot thoughts 
 rush in ; its favourite topic is itself and them. Shelley, indeed, 
 as we observed before, carries this to an extent which no poet 
 probably ever equalled. He described not only his character 
 
I02 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 but his circumstances. We know that this is so in a large 
 number of passages ; if his poems were commented on by some 
 one thoroughly familiar with the events of his life, we should 
 doubtless find that it was so in many more. On one strange 
 and painful scene his fancy was continually dwelling. In a 
 gentle moment we have a dirge — 
 
 * The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, 
 The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, 
 And the year 
 
 On the eai"th her deathbed, in a shroud of leaves, dead 
 Is lying. 
 
 Come months, come away, 
 
 From November to May, 
 
 In your saddest array ; 
 
 Follow the bier 
 
 Of the dead cold year, 
 And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. 
 
 The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, 
 The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling ; 
 For the year ; 
 
 The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone 
 To his dwelling. 
 
 Come, months, come away ; 
 
 Put on white, black, and gray ; 
 
 Let your light sisters play — 
 
 Ye, follow the bier 
 
 Of the dead cold year, 
 And make her grave green with tear on tear.* 
 
 In a frenzied mood he breaks forth into wildness : 
 
 * She is still, she is cold 
 
 On the bridal couch ; 
 One step to the white deathbed, 
 
 And one to the bier. 
 And one to the charnel — and one, 0, where ? 
 
 The dark arrow fled 
 
 In the noon. 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
 
 Ere the sun through heaven once more has roll'd, 
 The rats in her heart 
 Will have made their nest, 
 And the worms be alive in her golden hair; 
 While the spii'it that guides the sun 
 Sits throned in his flaming chair, 
 She shall sleep.' 
 
 There is no doubt that these and a hundred other similar 
 passages allude to the death of his first wife ; as melancholy a 
 story as ever shivered the nerves of an excitable being. The 
 facts are hardly known to us, but they are something like 
 these : In very early youth Shelley had formed a half-fanciful 
 attachment to a cousin, a Miss Harriet Grrove, who is said to 
 have been attractive, and to whom, certainly, his fancy often 
 went back in later and distant years. How deep the feeling 
 was on either side we do not know ; she seems to have taken an 
 interest in the hot singular dreams which occupied his mind — 
 except only where her image might intrude — from which one 
 might conjecture that she took unusual interest in him ; she 
 even wrote some chapters, or parts of some, in one of his boyish 
 novels, and her parents doubtless thought the ' Eosicrucian ' 
 could be endured, as Shelley was the heir to land and a 
 baronetcy. His expulsion from Oxford altered all this. Prob- 
 ably he had always among his friends been thought ' a singular 
 young man,' and they had waited in perplexity to see if the 
 oddness would turn to unusual good or unusual evil. His 
 atheistic treatise and its results seemed to show clearly the 
 latter, and all communication with Miss Grove was instantly 
 forbidden him. What she felt on the subject is not told us; 
 probably some theistic and undreaming lover intervened, for 
 she married in a short time. The despair of an excitable 
 poet at being deprived of his mistress at the same moment that 
 he was abandoned by his family, and in a measure by society, 
 may be fancied, though it cannot be known. Captain Medwin 
 observes : ' Shelley, on this trying occasion, had the courage to 
 live, in order that he might labour for one great object — the 
 
 3 
 
I04 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 advancement of the human race, and the amelioration _of_SQ6ijgty; 
 and strengthened himself in a resolution to devote his energies 
 to this ultimate end, being prepared to endure every obloquy, 
 to make every sacrifice for its accomplishment : and would,' 
 such is the Captain's English, ^ if necessary, have died in the 
 cause.' It does not appear, however, that disappointed love 
 took solely the very unusual form of philanthropy. By chance, 
 whether with or without leave does not appear, he went to see 
 his second sister, who was at school at a place called Balham 
 Hill, near London ; and, while walking in the garden with her, 
 ' a Miss Westbrook passed them.' She was a ' handsome blonde 
 young lady, nearly sixteen ; ' and Shelley was much struck. He 
 found out that her name was 'Harriett,' — as he, after his 
 marriage, anxiously expresses it, with two t's, ' Harriett ; ' and 
 he fell in love at once. She had the name of his first love ; 
 ' fairer, though yet the same.' After his manner, he wrote to 
 her immediately. He was in the habit of doing this to people 
 who interested him, either in his own or under an assumed 
 name : and once. Captain Medwin says, carried on a long corre 
 spondence with Mrs. Hemans, then Miss Browne, under his 
 (the captain's) name ; but which he, the deponent, was not 
 permitted to peruse. In Miss Westbrook's case the correspon- 
 dence had a more serious consequence. Of her character we 
 can only guess a little. She was, we think, an ordinary 
 blooming young lady of sixteen. Shelley was an extraordinary 
 young man of nineteen, rather handsome, very animated, and 
 expressing his admiration a little intensely. He was doubtless 
 much the most aristocratic person she had ever spoken to ; for 
 her father was a retired innkeeper, and Shelley had always 
 the air of a man of birth. There is a vision, too, of an elder 
 sister, who made ' Harriett dear ' very uncomfortable. On the 
 whole, the result may be guessed. At the end of August 1811, 
 we do not know the precise day, they were married at Grretna 
 Green. Jests may be made on it ; but it was no laughing matter 
 in the life of the wife or the husband. Of the lady's disposition 
 
Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 and mind we know nothing, except from Shelley ; a medium 
 which must, under the circumstances, be thought a distorting one. 
 We should conclude that she was capable of making many- 
 people happy, though not of making Shelley happy. There 
 is an ordinance of nature at which men of genius are perpetually 
 fretting, but which does more good than many laws of the 
 universe which they praise : it is, that ordinary women ordi- 
 narily prefer ordinary men. ' Grenius,' as Hazlitt would have 
 said, ' puts them out.' It is so strange ; it does not come into 
 the room as usual ; it says ' such things ; ' once it forgot to 
 brush its hair. The common female mind prefers usual tastes, 
 settled manners, customary conversation, defined and practical 
 pursuits. And it is a great good that it should be so. Nature 
 has no wiser instinct. The average woman suits the average 
 man ; good health, easy cheerfulness, common charms, suffice. 
 If Miss Westbrook had married an everyday person — a gentle- 
 man, suppose, in the tallow line — she wo:ild have been happy, 
 and have made him happy. Her mind could have understood 
 his life ; her society would have been a gentle relief from un- 
 odoriferous pursuits. She had nothing in common with Shelley. 
 His mind was full of eager thoughts, wild dreams, singular 
 aspirations. The most delicate tact would probably have often 
 failed, the nicest sensibility would have been jarred, affection 
 would have erred, in dealing with such a being. A very pecu- 
 liar character was required, to enter into such a rare union of 
 curious qualities. Some eccentric men of genius have, indeed, 
 felt in the habitual tact and serene nothingness of ordinary 
 women, a kind of trust and calm. They have admired an 
 instinct of the world which they had not — a repose of mind 
 they could not share. But this is commonly in later years. A 
 boy of twenty thinks he knows the world ; he is too proud and 
 happy in his own eager and shifting thoughts, to wish to con- 
 trast them with repose. The commonplaceness of life goads 
 him : placid society irritates him. Bread is an incumbrance ; 
 upholstery tedious : he craves excitement ; he wishes to reform 
 
io6 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 mankind. You cannot convince bim it is right to sew, in a 
 world so full of sorrow and evil. Shelley was in tliis state ; he 
 hurried to and fro over England, pursuing theories, and absorbed 
 in plans. He was deep in metaphysics ; had subtle disproofs 
 of all religion ; wrote several poems, which would have been a 
 puzzle to a very clever young lady. There were pecuniary diffi- 
 culties besides : neither of the families had approved of the 
 match, and neither were inclined to support the household. 
 Altogether, no one can be surprised that in( less than three years 
 the hasty union ended in a ' separation by muLual-COnsent.' 
 The wonder is that it lasted so long. — What her conduct was 
 after the separation, is not very clear : there were ' reports ' 
 about her at Bath — perhaps a loquacious place. She was not 
 twenty, probably handsome, and not improbably giddy : being 
 quite without evidence, we cannot judge what was rumour and 
 what was truth. Shelley has not left us in similar doubt. After 
 a year or two he travelled abroad with Mary, afterwards the 
 second Mrs. Shelley, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and 
 William Godwin — names most celebrated in those times, and 
 even now known for their anti-matrimonial speculations. Of 
 their 'six weeks' tour' abroad, in the year 1816, a record re- 
 mains, and should be read by any persons who wish to learn 
 what travelling was in its infancy. It was the year when the 
 Continent was first thrown open to English travellers ; and few 
 probably adopted such singular means of locomotion as Shelley 
 and his companions. First they tried walking, and had a very 
 small ass to carry their portmanteau ; then they tried a mule ; 
 then a fiacre, which drove away from them ; afterwards they 
 came to a raft. It was not, however, an unamusing journey 
 At an ugly and out-of-the-way chateau, near Brunen, Shelley 
 began a novel, to be called ' The Assassins,' which he never 
 finished — probably never continued — after his return ; but 
 which still remains, and is one of the most curious and cha- 
 racteristic specimens of his prose style. ' It was a refreshing 
 intellectual tour ; , one of the most pleasant rambles of his life. 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 107 
 
 On his return he was met by painful intelligence. His wife had 
 destroyed herself. Of her state of mind we have again no 
 evidence. She is said to have been deeply affected by the 
 ' reports ' to whicli we have alluded ; but whatever it was, Shelley 
 felt himself greatly to blame. He had been instrumental in 
 first dividing her from her family ; had connected himself with 
 her in a wild contract, from which neither could ever be set 
 free ; if he had not crossed her path, she might have been 
 happy in her own way and in her own sphere. All th is . preyed 
 upon his mind, and it is said he became mad ; and whether or 
 not his horror and pain went the length of actual frenzy, they 
 doubtless approached that border-line of suffering excitement 
 which divides the most melancholy form of sanity from the 
 most melancholy form of insanity. In several poems he seems 
 to delineate himself in the guise of a maniac : 
 
 * " Of his sad history 
 I know but this," said Macldalo ; " he came 
 To Venice a dejected man, and fame 
 Said he was wealthy, or he had been so. 
 Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woo ; 
 But he was ever talking in such sort 
 As you do, — but more sadly : he seem'd hurt, 
 Even as a man with his peculiar wrong, 
 To hear bnt of the oppression of the strong, 
 Or those absurd deceits (I think with you 
 In some respects, you know) which cany through 
 The excellent impostors of this earth 
 When they outface detection. He had worth, 
 Poor fellow ! but a humourist in his way.' — 
 
 ■ — " Alas, what drove him mad % " 
 
 " I cannot say : 
 A lady came with him from France ; and when 
 She left him and returned, he wander 'd then 
 About yon lonely isles of desert sand 
 Till he grew wild. He had no cash nor land 
 
io8 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 Remaining : — the police had brought him here — 
 
 Some fancy took him, and he would not bear 
 
 Removal ; so I fitted up for him 
 
 Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim ; 
 
 And sent him busts, and books, and urns for flowers, 
 
 Which had adorned his life in happier hours, 
 
 And instruments of music. You may guess, 
 
 A stranger could do little more or less 
 
 For one so gentle and unfortunate — 
 
 And those are his sweet strains, which charm the weight 
 
 From madmen's chains, and make this hell appear 
 
 A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear." 
 
 " Nay, this was kind of you, — he had no claim, 
 As the world says." 
 
 * None but the very same, 
 Which I on all mankind, were I, as he, 
 Fall'n to such deep reverse. His melody 
 Is interrupted ; now we hear the din 
 Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin ; 
 Let us now visit him : after this strain 
 He ever communes with himself again. 
 And sees and hears not any." 
 
 Having said 
 These words, we called the keeper : and he led 
 To an apartment opening on the sea — 
 There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully 
 Near a piano, his pale fingers twined 
 One with the other ; and the ooze and wind 
 Rushed through an open casement, and did sway 
 His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray : 
 His head was leaning on a music-book, 
 And he was muttering ; and his lean limbs shook ; 
 His lips were pressed against a folded leaf. 
 In hue too beautiful for health, and grief 
 Smiled in their motions as they lay apart. 
 As one who wrought from his own fervid heart 
 The eloquence of passion : soon he raised 
 His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed, 
 And spoke, — sometimes as one who wrote and thought 
 His words might move some heart that heeded not, 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 109 
 
 If sent to distant lands ; — and then as one 
 Reproaching deeds never to be undone, 
 "With wondering self-compassion ; then his speech 
 Was lost in grief, and then his words came each 
 Unmodulated and expressionless, — 
 But that from one jarred accent you might guess 
 It was despair made them so uniform : 
 And all the while the loud and gusty storm 
 Hissed through the window ; and we stood behind, 
 Stealing his accents from the envious wind, 
 Unseen. I yet remember what he said 
 Distinctly — such impression his words made.' 
 
 And casual illustrations — unconscious metaphors, showing a 
 terrible familiarity — are borrowed from insanity in his sub- 
 sequent works. 
 
 This strange story is in various ways deeply illustrative of 
 his character. It shows how the impulsive temperament, not 
 definitely intending evil, is hurried forward, so to say, over 
 actions and crimes which would seem to indicate deep depravity 
 « — which would do so in ordinary human nature, but which do 
 not indicate in it anything like the same degree of guilt. 
 Driven by singular passion across a tainted region, it retains no 
 taint; on a sudden it passes through evil, but preserves its 
 purity. So curious is this character, that a record of its actions 
 may read like a libel on its life. 
 
 To some the story may also suggest whether Shelley's nature 
 was one of those most adapted for love in its highest form. It 
 is impossible to deny that he loved with a great intensity; yet 
 it was with a certain narrowness, and therefore a certain fitful- 
 ness. Possibly a somewhat wider nature, taking hold of other 
 characters at more points, — fascinated as intensely, but more 
 variously, — stirred as deeply, but through more complicated 
 emotions, — is requisite for the highest and most lasting feeling. 
 Passion, to be enduring, must be many-sided. Eager and narrow 
 emotions urge like the gadfly of the poet : but they pass away ; 
 they are single ; there is nothing to revive them. Various as 
 
I lO 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 human nature must be the passion which absorbs that nature 
 into itself. Shelley's mode of delineating women has a corre- 
 sponding peculiarity. They are well described; lut they are 
 described under only one aspect. Every one of his poems almost 
 has a lady whose arms are white, whose mind is sympathising, 
 and whose soul is beautiful. She has many names— Cythna, 
 Asia, Emily ; but these are only external disguises ; she is in- 
 dubitably the same person, for her character never varies. No 
 character can be simpler. She is described as the ideal object 
 of love in its most simple and elemental form ; the pure object 
 of the essential passion. She is a being to be loved in a single 
 moment, with eager eyes and gasping breath ; but you feel that 
 in that moment you have seen the whole. There is nothing to 
 come to afterwards. The fascination is intense, but uniform. 
 There is not the ever-varying grace, the ever-changing expres- 
 sion of the unchanging charm, that alone can attract for all 
 time the shifting moods of a various and mutable nature. 
 
 The works of Shelley lie in a confused state, like the disjecta 
 membra of the poet of our boyhood. They are in the strictest 
 sense ' remains.' It is absurd to expect from a man who died 
 at thirty a long work of perfected excellence. All which at so 
 early an age can be expected are fine fragments, casual expres- 
 sions of single inspirations. Of these Shelley has written some 
 that are nearly, and one or two perhaps that are quite, perfect. 
 But he has not done more. It would have been better if he had 
 not attempted so much. He would have done well to have 
 heeded Groethe's caution to Eckerman : 'Beware of attempting 
 a large work. If you have a great work in your head, nothing 
 else thrives near it, all other thoughts are repelled, and the 
 pleasantness of life itself is for the time lost. What exertion 
 and expenditure of mental force are required to arrange and 
 round off a great whole ; and then what powers, and what a 
 tranquil undisturbed situation in life, to express it with the 
 proper fluency ! If you have erred as to the whole, all your toil 
 is lost ; and further, if, in treating so extensive a subject, you 
 
Percy By s she Shelley, 
 
 I I T 
 
 are not perfectly master of your material in the details, the 
 whole will be defective, and censure will be incurred.' Shelley 
 did not know this. He was ever labouring at long poems : but 
 he has scarcely left one which, as a whole, is worthy of him ; you 
 can point to none and say, This is Shelley. Even had he lived 
 to an age of riper capacity, it may be doubted if a being so dis- 
 continuous, so easily hurried to and fro, would have possessed 
 the settled, undeviating self-devotion that are necessary to a 
 long and perfect composition. He had not, like Groethe, the 
 cool shrewdness to watch for inspiration. 
 
 ( His success, as we have said, is in fragments ; Wd the best 
 of those fragments are lyrical. The very same isolation and 
 suddenness of impulse which rendered him unfit for the com- 
 position of great works, rendered him peculiarly fit to pour 
 forth on a sudden the intense essence of peculiar feeling ' in 
 profuse strains of unpremeditated art.' Lord Macaulay has said 
 that the words ' bard ' and ' inspiration,' generally so meaning- 
 less when applied to modern poets, have a meaning when 
 applied to Shelley. An idea, an emotion grew upon his brain 
 his breast heaved, his frame shook, his nerves quivered with the 
 ' harmonious madness ' of imaginative concentration. ' Poetry,' 
 he himself tells us, ' is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted 
 according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 
 ' I will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot say it ; 
 for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some in- 
 visible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory 
 brightness ; this power arises from within, like the colour of a 
 flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the con- 
 scious portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its ap- 
 proach or its departure. . . . Poetry is the record of the 
 best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. 
 We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feel- 
 ing sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes 
 regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen 
 and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond 
 
1 1 2 Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
 
 all expression : so that even in the desire and the regret they 
 leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in 
 the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration 
 of a diviner nature through our own ; but its footsteps are like 
 those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and 
 whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves 
 it.' In verse, Shelley has compared the skylark to a poet ; we 
 may turn back the description on his own art and his own 
 mind : 
 
 * Keen as are the arrows 
 Of that silver sphere, 
 Whose intense lamp narrows 
 In the white dawn clear, 
 Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 
 
 All the earth and air 
 
 With thy voice is loud, 
 As, when night is bare. 
 
 From one lonely cloud 
 The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. 
 
 What thou art we know not ; 
 
 Wbat is most like thee % 
 From rainbow-clouds there flow not 
 Drops so bright to see. 
 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 
 ******* 
 
 Like a high-born maiden 
 
 In a palace-tower. 
 Soothing her love-laden 
 
 Soul in secret hour 
 With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower. 
 
 Like a glow-worm golden 
 
 In a dell of dew, 
 Scattering unbeholden 
 
 Its aerial hue 
 
 Among the flowers and gi'ass which screen it from the view. 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 113 
 
 Like a rose embowered 
 
 In its own green leaves, 
 By warm winds deflowered, 
 Till the scent it gives 
 Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves. 
 
 Sound of vernal showers 
 
 On the twinkling grass, 
 Kain-awakened flowers, 
 All that ever was 
 Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.' 
 
 In most poets unearthly beings are introduced to express 
 peculiar removed essences of lyrical rapture ; but they are 
 generally failures. Lord Byron tried this kind of composition 
 in ' Manfred,' and the result is an evident failure. In Shelley,] 
 such singing solitary beings are almost uniformly successful; 
 while writing, his mind really for the moment was in the state 
 in which theirs is supposed always to be. He loved attenuated 
 ideas and abstracted excitement. In expressing their nature he 
 had but to set free his own. 
 
 Human nature is not, however, long equal to this sustained 
 effort of remote excitement. The impulse fails, imagination 
 fades, inspiration dies away. With the skylark it is well : 
 
 * With thy clear keen joy ance 
 Languor cannot be : 
 Shadow of annoyance 
 Never came near thee : 
 Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.' 
 
 But in unsoaring human nature languor comes, fatigue palls, 
 melancholy oppresses, melody dies away. The universe is not 
 all blue sky ; there is the thick fog and the heavy earth. ' The 
 world,' says Mr. Emerson, ' is mundane.' A creeping sense of 
 weight is part of the most aspiring nature. To the most 
 thrilling rapture succeeds despondency, perhaps pain. To 
 Shelley this was peculiarly natural. His dreams of reform, of 
 a world which was to be, called up the imaginative ecstasy • his 
 VOL. I. I 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 soul bounded forward into the future ; but it is not possible 
 even to the naost abstracted and excited mind to place its 
 happiness in the expected realisation of impossible schemes, 
 and yet not occasionally be uncertain of those schemes. The 
 rigid frame of society, the heavy heap of traditional institu- 
 tions, the solid slowness of ordinary humanity, depress the 
 aspiring fancy. ' Since our fathers fell asleep, all things con- 
 tinue as they were from the beginning.' Occasionally we 
 must think of our fathers. No man can always dream of ever 
 altering all which is. It is characteristic of Shelley, that at 
 the end of his most rapturous and sanguine lyrics there intrudes 
 the cold consciousness of this world. So with his Grrecian 
 dreams : — 
 
 * A brighter Hellas rears its mountains 
 
 From waves serener far ; 
 A new Peneus rolls its fountains 
 
 Against the morning-star. 
 Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep 
 Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. 
 
 A loftier Argo cleaves the main, 
 
 Fraught with a later prize ; 
 Another Orpheus sings again, 
 
 And loves, and weeps, and dies : 
 A new Ulysses leaves once more 
 Calypso for his native shore.' 
 
 But he ends : 
 
 ' 0, cease ! must hate and death return % 
 Cease ! must men kill and die % 
 Cease ! drain not to its dregs the urn 
 
 Of bitter prophecy. 
 The world is weary of the past — 
 O, might it die or rest at last ! ' 
 
 In many of his poems the failing of the feeling is as beautiful 
 as its short moment of hope and buoyancy. 
 
 The excellence of Shelley does not, however, extend equally 
 over the whole domain of lyrical poetry. That species of art 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 may be divided — not perhaps with the accuracy of sc 
 with enough for the rough purposes of popular critic: 
 the human and the abstract. The sphere of the former is of 
 course the actual life, passions, and actions of real men, — such 
 are the war-songs of rude nations especially ; in that early age 
 there is no subject for art but natural life and primitive passion. 
 At a later time, when from the deposit of the debris of a 
 hundred philosophies, a large number of half-per sonified ab- 
 stractions are part of the familiar thoughts and language of all 
 mankind, there are new objects to excite the feelings, — we 
 might even say there are new feelings to be excited ; the rough 
 substance of original passion is sublimated and attenuated till, 
 we hardly recognise its identity. Ordinarily and in most minds \ 
 the emotion loses in this process its intensity or much of it ; 
 but this is not universal. In some peculiar minds it is possible 
 to find an almost dizzy intensity of excitement called forth by 
 some fancied abstraction, remote altogether from the eyes and 
 senses of men. The love-lyric in its simplest form is probably 
 the most intense expression of primitive passion ; yet not in 
 those lyrics where such intensity is the greatest, — in tliose of 
 Burns, for example, — is the passion so dizzy, bewildering, and 
 bewildered, as in the ' Epipsychidion ' of Shelley, the passion of 
 which never came into the real world at all, was only a fiction 
 founded on fact, and was wholly — and even Shelley felt it — 
 inconsistent with the inevitable conditions of ordinary existence.) 
 In this point of view, and especially also taking account of his 
 peculiar religious opinions, it is remarkable that Shelley sliould 
 have taken extreme delight in the Bible as a composition. He 
 is thejjeaat -biblical. of poets. The whole, inevitable, essential 
 conditions of real life — the whole of its plain, natural joys and 
 sorrows — are described in the Jewish literature as they are 
 described nowhere else. Very often they are assumed rather 
 than delineated ; and the brief assumption is more effective 
 than the most elaborate description. There is none of the 
 delicate sentiment and enhancing sympathy which a modern 
 
 I 2 
 
ii6 
 
 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 writer would think necessary ; the inexorable facts are dwelt on 
 with a stern humanity, which recognises human feeling though 
 intent on something above it. Of all modern poets, Words- 
 worth shares the most in this peculiarity ; perhaps he is the 
 only recent one who has it at all. He knew the hills beneath 
 whose shade ' the generations are prepared : ' 
 
 * MTich did he see of men, 
 Their passions and their feelings : chiefly those 
 Essential and eternal in the heart, 
 That mid the simple form of rural life 
 Exist more simple in their elements, 
 And speak a plainer language.' 
 
 Shelley has nothing of this. The essential feelings he hoped 
 to change ; the eternal facts he struggled to remove. ^^Jothin^ 
 in human life to him was inevitable or fixed ; he fancied he 
 could alter it all. His sphere is the 'unconditioned;' he 
 floats away into an imaginary Elysium or an expected Utopia ; 
 beautiful and excellent, of course, but having nothing in 
 common with the absolute laws of the present world. Even in 
 the description of mere nature the difference may be noted. 
 Wordsworth describes the earth as we know it, with all its 
 peculiarities ; where there are moors and hills, where the 
 lichen grows, where the slate-rock juts out. Shelley describes 
 the universe. He rushes away among the stars ; this earth is 
 an assortment of imagery, he uses it to deck some unknown 
 planet. He scorns ' the smallest light that twinkles in the 
 heavens.' His theme is the vast, the infinite, the immeasur- 
 able. He is not of our home, nor homely ; he describes not 
 our world, but that which is common to all worlds — the 
 Platonic idea of a world. Where it can, his genius soars from 
 the concrete and real into the unknown, the indefinite, and 
 the void. 
 
 Shelley's success in i^e abstract lyric would prepare us for 
 expecting that he would fail in attempts at eloquence. The 
 mind which bursts forward of itself into the inane, is not 
 
Pei'cy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 likely to be eminent in the composed adjustments of measured 
 persuasion. A voluntary self-control is necessary to the orator : 
 even when he declaims, he must only let himself go ; a keen 
 will must be ready, a wakeful attention at hand, to see that he 
 does not say a word by which his audience will not be touched. 
 The eloquence of ' Queen Mab ' is of that unpersuasive kind 
 which is admired in the earliest youth, when things and life 
 are unknown, when all that is intelligible is the sound of 
 words. 
 
 Lord Macaulay, in a passage to which we have referred 
 already, speaks of Shelley as having, more than any other poet, 
 many of the qualities of the great old masters ; two of these he 
 has especially. In the first place, his imagination is classical 
 rather than romantic, — we should, perhaps, apologise for using 
 words which have been used so often, but which hardly convey 
 even now a clear and distinct meaning ; yet they seem the best 
 for conveying a distinction of this sort. When we attempt to 
 distinguish the imagination from the fancy, we find that they 
 are often related as a beginning to an ending. On a sudden 
 we do not know how a new image, form, idea, occurs to our 
 minds ; sometimes it is borne in upon us with a flash, some- 
 times we seem unawares to stumble upon it, and find it as if it 
 had long been there : in either case the involuntary, unantici- 
 pated appearance of this new thought or image is a primitive 
 fact which we cannot analyse or account for. We say it origi- 
 nated in our imagination or creative faculty : but this is a 
 mere expression of the completeness of our ignorance; we 
 could only define the imagination as the faculty which produces 
 such effects ; we know nothing of it or its constitution. Again, 
 on this original idea a large number of accessory and auxiliary 
 ideas seem to grow or accumulate insensibly, casually, and 
 without our intentional effort ; the bare primiti-ve form attracts 
 a clothing of delicate materials— an ado rnmen t not altering its 
 esences, but enhancing its effect. This we call the work of the 
 fancy. An exquisite delicacy in appropriating fitting acces- 
 
ii8 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 sories is as much the characteristic excellence of a fanciful 
 mind, as the possession of large, simple, bold ideas is of an 
 imaginative one. The last is immediate ; the first comes 
 minute by minute. The distinction is like what one fancies 
 between sculpture and painting. If we look at a delicate 
 statue — a Venus or Juno — it does not suggest any slow elabo- 
 rate process by which its expression was chiselled and its limbs 
 refined ; it seems a simple fact ; we look, and require no 
 account of it; it exists. The greatest painting suggests, not 
 only a creative act, but a decorative process : day by day there 
 was something new; we could watch the tints laid on, the 
 dresses tinged, the perspective growing and growing. There is 
 something statuesque about the imagination; there is the 
 gradual complexity of painting in the most exquisite produc- 
 tions of the fancy. When we speak of this distinction, we 
 seem almost to be speaking of the distinction between ancient 
 and modern literature. The characteristic of the classical , 
 literature is the simplicity with which the imagination appea.rs 
 in it; that of modern literature is the profusion with which \ 
 the most various adornments of the accessory fancy are thrown 
 and lavished upon it. Perhaps nowhere is this more con- 
 spicuous than in the modern treatment of antique subjects. 
 One of the most essentially modern of recent poets — Keats, — 
 has an ' Ode to a Grecian Urn : ' it begins — 
 
 * Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness ! 
 
 Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, 
 Sylvan historian ! who canst thus express 
 
 A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 
 What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 
 
 Of deities or mortals, or of both, 
 In Tempe or the dales of Arcady % 
 
 What men or gods are these % What maidens loth % 
 What mad pursuit ? What struggle to escape ? 
 
 What pipes and timbrels'? What wild ecstasy ? 
 
 No ancient poet would have dreamed of writing thus. There 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1 1 9 
 
 would have been no indistinct shadowy warmth, no breath of 
 surrounding beauty : his delineation would have been cold, 
 distinct, chiselled like the urn itself. The use which such a 
 poet as(^eats; makes of ancient mythology is exactly similar. 
 He owes his fame to the inexplicable art with which he has 
 breathed a soft tint over the marble forms of gods and 
 goddesses, enhancing their beauty without impairing their 
 chasteness. The naked kind of imagination is not peculiar to 
 a mythological age. The growth of civilisation, at least in 
 Greece, rather increased than diminished the imaginative 
 bareness of the poetical art. It seems to attain its height in 
 Sophocles. If we examine any of his greater passages, a 
 principal beauty is their reserved simplicity. A modern reader 
 almost necessarily uses them as materials for fancy : we are too 
 used to little circumstance to be able to do without it. Take 
 the passage in which (Edipus contrasts the conduct of his sons 
 with that of his daughters : 
 
 W TTCLVT EKELVit) To7q EV AtyVTrTO) l OflOlQ 
 
 <j)vaiv KaTEiKacjQivTE koX fiiov rpofag, 
 
 skeI yap oi fxkv cipcrEVEQ Kara OTkyaq 
 
 6aK0V(Tiv laTovpyovvTEg, at ^e ffvvvo^oL 
 
 TCL^io (3iov rpofela iropovvova ueL 
 
 a(p(ov 3', (jj TEKP, ovQ fXEv EiKog ttoveIv rd^Ef 
 
 Kar oIkov oiKovpovaiv &<tt£ irapdivoi^ 
 
 (T(p(t) 3' aPT eke'ivojv rajxa dvarr]vov KaKa 
 
 VTTEpWOVE'iTOV. 1] fXEV OTOV VEUQ 
 
 Tpofrjg eXtj^e Kai KaTia-)(y(JEv MfxaQf 
 act fisd {jfiwv Zva^opoQ TrXaviofiEvi] 
 yEpovrayioyEly noWa fiEV fcar' ayp'iav 
 vX-qv aaiTOQ rrjXiTrovg t aXtojXEirj^ 
 7roXX(M(Ti 6fxl3poLg fjXwv te Kavfiacri 
 HOxGovffa rXyifXiov, ^EVTEp riyEiTai ra Tfjg 
 OLKOL ^lahrjQf eI irarrip Tpo(j)r]t/ 'iyoi. 
 
 What a contrast to the ravings of Lear! What a world of 
 detail Shakespeare would have put into the passage ! What 
 talk of ' sulphurous and thought-executing fires,' ' simulars 
 
I20 
 
 Percy By s she Shelley, 
 
 of virtue,' ' pent-up guilts,' and ' tlie thick rotundity of the 
 world ! ' Decorum is the principal thing in Sophocles. The 
 conception of (Edipus is not 
 
 * Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow weeds, 
 With harlocks, hemlock, nettle, and cuckoo-flowers/ 
 
 There are no ' idle weeds ' among the ' sustaining corn.' The 
 conception of Lear is that of an old gnarled oak, gaunt and 
 quivering in the stormy sky, with old leaves and withered 
 branches tossing in the air, and all the complex growth of a 
 hundred years creaking and nodding to its fall. That of 
 (Edipus is the peak of Teneriffe, as we fancied it in our child- 
 hood, by itself and snowy, above among the stormy clouds, 
 heedless of the angry winds and the desolate waves, — single, 
 ascending, and alone. Or, to change the metaphor to one 
 derived from an art where the same qualities of mind have 
 produced kindred effects, ancient poetry is like a Grecian 
 temple, with pure form and rising columns, — created, one 
 fancies, by a single effort of an originative nature : modern 
 literature seems to have sprung from the involved brain of a 
 Grothic architect, and resembles a huge cathedral — the work of 
 the perpetual industry of centuries — complicated and infinite 
 in details ; but by their choice and elaboration producing an 
 effect of unity which is not inferior to that of the other, and is 
 heightened by the multiplicity through which it is conveyed. 
 And it is this v^warmth of circumstance-)— this profusion of 
 interesting detail — which has caused the name 'romantic' to 
 be perseveringly applied to modern literature. 
 
 "We need only to open Shelley, to show how essentially 
 classical in its highest efforts his art is. Indeed, although 
 nothing can be further removed from the staple topics of the 
 classical writers than the abstract lyric, yet their treatment 
 is nearly essential to it. We have said, its sphere is in what 
 the Grermans call the unconditioned — in the unknown, im- 
 measurable, and untrodden. It follows from this that v^o 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 121 
 
 cannot know much about it. We cannot know detail in tracts 
 we have never visited ; the infinite has no form ; the im- 
 measurable no outline: that which is common to all worlds 
 is simple. There is therefore no scope for the accessory fancy. 
 With a single soaring effort imagination may reach her end ; 
 if she fail, no fancy can help her ; if she succeed, there will be 
 no petty accumulations of insensible circumstance in a region 
 far above all things. Shelley's excellence in the abstract lyric 
 is almost another phrase for the simplicity of his impulsive 
 imagination. — He shows it on other subjects also. We have 
 spoken of his bare treatment of the ancient mythology. It is 
 the same with his treatment of nature. In the description 
 \ of the celestial regions quoted before — one of the most charac- 
 * teristic passages in his writings — the details are few, the air 
 thin, the lights distinct. We are conscious of an essential 
 difference if we compare the ' Ode to the Nightingale,' in 
 k Keats, for instance — such verses as 
 
 ' I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 
 
 Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs : 
 But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 
 
 Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
 The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild, 
 White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine, 
 Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves, 
 And mid-May's eldest child, 
 The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine. 
 
 The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 
 
 Darkling I listen ; and for many a time 
 
 I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
 Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, 
 
 To take into the air my quiet breath : 
 Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 
 To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 
 
 While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
 In such an ecstasy. 
 Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain^ 
 To thy high requiem become a sod.' 
 
122 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 — with the conclusion of the ode ' To a Skylark ' — 
 
 *Yet if we could scorn 
 
 Hate, and pride, and fear ; 
 If we were things born 
 Not to shed a tear, 
 I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 
 
 Better than all measures 
 
 Of delightful sound, 
 Better than all treasures 
 
 That in books are found. 
 Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! 
 
 Teach me half the gladness 
 
 That thy brain must know ; 
 Such harmonious madness 
 
 From my lips would flow. 
 The world should listen then, as I am listening now.* 
 
 We can hear that the poetry of Keats is a rich, composite, 
 voluptuous harmony ; ^that of Shelley a clear single ring of 
 penetrating melody^ 
 
 Of course, however, this criticism requires limitation. 
 There is an obvious sense in which Shelley is a fanciful, as 
 contra-distinguished from an imaginative poet. These words, 
 being invented for the popular expression of differences which 
 can be remarked without narrow inspection, are apt to mislead 
 us when we apply them to the exact results of a near and 
 critical analysis. Besides the use of the word 'fancy' to denote 
 the power which adorns and amplifies the product of the 
 primitive imagination, we also employ it to denote the weaker 
 exercise of the faculty which itself creates those elementary 
 products. We use the word ' imaginative ' only for strong, 
 vast, imposing, interesting conceptions : we use the word ' fan- 
 ciful' when we have to speak of smaller and weaker creations, 
 which amaze us less at the moment and affect us more slightly 
 afterwards. Of course, metaphysically speaking, it is not 
 likely that there will be found to be any distinction ; the 
 
Pe7^cy By s she Shelley. 123 
 
 faculty which creates the most attractive ideas is doubtless the 
 same as that which creates the less attractive. Common lan- 
 guage marks the distinction, because common people are 
 impressed by the contrast between what affects them much 
 and what affects them little ; but it is no evidence of the entire 
 difference of the latent agencies. Speech, as usual, refers to 
 sensations, and not to occult causes. Of fancies of this sort 
 Shelley is full : whole poems — as the ' Witch of Atlas ' — are 
 composed of nothing else. Living a good deal in, and writing! 
 a great deal about, the abstract world, it was inevitable that\ 
 he should often deal in fine subtleties, affecting very little the 
 concrete hearts of real men. Many pages of his are, in con- 
 sequence, nearly unintelligible, even to good critics of common 
 poetry. The air is too rarefied for hardy and healthy lungs : 
 these like, as Lord Bacon expressed it, ' to work upon stuff.' 
 From his habitual choice of slight and airy subjects, Shelley 
 may be called a fanciful, as opposed to an imaginative, poet ; 
 from his bare delineations of great objects, his keen expression 
 of distinct impulses, he should be termed an imaginative, 
 rather than a fanciful one. 
 
 Some of this odd combination of qualities Shelley doubtless 
 owed to the structure of his senses. By one of those singular 
 results which constantly meet us in metaphysical inquiry, the 
 imagination and fancy are singularly influenced by the bodily 
 sensibility. One might have fancied that the faculty by which 
 the soul soars into the infinite, and sees what it cannot see with 
 the eye of the body, would have been peculiarly independent of 
 that body. But the reverse is the case. Vividness of sensation 
 seems required to awaken, delicacy to define, copiousness to 
 enrich, the visionary faculty. A large experience proves that a 
 being who is blind to this world will be blind to the other ; 
 that a coarse expectation of what is not seen will follow from 
 a coarse perception of what is seen. Shelley's sensibility was 
 vivid but peculiar. Hazlitt used to say, ' he had seen him ; 
 and did not like his looks.' He had the thin keen excitement 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 of the fanatic student ; not the broad, natural energy which 
 Hazlitt expected from a poet. The difFased life of genial 
 enjoyment which was common to Scott and to Shakespeare, was 
 quite out of his way. Like Mr. Emerson, he would have 
 wondered they could be content with a ' mean and jocular life.' 
 In consequence, there is no varied imagery from human life in 
 his poetry. He was an abstract student, anxious about deep 
 philosophies ; and he had not that settled, contemplative, allotted 
 acquaintance with external nature which is so curious in Milton, 
 the greatest of studious poets. The exact opposite, however, to 
 Shelley, in the nature of his sensibility, is Keats. That great 
 poet used to pepper his tongue, 'to enjoy in all its grandeur 
 the cool flavour of delicious claret.' When you know it, you 
 seem to read it in his poetry. There is the same luxurious 
 sentiment ; the same poise on fine sensation. Shelley was the 
 reverse of this; he was a waterdrinker ; hisjv^rs^ runs quick_ and 
 jchill^ like a pure crystal stream. The sensibility of Keats was 
 attracted too by the spectacle of the universe ; he could not 
 keep his eye from seeing, or his ears from hearing, the glories 
 of it. All the beautiful objects of nature reappear by name in 
 his poetry. On the other hand, the abstract idea of beauty is 
 for ever celebrated in Shelley ; it haunted his soul. But it was 
 independent of special things ; it was the general surface of 
 beauty which lies upon all things. It was the smile of the 
 universe and the expression of the world ; it was not the vision 
 of a land of corn and wine. The nerves of Shelley quivered at 
 the idea of loveliness ; but no coarse sensation obtruded par- 
 ticular objects upon him. He was left to himself with books 
 and reflection. 
 
 So far, indeed, from Shelley having a peculiar tendency to 
 dwell on and prolong the sensation of pleasure, he has a per- 
 verse tendency to draw put into lingering keenness the torture 
 of agony^ Of his common recurrence to the dizzy pain of mania 
 we have formerly spoken ; but this is not the only pain. The 
 nightshade is commoner in his poems than the daisy. The 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 125 
 
 nerve is ever laid bare ; as often as it touches the open air of 
 the real world, it quivers with subtle pain. The high intellec- 
 tual impulses which animated him are too incorporeal for 
 human nature ; they begin in buoyant joy, they end in eager 
 suffering. 
 
 In style, said Mr, Wordsworth — in workmanship, we think 
 his expression was — Shelley is one of the best of us. This too, 
 we think, was the second of the peculiarities to which Lord 
 Macaulay referred when he said that Shelley had, more than 
 any recent poet, some of the qualities of the great old masters. 
 The peculiarity of his style is its intellectuality; and this 
 strikes us the more from its contrast with his impulsiveness. 
 He had something of this in life. Hurried away by sudden 
 desires, as he was in his choice of ends, we are struck with a 
 certain comparative measure and adjustment in his choice of 
 means. So in his writings ; over the most intense excitement, 
 the grandest objects, the keenest agony, the most buoyant joy, he 
 throws an air of subtle mind. His language is minutely and/ 
 acutely searching ; at the dizziest height of meaning the keen- 
 ness of the words is greatest. As in mania, so in his descriptions 
 of it, the acuteness of the mind seems to survive the mind itself. 
 It was from Plato and Sophocles, doubtless, that he gained the 
 last perfection in preserving the accuracy of the intellect when 
 treating of the objects of the imagination; but in its essence 
 it was a peculiarity of his own nature. As it was the instinct of 
 Byron to give in glaring words the gross phenomena of evident 
 objects, so it was that of Shelley to refine the most inscrutable 
 with the curious nicety of an attenuating metaphysician. In 
 the wildest of ecstasies his self-anatomising intellect is equal to 
 
 There is much more which might be said, and which ought 
 to be said, of Shelley; but our limits are reached. We have 
 not attempted a complete criticism ; /we have only aimed to 
 
 itself. 
 
126 
 
 Shakespeare, 
 
 SHAKESPEARE— THE MAN,^ 
 (1853.) 
 
 T3E greatest of English poets, it is often said, is but a 
 name. ' No letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, 
 no character of him drawn with any fulness by a contemporary,' 
 have been extracted by antiquaries from the piles of rubbish 
 which they have sifted. Yet of no person is there a clearer 
 picture in the popular fancy. You seem to have known 
 Shakespeare — to have seen Shakespeare — to have been friends 
 with Shakespeare. We would attempt a slight delineation of 
 the popular idea which has been formed, not from loose tradition 
 or remote research ; not from what some one says some one 
 else said that the poet said, but from data, which are at least 
 undoubted, from the sure testimony of his certain works. 
 
 Some extreme sceptics, we know, doubt whether it is pos- 
 sible to deduce anything as to an author's character from his 
 works. Yet surely people do not keep a tame steam-engine 
 to write their books ; and if those books were really written 
 by a man, he must have been a man who could write them ; 
 he must have had the thoughts which they express, have 
 acquired the knowledge they contain, have possessed the style 
 in which we read them. The difficulty is a defect of the critics. 
 A person who knows nothing of an author he has read, will not 
 know much of an author whom he has seen. 
 
 First of all, it may be said, that Shakespeare's works could 
 only be produced by a first-rate imagination working on a 
 
 ^ S]takes2)eare et son Tem2)s : Etude lAttcraire. Par M. Guizot. Paris. 1852. 
 
 Notca and Emendations to the Text of SJialtesjJ care's Plays from, early 
 3Ianuscrq)t Corrections in a Copy of the Folio, 1632, in the jJosscssion of R. 
 '^ayne Collier, Esq., F.S.A. London. 1853. 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 127 
 
 first-rate experience. It is often difficult to make out whether 
 the author of a poetic creation is drawing from fancy, or draw- 
 ing from experience ; but for art on a certain scale, the two 
 must concur. Out of nothing, nothing can be created. Some 
 plastic power is required, however great may be the material. 
 And when such a work as ' Hamlet ' or ' Othello,' still more, 
 w^hen both of them and others not unequal have been created 
 by a single mind, it may be fairly said, that not only a great 
 imagination, but a full conversancy with the world was necessary 
 to their production. The whole powers of man under the most 
 favourable circumstances, are not too great for such an effort. 
 We may assume that Shakespeare had a great experience. 
 
 To a great experience one thing is essential, an experi- 
 encing nature. It is not enough to have opportunity, it is 
 essential to feel it. Some occasions come to all men ; but to 
 many they are of little use, and to some they are none. What, 
 for example, has experience done for the distinguished French- 
 man, the name of whose essay is prefixed to this paper. 
 M. Guizot is the same man that he was in 1 820, or, we believe 
 as he was in 1814. Take up one of his lectures, published 
 before he was a practical statesman ; you will be struck with 
 the width of view, the amplitude and the solidity of the 
 reflections ; you will be amazed that a mere literary teacher 
 could produce anything so wise ; but take up afterwards an 
 essay published since his fall — and you will be amazed to find 
 no more. Napoleon the First is come and gone — the Bourbons 
 of the old regime have come and gone — the Bourbons of the 
 new regime have had their turn. M. Gruizot has been first 
 minister of a citizen king ; he has led a great party ; he has 
 pronounced many a great discours that was well received by 
 the second elective assembly in the world. But there is no 
 trace of this in his writings. No one would guess from them 
 that their author had ever left the professor's chair. It is the 
 same, we are told, with small matters : when M. Gruizot walks 
 the street, he seems to see nothing ; the head is thrown back, 
 
128 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 the eye fixed, and the mouth working. His mind is no doubt 
 at work, but it is not stirred by what is external. Perhaps it 
 is the internal activity of mind that overmasters the perceptive 
 power. Anyhow there might have been an cmeute in the 
 street and he would not have known it; there have been 
 revolutions in his life and he is scarcely the wiser. Among 
 the most frivolous and fickle of civilised nations he is alone. 
 They pass from the game of war to the game of peace, from 
 the game of science to the game of art, from the game of 
 liberty to the game of slavery, from the game of slavery to the 
 game of licence ; he stands like a schoolmaster in the play- 
 groimd, without sport and without pleasure, firm and sullen, 
 slow and awful. 
 
 A man of this sort is a curious mental phenomenon. lie 
 appears to get early — perhaps to be born with, a kind of dry 
 schedule or catalogue of the universe ; he has a ledger in his 
 head, and has a title to which he can refer any transaction ; 
 nothing puzzles him, nothing comes amiss to him, but he is 
 not in the least the wiser for anything. Like the book-keeper, 
 he has his heads of account, and he knows them, but he is no 
 wiser for the particular items. After a busy day, and after 
 a slow day, after a few entries, and after many, his knowledge 
 is exactly the same : take his opinion of Baron Eothschild, he 
 will say, ' Yes, he keeps an account with us ; ' of Humphrey 
 Brown, 'Yes, we have that account, too.' Just so with the 
 class of minds which we are speaking of, and in greater matters. 
 Very early in life they come to a certain and considerable 
 acquaintance with the world ; they learn very quickly all they 
 can learn, and naturally they never, in any way, learn any more. 
 Mr. Pitt is, in this country, the type of the character. Mr. 
 Alison, in a well-known passage, makes it a matter of wonder 
 that he was fit to be a Chancellor of the Exchequer at twenty- 
 three, and it is a great wonder. But it is to be remembered 
 that he was no more fit at forty-three. As somebody paid, he 
 did not grow, he was cast. Experience taught him nothing. 
 
Shakespeai'e, 
 
 129 
 
 and lie did not believe that he had anything to learn. The 
 habit of mind in smaller degrees is not very rare, and might 
 be illustrated without end. Hazlitt tells a story of West, the 
 painter, that is in point : AVhen some one asked him if he 
 had ever been to Greece, he answered, ' No, I have read a 
 descriptive catalogue of the principal objects in that country, 
 and I believe I am as well conversant with them as if I had 
 visited it.' No doubt he was just as well conversant, and so 
 would be any doctrinaire. 
 
 But Shakespeare was not a man of this sort. If he walked 
 down a street, he knew what was in that street. His mind did 
 not form in early life a classified list of all the objects in the 
 universe, and learn no more about the universe ever after. 
 From a certain fine sensibility of nature, it is plain that he 
 took a keen interest not only in the general and coarse outlines 
 of objects, but in their minutest particulars and gentlest grada- 
 tions. You may open Shakespeare and find the clearest proofs 
 of this ; take the following : — 
 
 * When last the yoimg Orlando parted from you, 
 He left a promise to retui-n again 
 Within an hour ; and, pacing through the forest, 
 Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy, 
 Lo, what befel ! he threw his eye aside, 
 And, mark, what object did present itself! 
 Under an oak, whose boucjhs were moss'd with age, 
 And high top bald with dry antiquity, 
 A wretched ragged man, o'crgrown with hair. 
 Lay sleeping on his back : about his neck 
 A green and gilded snake had wreath'd itself. 
 Who with her head, nimble in threats, approach'd 
 The opening of his mouth ; but suddenly 
 Seeing Orlando, it unlink'd it-elf. 
 And with indented glides did slip away 
 Into a bush : under which bush's shade 
 A lioness, with udders all drawn dry. 
 Lay ciouching, head on ground, with cat-like watch, 
 TOL. I. K 
 
I30 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 When that the sleeping man should stir ; for 'tis 
 The royal disposition of that beast, 
 To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead : 
 This seen,' &c. &c. 
 
 Or the more celebrated description of the hunt : — 
 
 ' And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, 
 Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles. 
 How he outruns the wind, and with what care 
 He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles : 
 The many musits through the which he goes 
 Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes. 
 
 ' Sometimes he runs among a flock of sheep. 
 To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell. 
 And sometime where earth-delving conies keep. 
 To stop the loud pursuers in their yell; 
 And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer ; 
 Danger deviseth shifts ; wit waits on fear : 
 
 * For there his smell with others being mingled, 
 The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, 
 Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled. 
 With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out ; 
 Then do they spend their mouths : Echo replies, 
 As if another chase were in the skies. 
 
 * By this, poor Wat, far ofi\, upon a hill, 
 Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear, 
 To hearken if his foes pursue him still ; 
 Anon their loud alarums he doth hear ; 
 And now his grief may be compared well 
 To one soi-e sick that hears the passing bell. 
 
 * Then thou shalt see the dew-bedabbled wretch 
 Tm-n and return, indenting with the way ; 
 Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch, 
 Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay : 
 For misery is trodden on by many, 
 
 And being low, never relieved by any.* 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 It is absurd, by the way, to say we know nothing about the 
 man who wrote that ; we know that he had been after a hare. 
 It is idle to allege that mere imagination would tell him that a 
 hare is apt to run among a flock of sheep, or that its so doing 
 disconcerts the scent of hounds. But no single citation really 
 represents the power of the argument. Set descriptions may be 
 manufactured to order, and it does not follow that even the 
 most accurate or successful of them was really the result of a 
 thorough and habitual knowledge of the object. A man who 
 knows little of Nature may write one excellent delineation, as 
 a poor man may have one bright guinea. Eeal opulence con- 
 sists in having many. What truly indicates excellent know- 
 ledge, is the habit of constant, sudden, and almost unconscious 
 allusion, which implies familiarity, for it can arise from that 
 alone, — and this very species of incidental, casual, and per- 
 petual reference to ' the mighty world of eye and ear,' is the 
 particular characteristic of Shakespeare. 
 
 In this respect Shakespeare had the advantage of one whom, 
 in many points, he much resembled — Sir Walter Scott. For a 
 great poet, the organisation of the latter was very blunt ; he 
 had no sense of smell, little sense of taste, almost no ear for 
 music (he knew a few, perhaps three, Scotch tunes, which he 
 avowed that he had learnt in sixty years, by hard labour and 
 mental association), and not much turn for the minutiae of 
 nature in any way. The effect of this may be seen in some of 
 the best descriptive passages of his poetry, and we will not 
 deny that it does (although proceeding from a sensuous defect), 
 in a certain degree, add to their popularity. He deals with the 
 main outlines and great points of nature, never attends to any 
 others, and in this respect he suits the comprehension and 
 knowledge of many who know only those essential and con- 
 siderable outlines. Young people, especially, who like big 
 things, are taken with Scott, and bored by Wordsworth, who 
 knew too much. And after all, the two poets are in proper 
 harmony, each with his own scenery. Of all beautiful scenery 
 
 K 2 
 
T32 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 the Scotch is the roughest and barest, as the Englich is the 
 most complex and cultivated. What a difference is there 
 between the minute and finished delicacy of Rydal Water and 
 the rough simplicity of Loch Katrine. It is the beauty of 
 civilisation beside the beauty of barbarism. Scott has himself 
 pointed out the effect of this on arts and artists. 
 
 ' Or see yon weather-beaten hind, 
 Whose sluggish herds before him wind, 
 Whose tattered plaid and rugged cheek 
 His Northern clime and kindred speak ; 
 Through England's laughing meads he goes. 
 And England's wealth around him flows ; 
 Ask if it would content him well, 
 At ease in those gay plains to dwell, 
 Where hedgerows spread a verdant screen, 
 And spires and forests intervene. 
 And the neat cottage peeps between % 
 No, not for these would he exchange 
 His dark Lochaber's boundless range. 
 Not for fair Devon's meads forsake 
 Ben Nevis grey and Garry's lake.' 
 
 * Thus while I ape the measures wild 
 Of tales that charmed me yet a child. 
 Rude though they be, still, with the chime. 
 Return the thoughts of early time ; 
 And feelings roused in life's first day, 
 Glow in the line and prompt the lay. 
 Then rise those crags, that mountain tower, 
 Which charmed my fancy's wakening hour. 
 Though no broad river swept along. 
 To claim perchance heroic song ; 
 Though sighed no groves in summer gale. 
 To prompt of love a softer tale ; 
 Though scarce a puny streamlet's speed 
 Claimed homage from a shepherd's reed. 
 Yet was poetic impulse given 
 By the green hill and clear blue heaven. 
 It was a barren scene and wild. 
 Where naked cliffs were rudely piled, 
 
 i 
 
Shakespeare, 
 
 ^33 
 
 But ever and anon between, 
 Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green ; 
 And well the lonely infant knew 
 Recesses where the wallflower grew, 
 And honeysuckle loved to crawl 
 Up the low crag and ruined wall. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 From me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask 
 The classic poet's well-conned task? 
 Nay, Erskine, nay — On the wild hill 
 Let the wild heathbell flourish still ; 
 Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, 
 But freely let the woodbine twine, 
 And leave imtrimmed the eglantine. 
 Nay, my friend, nay — Since oft thy praise 
 Hath given fresh vigour to my lays. 
 Since oft thy judgment could refine 
 My flattened thought or cumbrous line. 
 Still kind, as is thy wont, attend, 
 And in the minstrel spare the friend. 
 Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale, 
 Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale.' 
 
 And this is wise, for there is beauty in the North as well as 
 in the South. Only it is to be remembered that the beauty of 
 the Trosachs is the result of but a few elements — say birch and 
 brushwood, rough hills and narrow dells, much heather and 
 many stones — while the beauty of England is one thing in one 
 district and one in another ; is here the combination of one set of 
 qualities, and there the harmony of opposite ones, and is every- 
 where made up of many details and delicate refinements ; all 
 which require an exquisite delicacy of perceptive organisation, a 
 seeing eye, a minutely hearing ear. Scott's is the strong admi- 
 ration of a rough mind ; Shakespeare's, the nice minuteness of a 
 susceptible one. 
 
 A perfectly poetic appreciation of nature contains two ele- 
 ments, — a knowledge of facts, and a sensibility to charms. 
 Everybody who may have to speak to some naturalists will be 
 
134 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 well aware how widely the two may be separated. He will have 
 sean that a man may study butterflies and forget that they are 
 beautiful, or be perfect in the ' Lunar theory ' without knowing 
 what most people mean by the moon. Grenerally such people 
 prefer the stupid parts of nature — worms and Cochin-China 
 fowls. But Shakespeare was not obtuse. The lines — 
 
 ' Daffodils 
 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
 Or Cytherea's breath/ 
 
 seem to show that he knew those feelings of youth, to which 
 beauty is more than a religion. 
 
 In his mode of delineating natural objects Shakespeare is 
 curiously opposed to Milton. The latter, who was still by 
 temperament, and a schoolmaster by trade, selects a beautiful 
 object, puts it straight out before him and his readers, and 
 accumulates upon it all the learned imagery of a thousand 
 years ; Shakespeare glances at it and says something of his own. 
 It is not our intention to say that, as a describer of the external 
 world, Milton is inferior ; in set description we rather think 
 that he is the better. We only wish to contrast the mode in 
 which the delineation is effected. The one is like an artist who 
 dashes off any number of picturesque sketches at any moment ; 
 the other like a man who has lived at Kome, has undergone a 
 thorough training, and by deliberate and conscious effort, after 
 a long study of the best masters, can produce a few great 
 pictures. Milton, accordingly, as has been often remarked, is 
 careful in the choice of his subjects ; he knows too well the 
 value of his labour to be very ready to squander it ; Shake- 
 speare, on the contrary, describes anything that comes to hand, 
 for he is prepared for it whatever it may be, and what he paints 
 he paints without effort. Compare any passage from Shake- 
 speare — for example, those quoted before — and the following 
 passage from Milton : — 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 135 
 
 * Southward through Eden went a river large, 
 Nor changed its course, but through the shaggy hill 
 Passed underneath ingulfed ; for God had thrown 
 That mountain as his garden mould, high raised 
 Upon the rapid current, which through veins 
 Of porous earth, with kindly thirst up-drawn 
 Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill 
 Watered the garden ; thence united fell 
 Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood. 
 Which from its darksome passage now appears : 
 And now divided into four main streams 
 Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm 
 And country, whereof here needs no account \ 
 But rather to tell how, — if art could tell, — 
 How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, 
 Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold. 
 With mazy error under pendant shades 
 Ran nectar, visiting each plant ; and fed 
 Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art 
 In beds and curious knots, but nature boon 
 Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, 
 Both where the morning sun first warmly smote 
 The open field, and where the unpierced shade 
 Imbrowned the noontide bowers. Thus was this place 
 A happy rural seat of various view ; 
 Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm ; 
 Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind. 
 Hung amiable (Hesperian fables true. 
 If true, here only), and of delicious taste : 
 Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks 
 Grazing the tender herb, were interposed ; 
 Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap 
 Of some irriguous valley spread her store ; 
 Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.* 
 
 Why, you could draw a map of it. It is not ' Nature boon, 
 but 'nice art in beds and curious knots;' it is exactly the old 
 (and excellent) style of artificial gardening, by which any place 
 can be turned into trim hedge-rows, and stiff borders, and com- 
 fortable shades ; but there are no straight lines in nature or 
 
136 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Shakespeare. Perhaps the contrast may be accounted for by 
 the way in which the two poets acquired their knowledge of 
 scenes and scenery. We think we demonstrated before that 
 Shakespeare was a sportsman, but if there be still a sceptic or a 
 dissentient, let him read the following remarks on dogs : — 
 
 My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
 So flawed, so sanded ; and their heads are hung 
 With ears that sweep away the morning dew. 
 Crook-kneed and dewlapped like Thessalian bulls ; 
 Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells, 
 Each under each. A cry more tunable 
 Was never holloa'd to nor cheered with horn 
 In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.' 
 
 ' Judge when you hear.' It is evident that the man who 
 wrote this was a judge of dogs, was an out-of-door sporting 
 man, full of natural sensibility, not defective in ' daintiness of 
 ear,' and above all things, apt to cast on Nature random, 
 sportive, half-boyish glances, which reveal so much, and 
 bequeath such abiding knowledge. Milton, on the contrary, 
 went out to see nature. He left a narrow cell, and the intense 
 study which was his ' portion in this life,' to take a slow, care- 
 ful, and reflective walk. In his treatise on education he has 
 given us his notion of the way in which young people should 
 be familiarised with natural objects. 'But,' he remarks, 'to 
 retinn to our institute ; besides these constant exercises at 
 home, there is another opportunity of gaining pleasure from 
 pleasure itself abroad ; in those vernal seasons of the year when 
 the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness 
 against nature, not to go out and see her riches and partake in 
 her rejoicing in heaven and earth. I should not therefore be a 
 pei-suader to them of studying much in these, after two or three 
 years, that they have well laid their grounds, but to ride out in 
 companies, with prudent and staid guides, to all quarters of the 
 land ; learning and observing all places of strength, all com- 
 modities of building and of soil, for towns and tillage, harbours 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 137 
 
 and ports of trade. Sometimes taking sea as far as our navy, 
 to learn there also what they can in the practical knowledge of 
 sailing and of sea-fight.' Fancy ' the prudent and staid guides.' 
 What a machinery for making pedants. Perhaps Shakespeare 
 would have known that the conversation would be in this sort : 
 — • I say, Shallow, that mare is going in the knees. She has 
 never been the same since you larked her over the fivebar, while 
 Moleyes was talking clay and agriculture. I do not hate Latin 
 so much, but I hate " argillaceous earth ; " and what use is that 
 to a fellow in the Gruards, / should like to know ? ' Shake- 
 speare had himself this sort of boyish buoyancy. He was not 
 * one of the staid guides.' We might further illustrate it. 
 Yet this would be tedious enough, and we prefer to go on and 
 show what w^e mean by an experiencing nature in relation to 
 men and women, just as we have striven to indicate what it is 
 in relation to horses and hares. 
 
 The reason why so few good books are written, is that so 
 few people that can write know anything In general an 
 author has always lived in a room, has read books, has culti- 
 vated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of 
 the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own 
 eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His 
 life is a vacuum. The mental habits of Eobert Southey, which 
 about a year ago were so extensively praised in the public 
 journals, is the type of literary existence, just as the praise 
 bestowed on it shows the admiration excited by it among 
 literary people. He wrote poetry (as if anybody could) before 
 breakfast ; he read during breakfast. He wrote history until 
 dinner ; he corrected proof sheets between dinner and tea ; he 
 wrote an essay for the ' Quarterly ' afterwards ; and after supper 
 by way of relaxation composed the ' Doctor ' — a lengthy and 
 elaborate jest. Now, what can anyone think of such a life — 
 except how clearly it shows that the habits best fitted for com- 
 municating information, formed with the best care, and daily 
 regulated by the best motives, are exactly the habits which are 
 
138 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 likely to afford a man the least information to communicate. 
 Southey had no events, no experiences. His wife kept house 
 and allowed him pocket-money, just as if he had been a Grerman 
 professor devoted to accents, tobacco, and the dates of Horace's 
 amours. And it is pitiable to think that so meritorious a life 
 was only made endurable by a painful delusion. He thought 
 that day by day, and hour by hour, he was accumulating stores 
 for the instruction and entertainment of a long posterity. His 
 epics were to be in the hands of all men, and his history of 
 Brazil the ' Herodotus of the South American Eepublics.' As 
 if his epics were not already dead, and as if the people who now 
 cheat at Valparaiso care a real who it was that cheated those 
 before them. Yet it was only by a conviction like this that an 
 industrious and caligraphic man (for such was Kobert Southey), 
 who might have earned money as a clerk, worked all his days 
 for half a clerk's wages, at occupation much duller and more 
 laborious. The critic in the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' lays down 
 that you should always say that the picture would have been 
 better if the painter had taken more pains ; but in the case of 
 the practised literary man, you should often enough say that 
 the writings would have been much better if the writer had 
 taken less pains. He says he has devoted his life to the sub- 
 ject — the reply is, ' Then you have taken the best way to pre- 
 vent your making anything of it.' Instead of reading studi- 
 ously what Burgersdicius and ^noesidemus said men were, you 
 should have gone out yourself, and seen (if you can see) what 
 they are. 
 
 After all, the original way of writing books may turn out to 
 be the best. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken 
 anything from books, since there were no books for him to 
 copy from ; he looked at things for himself. Anyhow the 
 modern system fails, for where are the amusing books from 
 voracious students and habitual writers ? Not that we mean ex- 
 actly to say that an author's hard reading is the cause of his 
 writing that which is hard to read. This would be near the 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 139 
 
 truth, but not quite the truth. The two are concomitant 
 effects of a certain defective nature. Slow men read well, but 
 write ill. The abstracted habit, the want of keen exterior 
 interests, the aloofness of mind from what is next it, all tend to 
 make a man feel an exciting curiosity and interest about 
 remote literary events, the toils of scholastic logicians, and the 
 petty feuds of Argos and Lacedsemon ; but they also tend to 
 make a man very unable to explain and elucidate those exploits 
 for the benefit of his fellows. What separates the author from 
 his readers, will make it proportionably difficult for him to ex- 
 plain himself to them. Secluded habits do not tend to elo- 
 quence; and the indifferent apathy which is so common in 
 studious persons is exceedingly unfavourable to the liveliness of 
 narration and illustration which is needed for excellence in even 
 the simpler sorts of writing. Moreover, in general, it will per- 
 haps be found, that persons devoted to mere literature commonly 
 become devoted to mere idleness. They wish to produce a 
 great work, but they find they cannot. Having relinquished 
 everything to devote themselves to this, they conclude on trial 
 that this is impossible. They wish to write, but nothing occurs 
 to them. Therefore they write nothing, and they do nothing. 
 As has been said, they have nothing to do. Their life has no 
 events, unless they are very poor. With any decent means of 
 subsistence, they have nothing to rouse them from an indolent 
 and musing dream. A merchant must meet his bills, or he is 
 civilly dead and uncivilly remembered. But a student may 
 know nothing of time and be too lazy to wind up his watch. In 
 the retired citizen's journal in Addison's Sjpectator^ we have the 
 type of this way of spending the time : — Mem. Morning 8 to 9, 
 ' Went into the parlour and tied on my shoe-buckles.' This is 
 the sort of life for which studious men commonly relinquish 
 the pursuits of business and the society of their fellows. 
 
 Yet all literary men are not tedious, neither are they all 
 slow. One great example even these most tedious times have 
 luckily given us, to show us what may be done by a really great 
 
140 
 
 SJiakespeare. 
 
 man even now, the same who before served as an illustration — 
 Sir Walter Scott. -In his lifetime people denied he was a poet, 
 but nobody said that he was not ' the best fellow ' in Scotland — 
 perhaps that was not much — or that he had not more wise 
 joviality, more living talk, more graphic humour, than any man 
 in Great Britain. ' Wherever we went,' said Mr. Wordsworth, 
 'we found his name acted as an o'pen sesame, and I believe 
 that in the character of the sheriff^s friends, we might have 
 counted on a hearty welcome under any roof in the border 
 country.' Never neglect to talk to people with whom you are 
 casually thrown, was his precept, and he exemplified the maxim 
 himself, ' I believe,' observes his biographer, ' that Scott has 
 somewhere expressed in print his satisfaction, that amid all the 
 changes of our manners, the ancient freedom of personal in- 
 tercourse may still be indulged between a master and an out- 
 of-door servant ; but in truth he kept by the old fashion, even 
 with domestic servants, to an extent which I have hardly ever 
 seen practised by any other gentleman. He conversed with his 
 coachman if he sat by him, as he often did, on the box — with 
 his footman, if he chanced to be in the rumble. Indeed, he did 
 not confine his humanity to his own people ; any steady-going 
 servant of a friend of his was soon considered as a sort of friend 
 too, and was sure to have a kind little colloquy to himself at 
 coming or going.' ' Sir Walter speaks to every man as if he 
 was his blood relation,' was the expressive comment of one of 
 these dependents. It was in this way that he acquired the 
 great knowledge of various kinds of men, which is so clear and 
 conspicuous in his writings ; nor could that knowledge have 
 been acquired on easier terms, or in any other way. No man 
 could describe the character of Dan die Dinmont, without 
 having been in Lidderdale. Whatever has been once in a book 
 may be put into a book again ; but an original character, taken 
 at first hand from the sheepwalks and from nature, must be 
 seen in order to be known. A man, to be able to describe — 
 indeed, to be able to know — various people in life, must be able 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 141 
 
 at sight to comprehend their essential features, to know how 
 they shade one into another, to see how they diversify the 
 common uniformity of civilised life. Nor does this involve 
 simply intellectual or even imaginative pre-requisites, still less 
 will it be facilitated by exquisite senses or subtle fancy. What 
 is wanted is, to be able to appreciate mere clay — which mere 
 mind never will. If you will describe the people, — nay, if you 
 will write for the people, you must be one of the people. You 
 must have led their life, and must wish to lead their life. 
 However strong in any poet may be the higher qualities of 
 abstract thought or conceiving fancy, unless he can actually 
 sympathise with those around him, he can never describe those 
 around him. Any attempt to produce a likeness of what is not 
 really liked by the person who is describing it, will end in the 
 creation of what may be correct, but is not living — of what 
 may be artistic, but is likewise artificial. 
 
 Perhaps this is the defect of the works of the greatest 
 dramatic genius of recent times — Goethe. His works are 
 too much in the nature of literary studies ; the mind is often 
 deeply impressed by them, but one doubts if the author was. 
 He saw them as he saw the houses of Weimar and the plants 
 in the act of metamorphosis. He had a clear perception of 
 their fixed condition and their successive transitions, but he did 
 not really (if we may so speak) comprehend their motive power. 
 So to say, he appreciated their life, but not their liveliness. 
 Niebuhr, as is well known, compared the most elaborate of 
 (jroethe's works — the novel of Wilhelm Meister — to a menagerie 
 of tame animals, meaning thereby, as we believe, to express 
 much the same distinction. He felt that there was a deficiency 
 in mere vigour and rude energy. We have a long train and no 
 engine — a great accumulation of excellent matter, arranged and 
 ordered with masterly skill, but not animated with over-buoyant 
 and unbounded play. And we trace this not to a defect in 
 imaginative power, a defect which it would be a simple absurdity 
 to impute to Goethe, but to the tone of his character and the 
 
142 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 habits of liis mind. He moved hither and thither through life, 
 but he was always a man apart. He mixed with unnumbered 
 kinds of men, with courts and academies, students and women, 
 camps and artists, but everywhere he was with them yet not of 
 them. In every scene he was there, and he made it clear that 
 he was there with a reserve and as a stranger. He went there 
 to exjperience. As a man of universal culture and well skilled 
 in the order and classification of human life, the fact of any 
 one class or order being beyond his reach or comprehension 
 seemed an absurdity, and it was an absurdity. He thought 
 that he was equal to moving in any description of society, and 
 he was equal to it; but then on that exact account he was 
 absorbed in none. There were none of surpassing and immea- 
 surably preponderating captivation. No scene and no subject 
 were to him what Scotland and Scotch nature were to Sir Walter 
 Scott. ' If I did not see the heather once a year, I should die,' 
 said the latter ; but Groethe would have lived without it, and it 
 would not have cost him much trouble. In every one of Scott's 
 novels there is ahvays the spirit of the old moss trooper — the 
 flavour of the ancient border; there is the intense sympathy 
 which enters into the most living moments of the most living 
 characters — the lively energy which becomes the energy of the 
 most vigorous persons delineated. Marmion was ' written ' 
 while he was galloping on horseback. It reads as if it were so. 
 
 Now it appears that Shakespeare not only had that various 
 commerce with, and experience of men, which was common 
 both to Groethe and to Scott, but also that he agrees with the 
 latter rather than with the former in the kind and species of 
 that experience. He was not merely with men, but of men ; he 
 was not a ' thing apart,' with a clear intuition of what was in 
 those around him : he had in his own nature the germs and 
 tendencies of the very elements that he described. He knew 
 what was in man, for he felt it in himself. Throughout all his 
 writings you see an amazing sympathy with common people, 
 rather an excessive tendency to dwell on the common features 
 of ordinary lives. You feel that common people could have 
 
Shakespeai'e. 
 
 143 
 
 been cut out of him, but not without liis feeling it ; for it would 
 have deprived him of a very favourite subject — of a portion of 
 his ideas to which he habitually recurred. 
 
 * Leon. What would you with me, honest neighbour ? 
 
 Dog. Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you, that 
 decerns you nearly. 
 
 Leon. Brief, I pray you ; for you see 'tis a busy time with me. 
 Dog. Marry, this it is, sir. 
 Yerg. Yes, in truth it is, sir. 
 Leon. What is it, my good friends % 
 
 Dog. Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the matter : an old 
 man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt, as, God help, I would desire 
 they were ; but, in faith, honest as the skiQ between his brows. 
 
 Yerg. Yes, I thank God, I am as honest as any man living, that 
 is an old man, and no honester than I. 
 
 Dog. Comparisons are odorous : — palahras, neighbour Verges. 
 
 Leon. Neighbours, you are tedious. 
 
 Dog. It pleases your worship to say so, but we are the poor duke's 
 officers ; but, truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a king, 
 I could find in my heart to bestow it all of your worship. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Leon. I would fain know what you have to say. 
 
 Yerg. Marry, sir, our watch to-night, excepting your worship's 
 presence, have ta'en a couple of as arrant knaves as any in ]\Iessina. 
 
 Dog. A good old man, sir; he will be talking; as they say. When 
 the age is hi, the wit is out ; God help us ! it is a world to see ! — Well 
 said, i'faith, neighbour Verges : — well, God's a good man ; an two men 
 ride of a horse, one must ride behind :- An honest soul, i'faith, sir ; 
 by my troth he is, as ever broke bread ; but God is to be worshipped : 
 All men are not alike ; alas, good neighbour ! 
 
 Leon. Indeed, neighbour, he comes too far short of you. 
 
 Dog. Gifts that God gives,' — &c. &c. 
 
 * Stafford. Ay, sh*. 
 
 Cade. By her he had two children at one birth. 
 Staff. That's false. 
 
 Cade. Ay, there's the question ; but, I say, 'tis true : 
 The elder of them, being put to nurse, 
 Was by a beggar-woman stol'n away : 
 And, ignorant of his birth and parentage, 
 
Shakespeai^i 
 
 Became a bricklayer, when he came to age ; 
 
 His son am I ; deny it, if you can. 
 Dick. Nay, 'tis too true ; therefore he shall be king. 
 Smith. Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the 
 bricks are alive at this day to testify it ; therefore, deny it not.* 
 
 Shakespeare was too wise not to know that for most of the 
 purposes of human life stupidity is a most valuable element. He 
 had nothing of the impatience which sharp logical narrow minds 
 habitually feel when they come across those who do not ap- 
 prehend their quick and precise deductions. No doubt he talked 
 to the stupid players, to the stupid door-keeper, to the property 
 man, who considers paste jewels ' very preferable, besides the 
 expense ' — talked with the stupid apprentices of stupid Fleet 
 Street, and had much pleasure in ascertaining what was their 
 notion of ' King Lear.' In his comprehensive mind it was enough 
 if every man hitched well into his own place in human life. If 
 every one were logical and literary, how would there be scavengers, 
 or watchmen, or caulkers, or coopers ? Narrow minds will be 
 subdued to what they ' work in.' The ' dyer's hand ' will not 
 more clearly carry off its tint, nor will what is moulded more 
 precisely indicate the confines of the mould. A patient sym- 
 pathy, a kindly fellow-feeling for the narrow intelligence neces- 
 sarily induced by narrow circumstances, — a narrowness which, 
 in some degrees, seems to be inevitable, and is perhaps more 
 serviceable than most things to the wise conduct of life — this, 
 though quick and half-bred minds may despise it, seems to be a 
 necessary constituent in the composition of manifold genius. 
 ' How shall the world be served?' asks the host in Chaucer. We 
 must have cart-horses as well as race-horses, draymen as well as 
 poets. It is no bad thing, after all, to be a slow man and to 
 have one idea a year. You don't make a figure, perhaps, in 
 argumentative society, which requires a quicker species of 
 thought, but is that the worse ? 
 
 * Hoi. Via, Goodman Dull ; thou hast spoken no word all this 
 while. 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 145 
 
 DuU, Nor understood none neither, sir. 
 Hoi. Allons, we will employ thee. 
 
 Dull. I'll make one in a dance or so, or I will play on the tabor 
 to the worthies, and let them dance the hay. 
 
 Hoi. Most dull, honest Dull, to our sport away.' 
 
 And such, we believe, was the notion of Shakespeare. 
 
 S. T. Coleridge has a nice criticism which bears on this 
 point. He observes that in the narrations of uneducated people 
 in Shakespeare, just as in real life, there is a want of pro- 
 spectiveness and a superfluous amount of regressiveness. People 
 of this sort are unable to look a long way in front of them, 
 and they wander from the right path. They get on too fast 
 with one half, and then the other hopelessly lags. They can 
 tell a story exactly as it is told to them (as an animal can go 
 step by step where it has been before), but they can't calculate 
 its bearings beforehand, or see how it is to be adapted to those 
 to whom they are speaking, nor do they know how much they 
 have thoroughly told and how much they have not. ' I went 
 up the street, then I went down the street ; no, first went down 
 and then — but you do not follow me; I go before you, sir.' 
 Thence arises the complex style usually adopted by persons not 
 used to narration. They tumble into a story and get on as 
 they can. This is scarcely the sort of thing which a man could 
 foresee. Of course a metaphysician can account for it, and 
 like Coleridge, assure you that if he had not observed it, he 
 could have predicted it in a moment ; but, nevertheless, it is 
 too refined a conclusion to be made out from known premises 
 by common reasoning. Doubtless there is some reason why 
 negroes have woolly hair (and if you look into a philosophical 
 treatise, you will find that the author could have made out that 
 it would be so, if he had not, by a mysterious misfortune, 
 known from infancy that it was the fact), — still one could 
 never have supposed it oneself. And in the same manner, 
 though the profounder critics may explain in a satisfactory and 
 refined manner, how the confused and undulating style of 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 narration is peculiarly incident to the mere multitude, yet it 
 is most likely that Shakespeare derived his acquaintance with 
 it from the fact, from actual hearing, and not from what may be 
 the surer, but is the slower process of metaphysical deduction. 
 The best passage to illustrate this is that in which the nurse 
 gives a statement of Juliet's age ; but it will not exactly suit 
 our pages. The following of Mrs. Quickly will suffice : — 
 
 * Tilly-fally, Sir John, never tell me ; your ancient swaggerer 
 «omesnot in my doors. I was before Master Tizzick, the Deputy, 
 the other day; and, as he said to me, — it was no longer ago than 
 Wednesday last, — Neighbour Quickly, says he ; — Master Dumb, our 
 minister, was by then; — Neighbour Quickly, says he, receive those 
 that are civil ; for, saith he, you are in an ill name : — now, he said 
 so, I can tell you whereupon ; for, says he, you are an honest woman, 
 and well thought on ; therefore take heed to what guests you receive : 
 Receive, says he, no swaggering companions. — There comes none 
 here ; — you would bless you to hear what he said : — no, I'll no 
 swaggerers.' 
 
 Now, it is quite impossible that this, any more than the 
 political reasoning on the parentage of Cade, which was cited 
 before, should have been written by one not habitually and 
 sympathisingly conversant with the talk of the illogical classes. 
 Shakespeare felt, if we may say so, the force of the bad reason- 
 ing. He did not, like a sharp logician, angrily detect a flaw, 
 and set it down as a fallacy of reference or a fallacy of 
 amphibology. This is not the English way, though Dr. 
 Whately's logic has been published so long (and, as he says 
 himself, must now be deemed to be irrefutable, since no one 
 has ever offered any refutation of it). Yet still people in this 
 country do not like to be committed to distinct premises. They 
 like a Chancellor of the Exchequer to say, ' It has during very 
 many years been maintained by the honourable member for 
 Montrose that two and two make four, and I am free to say, 
 that I think there is a great deal to be said in favour of that 
 opinion ; but, without committing her Majesty's Government 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 H7 
 
 to that proposition as an abstract sentiment, I will go so far 
 as to assume two and two are not sufficient to make five, which, 
 with the permission of the House, will be a sufficient basis for 
 all the operations which I propose to enter upon during the 
 present year.' We have no doubt Shakespeare reasoned in that 
 way himself. Like any other Englishman, when he had a clear 
 course before him, he rather liked to shuffle over little hitches 
 in the argument, and on that account he had a great sympathy 
 with those who did so too. He would never have interrupted 
 Mrs. Quickly; he saw that her mind was going to and fro over 
 the subject ; he saw that it was coming right, and this was 
 enough for him, and will be also enough of this topic for 
 our readers. 
 
 We think we have proved that Shakespeare had an enor- 
 mous specific acquaintance with the common people ; that this 
 can only be obtained by sympathy. It likewise has a further 
 condition. 
 
 In spiritedness, the style of Shakespeare is very like to that 
 of Scott. The description of a charge of cavalry in Scott reads, 
 as was said before, as if it was written on horseback. A play 
 by Shakespeare reads as if it were written in a playhouse. The 
 great critics assure you, that a theatrical audience must be kept 
 awake, but Shakespeare knew this of his own knowledge. 
 When you read him, you feel a sensation of motion, a convic- 
 tion that there is something ' up,' a notion that not only is 
 something being talked about, but also that something is being 
 done. We do not imagine that Shakespeare owed this quality 
 to his being a player, but rather that he became a player be- 
 cause he possessed this quality of mind. For after, and not- 
 withstanding everything which has, or -nay be said against the 
 theatrical profession, it certainly does require from those who 
 pursue it a certain quickness and liveliness of mind. Mimics 
 are commonly an elastic sort of persons, and it takes a little 
 levity of disposition to enact even the ' heavy fathers.' If a 
 boy joins a company of strolling players, you may be sure that 
 
 L 2 
 
148 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 he is not a ' good boy ; ' he may be a trifle foolish, or a thought 
 romantic, but certainly he is not slow. And this was in truth 
 the case with Shakespeare. They say, too, that in the begin- 
 ning he was a first-rate link-boy ; and the tradition is affecting, 
 though we fear it is not quite certain. Anyhow you feel about 
 Shakespeare that he could have been a link-boy. In the same 
 way you feel he may have been a player. You are sure at once 
 that he could not have followed any sedentary kind of life. But 
 wheresoever there was anything acted in earnest or in jest, by 
 way of mock representation or by way of serious reality, there 
 he found matter for his mind. If anybody could have any 
 doubt about the liveliness of Shakespeare, let them consider 
 the character of Falstaff. When a man has created that with- 
 out a capacity for laughter, then a blind man may succeed in 
 describing colours. Intense animal spirits are the single senti- 
 ment (if they be a sentiment) of the entire character. If most 
 men were to save up all the gaiety of their whole lives, it would 
 come about to the gaiety of one speech in Falstaff. A morose 
 man might have amassed many jokes, might have observed 
 many details of jovial society, might have conceived a Sir John, 
 marked by rotundity of body, but could hardly have imagined 
 what we call his rotundity of mind. Wjb mean that the animal 
 spirits of Falstaff give him an easy, vague, diffusive sagacity 
 which is peculiar to him. A morose man, lago, for example, 
 may know anything, and is apt to know a good deal ; but what 
 he knows is generally all in corners. He knows number 1, 
 number 2, number 3, and so on, but there is not anything con- 
 tinuous, or smooth, or fluent in his knowledge. Persons con- 
 versant with the works of Hazlitt will know in a minute what 
 we mean. Everything which he observed he seemed to observe 
 from a certain soreness of mind ; he looked at people because 
 they offended him ; he had the same vivid notion of them that 
 a man has of objects which grate on a wound in his body. But 
 there is nothing at all of this in Falstaff; on the contrary, 
 everything pleases him, and everything is food for a joke. 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 149 
 
 Cheerfulness and prosperity give an easy abounding sagacity of 
 mind which nothing else does give. Prosperous people bound 
 easily over all the surface of things which their lives present to 
 them ; very likely they keep to the surface ; there are things 
 beneath or above to which they may not penetrate or attain, 
 but what is on any part of the surface, that they know well. 
 ' Lift not the painted veil which those who live call life,' and 
 they do not lift it. What is sublime or awful above, what is 
 ' sightless and drear ' beneath, — these they may not dream of. 
 Nor is any one piece or corner of life so well impressed on them 
 as on minds less happily constituted. It is only people who 
 have had a tooth out, that really know the dentist's waiting- 
 room. Yet such people, for the time at least, know nothing 
 but that and their tooth. The easy and sympathising friend 
 who accompanies them knows everything ; hints gently at the 
 contents of the Times, and would cheer you with Lord Palmer- 
 ston's replies. So, on a greater scale, the man of painful 
 experience knows but too well what has hurt him, and where 
 and why ; but the happy have a vague and rounded view of the 
 round world, and such was the knowledge of Falstaff. 
 
 It is to be observed that these high spirits are not a mere 
 excrescence or superficial point in an experiencing nature ; on 
 the contrary, they seem to be essential, if not to its idea or 
 existence, at least to its exercise and employment. How are 
 you to know people without talking to them, but how are you 
 to talk to them without tiring yourself? A common man is 
 exhausted in half an hour; Scott or Shakespeare could have 
 gone on for a whole day. This is, perhaps, peculiarly necessary 
 for a painter of English life. The basis of our national 
 character seems to be a certain energetic humour, which may 
 be found in full vigour in old Chaucer's time, and in great per- 
 fection in at least one of the popular writers of this age, and 
 which is, perhaps, most easily described by the name of our 
 greatest painter — Hogarth. It is amusing to see how entirely 
 the efforts of critics and artists fail to naturalise in England 
 
Shakespeare, 
 
 any other sort of painting. Their efforts are fruitless ; for the 
 people painted are not English people : they may be Italians, 
 or Greeks, or Jews, but it is quite certain that they are 
 foreigners. We should not fancy that modern art ought to 
 resemble the Mediaeval, So long as artists attempt the same 
 class of paintings as Eaphael, they will not only be inferior to 
 Kaphael, but they will never please, as they might please, the 
 English people. What we want is what Hogarth gave us — a 
 representation of ourselves. It may be that we are wrong, that 
 we ought to prefer something of the old world, some scene in 
 Eome or Athens, some tale from Carmel or Jerusalem ; but, 
 after all, we do not. These places are, we think, abroad, and 
 had their greatness in former times ; we wish a copy of what 
 now exists, and of what we have seen. London we know, and 
 Manchester we know, but where are all these ? It is the same 
 with literature, Milton excepted, and even Milton can hardly 
 be called a popular writer : all great English writers describe 
 English people, and in describing them, they give, as they 
 must give, a large comic element ; and, speaking generally, 
 this is scarcely possible, except in the case of cheerful and 
 easy-living men. There is, no doubt, a biting satire, like that 
 of Swift, which has for its essence misanthropy. There is the 
 mockery of Voltaire, which is based on intellectual contempt ; 
 but this is not our English humour — it is not that of Shake- 
 speare and Falstaff ; ours is the humour of a man who laughs 
 when he speaks, of flowing enjoyment, of an experiencing nature. 
 
 Yet it would be a great error if we gave anything like an 
 exclusive prominence to this aspect of Shakespeare. Thus he 
 appeared to those around him — in some degree they knew that 
 he was a cheerful, and humorous, and happy man ; but of his 
 higher gift they knew less than we. A great painter of men 
 must (as has been said) have a. faculty of conversing, but he 
 must also have a capacity for solitude. There is much of man- 
 kind that a man can only learn from himself. Behind every 
 man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another 
 
Shakespeare, 
 
 which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We 
 see but one aspect of our neighbour, as we see but one side of 
 the moon ; in either case there is also a dark half, which is un- 
 known to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a 
 room to himself. And if we would study the internal lives of 
 others, it seems essential that we should begin with our own. 
 If we study this our datum^ if we attain to see and feel how 
 this influences and evolves itself in our social and (so to say) 
 public life, then it is possible that we may find in the lives of 
 others the same or analogous features ; and if we do not, then 
 at least we may suspect that those who want them are deficient 
 likewise in the secret agencies which we feel produce them in 
 ourselves. The metaphysicians assert, that people originally 
 picked up the idea of the existence of other people in this way. 
 It is orthodox doctrine that a baby says : ' I have a mouth, 
 mamma has a mouth : therefore I'm the same species as 
 mamma. I have a nose, papa has a nose, therefore papa is the 
 same genus as me.' But whether or not this ingenious idea 
 really does or does not represent the actual process by which 
 we originally obtain an acquaintance with the existence of 
 minds analogous to our own, it gives unquestionably the process 
 by which we obtain our notion of that part of those minds 
 which they never exhibit consciously to others, and which only 
 becomes predominant in secresy and solitude and to themselves. 
 Now, that Shakespeare has this insight into the musing life of 
 man, as well as into his social life, is easy to prove ; take, for 
 instance, the following passages : — 
 
 ' This battle fares like to the morning's war, 
 When dying clouds contend with growing light ; 
 What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails, 
 Can neither call it perfect day nor night. 
 Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea, 
 Fore'd by the tide to combat with the wind ; 
 Now sways it that way, like the self-same sea 
 Eorc'd to retire by fury of the wind : 
 Sometime, the flood prevails ; and then, the wind : 
 
152 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Now, one the better ; then, another best ; 
 
 Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast, 
 
 Yet neither conqueror, nor conquered ; 
 
 So is the equal poise of this fell war. 
 
 Here on this molehill will I sit me down. 
 
 To whom God will, there be the \dctory ! 
 
 For Margaret my queen, and Clifford too, 
 
 Have chid me from the battle ; swearing both 
 
 They prosper best of all when I am thence. 
 
 Would I were dead ! if God's good will were so ; 
 
 For what is in this world but grief and woe % 
 
 Oh God ! methinks it were a happy life. 
 
 To be no better than a homely swain : 
 
 To sit upon a hill, as I do now. 
 
 To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, 
 
 Thereby to see the minutes how they run : 
 
 How many make the hour full complete, 
 
 How many hours bring about the day, 
 
 How many days will finish up the year, 
 
 How many years a mortal man may live. 
 
 When this is known, then to divide the time : • 
 
 So many hours must I tend my flock ; 
 
 So many hours must I take my rest ; 
 
 So many hours must I contemplate ; 
 
 So many hours must I sport myself ; 
 
 So many days my ewes have been with young ; 
 
 So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean ; 
 
 So many years ere I shall shear the fleece ; 
 
 So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, 
 
 Pass'd over to the end they were created. 
 
 Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. 
 
 Ah, what a life were this ! how sweet ! how lovely I 
 
 Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade 
 
 To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, 
 
 Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy 
 
 To kings, that fear their subjects' treachery % 
 
 O yes, it doth \ a thousand-fold it doth. 
 
 And to conclude, — the shepherd's homely curds. 
 
 His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, 
 
 His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, 
 
 A.11 which secure and sweetly he enjoys, 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 153 
 
 Is far beyond a prince's delicates, 
 
 His viands sparkling in a golden cup, 
 
 His body couched in a curious bed, 
 
 When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him.* 
 
 ' A fool, a fool ! — I met a fool i' the forest, 
 A motley fool ! — a miserable world ; — 
 As I do live by food, I met a fool ; 
 Who laid him down and basked him in the sun, 
 And railed on lady Fortune in good terms. 
 In good set terms, — and yet a motley fool. 
 " Good-morrow, fool," quoth I : " No, sir," quoth he, 
 " Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune 
 And then he drew a dial from his poke, 
 And looking on it with lack-lustre eye. 
 Says, very wisely, " It is ten o'clock : 
 Thus may we see," quoth he, " how the world wags ; 
 Tis but an hour ago since it was nine ; 
 And after an hour more, 'twill be eleven ; 
 And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe. 
 And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot, 
 And thereby hangs a tale." When I did hear 
 The motley fool thus moral on the time. 
 My lungs began to crow like chanticleer, 
 That fools should be so deep-contemplative ; 
 And I did laugh, sans intermission, 
 An hour by his dial.' 
 
 No slight versatility of mind and pliancy of fancy could 
 pass at will from scenes such as these to the ward of East- 
 cheap and the society which heard the chimes at midnight. 
 One of the reasons of the rarity of great imaginative works is 
 that in very few cases is this capacity for musing solitude com- 
 bined with that of observing mankind. A certain constitutional 
 though latent melancholy is essential to such a nature. This is 
 the exceptional characteristic in Shakespeare. All through his 
 works you feel you are reading the popular author, the successful 
 man ; but through them all there is a certain tinge of musing 
 sadness pervading, and, as it were, softening their gaiety. Not 
 
154 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 a trace can be found of ' eating cares ' or narrow and mind-con- 
 tracting toil, but everywhere there is, in addition to shrewd 
 sagacity and buoyant wisdom, a refining element of chastening 
 sensibility, which prevents sagacity from being rough, and 
 shrewdness from becoming cold. He had an eye for either sort 
 of life:— 
 
 * Why, let the stricken deer go weep, 
 The hart ungalled play ; 
 For some must watch, and some must sleep, 
 Thus runs the world away.' 
 
 In another point also Shakespeare, as he was, must be care- 
 fully contrasted with the estimate that would be formed of him 
 from such delineations as that of Falstaff, and that was doubtless 
 frequently made by casual though only by casual frequenters 
 of the Mermaid. It has been said that the mind of Shakespeare 
 contained within it the mind of Scott ; it remains to be observed 
 that it contained also the mind of Keats. For, beside the deli- 
 neation of human life, and beside also the delineation of nature, 
 there remains also for the poet a third subject — the delineation 
 of fancies. Of course, these, be they what they may, are like 
 to, and were originally borrowed either from man or from nature 
 — from one or from both together. We know but two things in 
 the simple way of direct experience, and whatever else we know 
 must be in some mode or manner compacted out of them. Yet 
 ' books are a substantial world, both pure and good,' and so are 
 fancies too. In all countries men have devised to themselves a 
 whole series of half-divine creations — mythologies Grreek and 
 Roman, fairies, angels, beings who may be, for aught we know, 
 but with whom, in the meantime, we can attain to no conversa- 
 tion. The most known of these mythologies are the Grreek, and 
 what is, we suppose, the second epoch of the Grothic, the fairies; 
 and it so happens that Shakespeare has dealt with them both 
 and in a remarkable manner. We are not, indeed, of those 
 critics who profess simple and unqualified admiration for the 
 poem of * Venus and Adonis.' It seems intrinsically, as we 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 155 
 
 know it from external testimony to have been, a juvenile pro- 
 duction, written when Shakespeare's nature might be well 
 expected to be crude and unripened. Power is shown, and 
 power of a remarkable kind ; but it is not displayed in a manner 
 that will please or does please the mass of men. In spite of the 
 name of its authoi', the poem has never been popular — and 
 surely this is sufficient. Nevertheless, it is remarkable as a 
 literary exercise, and as a treatment of a singular, though un- 
 pleasant subject. The fanciful class of poems differ from others 
 in being laid, so far as their scene goes, in a perfectly unseen 
 world. The type of such productions is Keats's ' Endymion.' 
 We mean that it is the type, not as giving the abstract perfec- 
 tion of this sort of art, but because it shows and embodies both 
 its excellences and defects in a very marked and prominent 
 manner. In that poem there are no passions and no actions, 
 there is no art and no life ; but there is beauty, and that is 
 meant to be enough, and to a reader of one-and-twenty it 
 is enough and more. What are exploits or speeches? What 
 is Csesar or Coriolanus? What is a tragedy like Lear, or 
 a real view of human life in any kind whatever, to people who 
 do not know and do not care what human life is ? In early 
 youth it is, perhaps, not true that the passions, taken generally, 
 are particularly violent, or that the imagination is in any re- 
 markable degree powerful ; but it is certain that the fancy 
 (which though it be, in the last resort, but a weak stroke of that 
 same faculty, which, when it strikes hard, we call imagination, 
 may yet for this purpose be looked on as distinct) is particularly 
 wakeful, and that the gentler species of passions are more absurd 
 than they are afterwards. And the literature of this period of 
 human life runs naturally away from the real world ; away from 
 the less ideal portion of it, from stocks and stones, and aunts 
 and uncles, and rests on mere half-embodied sentiments, which 
 in the hands of great poets assume a kind of semi-personality, 
 and are, to the distinction between things and persons, 'as 
 moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.' The 'Sonnets' 
 
156 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 of Shakespeare belong exactly to the same school of poetry. 
 They are not the sort of verses to take any particular hold upon 
 the mind permanently and for ever, but at a certain period they 
 take too much. For a young man to read in the spring of the 
 year among green fields and in gentle air, they are the ideal. 
 As first of April poetry they are perfect. 
 
 The ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' is of another order. If 
 the question were to be decided by ' Venus and Adonis,' in spite 
 of the unmeasured panegyrics of many writers, we should be 
 obliged in equity to hold, that as a poet of mere fancy Shake- 
 speare was much inferior to the late Mr. Keats and even to 
 meaner men. Moreover, we should have been prepared with 
 some refined reasonings to show that it was unlikely that a poet 
 with so much hold on reality, in life and nature, both in solitude 
 and in society, should have also a similar command over un- 
 reality : should possess a command not only of flesh and blood, 
 but of the imaginary entities which the self-inworking fancy 
 brings forth — impalpable conceptions of mere mind : quoedam 
 * simulacra miris pallentia modis thin ideas, which come we 
 know not whence, and are given us we know not why. But, 
 unfortunately for this ingenious, if not profound suggestion, 
 Shakespeare in fact possessed the very faculty which it tends to 
 prove that he would not possess. He could paint Poins and 
 Falstaff, but he excelled also in fairy legends. He had such 
 
 * Seething brains ; 
 Such shaping fantasies as apprehend 
 More than cool reason ever comprehends.* 
 
 As, for example, the idea of Puck, or Queen Mab, of Ariel, or 
 such a passage as the following : — 
 
 * Fuck. How now, spirit ! whither wander you ? 
 Fai. Over hill, over dale. 
 
 Thorough bush, thorough briar, 
 Over park, over pale. 
 Thorough flood, thorough fire, 
 I do wander everywhere, 
 Swifter than the moones sphere ; 
 
Shanespeare. 
 
 157 
 
 And I serve the faiiy queen, 
 
 To dew her orbs upon the green : 
 
 The cowslips tall her pensioners be; 
 
 In their gold coats spots you see ; 
 
 Those be rubies, faiiy favours, 
 
 In those freckles live theii' savours : 
 I must go seek some dew-drops here, 
 And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 
 Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll be gone ; 
 Our queen and all our elves come here anon. 
 
 Puck. The king doth keep his revels here to-night \ 
 Take heed the queen come not within his sight. 
 For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, 
 Because that she, as her attendant, hath 
 A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king ; 
 She never had so sweet a changeling : 
 And jealous Oberon would have the child 
 Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild : 
 But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy. 
 Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy : 
 And now they never meet in grove, or green, 
 By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen. 
 But they do square ; that all their elves, for fear, 
 Creep into acorn-cups, and hide them there. 
 
 Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making quite, 
 Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite 
 Call'd Robin Good-fellow : are you not he 
 That fright the maidens of the villagery ; 
 Skim milk ; and sometimes labour in the quern. 
 And bootless make the breathless housewife churn ; 
 And sometimes make the drink to bear no barm ; 
 Mislead night- wanderers, laughing at their harm % 
 Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, 
 You do their work, and they shall have good luck : 
 Are not you he % 
 
 Puck. Thou speak'st aright ; 
 I am that merry wanderer of the night. 
 I jest to Oberon, and make him smile. 
 When I a fat and bean fed horse beguile, 
 Neighing in likeness of a filly foal : 
 And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl, 
 
158 
 
 Shakespeai^e. 
 
 In very likeness of a roasted crab ; 
 
 And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob, 
 
 And on her wither'd dew-lap poiir the ale. 
 
 The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale. 
 
 Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me ; 
 
 Then slip I from beneath, down topples she. 
 
 And tailor cries, and falls into a cough ; 
 
 And then the whole quire hold their hips, and lolTe ; 
 
 And waxen in their mirth, and neeze and swear 
 
 A merrier hour was never wasted there. — 
 
 But room. Fairy, here comes Oberon. 
 
 Fai. And here my mistress : — Would that he were gone ! ' 
 
 Probably he believed in these things. Why not ? Everybody 
 else believed in them then. They suit our climate. As the 
 Greek mythology suits the keen Attic sky, the fairies, indistinct 
 and half-defined, suit a land of mild mists and gentle airs. 
 They confuse the ' maidens of the villagery ;' they are the paga- 
 nism of the South of England. 
 
 Can it be made out what were Shakespeare's political views ? 
 We think it certainly can, and that without difficulty. From 
 the English historical plays, it distinctly appears that he ac- 
 cepted, like everybody then, the Constitution of his country. 
 His lot was not cast in an age of political controversy, nor of 
 reform. What was, was from of old. The Wars of the Eoses 
 had made it very evident how much room there was for the evils 
 incident to an hereditary monarchy, for instance, those of a con- 
 troverted succession, and the evils incident to an aristocracy, as 
 want of public spirit and audacious selfishness, to arise and 
 continue within the realm of England. Yet they had not re- 
 pelled, and had barely disconcerted our conservative ancestors. 
 They had not become Jacobins ; they did not concur — and 
 history, except in Shakespeare, hardly does justice to them — in 
 Jack Cade's notion that the laws should come out of his mouth, 
 or that the commonwealth was to be reformed by interlocutors 
 in this scene. 
 
Shakespea7^e. 
 
 159 
 
 ' Geo. I tell thee, Jack Cade the clothier means to dress the 
 Commonwealth, and turn it, and set a new nap on it. 
 
 John. So he had need, for 'tis threadbare. Well, I say it was never 
 a merry world in England since gentlemen came up. 
 
 Geo. O miserable age ! Virtue is not regarded in handycrafts- 
 men. 
 
 John. The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons. 
 
 Geo. Nay more : the king's council are no good workmen. 
 
 John. True ; and yet it is said, Labour in thy vocation ; which is 
 as much as to say, as let the magistrates be labouring men, and there- 
 fore should we be magisti-ates. 
 
 Geo. Thou hast hit it, for there is no better sign of a brave mind 
 than a hard hand. 
 
 John, I see them ! I see them ! ' 
 
 The English people did see them, and know them, and 
 therefore have rejected them. An audience which, bona jide^ 
 entered into the merit of this scene, would never believe in 
 everybody's suffrage. They would know that there is such a 
 thing as nonsense, and when a man has once attained to that 
 deep conception, you may be sm-e of him ever after. And 
 though it would be absurd to say that Shakespeare originated 
 this idea, or that the disbelief in simple democracy is owing to 
 his teaching or suggestions, yet it may, nevertheless, be truly 
 said, that he shared in the peculiar knowledge of men — and 
 also possessed the peculiar constitution of mind — which engender 
 this effect. The author of Coriolanus never believed in a mob, 
 and did something towards preventing anybody else from doing 
 so. But this political idea was not exactly the strongest in 
 Shakespeare's mind. We think he had two other stronger, or as 
 strong. First, the feeling of loyalty to the ancient polity of this 
 country — not because it was good, but because it existed. In 
 his time, people no more thought of the origin of the monarchy 
 than they did of the origin of the Mendip Hills. The one had 
 always been there, and so had the other. God (such was the 
 common notion) had made both, and one as much as the other. 
 Everywhere, in that age, the common modes of political speech 
 
i6o 
 
 Shakespeare, 
 
 assumed the existence of certain utterly national institutions, 
 and would have been worthless and nonsensical except on that 
 assumption. This national habit appears as it ought to appear 
 in our national dramatist. A great divine tells us that the 
 Thirty-nine Articles are ' forms of thought ; ' inevitable condi- 
 tions of the religious understanding : in politics, ' kings, lords, 
 and commons ' are, no doubt, ' forms of thought,' to the great 
 majority of Englishmen ; in these, they live, and beyond these, 
 they never move. You can't reason on the removal (such is the 
 notion) of the English Channel, nor St. George's Channel, nor 
 can you of the English Constitution in like manner. It is to 
 most of us, and to the happiest of us, a thing immutable, and 
 such, no doubt, it was to Shakespeare, which, if any one would 
 have proved, let him refer at random to any page of the his- 
 torical English plays. 
 
 The second peculiar tenet which we ascribe to his political 
 creed, is a disbelief in the middle classes. We fear he had no 
 opinion of traders. In this age, we know, it is held that the 
 keeping of a shop is equivalent to a political education. Occa- 
 sionally, in country villages, where the trader sells everything, 
 he is thought to know nothing, and has no vote ; but in a town 
 where he is a householder (as, indeed, he is in the country), and 
 sells only one thing — there we assume that he knows everything. 
 And this assumption is in the opinion of some observers con- 
 firmed by the fact. Sir Walter Scott used to relate, that when, 
 after a trip to London, he returned to Tweedside, he always 
 found the people in that district knew more of politics than the 
 Cabinet. And so it is with the mercantile community in 
 modem times. If you are a Chancellor of the Exchequer, it is 
 possible that you may be acquainted with finance ; but if you 
 sell figs it is certain that you will. Now we nowhere find this 
 laid down in Shakespeare. On the contrary, you will generally 
 find that when a ' citizen ' is mentioned, he generally does or 
 says something absurd. Shakespeare had a clear perception 
 that it is possible to bribe a class as well as an individual, and 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 i6i 
 
 that personal obscuiity is but an insecure guarantee for political 
 disinterestedness. 
 
 * Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, 
 His private arbours and new-planted orchards 
 On this side Tiber ; he hath left them you. 
 And to your heirs for ever : common pleasures, 
 To walk abroad and recreate yourselves. 
 Here was a Csesar ! when comes such another!* 
 
 He everywhere speaks in praise of a tempered and ordered and 
 qualified polity, in which the pecuniary classes have a certain 
 influence, but no more, and shows in every page a keen sen- 
 sibility to the large views, and high-souled energies, the gentle 
 refinements and disinterested desires in which those classes are 
 likely to be especially deficient. He is particularly the poet of 
 personal nobility, though, throughout his writings, there is a 
 sense of freedom, just as Milton is the poet of freedom, though 
 with an underlying reference to personal nobility ; indeed, we 
 might well expect our two poets to combine the appreciation of 
 a rude and generous liberty with that of a delicate and refined 
 nobleness, since it is the union of these two elements that cha- 
 racterises our society and their experience. 
 
 There are two things — good-tempered sense and ill-tem- 
 pered sense. In our remarks on the character of Falstaff, we 
 hope we have made it very clear that Shakespeare had the 
 former ; we think it nearly as certain that he possessed the 
 latter also. An instance of this might be taken from that con- 
 tempt for the perspicacity of the bourgeoisie which we have 
 just been mentioning. It is within the limits of what may be 
 called malevolent sense, to take extreme and habitual pleasure 
 in remarking the foolish opinions, the narrow notions, and 
 fallacious deductions which seem to cling to the pompous and 
 prosperous man of business. Ask him his opinion of the cur- 
 rency question, and he puts ' bills ' and ' bullion ' together in a 
 sentence, and he does not seem to care what he puts between 
 them. But a more proper instance of (what has an odd sound), 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
l62 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 the malevolence of Shakespeare is to be found in the play of 
 ' Measure for Measure.' We agree with Hazlitt, that this play 
 ^eenas to be written, perhaps more than any other, con amore^ 
 and with a relish ; and this seems to be the reason why, notwith- 
 standing the unpleasant nature of its plot, and the absence of 
 any very attractive character, it is yet one of the plays which 
 take hold on the mind most easily and most powerfully. Now 
 the entire character of Angelo, which is the expressive feature 
 of the piece, is nothing but a successful embodiment of the 
 pleasure, the malevolent pleasure, which a warm-blooded and 
 expansive man takes in watching the rare, the dangerous and 
 inanimate excesses of the constrained and cold-blooded. One 
 seems to see Shakespeare, with his bright eyes and his large lips 
 and buoyant face, watching with a pleasant excitement the 
 excesses of his thin-lipped and calculating creation, as though 
 they were the excesses of a real person. It is the complete 
 picture of a natural hypocrite, who does not consciously dis- 
 guise strong impulses, but whose very passions seem of their 
 own accord to have disguised themselves and retreated into the 
 recesses of the character, yet only to recur even more danger- 
 ously when their proper period is expired, when the will is 
 cheated into security by their absence, and the world (and, it 
 may be, the 'judicious person ' himself) is impressed with a 
 sure reliance in his chilling and remarkable rectitude. 
 
 It has, we believe, been doubted whether Shakespeare was 
 a man much conversant with the intimate society of women. 
 Of course no one denies that he possessed a great knowledge 
 of them — a capital acquaintance with their excellences, faults, 
 and foibles ; but it has been thought that this was the result 
 rather of imagination than of society, of creative fancy rather 
 than of perceptive experience. Now that Shakespeare pos- 
 sessed, among oiher singular qualities, a remarkable imagina- 
 tive knowledge of women, is quite certain, for he was acquainted 
 with the soliloquies of women. A woman w^e suppose, like a 
 man, must be alone, in order to speak a soliloquy. After the 
 
Shakespeare, 
 
 greatest possible intimacy and experience, it must still be 
 imagination, or fancy at least, which tells any man what a 
 woman thinks of herself and to herself. There will still — get 
 as near the limits of confidence or observation as you can — be 
 a space which must be filled up from other means. Men can 
 only divine the truth — reserve, indeed, is a part of its charm. 
 Seeing, therefore, that Shakespeare had done what necessarily 
 and certainly must be done without experience, we were in 
 some doubt whether he might not have dispensed with it alto- 
 gether. A grave reviewer cannot know these things. Y/e 
 thought indeed of reasoning that since the delineations of 
 women in Shakespeare were admitted to be first-rate, it should 
 follow, — at least there was a fair presumption, — that no means 
 or aid had been wanting to their production, and that 
 consequently we ought, in the absence of distinct evidence, to 
 assume that personal intimacy as well as solitary imagination had 
 been concerned in their production. And we meant to cite the 
 ' questions about Octavia,' which Lord Byron, who thought he 
 had the means of knowing, declared to be * women all over.' 
 
 But all doubt was removed and all conjecture set to rest by 
 the coming in of an ably-dressed friend from the external world, 
 who mentioned that the language of Shakespeare's women was 
 essentially female language ; that there were certain points 
 and peculiarities in the English of cultivated English women, 
 which made it a language of itself, which must be heard 
 familiarly in order to be known. And he added, ' except a 
 greater use of words of Latin derivation, as was natural in an 
 age when ladies received a learned education, a few words not 
 now proper, a few conceits that were the fashion of the time, 
 and there is the very same English in the women's speeches in 
 Shakespeare.' He quoted — 
 
 * Think not I love him, though I ask for him ; 
 'Tis but a peevish boy : — yet he talks well ; — 
 But what care I for words % yet words do well, 
 When he that speaks them pleases those that hear. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 Shakespeare, 
 
 It is a pretty yontli : — not very pretty : — 
 
 But, sure, he's proud ; and yet his pride becomes him ; 
 
 He'll make a proper man : The best thing in him 
 
 Is his complexion ; and faster than his tongue 
 
 Did make offence, his eye did heal it up. 
 
 He is not tall ; yet for his years he's tall : 
 
 His leg is but so so : and yet 'tis well. 
 
 There was a pretty redness in his lip ; 
 
 A little riper and more lusty red 
 
 Than that mix'd in his cheek ; 'twas just the difference 
 
 Betwixt the constant red, and mingled damask. 
 
 There be some women, Silvius, had they mark'd him 
 
 In parcels as I did, would have gone near 
 
 To fall in love with him : but, for my part, 
 
 I love him not, nor hate him not ; and yet 
 
 I have more cause to hate him than to love him : 
 
 For what had he to do to chide at me % 
 
 He said, my eyes were black, and my hair black, 
 
 And, now I am remember'd, scorn'd at me : 
 
 I marvel, why I answer'd not again : 
 
 But that's all one ; ' 
 
 and the passage of Perdita's cited before about the daffodils 
 that — 
 
 Hake 
 
 The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
 Or Cytherea's breath ; ' 
 
 and said that these were conclusive. But we have not, our- 
 selves, heard young ladies converse in that manner. 
 
 Perhaps it is in his power of delineating women, that 
 Shakespeare contrasts most strikingly with the greatest master 
 of the art of dialogue in antiquity — we mean Plato. It will, 
 no doubt, be said that the delineation of women did not fall 
 within Plato's plan ; that men's life was in that age so separate 
 and predominant that it could be delineated by itself and 
 apart ; and no doubt these remarks are very true. But what 
 led Plato to form that plan ? What led him to select that 
 
Shakespeare, 
 
 i65 
 
 peculiar argumentative aspect of life, in which the masculine 
 element is in so high a degree superior ? We believe that he 
 did it because he felt that he could paint that kind of scene 
 much better than he could paint any other. If a person will 
 consider the sort of conversation that was held in the cool 
 summer morning, when Socrates was knocked up early to talk 
 definitions and philosophy with Protagoras, he will feel, not only 
 that women would fancy such dialogues to be certainly stupid, 
 and very possibly to be without meaning, but also that the side of 
 character which is there presented is one from which not only 
 the feminine but even the epicene element is nearly if not 
 perfectly excluded. It is the intellect surveying and delineatiog 
 intellectual characteristics. We have a dialogue of thinking 
 faculties ; the character of every man is delineated by showing 
 us, not his mode of action or feeling, but his mode of thinking, 
 alone and by itself. The pure mind, purged of all passion and 
 affection, strives to view and describe others in like manner ; 
 and the singularity is, that the likenesses so taken are so good, 
 ■ — that the accurate copying of the merely intellectual effects 
 and indications of character gives so true and so firm an im- 
 pression of the whole character, — that a daguerreotype of the 
 mind should almost seem to be a delineation of the life. But 
 though in the hand of a consummate artist, such a way of 
 representation may in some sense succeed in the case of men, it 
 would certainly seem sure to fail in the case of women. The 
 mere intellect of a woman is a mere nothing. It originates 
 nothing, it transmits nothing, it retains nothing ; it has little 
 life of its own, and therefore it can hardly be expected to attain 
 any vigoiu-. Of the lofty Platonic world of the ideas, which the 
 soul in the old doctrine was to arrive at by pure and continuous 
 reasoning, women were never expected to know anything. Plato 
 (though Mr. Grote denies that he was a practical man) was 
 much too practical for that ; he reserved his teaching for people 
 whose belief was regulated and induced in some measure by 
 abstract investigations ; who had an interest in the pure and (as 
 
Shakespeare, 
 
 it were) geometrical truth itself; who had an intellectual cha- 
 racter (apart from and accessory to their other character) 
 capable of being viewed as a large and substantial existence, 
 Shakespeare's being, like a woman's, worked as a whole. He was 
 capable of intellectual abstractedness, but commonly he was 
 touched with the sense of earth. One thinks of him as firmly 
 set on our coarse world of common clay, but from it he could 
 paint the moving essence of thoughtful feeling — which is the 
 best refinement of the best women. Imogen or Juliet would 
 have thought little of the conversation of Grorgias. 
 
 On few subjects has more nonsense been written than on the 
 learning of Shakespeare. In former times, the established tenet 
 was, that he was acquainted with the entire range of the Grreek 
 and Latin classics, and familiarly resorted to Sophocles and 
 ^schylus as guides and models. This creed reposed not so 
 much on any painful or elaborate criticism of Shakespeare's 
 plays, as on one of the a 'priori assumptions permitted to the 
 indolence of the wise old world. It was then considered clear, 
 by all critics, that no one could write good English who could 
 not also write bad Latin. Questioning scepticism has rejected 
 this axiom, and refuted with contemptuous facility the slight 
 attempt which had been made to verify this case of it from the 
 evidence of the plays themselves. But the new school, not 
 content with showing that Shakespeare was no formed or 
 elaborate scholar, propounded the idea that he was quite igno- 
 rant, just as Mr. Croker ' demonstrates ' that Napoleon Bonaparte 
 could scarcely write or read. The answer is, that Shakespeare 
 wrote his plays, and that those plays show not only a very 
 powerful, but also a very cultivated mind. A hard student 
 Shakespeare was not, yet he was a happy and pleased reader of 
 interesting books. He was a natural reader ; when a book was 
 dull he put it down, when it looked fascinating he took it 
 up, and the consequence is, that he remembered and mastered 
 what he read. Lively books, read with lively interest, leave 
 strong and living recollections ; the instructors, no doubt, say 
 
Shakespeare* 
 
 167 
 
 that they ought not to do so, and inculcate the necessity of 
 dry reading. Yet the good sense of a busy public has practi- 
 cally discovered that what is read easily is recollected easily, and 
 what is read with difficulty is remembered with more. It is 
 certain that Shakespeare read the novels of his time, for he has 
 founded on them the stories of his plays ; he read Plutarch, for 
 his words still live in the dialogue of the ' proud Eoman ' plays ; 
 and it is remarkable that Montaigne is the only philosopher that 
 Shakespeare can be proved to have read, because he deals more 
 than any other philosopher with the first impressions of things 
 which exist. On the other hand, it may be doubted if Shake- 
 speare would have perused his commentators. Certainly, he 
 would have never read a page of this review, and we go so far as 
 to doubt whether he would have been pleased with the admirable 
 discourses of M. Guizot, which we ourselves, though ardent 
 admirers of his style and ideas, still find it a little difficult to 
 read — and what would he have thought of the following specu- 
 lations of an anonymous individual, whose notes have been 
 recently published in a fine octavo by Mr. Collier, and, accord- 
 ing to the periodical essayists, ' contribute valuable suggestions 
 to the illustration of the immortal bard ' ? 
 
 * The Two Gentlemen of Yerona. 
 *AcT I. Scene I. 
 
 *P. 92. The reading of the subsequent line his hitherto been 
 
 " 'Tis true ; for you are over boots in love ; " 
 
 but the manuscript corrector of the Folio, 1632, has changed it to 
 
 " 'Tis true ; hut you are over boots in love," 
 
 which seems more consistent with the course of the dialogue ; for 
 Proteus, remarking that Leander had been more than over shoes 
 in love," with Hero, Valentine answers, that Proteus was even more 
 deeply in love than Leander. Proteus observes of the fable of Hero 
 and Leander — 
 
 " That's a deep story of a deeper love. 
 For he was more than over shoes in love." 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 Valentine retorts — 
 
 " 'Tis true ; hut you are over boots in love." 
 
 For instead of hut was perhaps caught by the compositor from the 
 preceding line.' 
 
 It is difficult to fancy Shakespeare perusing a volume of 
 such annotations, though we allow that we admire them our- 
 selves. As to the controversy on his school learning, we have 
 only to say, that though the alleged imitations of the Greek 
 tragedians are mere nonsense, yet there is clear evidence that 
 Shakespeare received the ordinary grammar school education 
 of his time, and that he had derived from the pain and suffer- 
 ing of several years, not exactly an acquaintance with Grreek or 
 Latin, but, like Eton boys, a firm conviction that there are such 
 languages. 
 
 Another controversy has been raised as to whether Shake- 
 speare was religious. In the old editions it is commonly enough 
 laid down that, when writing his plays, he had no desire to fill 
 the Griobe Theatre, but that his intentions were of the following 
 description. ' In this play,' Cymbeline, ' Shakespeare has 
 strongly depicted the frailties of our nature, and the effect of 
 vicious passions on the human mind. In the fate of the Queen 
 we behold the adept in perfidy justly sacrificed by the arts she 
 had, with unnatural ambition, prepared for others ; and in 
 reviewing her death and that of Cloten, we may easily call to 
 mind the words of Scripture,' &c. And of King Lear it is 
 observed with great confidence, that Shakespeare, ' no doubt ^ 
 intended to mark particularly the afflicting character of chil- 
 dren's ingratitude to their parents, and the conduct of Goneril 
 and Eegan to each other ; especially in the former's poisoning 
 the latter, and laying hands on herself, we are taught that those 
 who want gratitude towards their parents (who gave them their 
 being, fed them, nurtured them to man's estate) will not 
 scruple to commit more barbarous crimes, and easily to forget 
 that, by destroying their body, they destroy their soul also.' 
 
Shakespeare. 169 
 
 And Dr. Ulrici, a very learned and illegible writer, has dis- 
 covered that in every one of his plays Shakespeare had in view 
 the inculcation of the peculiar sentiments and doctrines of the 
 Christian religion, and considers the 'Midsummer Night's 
 Dream 'to be a specimen of the lay or amateur sermon. This 
 is what Dr. Ulrici thinks of Shakespeare ; but what would 
 Shakespeare have thought of Dr. Ulrici? We believe that 
 ' Fm, goodman Dull,' is nearly the remark which the learned 
 professor would have received from the poet to whom his very 
 careful treatise is devoted. And yet, without prying into the 
 Teutonic mysteries, a gentleman of missionary aptitudes might 
 be tempted to remark that in many points Shakespeare is 
 qualified to administer a rebuke to people of the prevalent re- 
 ligion. Meeting a certain religionist is like striking the corner 
 of a wall. He is possessed of a firm and rigid persuasion that 
 you must leave off this and that, stop, cry, be anxious, be ad- 
 vised, and, above all things, refrain from doing what you like, 
 for nothing is so bad for any one as that. And in quite another 
 quarter of the religious hemisphere, we occasionally encounter 
 gentlemen who have most likely studied at the feet of Dr. 
 Ulrici, or at least of an equivalent Gramaliel, and who, when we, 
 or such as we, speaking the language of mortality, remark of a 
 pleasing friend, ' Nice fellow, so and so ! Grood fellow as ever 
 lived ! ' reply sternly, upon an unsuspecting reviewer, with — 
 ' Sir, is he an earnest man ? ' To which, in some cases, we are 
 unable to return a sufficient answer. Yet Shakespeare, differ- 
 ing, in that respect at least, from the disciples of Carlyle, had, 
 we suspect, an objection to grim people, and we fear would have 
 liked the society of Mercutio better than that of a dreary 
 divine, and preferred Ophelia or ' that Juliet ' to a female 
 philanthropist of sinewy aspect. And, seriously, if this world 
 is not all evil, he who has understood and painted it best must 
 probably have some good. If the underlying and almighty 
 essence of this world be good, then it is likely that the writer 
 who most deeply approached to that essence will be himself 
 
170 
 
 Shakespeare, 
 
 good. There is a religion of week-days as well as of Sundays, 
 of ' cakes and ale ' as well as of pews and altar cloths. This 
 England lay before Shakespeare as it lies before us all, with its 
 green fields, and its long hedgerows, and its many trees, and its 
 great towns, and its endless hamlets, and its motley society, 
 and its long history, and its bold exploits, and its gathering 
 power, and he saw that they were good. To him, perhaps, more 
 than to any one else, has it been given to see that they were a 
 great unity, a great religious object ; that if you could only 
 descend to the inner life, to the deep things, to the secret 
 principles of its noble vigour, to the essence of character, to 
 what we know of Hamlet and seem to fancy of Ophelia, we 
 might, so far as we are capable of so doing, understand the 
 nature which Grod has made. Let us, then, think of him not 
 as a teacher of dry dogmas, or a sayer of hard sayings, but as 
 
 * A priest to us all, 
 Of the wonder and bloom of the world ' — 
 
 a teacher of the hearts of men and women ; one from whom 
 may be learned something of that inmost principle that ever 
 modulates 
 
 * With murmurs "bf the air, 
 And motions of the forests and the sea, 
 And voice of living beings, and woven hymns 
 Of night and day and the deep heart of man.' 
 
 "We must pause, lest our readers reject us, as the Bishop 
 of Durham the poor curate, because he was ' mystical and con- 
 fused.' 
 
 Yet it must be allowed that Shakespeare was worldly, and 
 the proof of it is, that he succeeded in the world. Possibly 
 this is the point on which we are most richly indebted to tradi- 
 tion. We see generally indeed in Shakespeare's works the 
 popular author, the successful dramatist ; there is a life and 
 play in his writings rarely to be found, except in those who 
 have had habitual good luck, and who, by the tact of experience. 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 171 
 
 feel the minds of their readers at every word, like a good rider 
 feels the mouth of his horse. But it would have been difficult 
 quite to make out whether the profits so accruing had been 
 profitably invested — whether the genius to create such illusions 
 was accompanied with the care and judgment necessary to put 
 out their proceeds properly in actual life. We could only have 
 said that there was a general impression of entire calmness 
 and equability in his principal works, rarely to be found where 
 there is much pain, which usually makes gaps in the work and 
 dislocates the balance of the mind. But happily here, and here 
 almost alone, we are on sure historical ground. The reverential 
 nature of Englishmen has carefully preserved what they thought 
 the great excellence of their poet — that he made a fortune.^ 
 It is certain that Shakespeare was proprietor of the Gflobe 
 Theatre — that he made money there, and invested the same 
 in land at Stratford-on-Avon, and probably no circumstance 
 in his life ever gave him so much pleasure. It was a great 
 thing that he, the son of the wool-comber, the poacher, the 
 good-for-nothing, the vagabond (for so we fear the phrase went 
 in Shakespeare's youth), should return upon the old scene a sub- 
 stantial man, a person of capital, a freeholder, a gentleman to 
 be respected, and over whom even a burgess could not affect 
 the least superiority. The great pleasure in life is doing what 
 people say you cannot do. Why did Mr. Disraeli take the 
 duties of the Exchequer with so much relish ? Because people 
 said he was a novelist, an ad captandum man, and — monstrum 
 hoTvendum ! — a Jew, that could not add up. No doubt it pleased 
 his inmost soul to do the work of the red-tape people better 
 
 * The only antiquarian thing which can be fairly called an anecdote of 
 Shakespeare is, that Mrs. Alleyne, a shrewd woman in those times, and 
 married to Mr. Alleyne, the founder of Dulwich Hospital, was one day, in the 
 absence of her husband, applied to on some matter by a player who gave a 
 reference to Mr. Hemmings (the ' notorious ' Mr. Hemmings, the commenta- 
 tors say) and to Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe, and that the latter, when re- 
 ferred to, said, ' Yes, certainly, he knew him, and he was a rascal and good- 
 for-nothing.' The proper speech of a substantial man, such as it is worth 
 while to give a reference to. 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 than those who could do nothing else. And so with Shake- 
 speare : it pleased him to be respected by those whom he had 
 respected with boyish reverence, but who had rejected the ima- 
 ginative man — on their own ground and in their own subject, 
 by the only title which they would regard — in a word, as a 
 moneyed man. We seem to see him eying the burgesses with 
 good-humoured fellowship and genial (though suppressed and 
 half-unconscious) contempt, drawing out their old stories, and 
 acquiescing in their foolish notions, with everything in his 
 head and easy sayings upon his tongue, — a full mind and a deep 
 dark eye, that played upon an easy scene — now in fanciful soli- 
 tude, now in cheerful society ; now occupied with deep thoughts, 
 now, and equally so, with trivial recreations, forgetting the dra- 
 matist in the man of substance, and the poet in the happy com- 
 panion ; beloved and even respected, with a hope for every one 
 and a smile for all. 
 
173 
 
 JOHN MILTON.^ 
 (1859.) 
 
 The ' Life of Milton,' by Professor Masson, is a difficulty for the 
 critics. It is very laborious, very learned, and in the main, we 
 believe, very accurate. It is exceedingly long, — there are 780 
 pages in this volume, and there are to be two volumes more : 
 it touches on very many subjects, and each of these has been 
 investigated to the very best of the author's ability. No one 
 can wish to speak with censure of a book on which so much 
 genuine labour has been expended ; and yet we are bound, as 
 true critics, to say that we think it has been composed upon a 
 principle that is utterly erroneous. In justice to ourselves we 
 must explain our meaning. 
 
 There are two methods on which biography may consistently 
 be written. The first of these is what we may call the ex- 
 haustive method. Every fact which is known about the hero 
 may be told us ; every thing which he did, every thing which 
 he would not do, every thing which other people did to him, 
 every thing which other people would not do to him, — may be 
 narrated at full length. We may have a complete picture of 
 all the events of his life ; of all which he underwent, and all 
 which he achieved. We may, as Mr. Carlyle expresses it, have 
 
 * The Life of John Milton, narrated in connection with the Political, Ecclesi- 
 astical, and Literary History of his time. By David Masson, M.A., Professor 
 of English Literature in University College, London. Cambridge : Mac- 
 millan. 
 
 An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton. By Thomas 
 Keightley ; with an Introduction to Paradise Lost. London : Chapman and 
 Hall. 
 
 The Poems of Milton, with Notes by Thomas Keightley. London : Chap- 
 and Hall, 
 
174 
 
 John- Milton. 
 
 a complete account ' of his effect upon the universe, and of the 
 effect of the universe upon him.' We admit that biographies 
 of this species would be very long and generally very tedious, 
 we know that the world could not contain very many of them ; 
 but nevertheless the principle on which they may be written is 
 intelligible. 
 
 The second method on which the life of a man may be 
 written is the selective. Instead of telling everything, we may 
 choose what we will tell. We may select out of the numberless 
 events, from among the innumerable actions of his life, those 
 events and those actions which exemplify his true character, 
 which prove to us what were the true limits of his talents, what 
 was the degree of his deficiencies, which were his defects, which 
 his vices, — in a word, we may select the traits and the particu- 
 lars which seem to give us the best idea of the man as he lived 
 and as he was. On this side the flood, as Sydney Smith would 
 have said, we should have fancied that this was the only prac- 
 ticable principle on which biographies can be written about 
 persons of whom many details are recorded. For ancient heroes 
 the exhaustive method is possible. All that can be known of 
 them is contained in a few short passages of Greek and Latin, 
 and it is quite possible to say whatever can be said about every 
 one of these : the result would not be unreasonably bulky, though 
 it might be dull. But in the case of men who have lived in the 
 thick of the crowded modern world, no such course is admissible ; 
 overmuch may be said, and we must choose what we will say. 
 Biographers, however, are rarely bold enough to adopt the se- 
 lective method consistently. They have, we suspect, the fear 
 of the critics before their eyes. They do not like that it should 
 be said that ' the work of the learned gentleman contains serious 
 omissions : the events of 1562 are not mcDtioned ; those of Oc- 
 tober 1579 are narrated but very cursorily :' and we fear that 
 in any case such remarks will be made. Very learned people 
 are pleased to show that they know what is not in the book ; 
 sometimes they may hint that perhaps the author did not know 
 
yohn Milton. 
 
 175 
 
 it, or surely he would have mentioned it. But a biographer 
 who wishes to write what most people of cultivation will be 
 pleased to read must be courageous enough to face the pain of 
 such censures. He must choose, as we have explained, the 
 characteristic parts of his subject ; and all that he has to take 
 care of besides, is so to narrate them that their chaiacteristic 
 elements shall be shown : to give such an account of the general 
 career as may make it clear what these chosen events really 
 were; to show their respective bearings to one another; to 
 delineate what is expressive in such a manner as to make it 
 expressive. 
 
 This plan of biography is, however, by no means that of 
 Mr. Masson. He has no dread of overgrown bulk and over- 
 whelming copiousness. He finds, indeed, what we have called 
 the exhaustive method insufficient. He not only wishes to 
 narrate in full the life of Milton, but to add those of his con- 
 temporaries likewise : he seems to wish to tell us not only what 
 Milton did, but also what every one else did in Grreat Britain 
 during his lifetime. He intends his book to be not ' merely a 
 biography of Milton, but also in some sort a continuous history 
 of his time. . . . The suggestions of Milton's life have indeed 
 determined the tracks of these historical researches and exposi- 
 tions, sometimes through the literature of the period, sometimes 
 through its civil and ecclesiastical politics ; but the extent to 
 which I have pursued them, and the space which I have assigned 
 to them, have been determined by my desire to present, by their 
 combination, something like a connected historical view of 
 British thought and British society in general prior to the Re- 
 volution.' We need not do more than observe that this union 
 of heterogeneous aims must always end, as it has in this case, in 
 the production of a work at once overgrown and incomplete. A 
 great deal which has only a slight bearing on the character of 
 Milton is inserted ; much that is necessary to a true history of 
 ' British thought and British society ' is of necessity left out. 
 The period of Milton's life which is included in the published 
 
176 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 volume makes the absurdity especially apparent. In middle 
 life Milton was a great controversialist on contemporary topics ; 
 and though it would not be proper for a biographer to load his 
 pages with a full account of all such controversies, yet some 
 notice of the most characteristic of them would be expected 
 from him. In this part of Milton's life some reference to 
 public events would be necessary ; and we should not severely 
 censure a biographer, if the great interest of those events in- 
 duced him to stray a little from his topic. But the first thirty 
 years of Milton's life require^ a very different treatment. He 
 passed those years in the ordinary musings of a studious and 
 meditative youth ; it was the period of Lycidas ' and of ' Comus ; ' 
 he then dreamed the 
 
 * Sights which youthful poets dream 
 On summer eve by haunted stream.' 
 
 We do not wish to have this part of his life disturbed, to a 
 greater extent than may be necessary, with the harshness of pub- 
 lic affairs. Nor is it necessary that it should be so disturbed. 
 A life of poetic retirement requires but little reference to any- 
 thing except itself. In a biography of Mr. Tennyson we should 
 not expect to hear of the Eeform Bill, or the Corn Laws. Mr. 
 Masson is, however, of a different opinion. He thinks it neces- 
 sary to tell us, not only all which Milton did, but every thing 
 also that he might have heard of. 
 
 The biography of Mr. Keightley is on a very different scale. 
 He tells the story of Milton's career in about half a small vo- 
 lume. Probably this is a little too concise, and the narrative 
 is somewhat dry and bare. It is often, however, acute, and is 
 always clear ; and even were its defects greater than they are, 
 we should think it unseemly to criticise the last work of one 
 who has performed so many useful services to literature with 
 extreme severity. 
 
 The bare outline of Milton's life is very well known. We 
 have all heard that he was born in the latter years of King James, 
 
John Milton. 
 
 77 
 
 just when Puritanism was collecting its strength for the ap- 
 proaching struggle ; that his father and mother were quiet good 
 people, inclined, but not immoderately, to that persuasion; that 
 he went up to Cambridge early, and had some kind of dissension 
 with the authorities there ; that the course of his youth was in 
 a singular degree pure and staid ; that in boyhood he was a 
 devourer of books, and that he early became, and always re- 
 mained, a severely studious man ; that he married, and had diffi- 
 culties of a peculiar character with his first wife ; that he wrote 
 on Divorce ; that after the death of his first wife, he married a 
 second time a lady who died very soon, and a third time a per- 
 son who survived him more than fifty years ; that he wrote early 
 poems of singular beauty, which we still read ; that he travelled 
 in Italy, and exhibited his learning in the academies there ; that 
 he plunged deep in the theological and political controversies of 
 his time ; that he kept a school, or rather, in our more modern 
 phrase, took pupils ; that he was a republican of a peculiar kind, 
 and of ' no church,' which Dr. Johnson thought dangerous ; 
 that he was Secretary for Foreign Languages under the Long 
 Parliament, and retained that office after the coup-d'etat of Crom- 
 well ; that he defended the death of Charles the First, and be- 
 came blind from writing a book in haste upon that subject ; that 
 after the Eestoration he was naturally in a position of some 
 danger and much difficulty ; that in the midst of that difficulty 
 he wrote ' Paradise Lost ; ' that he did not fail in heart or hope, 
 but lived for fourteen years after the destruction of all for which 
 he had laboured, in serene retirement, ' though fallen on evil 
 days, though fallen on evil times ; ' — all this we have heard from 
 our boyhood. How much is wanting to complete the picture — 
 how many traits, both noble and painful, might be recovered 
 from the past — we shall never know, till some biographer skilled 
 in interpreting the details of human nature shall select this sub 
 ject for his art. 
 
 All that we can hope to do in an essay like this is, to throw 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
178 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 together some miscellaneous remarks on the character of the 
 Puritan poet, and on the peculiarities of his works ; and if in 
 any part of them we may seem to make unusual criticisms, 
 and to be over -ready with depreciation or objection, our excuse 
 must be that we wish to paint a likeness, and that the harsher 
 features of the subject should have a prominence, even in an 
 outline. 
 
 There are two kinds of goodness conspicuous in the world, 
 and often made the subject of contrast there ; for which, how- 
 ever, we seem to want exact words, and which we are obliged to 
 describe rather vaguely and incompletely. These characters 
 may in one aspect be called the sensuous and the ascetic. The 
 character of the first is that which is almost personified in the 
 poet-king of Israel, whose actions and whose history have been 
 ' improved ' so often by various writers, that it now seems trite 
 even to allude to them. Nevertheless, the particular virtues and 
 the particular career of David seem to embody the idea of what 
 may be called sensuous goodness far more completely than a 
 living being in general comes near to an abstract idea. There 
 may have been shades in the actual man which would have 
 modified the resemblance ; but in the portrait which has been 
 handed down to us, the traits are perfect and the approximation 
 exact. The principle of this character is its sensibility to out- 
 ward stimulus ; it is moved by all which occurs, stirred by all 
 which happens, open to the influences of whatever it sees, hears, 
 or meets with. The certain consequence of this mental consti- 
 tution is a peculiar liability to temptation. Men are, according 
 to the divine, ' put upon their trial through the senses.' It is 
 through the constant suggestions of the outer world that our 
 minds are stimulated, that our will has the chance of a choice, 
 that moral life becomes possible. The sensibility to this external 
 stimulus brings with it, when men have it to excess, an unusual 
 access of moral difficulty. Everything acts on them, and every- 
 thing has a chance of turning them aside ; the most tempting 
 things act upon them very deeply, and their influence, in conse- 
 
John Milton, 
 
 179 
 
 quence, is extreme. Naturally, therefore, the errors of such men 
 are gi'eat. We need not point the moral — 
 
 * Dizzied faith and guilt and woe, 
 Loftiest aims by earth defiled, 
 Gleams of wisdom sin-hegiiiled. 
 Sated power's tyrannic mood, 
 Counsels shared with men of blood, 
 Sad success, parental tears, 
 And a dreary gift of years.' 
 
 But, on the other hand, the excellence of such men has a charm, 
 a kind of sensuous sweetness, that is its own. Being conscious 
 of frailty, they are tender to the imperfect ; being sensitive to 
 this world, they sympathise with the world ; being familiar with 
 all the moral incidents of life, their goodness has a richness and 
 a complication : they fascinate their own age, and in their deaths 
 they are ' not divided ' from the love of others. Their peculiar 
 sensibility gives a depth to their religion ; it is at once deeper 
 and more human than that of other men. As their sympathetic 
 knowledge of those whom they have seen is great, so it is with 
 their knowledge of Him whom they have not seen ; and as is 
 their knowledge, so 'is their love ; it is deep, from their nature ; 
 rich and intimate, from the variety of their experience ; chas- 
 tened by the ever-present sense of their weakness and of its 
 consequences. 
 
 In extreme opposition to this is the ascetic species of good- 
 ness. This is not, as is sometimes believed, a self-produced 
 ideal — a simply voluntary result of discipline and restraint. 
 Some men have by nature what others have to elaborate by 
 effort. Some men have a repulsion from the world. All of us 
 have, in some degree, a protective instinct ; an impulse, that is 
 to say, to start back from what may trouble us, to shun what 
 may fascinate us, to avoid what may tempt us. On the moral 
 side of human nature this preventive check is occasionally im- 
 perious ; it holds the whole man under its control, — makes him 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 recoil from the world, be ofifended at its amusements, be repelled 
 by its occupations, be scared by its sins. The consequences of this 
 tendency, when it is thus in excess, upon the character are very 
 great and very singular. It secludes a man in a sort of natural 
 monastery; he lives in a kind of moral solitude ; and the effects of 
 his isolation for good and for evil on his disposition are very many. 
 The best result is a singular capacity for meditative religion. ) 
 Being aloof from what is earthly, such persons are shut up with 
 what is spiritual ; being unstirred by the incidents of time, they 
 are alone with the eternal; rejecting this life, they are alone 
 with what is beyond. According to the measure of their minds, 
 men of this removed and secluded excellence become eminent 
 for a settled and brooding piety, for a strong and predominant 
 religion. In human life too, in a thousand ways, their isolated 
 excellence is apparent. They walk through the whole of it with 
 an abstinence from sense, a zeal of morality, a purity of ideal, 
 which other men have not. Their religion has an imaginative ^ 
 grandeur, and their life something of an unusual impeccability. ' 
 And these are obviously singular excellences. But the defi- 
 ciencies to which the same character tends are equally singular. 
 In the first place, their isolation gives them a certain pride in 
 themselves, and an inevitable ignorance of others. They are 
 secluded by their constitutional Bal/jicov from life ; they are re- 
 pelled from the pursuits which others care for ; they are alarmed 
 at the amusements which others enjoy. In consequence, they trust 
 in their own thoughts ; they come to magnify both them and 
 themselves — for being able to think and to retain them. The 
 greater the nature of the man, the greater is this temptation. His 
 thoughts are greater, and, in consequence, the greater is his 
 tendency to prize them, the more extreme is his tendency to 
 overrate them. This pride, too, goes side by side with a want of 
 sympathy. Being aloof from others, such a mind is unlike others ; 
 and it feels, and sometimes it feels bitterly, its own unlikeness. 
 Generally, however, it is too wrapt up in its own exalted thoughts 
 to be sensible of the pain of moral isolation ; it stands apart from 
 
John Milton. 
 
 others, unknowing and unknown. It is deprived of moral ex- 
 perience in two ways, — it is not tempted itself, and it does not 
 comprehend the temptations of others. And this defect of moral 
 experience is almost certain to produce two effects, one practical 
 and the other speculative. When such a man is wrong, he will 
 be apt to believe that he is right. If his own judgment err, he 
 will not have the habit of checking it by the judgment of others ; 
 he will be accustomed to think most men wrong ; differing from 
 them would be no proof of error, agreeing with them would 
 rather be a basis for suspicion. He may, too, be very wrong, for 
 the conscience of no man is perfect on all sides. The strange- 
 ness of secluded excellence will be sometimes deeply shaded by 
 very strange errors. To be commonly above others, still more 
 to think yourself above others, is to be below them every now 
 and then, and sometimes much below. Again, on the speculative 
 side, this defect of moral experience penetrates into the distin- 
 guishing excellence of the character, — its brooding and medi- 
 tative religion. Those who see life under only one aspect, can 
 see religion under only one likewise. This world is needful to 
 interpret what is beyond; the seen must explain the unseen. 
 It is from a tried and a varied and a troubled moral life that the 
 deepest and truest idea of God arises. The ascetic character 
 wants these ; therefore in its religion there will be a harshness 
 of outline, a bareness, so to say, as well as a grandeur. In life 
 we may look for a singular purity ; but also, and with equal 
 probability, for singular self-confidence, a certain unsympathising 
 straitness, and perhaps a few singular errors. 
 
 The character of the ascetic, or austere species of goodness, 
 is almost exactly embodied in Milton. Men, indeed, are formed 
 on no ideal type. Human nature has tendencies too various, 
 and circumstances too complex. All men's characters have sides 
 and aspects not to be comprehended in a single definition ; but 
 in this case, the extent to which the character of the man, 
 as we find it delineated, approaches to the moral abstraction 
 which we sketch from theory, is remarkable. The whole being 
 
l82 
 
 John Milton, 
 
 of Milton may, in some sort, be summed up in the great com- 
 mandment of the austere character, ' Keverence thyself.' We 
 find it expressed in almost every one of his singular descriptions 
 of himself, — of those striking passages which are scattered 
 through all his works, and which add to whatever interest may 
 intrinsically belong to them one of the rarest of artistic charms, 
 that of magnanimous autobiography. They have been quoted a 
 thousand times, but one of them may perhaps be quoted again. 
 ' I had my time, readers, as others have, who have good learn- 
 ing bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places, where the 
 opinion was it might be soonest attained ; and as the manner is, 
 was not unstudied in those authors which are most commended ; 
 whereof some were grave orators and historians, whose matter 
 methought I loved indeed, but as my age then was, so I under- 
 stood them ; others were the smooth elegiac poets, whereof the 
 schools are not scarce, whom both for the pleasing sound of 
 their numerous writing, which in imitation I found most easy, 
 and most agreeable to nature's part in me, and for their matter, 
 which what it is, there be few who know not, I was so allured 
 to read, that no recreation came to me better welcome : for that 
 it was then those years with me which are excused, though they 
 be least severe, I may be saved the labour to remember ye. 
 Whence having observed them to account it the chief glory of 
 their wit, in that they- were ablest to judge, to praise, and by 
 that could esteem themselves worthiest to love those high per- 
 fections, which under one or other name they took to celebrate, 
 I thought with myself by every instinct and presage of nature, 
 which is not wont to be false, that what emboldened them to 
 this task, might with such diligence as they used embolden me ; 
 and that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share, would 
 herein best appear, and best value itself, by how much more 
 wisely, and with more love of virtue I should choose (let rude 
 ears be absent) the object of not unlike praises : for albeit these 
 thoughts to some will seem virtuous and commendable, to others 
 only pardonable, to a third sort perhaps idle ; yet the mention- 
 
yohii Milton, 
 
 183 
 
 ing of them now will end in serious. Nor blame it, readers, 
 in those years to propose to themselves such a reward, as the 
 noblest dispositions above other things in this life have some- 
 times preferred : whereof not to be sensible when good and fair 
 in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, 
 and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For by the firm 
 settling of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so 
 much a proficient, that if I found those authors any where speak- 
 ing unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names 
 which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me, 
 from that time forward their art I still applauded, but the men 
 I deplored ; and above them all, preferred the two famous re- 
 nowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honour 
 of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime 
 and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not 
 after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would 
 not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable 
 things, ought himself to be a true poem ; that is, a composition 
 and_pattern of the best and honourablest things ; not presuming 
 to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he 
 have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which 
 is praiseworthy.' 
 
 It may be fanciful to add, and we may be laughed at, but we 
 believe that the self-reverencing propensity was a little aided by 
 his singular personal beauty. All the describers of his youth 
 concur in telling us that this was very remarkable. Mr. Masson 
 has the following account of it : — 
 
 * When Milton left Cambridge in July 1632, he was twenty-three 
 years and eight months old. In stature, therefore, at least, he was 
 already whatever he was to be. " In stature," he says himself at a latter 
 period, when driven to speak on the subject, " I confess I am not tall, 
 but still of what is nearer to middle height than to little : and what if 
 I were of little ; of which stature have often been very great men both 
 in peace and war — though why should that be called little which is 
 great enough for virtue % " (" Staturdjfateor^ non sumprocerd, sed quce 
 mediocri tamen qudm parvce propior sit ; sed quid si pavcdy qud et 
 
John Milton. 
 
 summi scepe turn pare turn hello viri fuere — quanquam parva cur 
 dicituVy quce ad virtutem satis magna est ?") This is precise enough ; 
 but we have Aubrey's words to the same effect : " He was scarce so 
 tall as I am," says Aubrey; to which, to make it more intelligible, he 
 appends the marginal note : — " Qu. Quot feet I am high ? Eesp. Of 
 middle stature — i.e. Milton was a little under middle height. " He 
 had light brown hair," continues Aubrey, — putting the word "abrown" 
 ("auburn ") in the margin by way of synonym for " light brown ; " — his 
 complexion exceeding fair ; oval face ; his eye a dark gray." ' 
 
 We are far from accusing Milton of personal vanity. His 
 character was too enormous, if we may be allowed so to say, for 
 a fault so petty. But a little tinge of excessive self-respect will 
 cling to those who can admire themselves. Ugly men are and 
 ought to be ashamed of their existence. Milton was not so. 
 
 The peculiarities of the austere type of character stand out 
 in IMilton more remarkably than in other men who partake of it, 
 because of the extreme strength of his nature. In reading him 
 this is the first thing that strikes us. We seem to have left the 
 little world of ordinary writers. The words of some authors are 
 said to have ' hands and feet ; ' they seem, that is, to have a 
 vigour and animation which only belong to things which live 
 and move. Milton's words have not this animal life. There is 
 no rude energy about them. But, on the other hand, they have, 
 or seem to have, a soul, a spirit which other words have not. He 
 was early aware that what he wrote, ' by certain vital signs it 
 had,' was such as the world would not ' willingly let die.' After 
 two centuries we feel the same. There is a solemn and firm 
 music in the lines ; a brooding sublimity haunts them ; the spirit 
 of the great writer moves over the face of the page. In life 
 there seems to have been the same peculiar strength that his 
 works suggest to us. His moral tenacity is amazing. He took 
 his own course, and he kept his own course ; and we may trace 
 in his defects the same characteristics. ' Energy and ill-temper,' 
 some say, ' are the same thing ; ' and though this is a strong ex- 
 aggeration, yet there is a basis of truth in it. People who labour 
 much will be cross if they do not obtain that for which they 
 
John Milton. 
 
 185 
 
 labour ; those who desire vehemently will be vexed if they do 
 not obtain that which they desire. As is the strength of the 
 impelling tendency, so, other things being equal, is the pain 
 which it will experience if it be baffled. Those, too, who are 
 set on what is high will be proportionately ojffended by the in- 
 trusion of what is low. Accordingly, Milton is described by 
 those who knew him as a ' harsh and choleric man,' ' He had,' 
 we are told, ' a gravity in his temper, not melancholy, or not till 
 the latter part of his life, — not sour, not morose, not ill-natured ; 
 but a certain severity of mind, not condescending to little 
 things ; ' — and this, although his daughter remembered that he 
 was delightful company, the life of conversation, and that he was 
 so ' on account of a flow of subjects and an unaffected cheerful- 
 ness and civility.' Doubtless this may have been so when he 
 was at ease, and at home. But there are unmistakable traces 
 of the harsher tendency in almost all his works. 
 
 Some of the peculiarities of the ascetic character were like- 
 wise augmented by his studious disposition. This began very 
 early in life, and continued till the end. ' My father,' he says, 
 ' destined me to the study of polite literature, which I embraced 
 with such avidity, that from the twelfth year of my age I hardly 
 ever retired to rest from my studies till midnight ; which was 
 the first source of injury to my eyes, to the natural weakness of 
 which were added frequent headaches : all of which not retarding 
 my eagerness after knowledge, he took care to have me in- 
 structed,' &c. Every page of his works shows the result of this 
 education. In spite of the occupations of manhood, and the 
 blindness and melancholy of old age, he still continued to have 
 his principal pleasure in that ' studious and select ' reading, 
 which, though often curiously transmuted, is perpetually in- 
 volved in the very texture of his works. We need not stay to 
 observe how a habit in itself so austere conduces to the develop- 
 ment of an austere character. Deep study, especially deep study 
 which haunts and rules the imagination, necessarily removes men 
 from life, absorbs them in themselves ; purifies their conduct, 
 
jfohn Milton, 
 
 with some risk of isolating their sympathies ; developes that 
 loftiness of mood which is gifted with deep inspirations and in- 
 dulged with great ideas, but which tends in its excess to engen- 
 der a contempt for others, and a self-appreciation which is even 
 more displeasing to them. 
 
 These same tendencies were aggravated also by two defects 
 which are exceedingly rare in great English authors, and which 
 perhaps Milton alone amongst those of the highest class is in a 
 remarkable degree chargeable with. We mean a deficiency in 
 humour, and a deficiency in a knowledge of plain human nature. 
 Probably when, after the lapse of ages, English literature is 
 looked at in its larger features only, and in comparison with 
 other literatures which have preceded or which may follow it, 
 the critics will lay down that its most striking characteristic as 
 a whole is its involution, so to say, in life ; the degree to which 
 its book-life resembles real life ; the extent to which the mo- 
 tives, dispositions, and actions of common busy persons are 
 represented in a medium which would seem likely to give us 
 peculiarly the ideas of secluded, and the tendencies of meditative 
 men. It is but an aspect of this fact, that English literature 
 abounds, — some critics will say abounds excessively, — with 
 humour. This is in some sense the imaginative element of 
 ordinary life, — the relieving charm, partaking at once of con- 
 trast and similitude, which gives a human and an intellectual 
 interest to the world of clowns and cottages, of fields and 
 farmers. The degree to which Milton is deficient in this element 
 is conspicuous in every page of his writings where its occur- 
 rence could be looked for ; and if we do not always look for it, 
 this is because the subjects of his most remarkable works are on 
 a removed elevation, where ordinary life, the world of * cakes 
 and ale,' is never thought of and never expected. It is in his 
 dramas, as we should expect, that Milton shows this deficiency 
 the most. ' Citizens ' never talk in his pages, as they do in 
 Shakespeare. We feel instinctively that Milton's eye had never 
 rested with the same easy pleasure on the easy, ordinary, shop- 
 
John Milton, 
 
 187 
 
 keeping world. Perhaps, such is the complication of art, that it 
 is on the most tragic occasions that we feel this want the most. 
 It may seem an odd theory, and yet we believe it to be a true 
 principle, that catastrophes require a. comic element. We appear 
 to feel the same principle in life. We may read solemn descrip- 
 tions of great events in history, — say of Lord Strafford's trial, and 
 of his marvellous speech, and his appeal to his ' saint in heaven;' 
 but we comprehend the whole transaction much better when we 
 learn from Mr. Baillie, the eye-witness, that people ate nuts and 
 apples, and talked, and laughed, and betted on the great question 
 of acquittal and condemnation. Nor is it difficult to understand 
 why this should be so. It seems to be a law of the imagination, 
 at least in most men, that it will not bear concentration. It is 
 essentially a glancing faculty. It goes and comes, and comes 
 and goes, and we hardly know whence or why. But we most 
 of us know that when we try to fix it, in a moment it passes 
 away. Accordingly, the proper procedure of art is to let it go 
 in such a manner as to ensure its coming back again. The 
 force of artistic contrasts effects exactly this result. Skilfully- 
 disposed opposites suggest the notion of each other. We realise 
 more perfectly and easily the great idea, the tragic conception, 
 when we are familiarised with its effects on the minds of little 
 people, — with the petty consequences which it causes, as well as 
 with the enormous forces from which it comes. The catastrophe 
 of Samson Agonistes discloses Milton's imperfect mastery of this 
 element of effect. If ever there was an occasion which admitted 
 its perfect employment, it was this. The kind of catastrophe is 
 exactly that which is sure to strike, and strike forcibly, the minds 
 of common persons. If their observations on the occasion were 
 really given to us, we could scarcely avoid something rather 
 comic. The eccentricity, so to speak, of ordinary persons, shows 
 itself peculiarly at such times, and they say the queerest things. 
 Shakespeare has exemplified this principle most skilfully on 
 various occasions : it is the sort of art which is just in his way. His 
 \ imagination always seems to be floating between the contrasts 
 
i88 
 
 yohn Milton. 
 
 of things ; and if his mind had a resting-place that it liked, it 
 was this ordinary view of extraordinary events. Milton was under 
 he great obligation to use this relieving principle of art in 
 the catastrophe of Samson, because he has made every effort to 
 heighten the strictly tragic element, which requires that relief. 
 His art, always serious, was never more serious. His Samson is 
 not the incarnation of physical strength which the popular fancy 
 embodies in the character ; nor is it the simple and romantic 
 character of the Old Testament. On the contrary, Samson has 
 become a Puritan : the observations he makes would have done 
 much credit to a religious pikeman in Cromwell's army. In 
 consequence, his death requires some lightening touches to 
 make it a properly artistic event. The pomp of seriousness 
 becomes too oppressive. 
 
 * At length for intermission sake they led him 
 Between the pillars ; he his guide requested 
 (For so from such as nearer stood we heard), 
 As over-tired, to let him lean a while 
 With both his arms on those two massy pillars 
 That to the arched roof gave main support. 
 He unsuspicious led him ; which when Samson 
 Felt in his arms, with head a while inclined, 
 And eyes fast fix'd, he stood, as one who pray'd, 
 Or some great matter in his mind revolved : 
 At last with head erect thus cry'd aloud, 
 " Hitherto, lords, what your commands imposed 
 I have perform'd, as reason was, obeying, 
 Not without wonder or delight beheld : 
 Now of my own accord such other trial 
 I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater, 
 As with amaze shall strike all who behold." 
 This utter'd, straining all his nerves he bow'd, 
 As with the force of winds and waters pent 
 When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars 
 With horrible convulsion to and fro. 
 He tugg'd, he shook, till down they came, and drew 
 The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder, 
 Upon the heads of all who sat beneath, — 
 
John Milton. 
 
 Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests, 
 Their choice nobility and flower, not only 
 Of this, but each Philistian city round. 
 Met from all parts to solemnise this feast. 
 Samson with these immix'd, inevitably 
 PuU'd down the same destruction on himself ; 
 The vulgar only 'scaped who stood without. 
 
 Chor. 0 dearly- bought revenge, yet gloriou^ 
 Living or dying thou hast fulfill'd 
 The work for which thou wast foretold 
 To Israel, and now ly'st victorious 
 Among thy slain self-kill'd, 
 Not willingly, but tangled in the fold 
 Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoin'd 
 Thee with thy slaughter'd foes, in number more 
 Than all thy life hath slain before.' 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 INO 
 
 This is grave and fine ; but Shakespeare would have done it 
 differently and better. 
 
 We need not pause to observe how certainly this deficiency 
 in humour and in the delineation of ordinary human feeling is 
 connected with a recluse, a solitary, and to some extent an un- 
 sympathising life. If we combine a certain natural aloofness 
 from common men with literary habits and an incessantly 
 studious musing, we shall at once see how powerful a force is 
 brought to bear on an instinctively austere character, and how 
 sure it will be to develope the peculiar tendencies of it, both 
 good and evil. It was to no purpose that Milton seems to have 
 practised a sort of professional study of life. No man could 
 rank more highly the importance to a poet of an intellectual 
 insight into all-important pursuits and ' seemly arts.' But it is 
 not by the mere intellect that we can take in the daily occupa- 
 tions of mankind ; we must sympathise with them, and see them 
 in their human relations. A chimney-sweeper, qua chimney- 
 sweeper, is not very sentimental ; it is in himself that he is so 
 interesting. 
 
 Milton's austere character is in some sort the more evident, 
 
I90 
 
 Jolm Milton. 
 
 because he possessed in large measure a certain relieving element, 
 in which those who are eminent in that character are very defi- 
 cient. Grenerally such persons have but obtuse senses. We are 
 prone to attribute the purity of their conduct to the dullness of 
 their sensations. Milton had no such obtuseness. He had every 
 opportunity for knowing the world of eye and ear. You cannot 
 open his works without seeing how much he did know of it. The 
 austerity of his nature was not caused by the deficiency of his 
 senses, but by an excess of the warning instinct. Even when he 
 professed to delineate the world of sensuous delight, this instinct 
 shows itself. Dr. Johnson thought he could discern melancholy 
 in ' L' Allegro.' If he had said solitariness, it would have been 
 correct. 
 
 The peculiar nature of Milton's character is very conspicu- 
 ous in the events of his domestic life, and in the views which 
 he took of the great public revolutions of his age. We can 
 spare only a very brief space for the examination of either of 
 these ; but we will endeavour to say a few words upon each of 
 them. 
 
 The circumstances of Milton's first marriage are as singular 
 as any in the strange series of the loves of the poets. The 
 scene opens with an affair of business. Milton's father, as is 
 well known, was a scrivener — a kind of professional money- 
 lender, then well known in London ; and having been early 
 connected with the vicinity of Oxford, continued afterwards to 
 have pecuniary transactions of a certain nature with country 
 gentlemen of that neighbourhood. In the course of these he 
 advanced 500^. to a certain Mr. Eichard Powell, a squire of fair 
 landed estate, residing at Forest Hill, which is about four miles 
 from the city of Oxford. The money was lent on the 11th of 
 June 1627 ; and a few months afterwards Mr. Milton the elder 
 gave 312^. of it to his son the poet, who was then a youth at 
 college, and made a formal memorandum of the same in the form 
 then usual, which still exists. The debt was never wholly dis- 
 charged ; for in 1651 we find Milton declaring on oath that he had 
 
 1 
 
John Milton. 
 
 never received more than 1 80^., ' in part satisfaction of his said 
 just and principal debt, with damages for the same and his costs 
 of suit.' Mr. Keightley supposes him to have ' taken many a ride 
 over to Forest Hill ' after he left Cambridge and was living at 
 Horton, which is not very far distant ; but of course this is only 
 conjecture. We only know that about 1643 'he took,' as his 
 nephew relates, ' a journey into the country, nobody about him 
 certainly knowing the reason, or that it was more than a journey 
 of recreation. After a month's stay he returns a married man, 
 who set out a bachelor ; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter 
 of Mr. Eichard Powell, then a justice of the peace' for the 
 county of Oxford. The suddenness of the event is rather strik- 
 ing ; but Philips was at the time one of Milton's pupils, and it 
 is possible that some pains may have been taken to conceal the 
 love-affair from the 'young gentlemen.' Still, as Philips was 
 Milton's nephew, he was likely to hear such intelligence tolerably 
 early ; and as he does not seem to have done so, the denouement 
 was probably rather prompt. At any rate, he was certainly 
 married at that time, and took his bride home to his house in 
 Aldersgate Street ; and there was feasting and gaiety according 
 to the usual custom of such events. A few weeks after, the 
 lady went home to her friends, in which there was of course 
 nothing remarkable ; but it is singular that when the natural 
 limit of her visit at home was come, she absolutely refused to 
 return to her husband. The grounds of so strange a resolution 
 are very difficult to ascertain. Political feeling ran very high : 
 old Mr. Powell adhered to the side of the king, and Milton to 
 that of the parliament; and this might be fancied to have 
 caused an estrangement. But on the other hand, these circum- 
 stances must have been well known three months before. 
 .Nothing had happened in that quarter of a year to change very 
 materially the position of the two parties in the State. Some 
 other cause for Mrs. Milton's conduct must be looked for. She 
 herself is said to have stated that she did not like her husband's 
 ' spare diet and hard study. No doubt, too, she found it dull 
 
192 
 
 Johi Milton. 
 
 in London ; she had probably always lived in the country, and 
 must have been quite unaccustomed to the not very pleasant 
 scene in which she found herself. Still, many young ladies have 
 married schoolmasters, and many young ladies have gone from 
 Oxfordshire to London ; and nevertheless, no such dissolution of 
 matrimonial harmony is known to have occurred. 
 
 The fact we believe to be, that the bride took a dislike to 
 her husband. We cannot but have a suspicion that she did 
 not like him before marriage, and that pecuniary reasons had 
 their influence. If, however, Mr. Powell exerted his paternal 
 influence, it may be admitted that he had unusual considera- 
 tions to advance in favour of the alliance he proposed. It is 
 not every father whose creditors are handsome young gentlemen 
 with fair incomes. Perhaps it seemed no extreme tyranny to 
 press the young lady a little to do that which some others might 
 have done without pressing. Still, all this is but hypothesis ; our 
 evidence as to the love-affairs of the time of King Charles I. is 
 but meagre. But, whatever the feelings of Miss Powell may have 
 been, those of Mrs. Milton are exceedingly certain. She would 
 not return to her husband ; she did not answer his letters ; and a 
 messenger whom he sent to bring her back was handled rather 
 roughly. Unquestionably, she was deeply to blame, by far the 
 most to blame of the two. Whatever may be alleged against 
 him, is as nothing compared with her offence in leaving him. To 
 defend so startling a course, we must adopt views of divorce even 
 more extreme than those which Milton was himself driven to 
 inculcate ; and whatever Mrs. Milton's practice may have been, 
 it may be fairly conjectured that her principles were strictly 
 orthodox. Yet, if she could be examined by a commission to the 
 ghosts, she would probably have some palliating circumstances 
 to allege in mitigation of judgment. There were, perhaps, pecu- 
 liarities in Milton's character which a young lady might not im- 
 properly dislike. The austere and ascetic character is of course 
 far less agreeable to women than the sensuous and susceptible. 
 The self-occupation, the pride, the abstraction of the former are 
 
John Milton, 
 
 193 
 
 to the female mind disagreeable ; studious habits and unusual 
 self-denial seem to it purposeless ; lofty enthusiasm, public spirit, 
 the solitary pursuit of an elevated ideal, are quite out of its way : 
 they rest too little on the visible world to be intelligible, they 
 are too little suggested by the daily occurrences of life to seem 
 possible. The poet in search of an imaginary phantom has 
 never been successful with women ; there are innumerable proofs 
 of that; and the ascetic moralist is even less interesting. A 
 character combined out of the two — and this to some extent 
 was Milton's — is singularly likely to meet with painful failure ; 
 with a failure the more painful, that it could never anticipate 
 or explain it. Possibly he was absorbed in an austere self- 
 conscious excellence ; it may never have occurred to him that a 
 lady might prefer the trivial detail of daily happiness. 
 
 Milton's own view of the matter he has explained to us in 
 his book on divorce ; and it is a very odd one. His complaint 
 was that his wife would not talk. What he wished in marriage 
 was an 'intimate and speaking help;' he encountered a ' mute 
 and spiritless mate.' One of his principal incitements to the 
 ' pious necessity of divorcing,' was an unusual deficiency in 
 household conversation. A certain loquacity in their wives has 
 been the complaint of various eminent men ; but his domestic 
 affliction was a different one. The ' ready and reviving asso- 
 ciate,' whom he had hoped to have found, appeared to be a ' co- 
 inhabiting mischief,' who was sullen, and perhaps seemed bored 
 and tired. And at times he is disposed to cast the blame of his 
 misfortune on the uninstructive nature of youthful virtue. The 
 ' soberest and best-governed men,' he says, are least practised in 
 such affairs, are not very well aware that 'the bashful muteness' 
 of a young lady ' may oft-times hide the unliveliness and natm-al 
 sloth which is really unfit for conversation ; ' and are rather in 
 too great haste to light the nuptial torch : whereas those ' who 
 have lived most loosely, by reason of their bold accustoming, 
 prove most successful in their matches; because their wild 
 affections, unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces to 
 
 VOL. I. O 
 
194 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 teach them experience.' And he rather wishes to infer that the 
 virtuous man should, in case of mischance, have his resource of 
 divorce likewise. 
 
 In truth, Milton's book on divorce — though only containing 
 principles which he continued to believe long after he had any 
 personal reasons for wishing to do so — were clearly suggested at 
 first by the unusual phenomena of his first marriage. His wife 
 began by not speaking to him, and finished by running away 
 from him. Accordingly, like most books which spring out of 
 personal circumstances, his treatises on this subject have a frank- 
 ness, and a mastery of detail, which others on the same topic 
 sometimes want. He is remarkably free from one peculiarity of 
 modern writers on such matters. Several considerate gentlemen 
 are extremely anxious for the ' rights of woman.' They think 
 that women will benefit by removing the bulwarks which the 
 misguided experience of ages has erected for their protection. 
 A migratory system of domestic existence might suit Madame 
 Dudevant, and a few cases of singular exception ; but we cannot 
 fancy that it would be, after all, so much to the taste of 
 most ladies as the present more permanent system. We have 
 some reminiscence of the stories of the wolf and the lamb, 
 when we hear amiable men addressing a female auditory (in 
 books, of course) on the advantages of a freer ' development.' 
 We are perhaps wrong, but we cherish an indistinct suspicion 
 that an indefinite extension of the power of selection would 
 rather tend to the advantage of the sex which more usually 
 chooses. But we have no occasion to avow such opinions now. 
 Milton had no such modern views. He is frankly and honestly 
 anxious for the rights of the man. Of the doctrine that divorce 
 is only permitted for the help of wives, he exclaims, ' Palpably 
 uxorious ! who can be ignorant, that a woman was created for 
 man, and not man for woman? What an injury is it after 
 wedlock to be slighted ! what to be contended with in point of 
 house-rule who shall be the head ; not for any parity of wisdom, 
 for that were something reasonable, but out of a female pride ! 
 
John Milton. 
 
 195 
 
 " I suffer not," saith St. Paul, " the woman to usin-p authority 
 over the man." If the Apostle could not suffer it,' he naturally 
 remarks, ' into what mould is he mortified that can ? ' He had 
 a sincere desire to preserve men from the society of unsocial 
 and unsympathising women ; and that was his principal idea. 
 
 His theory, to a certain extent, partakes of the same 
 notion. The following passage contains a perspicuous exposi- 
 tion of it: 'Moses, Deut. xxiv. 1, established a grave and 
 prudent law, full of moral equity, full of due consideration 
 owards nature, that cannot be resisted, a law consenting with 
 the wisest men and civilest nations ; that when a man hath 
 married a wife, if it come to pass that he cannot love her by 
 reason of some displeasing natural quality or unfitness in her, 
 let him write her a bill of divorce. The intent of which law 
 undoubtedly was this, that if any good and peaceable man 
 should discover some helpless disagreement or dislike, either of 
 mind or body, whereby he could not cheerfully perform the 
 duty of a husband without the perpetual dissembling of 
 offence and disturbance to his spirit ; rather than to live un- 
 comfortably and unhappily both to himself and to his wife ; 
 rather than to continue undertaking a duty, which he could not 
 possibly discharge, he might dismiss her, whom he could not 
 tolerably, and so not conscionably, retain. And this law the 
 Spirit of God by the mouth of Solomon, Prov. xxx. 21, 23, 
 testifies to be a good and a necessary law, by granting it that 
 " a hated woman " (for so the Hebrew word signifies, rather than 
 " odious," though it come all to one), that " a hated woman, 
 when she is married, is a thing that the earth cannot bear." ' 
 And he complains that the civil law of modern states inter- 
 feres with the ' domestical prerogative of the husband.' 
 
 His notion would seem to have been that a husband was 
 bound not to dismiss his wife, except for a reason really 
 sufficient ; such as a thoroughly incompatible temper, an in- 
 corrigible ' muteness,' and a desertion like that of Mrs. Milton. 
 But he scarcely liked to admit that, in the use of this power, 
 
 o 2 
 
196 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 he should be subject to the correction of human tribunals. He 
 thought that the circumstances of each case depended upon 
 ' utterless facts ; ' and that it was practically impossible for a 
 civil court to decide on a subject so delicate in its essence, and 
 so imperceptible in its data. But though amiable men doubt- 
 less suffer much from the deficiencies of their wives, we should 
 hardly like to intrust them, in their own cases, with a jurisdic- 
 tion so prompt and summary. 
 
 We are far from being concerned, however, just now with 
 the doctrine of divorce on its intrinsic merits : we were only 
 intending to give such an account of Milton's opinions upon it 
 as might serve to illustrate his character. We think we have 
 shown that it is possible there may have been, in his domestic 
 relations, a little overweening pride ; a tendency to overrate the 
 true extent of masculine rights, and to dwell on his wife's duty 
 to be social towards him rather than on his duty to be social 
 towards her, — to be rather sullen whenever she was not quite 
 cheerful. Still, we are not defending a lady for leaving her 
 husband for defects of such inferior magnitude. Few house- 
 holds would be kept together, if the right of transition were 
 exercised on such trifling occasions. We are but suggesting 
 that she may share the excuse which our great satirist has sug- 
 gested for another unreliable lady : ' My mother was an angel ; 
 but angels are not always commodes d vivre.^ 
 
 This is not a pleasant part of our subject, and we must 
 leave it. It is more agreeable to relate that on no occasion of 
 his life was the substantial excellence of Milton's character 
 more conclusively shown, than in his conduct at the last stage 
 of this curious transaction. After a very considerable interval, 
 and after the publication of his book on divorce, Mrs. Milton 
 showed a disposition to return to her husband ; and, in spite of 
 his theories, he received her with open arms. With great 
 Christian patience, he received her relations too. The Parlia- 
 mentary party was then victorious ; and old Mr. Powell, who 
 had suffered very much in the cause of the king, lived until his 
 
John Milton. 
 
 197 
 
 death untroubled, and ' wholly to his devotion,' as we are in- 
 formed, in the house of his son-in-law. 
 
 >^ Of the other occurrences of Milton's domestic life we have 
 left ourselves no room to speak ; we must turn to our second 
 source of illustration for his character, — his opinions on the 
 great public events of his time. It may seem odd, but we 
 believe that a man of austere character naturally tends hoth to 
 an excessive party spirit and to an extreme isolation. Of course, 
 the circumstances which develope the one must be different 
 from those which are necessary to call out the other : party- 
 spirit requires companionship ; isolation, if we may be pardoned 
 so original a remark, excludes it. But though, as we have 
 shown, this species of character is prone to mental solitude, 
 tends to an intellectual isolation where it is possible and as 
 soon as it can, yet when invincible circumstances throw it into 
 mental companionship, when it is driven into earnest associa- 
 tion with earnest men on interesting topics, its zeal becomes 
 excessive. Such a man's mind is at home only with its own 
 enthusiasm; it is cooped up within the narrow limits of its 
 own ideas, and it can make no allowance for those who differ 
 from or oppose them. We may see something of this excessive 
 party-zeal in Burke. No one's reasons are more philosophical ; 
 yet no one who acted with a party went further in aid of it or 
 was more violent in support of it. He forgot what could be 
 said for the tenets of the enemy ; his imagination made that 
 enemy an abstract incarnation of his tenets. A man, too, who 
 knows that he formed his opinions originally by a genuine and 
 intellectual process, is but little aware of the undue energy 
 those ideas may obtain from the concurrence of those around. 
 Persons who first acquired their ideas at second-hand are more 
 open to a knowledge of their own weakness, and better ac- 
 quainted with the strange force which there is in the sympathy 
 of others. The isolated mind, when it acts with the popular 
 feeling, is apt to exaggerate that feeling for the most part by 
 an almost inevitable consequence of the feelings which reader 
 
198 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 it isolated. Milton is an example of this remark. In the 
 commencement of the struggle between Charles I. and the Par- 
 liament, he sympathised strongly with the popular movement, 
 and carried to what seems now a strange extreme his partisan- 
 ship. No one could imagine that the first literary English- 
 man of his time could write the following passage on Charles I. : 
 
 ' Who can with patience hear this filthy, rascally Fool speak 
 so irreverently of Persons eminent both in Grreatness and Piety? 
 Dare you compare King David with King Charles \ a most 
 Eeligious King and Prophet, with a Superstitious Prince, and 
 who was but a Novice in the Christian Eeligion ; a most pru- 
 dent, wise Prince with a weak one ; a valiant Prince with a 
 cowardly one; finally, a most just Prince with a most unjust 
 one ? Have you the impudence to commend his Chastity and 
 Sobriety, who is known to have committed all manner of 
 Leudness in company with his Confident the Duke of Bucking- 
 ham'^ It were to no purpose to inquire into the private 
 Actions of his Life, who publickly at Plays would embrace and 
 kiss the Ladies.' 
 
 Whatever may be the faults of that ill-fated monarch — and 
 they assuredly were not small— no one would now think this 
 absurd invective to be even an excusable exaggeration. It 
 misses the true mark altogether, and is the expression of a 
 strongly imaginative mind, which has seen something that it 
 did not like, and is unable in consequence to see anything that 
 has any relation to it distinctly or correctly. But with the 
 supremacy of the Long Parliament Milton's attachment to 
 their cause ceased. No one has drawn a more unfavourable 
 picture of the rule which they established. Years after their 
 supremacy had passed away, and the restoration of the 
 monarchy had covered with a new and strange scene the old 
 actors and the old world, he thrust into a most unlikely part of 
 his History of England the following attack on them : — 
 
 ' But when once the superficiall zeal and popular fumes that 
 acted their New Magistracy were cool'd and spent in them, strait 
 
Jo/in Milton. 
 
 199 
 
 every one betook himself (setting the Commonwealth behind, 
 his privat ends before) to doe as his own profit or ambition 
 ledd him. Then was justice delay'd, and soon after deni'd : 
 spight and favom* determin'd all : hence faction, thence treach- 
 ery, both at home and in the field : ev'ry where wrong, and 
 oppression : foull and horrid deeds committed daily, or main- 
 tain'd, in secret, or in open. Som who had bin call'd from 
 shops and warehouses, without other merit, to sit in Supreme 
 Councills and Committees as thir breeding was, fell to huckster 
 the Commonwealth. Others did therafter as men could soothe 
 and humour them best ; so hee who would give most, or, under 
 covert of hypocriticall zeale, insinuat basest, enjoy 'd unworthily 
 the rewards of lerning and fidelity ; or escap'd the punishment 
 of his crimes and misdeeds. Thir Votes and Ordinances, which 
 men looked should have contain'd the repealing of bad laws, 
 and the immediat constitution of better, resounded with 
 nothing els, but new Impositions, Taxes, Excises ; yeerly, 
 monthly, weekly. Not to reckon the Offices, Grifts, and Pre- 
 ferments bestow'd and shar'd among themselvs.' 
 
 His dislike of this system of committees, and of the 
 generally dull and unemphatic administration of the Common- 
 wealth, attached him to the Puritan army and to Cromwell ; 
 but in the continuation of the passage we have referred to, he 
 expresses, with something, let it be said, of a schoolmaster 
 feeling, an unfavourable judgment on their career. 
 
 ' For Britan, to speak a truth not oft'n spok'n, as it is a 
 Land fruitful enough of men stout and courageous in warr, soe 
 it is naturally not over-fertill of men able to govern justly and 
 prudently in peace, trusting onely in thir Motherwit ; who con- 
 sider not justly, that civility, prudence, love of the Publick 
 good, more then of money or vaine honour, are to this soile in a 
 manner outlandish ; grow not here, but in mindes well im- 
 planted with solid and elaborat breeding, too impolitic els and 
 rude, if not headstrong and intractable to the industry and 
 vertue either of executing or understanding true Civill Grovern- 
 
 i 
 
200 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 ment. Valiant indeed, and prosperous to win a field ; but to 
 know the end and reason of winning, unjudicious, and unwise : 
 in good or bad succes, alike unteachable. For the Sun, which 
 wee want, ripens wits as well as fruits ; and as Wine and Oil 
 are inaported to us from abroad, soe must ripe understanding, 
 and many Civill Vertues, be imported into our mindes from 
 Foren Writings, and examples of best Ages ; we shall els mis- 
 carry still, and com short in the attempts of any great enter- 
 prize. Hence did thir Victories prove as fruitles, as thir Losses 
 dang'rous ; and left them still conq'ring under the same greev- 
 ances, that Men suffer conquer'd : which was indeed unlikely to 
 goe otherwise, unles Men more then vulgar bred up, as few of 
 them were, in the knowledg of antient and illustrious deeds, 
 invincible against many and vaine Titles, impartial to Freind- 
 ships and Kelations, had conducted thir Affairs : but then from 
 the Chapman to the Eetailer, many whose ignorance wa^ more 
 audacious then the rest, were admitted with all thir sordid 
 Eudiments to bear no meane sway among them, both in Church 
 and State.' 
 
 ^ We need not speak of Milton's disapprobation of the Resto- 
 ration. Between him and the world of Charles II. the oppo- 
 sition was inevitable and infinite. Therefore the general fact 
 remains, that except in the early struggles, when he exaggerated 
 the popular feeling, he remained solitary in opinion, and had 
 very little sympathy with any of the prevailing parties of his 
 time. 
 
 Milton's own theory of government is to be learned from 
 his works. He advocated a free commonwealth, without rule of 
 a single person, or House of Lords : but the form of his pro- 
 jected commonwealth was peculiar. He thought that a certain 
 perpetual council, which should be elected by the nation once 
 for all, and the number of which should be filled up as vacan- 
 cies might occur, was the best possible machine of government. 
 He did not confine his advocacy to abstract theory, but pro- 
 posed the immediate establishment of such a council in this 
 
John Milton, 
 
 20I 
 
 country. "We need not go into an elaborate discussion to show 
 the errors of this conclusion. Hardly any one, then or since, has 
 probably adopted it. The interest of the theoretical parts of 
 Milton's political works is entirely historical. The tenets 
 advocated are not of great value, and the arguments by which 
 he supports them are perhaps of less ; but their relation to the 
 times in which they were written gives them a very singular 
 interest. The time of the Commonwealth was the only period 
 in English history in which the fundamental questions of 
 government have been thrown open for popular discussion in 
 this country. We read in French literature discussions on the 
 advisability of establishing a monarchy, on the advisability of 
 establishing a republic, on the advisability of establishing an 
 empire ; and, before we proceed to examine the arguments, we 
 cannot help being struck at the strange contrast which this 
 multiplicity of open questions presents to our own uninquiring 
 acquiescence in the hereditary polity which has descended to us. 
 ' King, Lords, and Commons ' are, we think, ordinances of 
 nature. Yet Milton's political writings embody the reflections 
 of a period when, for a few years, the government of England 
 was nearly as much a subject of fundamental discussion as that 
 of France was in 1851. An ' invitation to thinkers,' to borrow 
 the phrase of Neckar, was given by the circumstances of the 
 time ; and, with the habitual facility of philosophical specula- 
 tion, it was accepted, and used to the utmost. 
 
 Such are not the kind of speculations in which we expect 
 assistance from Milton. It is not in its transactions with others, 
 in its dealings with the manifold world, that the isolated and 
 austere mind shows itself to the most advantage. Its strength 
 lies in itself. It has ' a calm and pleasing solitariness.' It hears 
 thoughts which others cannot hear. It enjoys the quiet and 
 still air of delightful studies ; and is ever conscious of such 
 mu?iQg and poetry ' as is not to be obtained by the invocation 
 of Dame Memory and her twin daughters, but by devout 
 prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance 
 
202 
 
 jfohn Milton. 
 
 and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed 
 fire of His altar.' 
 
 * Descend from Heav'n, Urania, by that name 
 If rightly thou art call'd, whose voice divine 
 Following, above th' Olympian hill I soar, 
 Above the flight of Pegasean wing. 
 The meaning, not the name, I call ; for thou 
 Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top 
 Of old Olympus dwelFst, but heav'nly born : 
 Before the hills appear'd, or fountain flow'd, 
 Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse, 
 Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play 
 In presence of th' Almighty Father, pleased 
 With thy celestial song. Up led by Thee 
 Into the Heav'n of Heav'ns I have presumed, 
 An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air. 
 Thy temp'ring. With like safety guided down, 
 Return me to my native element ; 
 Lest from this flying steed, unrein'd (as once 
 Bellerophon, though from a lower clime), 
 Dismounted, on th' Aleian field I fall 
 Erroneous there to wander and forlorn. 
 Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound 
 Within the visible diurnal sphere ; 
 Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole. 
 More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged 
 To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, 
 On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues ; 
 In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round, 
 And solitude ; yet not alone, while thou 
 Yisit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn 
 Purples the east : still govern thou my song, 
 Urania, and fit audience find, though few ; 
 But drive far off* the barb'rous dissonance 
 Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race 
 Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard 
 In Bhodope, where woods and rocks had ears 
 To rapture, till the savage clamour drown'd 
 Both harp and voice ; nor could the Muse defend 
 Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores ; 
 For thou art heav'nly, she an empty dream.' 
 
John Milton. 
 
 203 
 
 *An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found 
 John Milton in a small chamber hung with rusty green, sitting 
 in an elbow-chair, and dressed neatly in black : pale, but not 
 cadaverous.' ' He used also to sit in a gray coarse cloth coat at 
 the door of his house near Bunhill Fields, in warm, sunny 
 weather ; ' and the common people said he was inspired. 
 
 If from the man we turn to his works, we are struck at 
 once with two singular contrasts. The first of them is this. 
 The distinction between ancient and modern art is sometimes 
 said, and perhaps truly, to consist in the simple bareness of the 
 imaginative conceptions which we find in ancient art, and the 
 comparatively complex clothing in which all modern creations 
 are embodied. If we adopt this distinction, Milton seems in 
 some sort ancient, and in some sort modern. Nothing is so 
 simple as the subject-matter of his works. The two greatest of 
 his creations, the character of Satan and the character of Eve, 
 are two of the simplest — the latter probably the very 
 simplest — in the whole field of literature. On this side 
 Milton's art is classical. On the other hand, in no writer is 
 the imagery more profuse, the illustrations more various, the 
 dress altogether more splendid. And in this respect the style 
 of his art seems romantic and modern. In real truth, however, 
 it is only ancient art in a modern disguise. The dress is a 
 mere dress, and can be stripped off when we will. We all of 
 us do perhaps in memory strip it off for ourselves. Notwith- 
 standing the lavish adornments with which her image is pre- 
 sented, the character of Eve is still the simplest sort of feminine 
 essence — the pure embodiment of that inner nature, which we 
 believe and hope that women have. The character of Satan, 
 though it is not so easily described, has nearly as few elements 
 in it. The most purely modern conceptions will not bear to be 
 unclothed in this matter. Their romantic garment clings in- 
 separably to them. Hamlet and Lear are not to be thought of 
 except as complex characters, with very involved and compli- 
 cated embodiments. They are as difficult to draw out in words 
 
204 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 as the common characters of life are ; that of Hamlet, perhaps, 
 is more so. If we make it, as perhaps we should, the cha- 
 racteristic of modern and romantic art that it presents us with 
 creations which we cannot think of or delineate except as very 
 varied, and, so to say, circumstantial, we must not rank Milton 
 among the masters of romantic art. And without involving 
 the subject in the troubled sea of an old controversy, we may 
 say that the most striking of the poetical peculiarities of Milton 
 is the bare simplicity of his ideas, and the rich abundance of 
 his illustrations. 
 
 Another of his peculiarities is equally striking. There 
 seems to be such a thing as second-hand poetry. Some poets, 
 musing on the poetry of other men, have unconsciously shaped 
 it into something of their own : the new conception is like the 
 original, it would never probably have existed had not the ori- 
 ginal existed previously; still it is sufficiently different from 
 the original to be a new thing, not a copy or a plagiarism ; it 
 is a creation, though, so to say, a suggested creation. Grray is 
 as good an example as can be found of a poet whose works 
 abound in this species of semi-original conceptions. Industrious 
 critics track his best lines back, and find others like them 
 which doubtless lingered near his fancy while he was writing 
 them. The same critics have been equally busy with the 
 works of Milton, and equally successful. They find traces of 
 his reading in half his works ; not, which any reader could do, 
 in overt similes and distinct illustrations, but also in the very 
 texture of the thought and the expression. In many cases, 
 doubtless, they discover more than he himself knew. A mind 
 like his, which has an immense store of imaginative recollec- 
 tions, can never know which of his own imaginations is exactly 
 suggested by which recollection. Men awake with their best 
 ideas ; it is seldom worth while to investigate very curiously 
 whence they came. Our proper business is to adapt, and mould, 
 and act upon them. Of poets perhaps this is true even more 
 remarkably than of other men ; their ideas are suggested in 
 
John Milton. 
 
 205 
 
 modes, and according to laws, wliicli are even more impossible 
 to specify than the ideas of the rest of the world. Second-hand 
 poetry, so to say, often seems quite original to the poet him- 
 self ; he frequently does not know that he derived it from an old 
 memory ; years afterwards it may strike him as it does others. 
 Still, in general, such inferior species of creation is not so 
 likely to be found in minds of singular originality as in those of 
 less. A brooding, placid, cultivated mind, like that of Grray, is 
 the place where we should expect to meet with it. Grreat origin- 
 ality disturbs the adaptive process, removes the mind of the 
 poet from the thoughts of other men, and occupies it with its 
 own heated and flashing thoughts. Poetry of the second de- 
 gree is like the secondary rocks of modern geology — a still, 
 gentle, alluvial formation ; the igneous glow of primary genius 
 brings forth ideas like the primeval granite, simple, astounding, 
 and alone. Milton's case is an exception to this rule. His 
 mind has marked originality, probably as much of it as any in 
 literature ; but it has as much of moulded recollection as any 
 mind too. His poetry in consequence is like an artificial park, 
 green, and soft, and beautiful, yet with outlines bold, distinct, 
 and firm, and the eternal rock ever jutting out ; or, better still, 
 it is like our own lake scenery, where nature has herself the 
 same combination — where we have Eydal- water side by side 
 with the everlasting upheaved mountain. Milton has the same 
 union of softened beauty with unimpaired grandeur ; and it is 
 his peculiarity. 
 
 These are the two contrasts which puzzle us at first in 
 Milton, and which distinguish him from other poets in our 
 remembrance afterwards. We have a superficial complexity in 
 illustration, and imagery, and metaphor ; and in contrast with 
 it we observe a latent simplicity of idea, an almost rude 
 strength of conception. The underlying thoughts are few, 
 though the flowers on the surface are so many. We have like- 
 wise the perpetual contrast of the soft poetry of the memory, 
 and the firm, as it were fused, and glowing poetry of the 
 
206 
 
 yohn Milton. 
 
 imagination. His words, we may half fancifully say, are like 
 his character. There is the same austerity in the real essence, 
 the same exquisiteness of sense, the same delicacy of form 
 which we know that he had, the same music which we imagine 
 there was in his voice. In both his character and his poetry 
 there was an ascetic nature in a sheath of beauty. 
 
 )CN"o book perhaps which has ever been written is more 
 difficult to criticise than Paradise Lost, The only way to 
 criticise a work of the imagination, is to describe its effect 
 upon the mind of the reader — at any rate, of the critic ; and 
 this can only be , adequately delineated by strong illustrations, 
 apt similes, and perhaps a little exaggeration. The task is in 
 its very nature not an easy one ; the poet paints a picture on 
 the fancy of the critic, and the critic has in some sort to copy 
 it on the paper. He must say what it is before he can make 
 remarks upon it. But in the case of Paradise Lost we hardly 
 like to use illustrations. The subject is one which the imagi- 
 nation rather shrinks from. At any rate, it requires courage, 
 and an effort to compel the mind to view such a subject as dis- 
 tinctly and vividly as it views other subjects. Another pecu- 
 liarity of Paradise Lost makes the difficulty even greater. It 
 does not profess to be a mere work of art ; or rather, it claims 
 to be by no means that, and that only. It starts with a dog- 
 matic aim ; it avowedly intends to 
 
 ' assert eternal Providence, 
 And justify the ways of God to man/ 
 
 In this point of view we have always had a sympathy with the 
 Cambridge mathematician who has been so much abused. He 
 said, ' After all. Paradise Lost proves nothing ; ' and various 
 persons of poetical tastes and temperament have been very 
 severe on the prosaic observation. Yet, 'after all,' he was 
 right. Milton professed to prove something. He was too pro- 
 found a critic — rather, he had too profound an instinct of those 
 eternal principles of art which criticism tries to state — not to 
 
yohn Milton, 
 
 207 
 
 know that on such a subject he must prove something. He 
 professed to deal with the great problem of human destiny ; to 
 show why man was created, in what kind of universe he lives, 
 whence he came, and whither he goes. He dealt of necessity 
 with the greatest of subjects. He had to sketch the greatest 
 of objects. He was concerned with infinity and eternity even 
 more than with time and sense ; he undertook to delineate the 
 ways, and consequently the character of Providence, as well as 
 the conduct and the tendencies of man. The essence of success 
 in such an attempt is to satisfy the religious sense of man ; to 
 bring home to our hearts what we know to be true ; to teach 
 us what we have not seen ; to awaken us to what we have for- 
 gotten ; to remove the ' covering ' from all people, and ' the * 
 veil ' that is spread over all nations ; to give us, in a word, such 
 a conception of things divine and human as we can accept, 
 believe, and trust. The true doctrine of criicism demands 
 what Milton invites — an examination of the degree in which 
 the great epic attains this aim. And if, in examining it, we 
 find it necessary to use unusual illustrations, and plainer words 
 than are customary, it must be our excuse that we do not think 
 the subject can be made clear without them. 
 
 The defect of Paradise Lost is that, after all, it is founded 
 on apolitical transaction. The scene is in heaven very early in 
 the history of the universe, before the creation of man or the 
 fall of Satan. We have a description of a court. The angels, 
 
 * By imperial summons called/ 
 
 appear 
 
 * Under their hierarchs in orders bright : 
 Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced, 
 Standards and gonfalons 'twixt van and rear 
 Stream in the air, and for distinction serve 
 Of hierarchies, and orders, and degrees.' 
 
 To this assemblage ' th' Omnipotent ' speaks : 
 
 ' Hear, all ye Angels, progeny of light. 
 Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Pow'rs, 
 
2o8 
 
 John Milton, 
 
 Hear my decree, whicli urn-evoked shall stand : 
 
 This day I have begot whom I declare 
 
 My only Son ; and on this holy hill 
 
 Him have anointed, whom ye now behold 
 
 At my right hand ; your Head I him appoint ; 
 
 And by myself have sworn, to him shall bow 
 
 All knees in Heav'n, and shall confess him Lord: 
 
 Under his great vicegerent reign abide 
 
 United as one individual soul 
 
 For ever happy. Him who disobeys, 
 
 Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day. 
 
 Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls 
 
 Int' utter darkness, deep ingulph'd, his place 
 
 Ordain'd without redemption, without end.* 
 
 This act of patronage was not popular at court ; and why 
 should it have been ? The religious sense is against it. The 
 worship which sinful men owe to Grod is not transferable to 
 lieutenants and vicegerents. The whole scene of the court jars 
 upon a true feeling. We seem to be reading about some emr 
 peror of history, who admits his son to a share in the empire, 
 who confers on him a considerable jurisdiction, and requires 
 officials, with ' standards and gonfalons,' to bow before him. 
 The orthodoxy of Milton is quite as questionable as his 
 accuracy. The old Athanasian creed was not made by persons 
 who would allow such a picture as that of Milton to stand 
 before their imaginations. The generation of the Son was to 
 them a fact ' before all time ; ' an eternal fact. There was no 
 question in their minds of patronage or promotion. The Son 
 was the Son before all time, just as the Father was the Father 
 before all time. Milton had in such matters a bold but not 
 very sensitive imagination. He accepted the inevitable ma- 
 terialism of biblical, and, to some extent, of all religious 
 language as distinct revelation. He certainly believed, in con- 
 tradiction to the old creed, that God had both 'parts and 
 passions.' He imagined that earth 
 
 * Is but the shadow of heaven and things therein, 
 Each to other like more than on earth is thought.* 
 
jfohn Milton, 
 
 209 
 
 From some passages it would seem that he actually thought of 
 Grod as having ' the members and form ' of a man. Naturally, 
 therefore, he would have no toleration for the mysterious notions 
 of time and eternity which are involved in the traditional 
 doctrine. We are not, however, now concerned with Milton's 
 belief, but with his representation of his creed — his picture, so 
 to say, of it in Paradise Lost ; still, as we cannot but think, 
 that picture is almost irreligious, and certainly different from 
 that which has been generally accepted in Christendom. Such 
 phrases as ' before all time,' ' eternal generation,' are doubtless 
 very vaguely interpreted by the mass of men ; nevertheless, no 
 sensitively orthodox man could have drawn the picture of a 
 generation, not to say an exaltation, in time. 
 
 We shall see this more clearly by reading what follows in 
 the poem : 
 
 * All seemed well pleased ; all seemed, but were not all.' 
 
 One of the archangels, whose name can be guessed, decidedly 
 disapproved, and calls a meeting, at which he explains that 
 
 * orders and degrees 
 Jar not with liberty, but well consist ; * 
 
 but still, that the promotion of a new person, on grounds of 
 relationship merely, above, even infinitely above, the old 
 angels, with imperial titles, was ' a new law,' and rather 
 tyrannical. Abdiel, 
 
 ' than whom none with more zeal adored 
 The Deity, and with divine commands obeyed,' 
 attempts a defence : 
 
 * Grant it thee unjust, 
 That equal over equals monarch reign : 
 Thyself, though great and glorious, dost thou count, 
 Or all angelic nature join'd in one. 
 Equal to him begotten Son ? by whom 
 As by his Word the mighty Father made 
 All things, ev'n thee ; and all the Spirits of Heav'n 
 VOL. I. P 
 
 I 
 
2IO 
 
 yohn Milton. 
 
 By him created in their bright degrees, 
 Crown'd them with glory, and to their glory named 
 Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Pow'rs, 
 Essential Pow'rs ; nor by his reign obscured, 
 But more illustrious made ; since he the Head, 
 One of our number thus reduced becomes ; 
 His laws our laws ; all honour to him done 
 . Returns our own. Cease then this impious rage, 
 
 \ And tempt not these ; but hasten to appease 
 
 Th' incensed Father and th' incensed Son, 
 While pardon may be found, in time besought/ 
 
 Yet though Abdiel's intentions were undeniably good, his argu- 
 ment is rather specious. Acting as an instrument in the 
 process of creation would scarcely give a valid claim to the 
 obedience of the created being. Power may be shown in the 
 act, no doubt ; but mere power gives no true claim to 
 the obedience of moral beings. It is a kind of principle of 
 all manner of idolatries and false religions to believe that it 
 does so. Satan, besides, takes issue on the fact ; 
 
 * That we were formed then, say'st thou? and the work 
 Of secondary hands, by task transferr'd 
 From Father to his Son % Strange point and new ! 
 Doctrine which we would know whence learned.' 
 
 And we must say that the speech in which the new ruler is in- 
 troduced to the ' thrones, dominations, princedoms, powers,' is 
 hard to reconcile with Abdiel's exposition. ' This day ' he 
 seems to have come into existence^ and could hardly have 
 assisted at the creation of the angels, who are not young, and 
 who converse with one another like old acquaintances. 
 
 We have gone into this part of the subject at length, 
 because it is the source of the great error which pervades 
 Paradise Lost Satan is made interesting. This has been 
 the charge of a thousand orthodox and even heterodox writers 
 against Milton. Shelley, on the other hand, has gloried in it ; 
 and fancied, if we remember righlly, that Milton intentionally 
 
Johii JMilion. 
 
 21 I 
 
 liinged himself on the Satanic side of the universe, just as 
 Shelley himself would have done, and that he wished to show 
 the falsity of the ordinary theology. But Milton was born an 
 age too early for such aims, and was far too sincere to have 
 advocated any doctrine in a form so indirect. He believed 
 every word he said. He was not conscious of the effect his 
 teaching would produce in an age like this, when scepticism is 
 in the air, and when it is not possible to help looking coolly on 
 his delineations. Probably in our boyhood we can recollect a 
 period when any solemn description of celestial events would 
 have commanded our respect; we should not have dared to 
 read it intelligently, to canvass its details and see what it 
 meant : it was a religious book ; it sounded reverential, and 
 that would have sufficed. Something like this was the state of 
 mind of the seventeenth century. Even Milton probably 
 shared in a vague reverence for religious language. He hardly 
 felt the moral effect of the pictures he was drawing. His 
 artistic instinct too, often hurries him away. His Satan was 
 to him, as to us, the hero of his poem. Having commenced by 
 making him resist -on an occasion which in an earthly kingdom 
 would have been excusable and proper, he probably a little 
 sympathised with him, just as his readers do. 
 
 The interest of Satan's character is at its height in the first 
 two books. Coleridge justly compared it to that of Napoleon. 
 There is the same pride, the same satanic ability, the same will, 
 the same egotism. His character seems to grow with his posi- 
 tion. He is far finer after his fall, in misery and suffering, with 
 scarcely any resource except in himself, than he was originally 
 in heaven ; at least, if Raphael's description of him can be 
 trusted. No portrait which imagination or history has drawn 
 of a revolutionary anarch is nearly so perfect ; there is all the 
 grandeur of the greatest human mind, and a certain infinitude 
 in his circumstances which humanity must ever want. Few 
 Englishmen feel a profound reverence for Napoleon I. There 
 was no French alliance in Ids time ; we have most of us some 
 
 p 2 
 
212 
 
 Johi Milton. 
 
 tradition of antipathy to' him. Yet hardly any Englishman 
 can read the account of the campaign of 1814 without feeling 
 his interest in the Emperor to be strong, and without perhaps 
 being conscious of a latent wish that he may succeed. Our 
 opinion is against him, our serious wish is of course for England ; 
 but the imagination has a sympathy of its own, and will not 
 give place. We read about the great general — never greater 
 than in that last emergency — showing resources of genius that 
 seem almost infinite, and that assm*edly have never been 
 surpassed, yet vanquished, yielding to the power of circum- 
 stances, to the combined force of adversaries, each of whom 
 singly he outmatches in strength, and all of whom together he 
 surpasses in majesty and in mind. Something of the same sort 
 of interest belongs to the Satan of the first two books of 
 Paradise Lost. We know that he will be vanquished ; his 
 name is not a recommendation. Still we do not imagine dis- 
 tinctly the minds by which he is to be vanquished ; we do not 
 take the same interest in them that we do in him. ; our sym- 
 pathies, our fancy, are on his side: 
 
 Perhaps much of this was inevitable ; yet what a defect it 
 is ! especially what a defect in Milton's own view, and looked at 
 with the stern realism with which he regarded it ! Suppose that 
 the author of evil in the universe were the most attractive being 
 in it ; suppose that the source of all sin were the origin of all 
 interest to us ! We need not dwell upon this. 
 
 As we have said, much of this was difficult to avoid, if in- 
 deed it could be avoided in dealing with such a theme. Even 
 Milton shrank, in some measure, from delineating the Divine 
 character. His imagination evidently halts when it is required 
 to perform that task. The more delicate imagination of our 
 modern world would shrink still more. Any person who will 
 consider what such an attempt must end in, will find his nerves 
 quiver. But by a curiously fatal error, Milton has selected for 
 delineation exactly that part of the Divine nature which is most 
 beyond the reach of the human faculties, and which is also, 
 
John Milton. 
 
 213 
 
 when we try to describe our fancy of it, the least effective to our 
 minds. He has made Grod argue. Now the procedure of the 
 Divine mind from truth to truth must ever be incomprehensible 
 to us ; the notion, indeed, of His proceeding at all, is a con- 
 tradiction : to some extent, at least, it is inevitable that we 
 should use such language, but we know it is in reality inappli- 
 cable. A long train of reasoning in such a connection is so out 
 of place as to be painful ; and yet Milton has many. He relates 
 a series of family prayers in heaven, with sermons afterwards, 
 which are very tedious. Even Pope was shocked at the notion 
 of Providence talking like ' a school-divine.' And there is the 
 still worse error, that if you once attribute reasoning to Him, 
 subsequent logicians may discover that He does not reason 
 very well. 
 
 Another way in which Milton has contrived to strengthen 
 our interest in Satan, is the number and insipidity of the good 
 angels. There are old rules as to the necessity of a supernatural 
 machinery for an epic poem, worth some fraction of the paper 
 on which they are written, and derived from the practice of 
 Homer, who believed his gods and goddesses to be real beings, 
 and would have been rather harsh with a critic who called them 
 machinery. These rules had probably an influence with Milton, 
 and induced him to manipulate these serious angels more than 
 he would have done otherwise. They appear to be excellent 
 administrators with very little to do ; a kind of grand chamber- 
 lains with wiugs, who fly down to earth and communicate in- 
 formation to Adam and Eve. They have no character ; they are 
 essentially messengers, merely conductors, so to say, of the pro- 
 vidential will : no one fancies that they have an independent 
 power of action ; they seem scarcely to have minds of their own. 
 No effect can be more unfortunate. If the struggle of Satan 
 had been with Deity directly, the natural instincts of religion 
 would have been awakened; but when an angel possessed of 
 mind is contrasted with angels possessed only of wings, we 
 sympathise with the former. 
 
214 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 In the first two books, therefore, our sympathy with Milton's 
 Satan is great ; we had almost said unqualified. The speeches 
 he delivers are of well-known excellence. Lord Brougham, no 
 contemptible judge of emphatic oratory, has laid down, that if 
 a person had not an opportunity of access to the great Attic 
 masterpieces, he had better choose these for a model. What is 
 to be regretted about the orator is, that he scarcely acts up to 
 his sentiments. ' Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,' 
 is, at any rate, an audacious declaration. But he has no room 
 for exhibiting similar audacity in action. His offensive career 
 is limited. In the nature of the subject there was scarcely any 
 opportunity for the fallen archangel to display in the detail of 
 his operations the surpassing intellect with which Milton has 
 endowed him. He goes across chaos, gets into a few physical 
 difficulties ; but these are not much. His grand aim is the con- 
 quest of our first parents ; and we are at once struck with the 
 enormous inequality of the conflict. Two beings just created, 
 without experience, without guile, without knowledge of good 
 and evil, are expected to contend with a being on the delineation 
 of whose powers every resource of art and imagination, every 
 subtle suggestion, every emphatic simile, has been lavished. The 
 idea in every reader's mind is, and must be, not surprise that 
 our first parents should yield, but wonder that Satan should 
 not think it beneath him to attack them. It is as if an army 
 should invest a cottage. 
 
 We have spoken more of theology than we intended ; and 
 we need not say how much the monstrous inequalities attributed 
 to the combatants affect our estimate of the results of the con- 
 flict. The state of man is what it is, because the defenceless 
 Adam and Eve of Milton's imagination yielded to the nearly all- 
 powerful Satan whom he has delineated. Milton has in some 
 sense invented this difficulty ; for in the book of Grenesis there 
 is no such inequality. The serpent may be subtler than any 
 beast of the field ; but he is not necessarily subtler or cleverer 
 than man. So far from Milton having justified the ways of 
 
John Milton, 
 
 215 
 
 G-od to man, he has loaded the common theology with a new 
 encumbrance. 
 
 We may need refreshment after this discussion ; and we 
 cannot find it better than in reading a few remarks of Eve. 
 
 * That day I oft remember, when from sleep 
 I first awaked, and found myself reposed 
 Under a shade on flow'rs, much wond'ring where 
 And what I was, whence thither brought, and how. 
 Not distant far from thence a murm'ring sound 
 Of waters issued from a cave, and spread 
 Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved 
 Pure as th' expanse of Heav'n. . . I thither went 
 With unexperienced thought, and laid me down 
 On the green bank, to look into the clear 
 Smooth lake, that to me seem'd another sky. 
 As I bent down to look, just opposite 
 A shape within the wat'ry gleam appear'd, 
 Bending to look on me. I started back \ 
 It started back : but pleased I soon return'd ; 
 Pleased it return'd as soon with answ'ririg looks 
 Of sympathy and love : there I had fix'd 
 Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire. 
 Had not a voice thus warn'd me. What thou seest, 
 What there thou seest, fair Creature, is thyse'f ; 
 With thee it came and goes : but follow me, 
 And I will bring thee where no shadow stay 3 
 Thy coming, and thy soft embraces, he 
 Whose image thou art ; him thou shalt enjoy 
 Inseparably thine : to him shalt bear 
 Multitudes like thyself, and thence be call'd 
 Mother of Human Race. What could I do 
 But follow straight, invisibly thus led? 
 Till I espy'd thee, fair indeed and tall 
 Under a platan ; yet methought less fair, 
 Less winning soft, less amiably mild, 
 Than that smooth wat'ry image. Back I turn'd : 
 Thou following cry'dst aloud. Return, fair Eve ; 
 Whom fly'st thou % ' 
 
 Eve's character, indeed, is one of the most wonderful efforts of 
 
John Milton. 
 
 the hiuman imagination. She is a kind of abstract woman ; 
 essentially a typical being ; an official ' mother of all living.' 
 Yet she is a real interesting woman, not only full of delicacy 
 and sweetness, but with all the undefinable fascination, the 
 charm of personality, which such typical characters hardly ever 
 have. By what consummate miracle of wit this charm of indi- 
 viduality is preserved, without impairing the general idea which 
 is ever present to us, we cannot explain, for we do not know. 
 
 Adam is far less successful. He has good hair, — ' hyacin- 
 thine locks ' that ' from his parted forelock manly hung ; ' a 
 ' fair large front ' and ' eye sublime ; ' but he has little else that 
 we care for. There is, in truth, no opportunity of displaying 
 manly virtues, even if he possessed them. He has only to yield 
 to his wife's solicitations, which he does. Nor are we sure that 
 he does it well. He is very tedious ; he indulges in sermons 
 which are good; but most men cannot but fear that so de- 
 lightful a being as Eve must have found him tiresome. She 
 steps away, however, and goes to sleep at some of the worst 
 points. 
 
 Dr. Johnson remarked, that, after all, Paradise Lost was 
 one of the books which no one wished longer : we fear, in this 
 irreverent generation, some wish it shorter. Hardly any reader 
 would be sorry if some portions of the later books had been 
 spared him. Coleridge, indeed, discovered profound mysteries 
 in the last ; but in what could not Coleridge find a mystery 
 if he wished? Dryden more wisely remarked that Milton 
 became tedious when he entered upon a ' tract of Scripture.' 
 Nor is it surprising that such is the case. The style of many 
 parts of Scripture is such that it will not bear addition or sub- 
 traction. A word less, or an idea more, and the effect upon the 
 mind is the same no longer. Nothing can be more tiresome 
 than a sermonic amplification of such passages. It is almost 
 too much when, as from the pulpit, a paraphrastic commentary 
 is prepared for our spiritual improvement. In deference to the 
 intention we bear it, but we bear it unwillingly ; and we can- 
 
John Milton, 
 
 not endure it at all when, as in poems, the object is to awaken 
 our fancy rather than to improve our conduct. The account 
 of the creation in the book of Grenesis is one of the compositions 
 from which no sensitive imagination would subtract an iota, to 
 which it could not bear to add a word. Milton's paraphrase is 
 alike copious and ineffective. The universe is, in railway 
 phrase, ' opened,' but not created ; no green earth springs in a 
 moment from the indefinite void. Instead, too, of the simple 
 loneliness of the Old Testament, several angelic officials are in 
 attendance, who help in nothing, but indicate that heaven must 
 be plentifully supplied with tame creatures. 
 
 There is no difficulty in writing such criticisms, and, in- 
 deed, other unfavourable criticisms on Paradise Lost, There 
 is scarcely any book in the world which is open to a greater 
 number, or which a reader who allows plain words to produce a 
 due effect will be less satisfied with. Yet what book is really 
 greater ? In the best parts the words have a magic in them ; 
 even in the inferior passages you are hardly sensible of their 
 inferiority till you translate them into your own language. 
 Perhaps no style ever written by man expressed so adequately 
 the conceptions of a mind so strong and so peculiar ; a manly 
 strength, a haunting atmosphere of enhancing suggestions, a 
 firm continuous music, are only some of its excellences. To 
 comprehend the whole of the others, you must take the volume 
 down and read it, — the best defence of Milton, as has been said 
 most truly, against all objections. 
 
 Probably no book shows the transition which our theology 
 has made since the middle of the seventeenth century, at once 
 so plainly and so fully. We do not now compose long narratives 
 to 'justify the ways of Grod to man.' The more orthodox we 
 are, the more we shrink from it ; the more we hesitate at such 
 a task, the more we allege that we have no powers for it. Our 
 most celebrated defences of established tenets are in the style 
 of Butler, not in that of Milton. They do not profess to show 
 a satisfactory explanation of human destiny ; on the contrary, 
 
2l8 
 
 jfohn Milto7i. 
 
 they hint that probably we could not understand such an expla- 
 nation if it were given us ; at any rate, they allow that it is not 
 given us. Their course is palliative. They suggest an ' analogy 
 of difficulties.' If our minds were greater, so they reason, we 
 should comprehend these doctrines : now we cannot explain 
 analogous facts which we see and know. No style can be more 
 opposite to the bold argument, the boastful exposition of Mil- 
 ton. The teaching of the eighteenth century is in the very at- 
 mosphere we breathe. We read it in the teachings of Oxford ; 
 we hear it from the missionaries of the Vatican. The air of the 
 theology is clarified. We know our difficulties, at least ; we 
 are rather prone to exaggerate the weight of some than to deny 
 the reality of any. 
 
 We cannot continue a line of thought which would draw us 
 on too far for the patience of our readers. We must, however, 
 make one more remark, and we shall have finished our criticism 
 on Paradise Lost. It is analogous to that which we have just 
 made. The scheme of the poem is based on an offence against 
 positive morality. The offence of Adam was not against nature 
 or conscience, nor against any thing of which we can see the 
 reason, or conceive the obligation, but against an unexplained 
 injunction of the Supreme Will. The rebellion in heaven, as 
 Milton describes it, was a rebellion, not against known ethics, 
 or immutable spiritual laws, but against an arbitrary selection 
 and an unexplained edict. We do not say that there is no such 
 thing as positive morality : we do not think so ; even if we did, 
 we should not insert a proposition so startling at the conclusion 
 of a literary criticism. But we are sure that wherever a posi- 
 tive moral edict is promulgated, it is no subject, except perhaps 
 under a very peculiar treatment, for literary art. By the very 
 nature of it, it cannot satisfy the heart and conscience. It is 
 a difficulty ; we need not attempt to explain it away. There 
 are mysteries enough which will never be explained away. But 
 it is contrary to every principle of criticism to state the diffi- 
 culty as if it were not one ; to bring forward the puzzle, yet 
 
yohn Milton, 
 
 leave it to itself ; to publish so strange a problem, and give only 
 an untrue solution of it : and yet such, in its bare statement, is 
 all that Milton has done. 
 
 Of Milton's other writings we have left ourselves no room to 
 speak ; and though every one of them, or almost every one of 
 them, would well repay a careful criticism, yet few of them 
 seem to throw much additional light on his character, or add 
 much to our essential notion of his genius, though they may 
 exemplify and enhance it. Comus is the poem which does so 
 the most. Literature has become so much lighter than it used 
 to be, that we can scarcely realise the position it occupied in 
 the light literature of our forefathers. We have now in our 
 own language many poems that are pleasanter in their subject, 
 more graceful in their execution, more flowing in their outline, 
 more easy to read. Dr. Johnson, though perhaps no very ex- 
 cellent authority on the more intangible graces of literature, 
 was disposed to deny to Milton tlie capacity of creating the 
 lighter literature : ' Milton, madam, was a genius that could 
 cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon 
 cherry-stones.' And it would not be surprising if this genera- 
 tion, which has access to the almost indefinite quantity of 
 lighter compositions which have been produced since Johnson's 
 time, were to echo his sentence. In some degree, perhaps, the 
 popular taste does so. Comus has no longer the peculiar ex- 
 ceptional popularity which it used to have. We can talk with- 
 out general odium of its defects. Its characters are nothings 
 its sentiments are tedious, its story is not interesting. But it 
 is only when we have realised the magnitude of its deficiencies 
 that we comprehend the peculiarity of its greatness. Its 
 power is in its style. A grave and drm music pervades it : it is 
 soft, without a thought of weakness; harmonious and yet 
 strong ; impressive, as few such poems are, yet covered with a 
 bloom of beauty and a complexity of charm that few poems 
 have either. We have, perhaps, light literature in itself 
 better, that we read oftener and more easily, that lingers more 
 
220 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 in our memories ; but we have not any, we question if there 
 ever will be any, which gives so true a conception of the 
 capacity and the dignity of the mind by which it was pro- 
 duced. The breath of solemnity which hovers round the music 
 attaches us to the writer. Every line, here as elsewhere, in 
 Milton excites the idea of indefinite power. 
 
 And so we must draw to a close. The subject is an infinite 
 one, and if we pursued it, we should lose ourselves in miscella- 
 neous commentary, and run on far beyond the patience of our 
 readers. What we have said has at least a defined intention. 
 We have wished to state the impression which the character of 
 Milton and the greatest of Milton's works are likely to produce 
 on readers of the present generation — a generation different 
 from his own almost more than any other. 
 
221 
 
 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE 
 (1862.) 
 
 NoTHiNa is so transitory as second-class fame. The name of 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is hardly now known to the 
 great mass of ordinary English readers. A generation has 
 arisen which has had time to forget her. Yet only a few years 
 since, an allusion to the ' Lady Mary ' would have been easily 
 understood by every well-informed person ; young ladies were 
 enjoined to form their style upon hers ; and no one could have 
 anticipated that her letters would seem in 1862 as different 
 from what a lady of rank would then write or publish as if 
 they had been written in the times of paganism. The very 
 change, however, of popular taste and popular morality gives 
 these letters now a kind of interest. The farther and the 
 more rapidly we have drifted from where we once lay, the 
 more do we wish to learn what kind of port it was. We ven- 
 ture, therefore, to recommend the letters of Lady Mary Wort- 
 ley Montagu as an instructive and profitable study, not indeed 
 to the youngest of young ladies, but to those maturer persons 
 of either sex ' who have taken all knowledge to be their pro- 
 vince,' and who have commenced their readings in 'univer- 
 sality ' by an assiduous perusal of Parisian fiction. 
 
 It is, we admit, true that these letters are not at the pre- 
 sent day very agreeable reading. What our grandfathers and 
 grandmothers thought of them it is not so easy to say. But it 
 
 * I7ie Letter's and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Edited by her 
 Great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe. Third edition, with Additions and Correc- 
 tions derived from the original Manuscripts, illustrative Notes, and a New 
 Memoir. By W. Moy Thomas. In two volumes. London : Henry Bohn. 
 
222 
 
 Lady Ma?y Wcrtlcy Mo7ttagu, 
 
 now seems clear that Lady Mary was that most miserable 
 of human beings, an ambitious and wasted woman ; that she 
 brought a very cultivated intellect into a very cultivated 
 society ; that she gave to that society what it was most anxious 
 to receive, and received from it all which it had to bestow ; — 
 and yet that this all was to her as nothing. The high intel- 
 lectual world of England has never been so compact, so visible 
 in a certain sense, so enjoyable, as it was in her time. She had 
 a mind to understand it, beauty to adorn it, and wit to amuse 
 it ; but she chose to pass a great part of her life in exile, and 
 returned at last to die at home among a new generation, whose 
 name she hardly knew, and to whom she herself was but a 
 spectacle and a wonder. 
 
 Lady Mary Pierrepont — for that was by birth her name — 
 belonged to a family which had a traditional reputation for 
 ability and cultivation. The Memoirs of Lucy Hutchinson — 
 (almost the only legacy that remains to us from the first gene- 
 ration of refined Puritans, the only book, at any rate, which 
 effectually brings home to us how different they were in taste 
 and in temper from their moi»e vulgar and feeble successors) — 
 contains a curious panegyric on wise William Pierrepont, to 
 whom the Parliamentary party resorted as an oracle of judg- 
 ment, and whom Cromwell himself, if tradition may be trusted, 
 at times condescended to consult and court. He did not, how- 
 ever, transmit much of his discretion to his grandson. Lady 
 Mary's father. This nobleman, for he inherited from an elder 
 branch of the family both the marquisate of Dorchester and 
 the dukedom of Kingston, was a mere man ' about town,' as the 
 homely phrase then went, who passed a long life of fashionable 
 idleness interspersed with political intrigue, and who signalised 
 his old age by marrying a young beauty of fewer years than 
 his youngest daughter, who, as he very likely knew, cared 
 nothing for him and much for another person. He had the 
 ' grand air,' however, and he expected his children, when he 
 visited them, to kneeld own immediately and ask his blessing, 
 
Lady Mary Woidley Montagu. 
 
 223 
 
 which, if his character was what is said, must have been very 
 valuable. The only attention he ever (that we know of) be- 
 stowed upon Lady Mary was a sort of tlieatrical outrage, plea- 
 sant enough to her at the time, but scarcely in accordance 
 with the educational theories in which we now believe. He 
 was a member of the Kit-Cat, a great Whig club, the Brooks's 
 of Queen Anne's time, which, like Brooks's, appears not to 
 have been purely political, but to have found time for occa- 
 sional relaxation and for somewhat unbusiness-like discussions. 
 They held annually a formal meeting to arrange the female 
 toasts for that year ; and we are told that a whim seized her 
 father to nominate Lady Mary, ' then not eight years old, a 
 candidate ; alleging that she was far prettier than any lady on 
 their list.' The other members demurred, because the rules 
 of the club forbade them to elect a beauty whom they had 
 never seen. ' Then you shall see her,' cried he ; and in the 
 gaiety of the moment sent orders home to have her finely 
 dressed and brought to him at the tavern, where she was re- 
 ceived with acclamations, her claim unanimously allowed, her 
 health drunk by every one present, and her name engraved in 
 due form upon a drinking-glass. The company consisting of 
 some of the most eminent men in England, she went from the 
 lap of one poet, or patriot, or statesman, to the arms of 
 another, was feasted with sweetmeats, overwhelmed with 
 caresses, and what perhaps already pleased her better than 
 either, heard her wit and beauty loudly extolled on every side. 
 Pleasure, she said, was too poor a word to express her sensa- 
 tions ; they amounted to ecstasy : never again, throughout 
 her whole future life, did she pass so happy a day. Nor, in- 
 deed, could she ; for the love of admiration, which this scene 
 was calculated to excite or increase, could never again be so 
 fully gratified ; there is always some alloying ingredient in the 
 cup, some drawback upon the triumphs, of grown people. Her 
 father carried on the frolic, and we may conclude, confirmed 
 the taste, by having her picture painted for the club-room, that 
 
2 24 Lady Mary Worthy Montagu. 
 
 she might be enrolled a regular toast. Perhaps some young 
 ladies of more than eight years old would not much object to 
 have lived in those times. Fathers may be wiser now than 
 they were then, but they rarely make themselves so thoroughly 
 agreeable to their children. 
 
 This stimulating education would leave a weak and vain 
 girl still more vain and weak ; but it had not that effect on 
 Lady Mary. Vain she probably was, and her father's boastful- 
 ness perhaps made her vainer; but her vanity took an intel- 
 lectual turn. She read vaguely and widely ; she managed to 
 acquire some knowledge — how much is not clear — of Grreek and 
 Latin, and certainly learned with sufficient thoroughness 
 French and Italian. She used to say that she had the worst 
 education in the world, and that it was only by the ' help of an 
 uncommon memory and indefatigable labour ' that she had ac- 
 quired her remarkable attainments. Her father certainly seems to 
 have been capable of any degree of inattention and neglect ; but 
 we should not perhaps credit too entirely all the legends which 
 an old lady recounted to her grandchildren of the intellectual 
 difficulties of her youth. 
 
 She seems to have been encouraged by her grandmother, 
 one of the celebrated Evelyn family, whose memory is thus 
 enigmatically but still expressively enshrined in the diary of 
 the author of Sylva : — ' Under this date,' we are informed, ' of 
 the 2d of July 1649, he records a day spent at Grodstone, 
 where Sir John ' (this lady's father) ' was on a visit with his 
 daughter ; ' and he adds, ' Mem. The prodigious memory of 
 Sir John of Wilts's daughter, since married to Mr. W. Pierre- 
 pont.' The lady who was thus formidable in her youth deigned 
 in her old age to write frequently, as we should now say, — to 
 open a ' regular commerce' of letters, as was said in that age — 
 with Lady Mary when quite a girl, which she always believed 
 to have been beneficial to her, and probably believed rightly ; 
 for she was intelligent enough to comprehend what was said to 
 her, and the old lady had watched many changes in many things. 
 
Lady Mary Wort ley Montagu. 225 
 
 Her greatest intellectual guide, at least so in after life she 
 used to relate, was Mr. Wortley, whom she afterwards married. 
 ' When I was young,' she said, ' I was a great admirer of 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses, and that was one of the chief reasons 
 that set me upon the thoughts of stealing the Latin language. 
 Mr. Wortley was the only person to whom I communicated my 
 design, and he encouraged me in it. I used to study five or 
 six hours a day for two years in my father's library ; and so got 
 that language, whilst everybody else thought I was reading 
 nothing but novels and romances.' She perused, however, 
 some fiction also ; for she possessed, till her death, the whole 
 library of Mrs. Lennox's Female Quixote, a ponderous series 
 of novels in folio, in one of which she had written, in her 
 fairest youthful hand, the names and characteristic qualities of 
 ' the beautiful Diana, the volatile Clemene, the melancholy 
 Doris, Celadon the faithful, Adamas the wise, and so on, form- 
 ing two columns.' 
 
 Of Mr. Wortley's character it is not difficult, from the 
 materials before us, to decipher the features ; he was a slow 
 man, with a taste for quick companions. Swift's diary to Stella 
 mentions an evening spent over a bottle of old wine with Mr. 
 Wortley and Mr. Addison. Mr. Wortley was a rigid Whig, and 
 Swift's transition to Toryism soon broke short that friendship. 
 But with Addison he maintained an intimacy which lasted 
 during their joint lives, and survived the marriages of both. 
 With Steele likewise he was upon the closest terms, is said to 
 have written some papers in the Tatter and Spectator ; and the 
 second volume of the former is certainly dedicated to him in 
 affectionate and respectful terms. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, these conspicuous testimonials 
 to high ability, Mr. Wortley was an orderly and dull person. 
 Every letter received by him from his wife during five-and- 
 twenty years of absence, was found, at his death, carefully 
 endorsed with the date of its arrival, and with a synopsis of 
 its contents. ' He represented,' we are told, ' at various times, 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
2 26 Lady Mary Worthy Montagu, 
 
 Huntingdon, Westminster, and Peterborough in Parliament, 
 and appears to have been a member of that class who win 
 respectful attention by sober and business-like qualities ; and 
 his name is constantly found in the drier and more formal part 
 of the politics of the time.' He answered to the description given 
 more recently of a similar person : ' Is not,' it was asked, ' Sir 
 
 John a very methodical person ? ' ' Certainly he is,' was 
 
 the reply, ' he files his invitations to dinner.' The Wortley 
 papers, according to the description of those who have in- 
 spected them, seem to contain the accumulations of similar 
 documents during many years. He hoarded money, however, 
 to more purpose, for he died one of the richest commoners 
 in England; and a considerable part of the now marvellous 
 wealth of the Bute family seems at first to have been derived 
 from him. 
 
 Whatever good qualities Addison and Steele discovered in 
 ]\Ir. Wortley, they were certainly not those of a good writer. 
 We have from his pen and from that of Lady Mary a descrip- 
 tion of the state of English politics during the three first years 
 of George III., and any one who wishes to understand how 
 much readability depends upon good writing would do well to 
 compare the two. Lady Mary's is a clear and bright descrip- 
 tion of all the superficial circumstances of the time ; Mr. 
 Wortley's is equally superficial, often unintelligible and always 
 lumbering, and scarcely succeeds in telling us more than that 
 the writer was wholly unsuccessful in all which be tried to do. 
 As to Mr. Wortley's contributions to the periodicals of his time, 
 we may suspect that the jottings preserved at Loudon are all 
 which he ever wrote of them, and that the style and arrange- 
 ment were supplied by more skilful writers. Even a county 
 member might furnish headings for the Saturday Review, He 
 might say : ' Trent British vessel — Americans always intrusive — 
 Support Government — Kill all that is necessary.' 
 
 What Lady Mary discovered in Mr. Wortley it is easier to 
 say and shorter, for he was very handsome. If his portrait can 
 
Lady Mary Worthy Montagti. 227 
 
 be trusted, there was a placid and business-like repose about 
 him, which might easily be attractive to a rather excitable 
 and wild young lady, especially when combined with imposing 
 features and a quiet sweet expression. He attended to her also. 
 When she was a girl of fourteen, he met her at a party, and 
 evinced his admiration. And a little while later, it is not diffi- 
 cult to fancy that a literary young lady might be much pleased 
 with a good-looking gentleman not imcomfortably older than 
 herself, yet having a place in the world, and well known to the 
 literary men of the age. He was acquainted with the classics 
 too, or was supposed to be so ; and whether it was a consequence 
 of or a preliminary to their affections, Lady Mary wished to 
 know the classics also. 
 
 Bishop Burnet was so kind as to superintend the singular 
 studies — for such they were clearly thought — of this aristo- 
 cratic young lady ; and the translation of the Enchiridion of 
 Epictetus, which he revised, is printed in this edition of her 
 works. But even so grave an undertaking could not wholly 
 withdraw her from more congenial pursuits. She commenced 
 a correspondence with Miss Wortley, Mr. Wortley's unmarried 
 sister, which still remains, though Miss Wortley's letters are 
 hardly to be called hers, for her brother composed, and she 
 merely copied them. The correspondence is scarcely in the 
 sort of English or in the tone which young ladies, we under- 
 stand, now use. 
 
 * It is as impossible/ says Miss Wortley, ' for my dearest Lady 
 Mary to utter thought that can seem dull as to jnit on a look that is 
 not beautiful. Want of wit is a fault that those who envy you most 
 would not be able to find in your kind compliments. To me they 
 seem perfect, since repeated assurances of your kindness forbid me to 
 question their sincerity. You have often found that the most aniriy, 
 nay, the most neglectful air you can assume, has made as deep a 
 wound as the kindest ; and these lines of yours, that you tax with 
 dulness (perhaps because they were writ when you was not in a riglit 
 humour, or when your thoughts were elsewhere employed), are so far 
 from deserving the imputation, that the very turn of your expression, 
 
 q2 
 
2 28 Lady Mary Worthy Moniagti. 
 
 had I forgot the rest of your charms, would be sufficient to make me 
 lament the only fault you have — your inconstancy.' 
 
 To which the reply is : 
 
 * I am infinitely obliged to you, my dear Mrs. Wortley, for the 
 wit, beauty, and other fine qualities, you so generously bestow upon 
 me. Next to receiving them from Heaven, you are the person from 
 whom I would choose to receive gifts and graces : I am very well 
 satisfied to owe them to your own deHcacy of imagination, which 
 represents to you the idea of a fine lady, and you have good nature 
 enough to fancy I am she. All this is mighty well, but you do not 
 stop there ; imagination is boundless. After giving me imaginary wit 
 and beauty, you give me imaginary passions, and you tell me I'm in 
 love : if I am, 'tis a perfect sin of ignorance, for I don't so much as 
 know the man's name : I have been studying these three hours, and 
 cannot guess who you mean. I passed the days of Nottingham races 
 [at] Thoresby without seeing, or even wishing to see, one of the sex. 
 Now, if I am in love, I have very hard fortune to conceal it so in- 
 dustriously from my own knowledge, and yet discover it so much to 
 other people. 'Tis against all form to have such a passion as that, 
 without giving one sigh for the matter. Pray tell me the name of 
 him I love, that I may (according to the laudable custom of lovers) 
 sigh to the woods and groves hereabouts, and teach it to the echo.' 
 
 After some time Miss Wortley unfortunately died, and there 
 was an obvious difficulty in continuing the correspondence 
 without the aid of an appropriate sisterly screen. Mr, Wortley 
 seems to have been tranquil and condescending ; perhaps he 
 thought placid tactics would be most effective, for Lady Mary 
 was not so calm. He sent her some Tatlers, and received, by 
 way of thanks, the following tolerably encouraging letter : 
 
 ' To Mr, Worthy Montagu, 
 
 ' I am surprised at one of the Tatlers you send me ; is it 
 possible to have any sort of esteem for a person one believes 
 capable of having such trifling inclinations? Mr. BickerstafF 
 has very wrong notions of our sex. I can say there are some of 
 us that despise charms of show, and all the pageantry of great- 
 ness, perhaps with more ease than any of the philosophers. In 
 
Lady Mary Worthy Montagtc. 229 
 
 contemning the world, they seem to take pains to contemn it ; 
 we despise it, without taking the pains to read lessons of 
 morality to make us do it. At least I know I have always 
 looked upon it with contempt, without being at the expense of 
 one serious reflection to oblige me to it. I carry the matter 
 yet farther; was I to choose of two thousand pounds a year or 
 twenty thousand, the first would be my choice. There is some- 
 thing of an unavoidable emharras in making what is called a 
 great figure in the world ; [it] takes off from the happiness of 
 life ; I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great estates 
 and titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to 
 be given to fools, for 'tis only to them that they are blessings. 
 The pretty fellows you speak of, I own entertain me sometimes ; 
 but is it impossible to be diverted with what one despises ? I 
 can laugh at a puppet-show ; at the same time 1 know there is 
 nothing in it worth my attention or regard. Greneral notions 
 are generally wrong. Ignorance and folly are thought the best 
 foundations for virtue, as if not knowing what a good wife is 
 was necessary to make one so. I confess that can never be my 
 way of reasoning ; as I always forgive an injury when I think 
 it not done out of malice, I can never think myself obliged by 
 what is done without design. Give me leave to say it (I know 
 it sounds vain), I know how to make a man of sense happy ; 
 but then that man must resolve to contribute something to- 
 wards it himself. I have so much esteem for you, I should be 
 very sorry to hear you was unhappy ; but for the world I would 
 not be the instrument of making you so ; which (of the humour 
 you are) is hardly to be avoided if I am your wife. You dis- 
 trust me — I can neither be easy, nor loved, where I am dis- 
 trusted. Nor do I believe your passion for me is what you 
 pretend it ; at least I am sure was I in love I could not talk as 
 you do. Few women would have spoke so plainly as I have 
 done ; but to dissemble is among the things I never do. I take 
 more pains to approve my conduct to myself than to the world ; 
 and would not have to accuse myself of a minute's deceit. I 
 
230 Lady Mary Worthy Montagu, 
 
 wish I loved you enough to devote myself to be for ever mise- 
 rable, for the pleasure of a day or two's happiness. I cannot 
 resolve upon it. You must think otherwise of me, or not all. 
 
 ' I don't enjoin you to burn this letter. I know you will. 
 'Tis the first I ever writ to one of your sex, and shall be the 
 last. You must never expect another. I resolve against all 
 correspondence of the kind ; my resolutions are seldom made, 
 and never broken.' 
 
 Mr. Wortley, however, still grumbled. He seems to have 
 expected a young lady to do something even more decisive 
 than ask him to marry her. He continued to hesitate and 
 pause. The lady in the comedy says, 'What right has a man to 
 intend unless he states his intentions ? ' and Lady Mary's bio- 
 graphers are entirely of that opinion. They think her exceed- 
 ingly ill-used, and Mr. Wortley exceedingly to blame. And so 
 it may have been ; certainly a love-correspondence is rarely 
 found where activity and intrepidity on the lady's side so much 
 contrasts with quiescence and timidity on the gentleman's. If, 
 however, we could summon him before us, probably Mr. 
 Wortley would have something to answer on his own behalf. 
 It is tolerably plain that he thought Lady Mary too excitable. 
 ' Certainly,' he doubtless reasoned, 'she is a. handsome young- 
 lady, and very witty ; but beauty and wit are dangerous as well 
 as attractive. Vivacity is delightful ; but my esteemed friend 
 Mr. Addison has observed that excessive quickness of parts is 
 not unfrequently the cause of extreme rapidity in action. 
 Lady Mary makes love to me before marriage, and I like it ; 
 but may she not make love also to some one else after marriage, 
 and then I shall not like it.' Accordingly he writes to her timor- 
 ously as to her love of pleasure, her love of romantic reading, 
 her occasional toleration of younger gentlemen and quicker 
 admirers. At last, however, he proposed; and, as far as the 
 lady was concerned, there was no objection. 
 
 We might have expected, from a superficial view of the 
 facts, that there would have been no difficulty either on the 
 
Lady Mary Worthy Montagu, 
 
 231 
 
 side of her father. Mr. Wortley died one of the richest com- 
 moners in England ; was of the first standing in society, of 
 good family, and he had apparently, therefore, money to settle 
 and station to offer to his bride. And he did offer both. He 
 was ready to settle an ample sum on Lady Mary, both as his 
 wife and as his widow, and was anxious that, if they married, 
 they should live in a manner suitable to her rank and his 
 prospects. But nevertheless there was a difficulty. The Taller 
 had recently favoured its readers with dissertations upon social 
 ethics not altogether dissimilar to those with which the Satur- 
 day Revieiu frequently instructs its readers. One of these dis 
 sertations contained an elaborate exposure of the folly of 
 settling your estate upon your unborn children. The argu- 
 ments were of a sort very easily imaginable. ' Why,' it was 
 said, ' should you give away that which you have to a person 
 whom you do not know ; whom you may never see ; whom you 
 may not like when you do see ; who may be undutiful, unplea- 
 sant, or idiotic ? Why, too, should each generation surrender 
 its due control over the next ? When the family estate is 
 settled, men of the world know that the father's control is 
 gone, for disinterested filial affection is an unfrequent though 
 doubtless possible virtue; but so long as property is in sus- 
 pense, all expectants will be attentive to those who have it in 
 their power to give or not to give it.' These arguments had con- 
 verted Mr. Wortley, who is said even to have contributed notes 
 for the article, and they seem to have converted Lady Mary 
 also. She was to have her money, and the most plain-spoken 
 young ladies do not commonly care to argue much about the 
 future provision for their possible children; the subject is 
 always delicate and a little frightful, and on the whole, must be 
 left to themselves. But Lord Dorchester, her father, felt it his 
 duty to be firm. It is an old saying, that ' you never know 
 where a man's conscience may turn up,' and the advent of 
 ethical feeling was in this case even unusually beyond calcula- 
 tion. Lord Dorchester had never been an anxious father, and 
 
232 
 
 Lady Mary Worthy Montagu. 
 
 was not now going to be a liberal father. He had never cared 
 much about Lady Mary, except in so far as he could himself 
 gain eclat by exhibiting her youthful beauty, and he was not now 
 at her marriage about to do at all more than was necessary and 
 decent in his station. It was not therefore apparently probable 
 that he would be irritatingly obstinate respecting the income of 
 his daughter's children. He was so, however. He deemed it a 
 duty to see that 'his grandchild never should be a beggar,' 
 and, for what reason does not so clearly appear, wished that his 
 eldest male grandchild should be immensely richer than all his 
 other grandchildren. The old feudal aristocrat, often in modern 
 Europe so curiously disguised in the indifferent exterior of a 
 careless man of the world, was, as became him, dictatorial and 
 unalterable upon the duty of founding a family. Though he 
 did not care much for his daughter, he cared much for the 
 position of his daughter's eldest son. He had probably 
 stumbled on the fundamental truth that ' girls were girls, and 
 boys were boys,' and was disinclined to disregard the rule of 
 primogeniture by which he had obtained his marquisate, and 
 from which he expected a dukedom. 
 
 Mr. Wortley, however, was through life a man, if eminent 
 in nothing else, eminent at least in obstinacy. He would not 
 give up the doctrine of the Taller even to obtain Lady Mary. 
 The match was accordingly abandoned, and Lord Dorchester 
 looked out for and found another gentleman whom he proposed 
 to make his son-in-law ; for he believed, according to the old 
 morality, ' that it was the duty of the parents to find a husband 
 for a daughter, and that when he was found, it was the 
 daughter's duty to marry him.' It was as wrong in her to at- 
 tempt to choose as in him to neglect to seek. Lady Mary was, 
 however, by no means disposed to accept this passive theory of 
 female obligation. She had sought and chosen ; and to her 
 choice she intended to adhere. The conduct of Mr. Wortley 
 would have offended some ladies, but it rather augmented her 
 admiration. She had exactly that sort of irritable intellect 
 
Lady Majy Worthy Montagu. 233 
 
 which sets an undue value on new theories of society and 
 morality, and is pleased when others do so too. She thought 
 Mr. Wortley was quite right not to ' defraud himself for a 
 possible infant,' and admired his constancy and firmness. She 
 determined to risk a step, as she herself said, unjustifiable to 
 her own relatives, but which she nevertheless believed that she 
 could justify to herself. She decided on eloping with Mr. 
 Wortley. 
 
 Before, however, taking this audacious leap, she looked a 
 little. Though she did not object to the sacrifice of the cus- 
 tomary inheritance of her contingent son, she by no means 
 approved of sacrificing the settlement which Mr. Wortley had 
 undertaken at a prior period of the negotiation to make upon 
 herself. And, according to common sense, she was undoubtedly 
 judicious. She was going from her father, and foregoing the 
 money which he had promised her ; and therefore it was not 
 reasonable that, by going io her lover, she should forfeit also 
 the money which had promised her. And there is nothing 
 offensive in her mode of expression. ' 'Tis something odd for 
 a woman that brings nothing to expect anything ; but after the 
 way of my education, I dare not pretend to live but in some 
 degree suitable to it. I had rather die than return to a 
 dependency upon relations I have disobliged. Save me from 
 that fear, if you love me. If you cannot, or think I ought not 
 to expect it, be sincere and tell me so. 'Tis better 1 should not 
 be yours at all, than, for a short happiness, involve myself in 
 ages of misery. I hope there will never be occasion for this 
 precaution ; but, however, 'tis necessary to make it.' But true 
 and rational as all this seems, perliaps it is still truer and still 
 more rational to say, that if a woman has not sufficient confi- 
 dence in her lover to elope with him without a previous promise 
 of a good settlement, she had better not elope with him at all. 
 After all, if he declines to make the stipulated settlement, the 
 lady will have either to return to her friends or to marry with- 
 out it, and she would have the full choice between these satis- 
 
234 
 
 Lady Mary Worthy Montagu, 
 
 factory alternatives, even if she asked no previous promise from 
 her lover. At any rate, the intrusion of coarse money among 
 the refined materials of romance is, in this case, even more 
 curious and remarkable than usual. 
 
 After some unsuccessful attempts, Lady Mary and Mr. 
 Wortley did elope and did marry, and, after a certain interval, 
 of course, Lord Dorchester received them, notwithstanding 
 their contempt of his authority, into some sort of favour and 
 countenance. They had probably saved him money by their 
 irregularity, and economical frailties are rarely judged severely 
 by men of fashion who are benefited by them. Lady Mary, 
 however, was long a little mistrusted by her own relations, and 
 never seems to have acquired much family influence ; but her 
 marriage was not her only peculiarity, or the only one which 
 impartial relations might dislike. 
 
 The pair appear to have been for a little while tolerably 
 happy. Lady Mary was excitable, and wanted letters when 
 absent, and attention when present : Mr. Wortley was heavy 
 and slow ; could not write letters when away, and seemed 
 torpid in her society when at home. Still, these are cornmon 
 troubles. Common, too, is the matrimonial correspondence 
 upon baby's deficiency in health, and on Mrs. Behn's opinion 
 that ' the cold bath is the best medicine for weak children,' It 
 seems an odd end to a deferential perusal of Latin authors in 
 girlhood, and to a spirited elopement with the preceptor in 
 after years ; but the transition is only part of the usual irony of 
 human life. 
 
 The world, both social and political, into which Lady Mary 
 was introduced by her marriage was singularly calculated to 
 awaken the faculties, to stimulate the intellect, to sharpen the 
 wit, and to harden the heart of an intelligent, witty, and hard- 
 headed woman. The world of London — even the higher world 
 — is now too large to be easily seen, or to be pithily described. 
 The elements are so many, their position is so confused, the 
 display of their mutual counteraction is so involved, that many 
 
Lady Mary Wort ley Montagu. 235 
 
 years must pass away before even a very clever woman can 
 til oro uglily comprehend it all. She will cease to be young and 
 handsome long ere she does comprehend it. And when she at 
 last understands it, it does not seem a fit subject for concise 
 and simimary wit. Its evident complexity refuses to be con- 
 densed into pithy sayings and brilliant bons-mots. It has fallen 
 into the hands of philosophers, with less brains perhaps than 
 the satirists of our fathers, but with more anxiety to tell the 
 whole truth, more toleration for the many-sidedness of the 
 world, with less of sharp conciseness, but, perhaps, with more 
 of useful completeness. As are the books, so are the readers. 
 People do not wish to read satire nowadays. The epigrams 
 even of Pope would fall dull and dead upon this serious and 
 investigating time. The folly of the last age affected levity ; 
 the folly of this, as we all know, encases itself in ponderous 
 volumes which defy refutation, in elaborate arguments which 
 prove nothing, in theories which confuse the uninstructed, and 
 which irritate the well-informed. The folly of a hundred years 
 since was at least the folly of Vivien, but ours is the folly of 
 Merlin : 
 
 ' Ton read the book, my pretty Vivien, 
 And none can read the text, not even I, 
 And none can read the comments but myself— 
 Oh, the results are simple ! ' 
 
 Perhaps people did not know then as much as they know now : 
 indisputably they knew nothing like so much in a superficial 
 way about so many things ; but they knew far more correctly 
 where their knowledge began and where it stopped ; what they 
 thought and why they thought it : they had readier illustra- 
 tions and more summary phrases ; they could say at once what 
 it came to, and to what action it should lead. 
 
 The London of the eighteenth century was an aristocratic 
 world, which lived to itself, which displayed the virtues and 
 developed the vices of an aristocracy which was under little fear 
 of external control or check; which had emancipated itself from 
 
236 Lady Mary Worthy Montagu. 
 
 the control of the crown ; which had not fallen under the con- 
 trol of the bourgeoisie ; which saw its own life, and saw that, 
 according to its own maxims, it was good. Public opinion now 
 rules, and it is an opinion which constrains the conduct, and 
 narrows the experience, and dwarfs the violence, and minimises 
 the frankness of the highest classes, while it diminishes their 
 vices, supports their conscience, and precludes their grossness. 
 There was nothing like this in the last century, especially in the 
 early part of it. The aristocracy came to town from their re- 
 mote estates,— where they were uncontrolled by any opinion or 
 by any equal society, and where the eccentricities and person- 
 alities of each character were fostered and exaggerated, — to a 
 London which was like a large county town, in which everybody 
 of rank knew everybody of rank, where the eccentricities of 
 each rural potentate came into picturesque collision with the 
 eccentricities of other rural potentates, where the most minute 
 allusions to the peculiarities and the career of the principal 
 persons were instantly understood, where squibs were on every 
 table, and where satire was in the air. No finer field of social 
 observation could be found for an intelligent and witty woman. 
 Lady Mary understood it at once. 
 
 Nor was the political life of the last century so unfavourable 
 to the influence and so opposed to the characteristic compre- 
 hension of women as our present life. We are now ruled by 
 political discussion and by a popular assembly, by leading ar- 
 ticles, and by the House of Commons. But women can scarcely 
 ever compose leaders, and no woman sits in our representative 
 chamber. The whole tide of abstract discussion, which fills our 
 mouths and deafens our ears, the whole complex accumulation 
 of facts and figures to which we refer every thing, and which 
 we apply to every thing, is quite unfemale. A lady has an 
 insight into what she sees ; but how will this help her with the 
 case of the Trent, with the proper structure of a representative 
 chamber, with Indian finance or parliamentary reform ? Women 
 are clever, but cleverness of itself is nothing at present. A 
 
Lady Mary Woi'tley Montagu, 237 
 
 sharp Irish writer described himself ' as bothered intirely by 
 the want of preliminary information ; ' women are in the same 
 difficulty now. Their nature may hereafter change, as some 
 sanguine advocates suggest. But the visible species certainly 
 have not the intellectual providence to acquire the vast stores 
 of dry information which alone can enable them to^> adge 
 adequately of our present controversies. We are ruled by a 
 machinery of oratory and discussion, in which women have no 
 share, and which they hardly comprehend : we are engaged on 
 subjects which need an arduous learning, to which they have 
 no pretensions. 
 
 In the last century much of this was very different. The 
 Court still counted for much in English politics. The House 
 of Commons was the strongest power in the State machine, but 
 it was not so immeasurably the strongest power as now. It 
 was absolutely supreme within its sphere, but that sphere was 
 limited. It could absolutely control the money, and thereby 
 the policy of the State. Whether there should be peace or 
 war, excise or no excise, it could and did despotically deter- 
 mine. It was supreme in its choice of measures. But, on 
 the other hand, it had only a secondary influence in the choice 
 of persons. Who the Prime Minister was to be, was a ques- 
 tion not only theoretically determinable, but in fact deter- 
 mined by the Sovereign. The House of Commons could 
 despotically impose two conditions : first, that the Prime 
 Minister should be a man of sufficient natural ability, and 
 sufficient parliamentary experience, to conduct the business of 
 his day ; secondly, that he should adopt the policy which the 
 nation wished. But, subject to a conformity with these pre- 
 requisites, the selection of the king was nearly uncontrolled. 
 Sir Eobert Walpole was the greatest master of parliamentary 
 tactics and political business in his generation ; he was a states- 
 man of wide views and consummate dexterity ; but these in- 
 tellectual gifts, even joined to immense parliamentary expe- 
 rience, were not alone sufficient to make him and to keep him 
 
238 Lady Mary Worthy Montagti. 
 
 Prime Minister of England. He also maintained, during two 
 reigns, a complete system of court-strategy. During the reign 
 of Greorge II. he kept a queen- watcher. Lord Hervey, one of 
 the cleverest men in England, the keenest observer, perhaps, 
 in England, was induced, by very dexterous management, to 
 remain at court during many years — to observe the queen, to 
 hint to the queen, to remove wrong impressions from the 
 queen, to confirm the Walpolese predilections of the queen, to 
 report every incident to Sir Robert. The records of politics 
 tell us few stranger tales than that it should have been neces- 
 sary for the Sir Eobert Peel of the age to hire a subordinate 
 as safe as Eldon, and as witty as Canning, for the sole purpose 
 of managing a clever Grerman woman, to whom the selection of 
 a Prime Minister was practically intrusted. Nor was this the 
 only court-campaign which Sir Eobert had to conduct, or in 
 which he was successful. Lady Mary, who hated him much, 
 has satirically described the foundation upon which his court 
 favour rested during the reign of Greorge I. : — 
 
 " The new Court with all their train was arrived before I left the 
 country. The Duke of Marlborough was returned in a sort of 
 triumph, with the apparent merit of having suffered for his fidelity 
 to the succession, and was reinstated in his office of general, &c. In 
 short, all people who had sufiered any hardship or disgrace during the 
 late ministry would have it believed that it was occasioned by their 
 attachment to the House of Hanover. Even Mr. Walpole, who had 
 been sent to the Tower for a piece of bribery proved upon him, was 
 called a confessor to the cause. But he had another piece of good 
 luck that yet more contributed to his advancement ; he had a very 
 handsome sister, whose folly had lost her i-eputation in London ; but 
 the yet greater folly of Lord Townshend, who happened to be a neigh- 
 bour in Norfolk to Mr. Walpole, had occasioned his being drawn in 
 to marry her some months before the queen died. 
 
 * Lord Townshend had that sort of understanding which com- 
 monly makes men honest in the first part of their lives ; they follow 
 the instructions of their tutor, and, till somebody thinks it worth 
 their while to show them a new path, go regularly on in the road 
 where they are set. Lord Townshend had then been many years an 
 
Lady Mary Worthy Montagu. 239 
 
 excellent husband to a sober wife, a kind master to all his servants 
 and dependents, a serviceable relation wherever it was in his power, 
 and followed the instinct of nature in being fond of his childi-en. 
 Such a sort of behaviour without any glaring absurdity, either in 
 prodigality or avarice, always gains a man the repvitation of reason- 
 able and honest ; and this was his character when the Earl of Godol- 
 pliin sent him envoy to the States, not doubting but he would be 
 faithful to his orders, without giving himself the trouble of criticising 
 on them, which is what all ministers wish in an envoy. Robotun^ 
 a French refugee (secretary to Bernstoff, one of the Elector of Han- 
 over's ministers), happened then to be at the Hague, and was civilly 
 received at Lord Townshend's, who treated him at his table with the 
 English hospitality, and he was charmed with a leception which his 
 birth and education did not entitle him to. Lord Townshend was 
 recalled when the queen changed her ministry ; his wife died, and he 
 retired into the country, where (as I have said before) Walpole had 
 art enough to make him marry his sister Dolly. At that time, I 
 believe, he did not propose much more advantage by the match than 
 to get rid of a girl that lay heavy on his hands. 
 
 ' When King George ascended the throne, he was surrounded by 
 nil his German ministers and playfellows, male and female. Baron 
 Goritz was the most considerable among them both for birth and for- 
 tune. He had managed the king's treasury thirty years with the 
 utmost fidelity and economy ; and had the true German honesty, 
 being a plain, sincere, and unambitious man. Bernstoff, the secre- 
 tary, was of a different turn. He was avaricious, artful, and de- 
 signing ; and had got his share in the king's councils by bribing his 
 women. Bobotun was employed in these matters, and had the san- 
 guine ambition of a Frenchman. He resolved there should be an 
 English ministry of his choosing ; and, knowing none of them per- 
 sonally but Townshend, he had not failed to recommend him to his 
 master, and his master to the king, as the only proper person for the 
 important post of Secretary of State ; and he entered upon that 
 office with universal applause, having at that time a very popular 
 character, which he might possibly have retained for ever if he had 
 not been entirely governed by his wife and her brother B. Walpole, 
 whom he immediately advanced to be paymaster, esteemed a post of 
 exceeding profit, and very necessary for his indebted estate.' 
 
 And it is indisputable that Lord Townshend, who thought 
 he was a very great statesman, and who began as the patron of 
 
240 Lady Mary Woi^tley Montagu. 
 
 Sir Eobert Walpole, nevertheless was only his Court-agent — the 
 manager on his behalf of the king and of the king's mistresses. 
 
 We need not point out at length, for the passage we have 
 cited of itself indicates how well suited this sort of politics is 
 to the comprehension and to the pen of a keen-sighted and 
 witty woman. 
 
 Nor was the Court the principal improver of the London 
 society of the age. The House of Commons was then a part of 
 society. This separate, isolated, aristocratic world, of which 
 we have spoken, had an almost undisputed command of both 
 Houses in the Legislature. The letter of the constitution did 
 not give it them, and no law appointed that it should be so. 
 But the aristocratic class were by 'far the most educated, by far 
 the most respected, by far the most eligible part of the nation. 
 Even in the boroughs, where there was universal suffrage, or 
 something near it, they were the favourites. Accordingly, 
 they gave the tone to the House of Commons ; they required 
 the small community of members who did not belong to their 
 order to conform as far as they could to their usages, and to 
 guide themselves by their code of morality and of taste. In 
 the main the House of Commons obeyed these injunctions, 
 and it was repaid by being incorporated within the aristocratic 
 world : it became not only the council of the nation, but the 
 debating-club of fashion. That which was ' received ' modified 
 the recipient. The remains of the aristocratic society, wherever 
 we find them, are penetrated not only with an aristocratic but 
 with a political spirit. They breathe a sort of atmosphere of 
 politics. In the London of the present day, the vast mis- 
 cellaneous bourgeois London, we all know that this is not 
 so. ' In the country,' said a splenetic observer, ' people talk 
 politics ; at London dinners you talk nothing ; between two 
 pillars of crinoline you eat and are resigned.' A hundred and 
 fifty years ago, as far as our rather ample materials inform 
 us, people in London talked politics just as they now talk 
 politics in Worcestershire ; and being on the spot, and cooped 
 
Lady Mary Worthy Montagu. 241 
 
 up with politicians in a small social world, their talk was com- 
 monly better. They knew the people of whom they spoke, 
 even if they did not know the subjects with which they were 
 concerned. 
 
 No element is better fitted to counteract the characteristic 
 evil of an aristocratic society. The defect of such societies in 
 all times has been frivolity. All talk has tended to become 
 gossip ; it has ceased to deal with important subjects, and has 
 devoted itself entirely to unimportant incidents. Whether the 
 
 Due de has more or less prevailed with the Marquise 
 
 de is a sort of common form into which any details may 
 
 be fitted, and any names inserted. The frivolities of gallantry 
 — never very important save to some woman who has long been 
 dead — fill the records of all aristocracies who lived under a 
 despotism, who had no political authority, no daily political 
 cares. The aristocracy of England in the last century was, at 
 any rate, exempt from this reproach. There is in the records 
 of it not only an intellectuality, which would prove little, — for 
 every clever describer, by the subtleties of his language and 
 the arrangement of his composition, gives a sort of intellec- 
 tuality even to matters which have no pretension to it them- 
 selves, — but likewise a pervading medium of political discussion. 
 The very language in which they are written is the language 
 of political business. Horace Walpole was certainly by nature 
 no politician and no orator ; yet no discerning critic can read 
 a page of his voluminous remains without feeling that the 
 writer has through life lived with politicians and talked with 
 politicians. A keen observant mind, not naturally political, 
 but capable of comprehending and viewing any subject which 
 was brought before it, has chanced to have this particular 
 subject — politics — presented to it for a lifetime; and all its 
 delineations, all its efforts, all its thoughts, reflect it, and are 
 coloured by it. In all the records of the eighteenth century 
 the tonic of business is seen to combat the relaxing effect of 
 habitual luxury. 
 
 VOL. I. R 
 
242 Lady Mary Worfley Montagu. 
 
 This element, too, is favourable to a clever woman. The 
 more you can put before such a person the greater she will be ; 
 the less her world, the less she is. If you place the most keen- 
 sighted lady in the midst of the pure futilities and unmitigated 
 flirtations of an aristocracy, she will sink to the level of those 
 elements, and will scarcely seem to wish for anything more, 
 or to be competent for anything higher. But if she is placed 
 in an intellectual atmosphere, in which political or other im- 
 portant subjects are currently passing, you will probably find 
 that she can talk better upon them than you can, without your 
 being able to explain whence she derived either her information 
 or her talent. 
 
 The subjects, too, which were discussed in the political 
 society of the last age were not so inscrutable to women as 
 our present subjects ; and even when there were great diffi- 
 culties they were more on a level with men in the discussion 
 of them than they now are. It was no disgrace to be destitute 
 of preliminary information at a time in which there were no ac- 
 cumulated stores from which such information could be derived. 
 A lightening element of female influence is therefore to be 
 found through much of the politics of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Lady Mary entered easily into all this world, both social 
 and political. She had beauty for the fashionable, satire for 
 the witty, knowledge for the learned, and intelligence for the 
 politician. She was not too refined to shrink from what we 
 now consider the coarseness of that time. Many of her verses 
 themselves are scarcely adapted for our decorous pages. Per- 
 haps the following give no unfair idea of her ordinary state 
 of mind : 
 
 'TOWN ECLOGUES. 
 
 roxana; or, the drawing-room. 
 
 * Roxana, from the Court retiring late, 
 Sigh'd her soft sorrows at St. James's gate. 
 Such heavy thoughts lay brooding in her breast, 
 Not her own chairmen with more weight oppress'd; 
 
Lady Maiy Worthy Montagu. 243 
 
 They groan the cruel load they're doom'd to bear ; 
 She in these gentle sounds express'd her care. 
 
 " Was it for this that I these roses wear % 
 For this new-set the jewels for my hair % 
 Ah ! Princess ! with what zeal have I pursued ! 
 Almost forgot the duty of a prude. 
 Thinking I never could attend too soon, 
 IVe miss'd my prayers, to get me dress'd by noon. 
 For thee, ah ! what for thee did I resign ! 
 My pleasures, passions, all that e'er was mine. 
 I sacrific'd both modesty and ease. 
 Left operas and went to filthy plays ; 
 Double-entendres shock my tender ear ; 
 Yet even this for thee I choose to bear. 
 In glowing youth, when nature bids be gay, 
 And every joy of life before me lay. 
 By honour prompted, and by pride restrain'd, 
 The pleasures of the young my soul disdain'd : 
 Sermons I sought, and with a mien severe 
 Censur'd my neighbours, and said daily prayer. 
 
 " Alas ! how chang'd — with the same seruion-mien 
 That once I pray'd, the What dCye caWt I've seen. 
 Ah ! cruel Princess, for thy sake I've lost 
 That reputation which so dear had cost : 
 I, who avoided every public place, 
 When bloom and beauty bade me show my face, 
 Now near thee constant every night abide 
 With never- failing duty by thy side ; 
 Myself and daughters standing on a row, 
 To all the foreigners a goodly show ! 
 Oft had your drawing-room been sadly thin, 
 And merchants' wives close by the chair been seen, 
 Had not I amply filled the empty space. 
 And saved your highness from the diie disgrace. 
 
 " Yet Coquetilla's artifice prevails. 
 When all my merit and my duty fails; 
 That Coquetilla, whose deluding airs 
 Corrupt our virgins, still our youth ensnares j 
 So sunk her character, so lost her fame, 
 Scarce visited before your highness came : 
 B 2 
 
244 Lady Mary Woriley Montagu, 
 
 Yet for the bed-chamber 'tis her you choose, 
 
 When zeal and fame and virtue you refuse. 
 
 Ah ! worthy choice ! not one of all your train 
 
 Whom censure blasts not, and dishonours stain ! 
 
 Let the nice hind now suckle dirty pigs, 
 
 And the proud pea-hen hatch the cuckoo's eggs ! 
 
 Let Iris leave her paint and own her age, 
 
 And grave Suffolka wed a giddy page ! 
 
 A greater miracle is daily view'd, 
 
 A virtuous Princess with a Court so lewd. 
 
 " I know thee, Court ! with all thy treach'rous wiles, 
 Thy false caresses and undoing smiles ! 
 Ah ! Princess, learn'd in all the courtly arts. 
 To cheat our hopes, and yet to gain our hearts ! 
 
 " Large lovely bribes are the great statesman's aim ; 
 And the neglected patiiot follows fame. 
 The Prince is ogled ; some the king pursue ; 
 But your Roxana only follows you. 
 Despis'd Roxana, cease, and try to find 
 Some other, since the Princess proves unkind : 
 Perhaps it is not hard to find at Coui't, 
 If not a greater, a more firm support." ' 
 
 There was every kind of rumour as to Lady Mary's own 
 conduct, and we have no means of saying whether any of 
 these rumours were true. There is no evidence against her 
 which is worthy of the name. So far as can be proved, she 
 was simply a gay, witty, bold-spoken, handsome woman, who 
 made many enemies by unscrupulous speech, and many friends 
 by unscrupulous flirtation. We may believe, but we cannot 
 prove, that she found her husband tedious, and was dissatisfied 
 that his slow, methodical, home mind made so little progress 
 in the political world, and understood so little of what really 
 passed there. Unquestionably she must have much preferred 
 talking to Lord Hervey to talking with Mr. Montagu. But we 
 must not credit the idle scandals of a hundred years since, 
 because they may have been true, or because they appear not 
 inconsistent with the characters of those to whom they relate. 
 There were legends against every attractive and fashionable 
 
Lady Mary Wort ley Montagu. 
 
 245 
 
 woman in that age, and most of the legends were doubtless 
 exaggerations and inventions. We cannot know the truth of 
 such matters now, and it would hardly be worth searching 
 into if we could ; but the important fact is certain, Lady Mary 
 lived in a world in which the worst rumours were greedily told, 
 and often believed, about her and others ; and the moral refine- 
 ment of a woman must always be impaired by such a contact. 
 
 Lady Mary was so unfortunate as to incur the partial dis- 
 like of one of the great recorders of that age, and the bitter 
 hostility of the other. She was no favourite with Horace Wal- 
 pole, and the bitter enemy of Pope. The first is easily explic- 
 able. Horace Walpole never loved his father, but recompensed 
 himself by hating his father's enemies. No one connected with 
 the opposition to Sir Kobert is spared by his son, if there be a 
 fair opportunity for unfavourable insinuation. Mr. Wortley 
 Montagu was the very man for a grave mistake. He made the 
 very worst that could be made in that age. He joined the 
 party of constitutional exiles on the Opposition bench, who 
 had no real objection to the policy of Sir Eobert Walpole ; 
 who, when they had a chance, adopted that policy themselves ; 
 who were discontented because they had no power, and he 
 had all the power. Probably too, being a man eminently re- 
 spectable, Mr. Montagu was frightened at Sir Eobert's un- 
 scrupulous talk and not very scrupulous actions. At any rate, 
 he opposed Sir Eobert ; and thence many a little observation 
 of Horace Walpole's against Lady Mary. 
 
 Why Pope and Lady Mary quarrelled is a question on 
 which much discussion has been expended, and on which a 
 judicious Grerman professor might even now compose an inter* 
 esting and exhaustive monograph. A curt English critic will 
 be more apt to ask, ' Why they should not have quarrelled ? * 
 We know that Pope quarrelled with almost every one ; we know 
 that Lady Mary quarrelled or half quarrelled with most of her 
 acquaintances. Why, then, should they not have quarrelled 
 with one another ? 
 
^4^ Lady Mary Worthy Montagu, 
 
 It is certain that they were very intimate at one time ; for 
 Pope wrote to her some of the most pompous letters of compli- 
 ment in the language. And the more intimate they were to 
 begin with, the more sure they were to be enemies in the end. 
 Human nature will not endure that sort of proximity. An 
 irritable, vain poet, who always fancies that people are trying 
 to hurt him, whom no argument could convince that every 
 one is not perpetually thinking about him, cannot long be 
 friendly with a witty woman of unscrupulous tongue, wlio 
 spares no one, who could sacrifice a good friend for a bad hon- 
 onot, who thinks of the person whom she is addressing, not of 
 those about whom she is speaking. The natural relation of 
 the two is that of victim and torturer, and no other will long- 
 continue. There appear also to have been some money matters 
 (of all things in the world) between the two. Lady Mary was 
 intrusted by Pope with some money to use in speculation during 
 the highly fashionable panic which derives its name from the 
 South-Sea Bubble, — and as of course it was lost. Pope was very 
 angry. Another story goes, that Pope made serious love to 
 Lady Mary, and that she laughed at him ; upon which a very 
 personal, and not always very correct, controversy has arisen as 
 to the probability or improbability of Pope's exciting a lady's 
 feelings. Lord Byron took part in it with his usual acuteness 
 and incisiveness, and did not leave the discussion more decent 
 than he found it. Pope doubtless was deformed, and had not 
 the large red health that uncivilised women admire ; yet a 
 clever lady might have taken a fancy to him, for the little 
 creature knew what he was saying. There is, however, no evi- 
 dence that Lady Mary did so. We only know that there was a 
 sudden coolness or quarrel between them, and that it was the 
 beginning of a long and bitter hatred. 
 
 In their own times Pope's sensitive disposition probably 
 gave Lady Mary a great advantage. Her tongue perhaps gave 
 him more pain than his pen gave her. But in later times she 
 has fared the worse. What between Pope's sarcasms and Horace 
 
Lady Mary Wort ley Montagu. 247 
 
 \\^alpole's anecdotes, Lady Mary's reputation has buffered very 
 considerably. As we have said, her offences are non jproven ; 
 there is no evidence to convict her ; but she is likely to be con- 
 demned upon the general doctrine that a person who is accused 
 of much is probably guilty of something. 
 
 During many years Lady Mary continued to live a dis- 
 tinguished fashionable and social life, with a single remarkable 
 break. This interval was her journey to Constantinople. The 
 powers that then were, thought fit to send Mr. Wortley as 
 ambassador to Constantinople, and his wife accompanied him. 
 During that visit she kept a journal, and wrote sundry real 
 letters, out of which, after her return, she composed a series of 
 unreal letters as to all she saw and did in Turkey, and on the 
 journey there and back, which were published, and which are 
 still amusing, if not always select, reading. The Sultan was 
 not then the ' dying man ' ; he was the ' Grand Turk.' He was 
 not simply a potentate to be counted with, but a power to be 
 feared. The appearance of a Turkish army on the Danube had 
 in that age much the same effect as the appearance of a Eussian 
 army now. It was an object of terror and dread. A mission 
 at Constantinople was not then a bureau for interference in 
 Turkey, but a serious oflBce for transacting business with a great 
 European power. A European ambassador at Constantinople 
 now presses on the Grovernment there impracticable reforms ; he 
 then asked for useful aid. Lady Mary was evidently impressed 
 by the power of the country in which she sojourned ; and we 
 observe in her letters evident traces of the notion that the Turk 
 was the dread of Christendom, — which is singular now, when 
 the Turk is its protege. 
 
 Lady Mary had another advantage too- Many sorts of 
 books make steady progress ; a scientific treatise published now 
 is sure to be fuller and better than one on the same subject 
 written long ago. But with books of travel in a stationary 
 country the presumption is the contrary. In that case the old 
 book is probably the better book. The first traveller writes out 
 
 s 
 
248 Lady Mary Worthy Montagtc. 
 
 a plain, straightforward description of the most striking objects 
 with which he meets ; he believes that his readers know nothing 
 of the country of which he is writing, for till he visited it he 
 probably knew nothing himself ; and, if he is sensible, he 
 describes simply and clearly all which most impresses him. 
 He has no motive for not dwelling upon the principal things, 
 and most likely will do so, as they are probably the most con- 
 spicuous. The second traveller is not so fortunate. He is 
 always in terror of the traveller who went before. He fears the 
 criticism, — ' this is all very well, hut we knew the whole of it 
 before. No. 1 said that at page 103.' In consequence he is 
 timid. He picks and skips. He fancies that you are acquainted 
 with all which is great and important, and he dwells, for your 
 good and to your pain, upon that which is small and unim- 
 portant. For ordinary readers no result can be more fatal. 
 They perhaps never read, — they certainly do not remember 
 anything upon the subject. The curious minutice, so elabo- 
 rately set forth, are quite useless, for they have not the general 
 framework in which to store them. Not knowing much of the 
 first traveller's work, that of the second is a supplement to a 
 treatise with which they are unacquainted. In consequence 
 they do not read it. Lady Mary made good use of her position 
 in the front of the herd of tourists. She told us what she saw 
 in Turkey, — all the best of what she saw, and all the most 
 remarkable things, — and told it very well. 
 
 Nor was this work the only fruit of her Turkish travels ; 
 she brought home the notion of inoculation. Like most im- 
 provers, she was roughly spoken to. Medical men were angry 
 because the practice was not in their books, and conservative 
 men were cross at the agony of a new idea. Eeligious people 
 considered it wicked to have a disease which Providence did 
 not think fit to send you ; and simple people ' did not like to 
 make themselves ill of their own accord.' She triumphed, how- 
 ever, over all obstacles ; inoculation, being really found to 
 lengthen life and save complexions, before long became general. 
 
Lady Mary Worthy Montagu. 
 
 249 
 
 One of the first patients upon whom Lady Mary tried the 
 novelty was her own son, and many considerate people thought 
 it ' worthy of observation ' that he turned out a scamp. When 
 he ran away from school, the mark of inoculation, then rare, 
 was used to describe him, and after he was recovered, he never 
 did anything which was good. His case seems to have been 
 the common one in which nature (as we speak) requites herself 
 for the strongheadedness of several generations by the weakness 
 of one. His father's and his mother's family had been rather 
 able for some generations ; the latter remarkably so. But 
 this boy had always a sort of practical imbecility. He was 
 not stupid, but he never did anything right. He exemplified 
 another curious trait of nature's practice. Mr. Montagu was 
 obstinate, though sensible ; Lady Mary was flighty, though 
 clever. Nature combined the defects. Young Edward Mon- 
 tagu was both obstinate and flighty. The only pleasure he can 
 ever have given his parents was the pleasure of feeling their 
 own wisdom. He showed that they were right before marriage 
 in not settling the paternal property upon him, for he ran 
 through every shilling he possessed. He was not sensible enough 
 to keep his property, and just not fool enough for the law to 
 take it from him. 
 
 After her return from Constantinople, Lady Mary continued 
 to lead the same half-gay and half-literary life as before ; but 
 at last she did not like it. Various ingenious inquirers into 
 antiquated minutiae have endeavoured, without success, to dis- 
 cover reasons of detail which might explain her dissatisfaction. 
 They have suggested that some irregular love-affair was un- 
 prosperous, and hinted that she and her husband were not on 
 good terms. The love-affair, however, when looked for, cannot 
 be found ; and though she and her husband would appear to 
 have been but distantly related, they never had any great 
 quarrel which we know of. Neither seems to have been fitted 
 to give the other much pleasure, and each had the fault of 
 which the other was most impatient. Before marriage Lady 
 
250 Lady Mary Worthy Montagu. 
 
 Mary had charmed Mr. Montagu, but she had also frightened 
 him ; after marriage she frightened, but did not charm him. 
 He was formal and composed ; she was flighty and outree. 
 ' What will she do next ? ' was doubtless the poor man's daily 
 feeling ; and ' Will he ever do anything ? ' was probably also 
 hers. Torpid business, which is always going on, but which 
 never seems to come to anything, is simply aggravating to a 
 clever woman. Even the least impatient lady can hardly en- 
 dure a perpetual process for which there is little visible and 
 nothing theatrical to show ; and Lady Mary was by no means 
 the least impatient. But there was no abrupt quarrel between 
 the two ; and a husband and wife who have lived together more 
 than twenty years can generally manage to continue to live 
 together during a second twenty years. These reasons of de- 
 tail are scarcely the reasons for Lady Mary's wishing to break 
 away from the life to which she had so long been used. Yet 
 there was clearly some reason, for Lady Mary went abroad, and 
 stayed there during many years. 
 
 We believe that the cause was not special and peculiar 
 to the case, but general, and due to the invariable principles 
 of human nature, at all times and everywhere. If historical 
 experience proves anything, it proves that the earth is not 
 adapted for a life of mere intellectual pleasure. The life of a 
 brute on earth, though bad, is possible. It is not even difficult 
 to many persons to destroy the higher part of their nature by 
 a continual excess in sensual pleasure. It is even more easy 
 and possible to dull all the soul and most of the mind by a 
 vapid accumulation of torpid comfort. Many of the middle 
 classes spend their whole lives in a constant series of petty 
 pleasures, and an undeviating pursuit of small material objects. 
 The gross pursuit of pleasure, and the tiresome pursuit of 
 petty comfort, are quite suitable to such ' a being as man in 
 such a world as the present one.' What is not possible is, to 
 combine the pursuit of pleasure and the enjoyment of comfort 
 with the characteristic pleasures of a strong mind. If you 
 
Lady Mary Worthy Montagtt. 251 
 
 wish for luxury, you must not nourish the inquisitive instinct. 
 The great problems of human life are in the air ; they are with- 
 out us in the life we see, within us in the life we feel. A quick 
 intellect feels them in a moment. It says, ' Why am I here ? 
 What is pleasure, that I desire it ? What is comfort, that I 
 seek it ? What are carpets and tables ? What is the lust of the 
 eye ? What is the pride of life, that they should satisfy mef 1 
 was not made for such things. I hate them, because I have liked 
 them ; I loathe them, because it seems that there is nothing 
 else for me.' An impatient woman's intellect comes to this point 
 in a moment ; it says, ' Society is good, but I have seen society. 
 What is the use of talking, or hearing bon-mots ? I have done 
 both till I am tired of doing either. I have laughed till I 
 have no wish to laugh again, and made others laugh till I have 
 hated them for being such fools. As for instruction, I have 
 seen the men of genius of my time ; and they tell me nothing, 
 — nothing of what I want to know. They are choked with 
 intellectual frivolities. They cannot say " whence I came, and 
 whither I go." What do they know of themselves ? It is not 
 from literary people that we can learn anything ; more likely, 
 they will copy, or try to copy, the manners of lords, and make 
 ugly love, in bad imitation of those who despise them.' Lady 
 Mary felt this, as we believe. She had seen all the world of Eng- 
 land, and it did not satisfy. She turned abroad, not in pursuit 
 of definite good, nor from fear of particular evil, but from a 
 vague wish for some great change — from a wish to escape from 
 a life which harassed the soul, but did not calm it; which 
 awakened the intellect without answering its questions. 
 
 She lived abroad for more than twenty years, at Avignon 
 and Venice and elsewhere ; and, during that absence, she 
 wrote the letters which compose the greater part of her works. 
 And there is no denying that they are good letters. The art of 
 note- writing may become classical — it is for the present age to 
 provide models of that sort of composition — but letters have 
 perished. Nobody but a bore now takes pains enough to make 
 
252 Lady Mary Woj'tley Montagu, 
 
 them pleasant ; and the only result of a bore's pains is to make 
 them unpleasant. The correspondence of the present day is a 
 continual labour without any visible achievement. The dying 
 penny-a-liner said with emphasis, ' That which I have written 
 has perished.' We might all say so of the mass of petty 
 letters we write. They are a heap of small atoms, each with 
 some interest individually, but with no interest as a whole ; 
 all the items concern us, but they all add up to nothing. 
 In the last century, cultivated people who sat down to write 
 a letter took pains to have something to say, and took pains 
 to say it. The postage was perhaps ninepence; and it would 
 be impudent to make a correspondent pay ninepence for 
 nothing. Still more impudent was it, after having made him 
 pay ninepence, to give him the additional pain of making out 
 what was half expressed. People, too, wrote to one another 
 then, not unfrequently, who had long been separated, and who 
 required much explanation and many details to make the life 
 of each intelligible to the other. The correspondence of the 
 nineteenth century is like a series of telegrams with amplified 
 headings. There is not more than one idea ; and that idea 
 comes soon, and is soon over. The best correspondence of the 
 last age is rather like a good light article, — in which the 
 points are studiously made, — in which the effort to make them 
 is studiously concealed, — in which a series of selected circum- 
 stances is set forth, — in which you feel, but are not told, that 
 the principle of the writer's selection was to make his com- 
 position pleasant. 
 
 In letter-writing of this kind Lady Mary was very skilful. 
 She has the highest merit of letter- writing — ^she is concise 
 without being affected. Fluency, which a great orator pro- 
 nounced to be the curse of orators, is at least equally ihe curse 
 of writers. There are many people, many ladies especially, 
 who can write letters at any length, in any number, and at 
 any time. We may be quite sure that the letters so written 
 are not good letters. Composition of any sort implies con- 
 
Lady Mary Worthy Montagu, 253 
 
 sideration ; you must see where you are going before you can 
 go straight, or can pick yoiu' steps as you go. On the other 
 hand, too much consideration is unfavourable to the ease of 
 letter- writing, and perhaps of all writing. A letter too much 
 studied wants flow ; it is a museum of hoarded sentences. 
 Each sentence sounds effective ; but the whole composition 
 wants vitality. It was written with the memory instead 01 
 the mind ; and every reader feels the effect, though only the 
 critical reader can detect the cause. Lady Mary understood 
 all this. She said what she had to say in words that were 
 always graphic and always sufficiently good, but she avoided 
 curious felicity. Her expressions seem choice, but not chosen. 
 
 At the end of her life Lady Mary pointed a subordinate 
 but not a useless moral. The masters of mandane ethics 
 observe that ' you should stay in the world, or stay out of the 
 world.' Lady Mary did neither. She went out and tried to 
 return. Horace Walpole thus describes the result : ' Lady 
 Mary Wortley is arrived ; I have seen her ; I think her avarice 
 her art, and her vivacity are all increased. Her dress, like her 
 language, is a galimatias of several countries ; the groundwork 
 rags, and the embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no 
 handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, and no shoeS;, An old 
 black laced hood represents the first ; the fur of a horseman's 
 coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second ; a dimity 
 petticoat is deputy and officiates for the fourth ; and slippers 
 act the part of the last. When I was at Florence, and she 
 was expected there, we were drawing sortes Virgilianas for 
 her ; we literally drew 
 
 " Insanam vatem aspicies." 
 
 It would have been a stranger prophecy now even than it was 
 then.' There is a description of what the favourite of society 
 becomes after leaving it for years, and after indulging eccen- 
 tricities for years ! There is a commentary on the blunder of 
 exposing yourself in your old age to young people, to whom 
 
254 
 
 Lady Mary Wo 7^1 Icy Montagit. 
 
 you have always been a tradition and a name ! Horace Wal- 
 pole doubtless painted up a few trivialities a little. But one 
 of the traits is true. Lady Mary lived before the age in wliich 
 people waste half their lives in washing the whole of their 
 persons. 
 
 Lady Mary did not live long after her return to England. 
 Horace Walpole's letter is written on the 2nd February 1762, 
 and she died on the 21st August in the same year. Her hus- 
 band had died just before her return, and perhaps, after so many 
 years, she would not have returned imless he had done so. 
 Requiescat in jpace ; for she quarrelled all her life. 
 
 i 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 255 
 
 miLIAM COWPER.' 
 (1855.) 
 
 For the English, after all, the best literature is the English. 
 We understand the language ; the manners are familiar to us ; 
 the scene at home : the associations our own. Of course, a 
 man who has not read Homer is like a man who has not seen 
 the ocean. There is a great object of which he has no idea. 
 But we cannot be always seeing the ocean. Its face is always 
 large ; its smile is bright ; the ever-sounding shore sounds on . 
 Yet we have no property in them. We stop and gaze ; we 
 pause and draw our breath ; we look and wonder at the 
 grandeur of the other world ; but we live on shoi'e. We fancy 
 associations of unknown things and distant climes, of strange 
 men and strange manners. But we are ourselves. Foreigners 
 do not behave as we should, nor do the Grreeks. What a 
 strength of imagination, what a long practice, what a facility 
 in the details of fancy is required to picture their past and 
 unknown world ! They are deceased. They are said to be 
 immortal, because they have written a good epitaph ; but they 
 are gone. Their life and their manners have passed away. 
 We read with interest in the catalogue of the ships — 
 
 * The men of Argos and Tyrintha next, 
 And of Hermione, that stands retired 
 With Asine, within her spacious bay ; 
 Of Epidaurus, crowned with purple vines, 
 
 ' Poetical Works of William CoivpoT. Edited by Kobert Bell. J. W. 
 Parker and Son. 
 
 The Life of William Cowper^ with Selections from his Correspondence. 
 Being Volume I. of the Library of Christian Biography, superintended by 
 the Rev. Robert Bickersteth. Seeley, Jackson, and Co. 
 
256 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 And of Trsezena, with the Achaian youth 
 Of sea-begii't ^gina, and with thine 
 Maseta, and the dwellers on thy coast, 
 
 Waveworn Eionse ; 
 
 And from Caristus and from Styra came 
 Their warlike multitudes, in front of whom 
 Elphenor marched, Calchodon's mighty son. 
 With foreheads shorn and wavy locks behind, 
 They followed, and alike were eager all 
 To split the hauberk with the shortened spear.* 
 
 But they are dead. ' " So am not I," said the foolish fat scul- 
 lion.' We are the English of the present day. We have cows and 
 calves, com and cotton ; we hate the Kussians ; we know where 
 the Crimea is ; we believe in Manchester the great. A large 
 expanse is around us ; a fertile land of corn and orchards, and 
 pleasant hedgerows, and rising trees, and noble prospects, and 
 large black woods, and old church towers. The din of 
 great cities comes mellowed from afar. The green fields, the 
 half-hidden hamlets, the gentle leaves, soothe us with ' a sweet 
 inland murmur.' We have before us a vast seat of interest, and 
 toil, and beauty, and power, and this our own. Here is our 
 liome. The use of foreign literature is like the use of foreign 
 travel. It imprints in early and susceptible years a deep 
 impression of great, and strange, and noble objects ; but we 
 cannot live with these. They do not resemble our familiar life ; 
 they do not bind themselves to our intimate affection ; they are 
 picturesque and striking, like strangers and wayfarers, but they 
 are not of our home, or homely ; they cannot speak to our 
 ' business and bosoms ' ; they cannot touch the hearth of the 
 soul. It would be better to have no outlandish literature in the 
 mind than to have it the principal thing. We should be like 
 accomplished vagabonds without a country, like men with a 
 himdred acquaintances and no friends. We need an intellectual 
 possession analogous to our own life ; which reflects, embodies, 
 improves it ; on which we can repose ; which will recur to us in 
 the placid moments — which will be a latent principle even in 
 
William Cowper, 
 
 257 
 
 the acute crises of our life. Let us be thankful if our researches 
 in foreign literature enable us, as rightly used they will enable 
 us, better to comprehend our own. Let us venerate what is old, 
 and marvel at what is far. Let us read our own books. Let us 
 understand ourselves. 
 
 With these principles, if such they may be called, in our 
 minds, we gladly devote these early pages of our journal' to 
 the new edition of Cowper, with which Mr. Bell has favoured 
 us. There is no writer more exclusively English. There is no 
 one — or hardly one, perhaps — whose excellences are more 
 natural to our soil, and seem so little able to bear transplanta- 
 tion. We do not remember to have seen his name in any conti- 
 nental book. Professed histories of English literature, we dare 
 say, name him ; but we cannot recall any such familiar and 
 cursory mention as would evince a real knowledge and hearty 
 appreciation of his writings. 
 
 The edition itself is a good one. The life of Cowper, which 
 is prefixed to it, though not striking, is sensible. The notes 
 are clear, explanatory, and, so far as we know, accurate. The 
 special introductions to each of the poems are short and 
 judicious, and bring to the mind at the proper moment the 
 passages in Cowper's letters most clearly relating to the work 
 in hand. The typography is not very elegant, but it is plain 
 and business-like. There is no affectation of cheap ornament. 
 
 The little book which stands second on our list belongs 
 to a class of narratives written for a peculiar public, incul- 
 cating peculiar doctrines, and adapted, at least in part, to 
 a peculiar taste. We dissent from many of these tenets, and 
 believe that they derive no support, but rather the contrary, 
 from the life of Cowper. In previous publications, written 
 for the same persons, these opinions have 'been applied to 
 that melancholy story in a manner which it requires strong- 
 writing to describe. In this little volume they are more 
 
 ' This was the second article in the first number of the National 
 VOL. I. 8 
 
258 
 
 rarely expressed, and when they are it is with diffidence, 
 tact, and judgment. 
 
 Only a most pedantic critic would attempt to separate 
 the criticism on Cowper's works from a narrative of his 
 life. Indeed, such an attempt would be scarcely intelligible. 
 Cowper's poems are almost as much connected with his 
 personal circumstances as his letters, and his letters are as 
 purely autobiographical as those of any man can be. If 
 all information concerning him had perished save what his 
 poems contain, the attention of critics would be diverted 
 fi'om the examination of their interior characteristics to a 
 conjectural dissertation on the personal fortunes of the 
 author. The Grermans would have much to say. It would be 
 debated in Tiibingen who were the Three Hares, why 'The 
 Sofa ' was written, why John Grilpin was not called William. 
 Halle would show with great clearness that there was no 
 \eason why he should be called William ; that it appeared 
 by the bills of mortality that several other persons born about 
 the same period had also been called John ; and the ablest 
 of all the professors would finish the subject with a mono- 
 graph showing that there was a special fitness in the name 
 John, and that any one with the aesthetic sense who (like the 
 professor) had devoted many years exclusively to the perusal 
 of the poem, would be certain that any other name would be 
 quite ' paralogistic, and in every manner impossible and inap- 
 propriate.' It would take a Grerman to write upon the Hares. 
 
 William Cowper, the poet, was born on November 26, 
 1731, at his father's parsonage, at Berkhampstead. Of his 
 father, who was chaplain to the king, we know nothing of 
 importance. Of his mother, who had been named Donne, 
 and was a Norfolk lady, he has often made mention, and it 
 appears that he regarded the faint recollection which he re- 
 tained of her — for she died early — with peculiar tenderness. 
 In later life, and when his sun was going down in gloom and 
 sorrow, he recurred eagerly to opportunities of intimacy with 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 259 
 
 lier most distant relatives, and wished to keep alive the idea 
 of her in his mind. That idea was not of course very definite ; 
 indeed, as described in his poems, it is rather the abstract idea 
 of what a mother should be, than anything else ; but he was 
 able to recognise her picture, and there is a suggestion of 
 cakes and sugar-plums, which gives a life and vividness to the 
 rest. Soon after her death he was sent to a school kept by a 
 man named Pitman, at which he always described himself as 
 having suffered exceedingly from the cruelty of one of the boys. 
 He could never see him, or think of him, he has told us, with- 
 out trembling. And there must have been some solid reason for 
 this terror, since — even in those days, when tvtttw meant ' I 
 strike,' and 'boy' denoted a thing to be beaten —this juvenile 
 inflicter of secret stripes was actually expelled. From Mr. 
 Pitman, Cowper, on account of a weakness in the eyes, which 
 remained with him through life, was transferred to the care 
 of an oculist, — a dreadful fate even for the most cheerful boy, 
 and certainly not likely to cure one with any disposition to 
 melancholy ; hardly indeed can the boldest mind, in its 
 toughest hour of manly fortitude, endure to be domesticated 
 with an operation chair. Thence he went to Westminster, of 
 which he has left us discrepant notices, according to the feeling 
 for the time being uppermost in his mind. From several 
 parts of the ' Tirocinium,' it would certainly seem that he re- 
 garded the whole system of public school teaching not only 
 with speculative disapproval, but with the painful hatred of a 
 painful experience. A thousand genial passages in his private 
 letters, however, really prove the contrary ; and in a changing 
 mood of mind, the very poem which was expressly written to 
 ' recommend private tuition at home ' gives some idea of school 
 happiness. 
 
 * Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise, 
 We love the play -place of our early days ; 
 The scene is touching, and the heart is stone 
 That feels not at that sight, and feels at none. - 
 s 2 
 
26o 
 
 William Cowper, 
 
 The wall on which we tiied our graving skill, 
 
 The very name we carved subsisting still, 
 
 The bench on which we sat while deep employed, 
 
 Though mangled, hacked, and hewed, not yet destroyed; 
 
 The little ones unbuttoned, glowing hot. 
 
 Playing our games, and on the very spot, 
 
 As happy as we once, to kneel and di-aw 
 
 The chalky ring, and knuckle down at taw ; 
 
 To pitch the ball into the grounded hat. 
 
 Or drive it devious with a dextrous pat ; 
 
 The pleasing spectacle at once excites 
 
 Such recollections of our own delights. 
 
 That viewing it, we seem almost t' obtain 
 
 Our innocent sweet simple years again. 
 
 This fond attachment to the well-known place, 
 
 Whence first we started into life's long race. 
 
 Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway, 
 
 We feel it e'en in age, and at our latest day.' 
 
 Probably we pursue an insoluble problem in seeking a 
 suitable education for a morbidly melancholy mind. At first 
 it seems a dreadful thing to place a gentle and sensitive nature 
 in contact, in familiarity, and even under the rule of coarse 
 and strong buoyant natures. Nor should this be in general 
 attempted. The certain result is present suffering, and the 
 expected good is remote and disputable. Nevertheless, it is 
 no artificial difficulty which we here encounter — none which 
 we can hope by educational contrivances to meet or vanquish. 
 The difficulty is in truth the existence of the world. It is the 
 fact, that by the constitution of society the bold, the vigorous, 
 and the buoyant, rise and rule ; and that the weak, the shrink- 
 ing, and the timid, fall and serve. In after-life, in the actual 
 commerce of men, even too in those quiet and tranquil pur- 
 suits in which a still and gentle mind should seem to be under 
 the least disadvantage, in philosophy and speculation, the 
 strong and active, who have confidence in themselves and their 
 ideas, acquire and keep dominion. It is idle to expect that 
 this will not give great pain^ — that the shrinking and timid, 
 
William Cowper, 
 
 261 
 
 who are often just as ambitious as others, will not repine — that 
 the rough and strong will not often consciously inflict grievous 
 oppression — will not still more often, without knowing it, cause 
 to more tremulous minds a refined suffering which their coarser 
 texture could never experience, which it does not sympathise 
 with, nor comprehend. Some time in life — it is but a question 
 of a very few years at most — this trial must be undergone. 
 There may be a short time, more or less, of gentle protection 
 and affectionate care, but the leveret grows old— the world 
 waits at the gate — the hounds are ready, and the huntsman 
 too, and there is need of strength, and pluck, and speed. 
 Cowper indeed, himself, as we have remarked, does not, on an 
 attentive examination, seem to have suffered exceedingly. In 
 subsequent years, when a dark cloud had passed over him, he 
 was apt at times to exaggerate isolated days of melancholy 
 and pain, and fancy that the dislike which he entertained for 
 the system of schools, by way of speculative principle, was in 
 fact the result of a personal and suffering experience. But, as 
 we shall have (though we shall not, in fact, perhaps use them 
 all) a thousand occasions to observe, he had, side by side with 
 a morbid and melancholy humour, an easy nature, which was 
 easily satisfied with the world as he found it, was pleased with 
 the gaiety of others, and liked the sight of, and sympathy 
 with, the more active enjoyments which he did not care to en- 
 gage in or to share. Besides, there is every evidence that 
 cricket and marbles (though he sometimes in his narratives 
 suppresses the fact, in condescension to those of his associates 
 who believed them to be the idols of wood and stone which are 
 spoken of in the prophets) really exercised a laudable and 
 healthy supremacy over his mind. The animation of the 
 scene — the gay alertness which Gray looked back on so fondly 
 in long years of soothing and delicate musing, exerted, as the 
 passage which we cited shows, a great influence over a genius 
 superior to Grray's in facility and freedom, though inferior in 
 the ' little footsteps ' of the finest fancy, — in the rare and care- 
 
262 
 
 William Cozvper. 
 
 fully-hoarded felicities, unequalled save in the immeasurable 
 abundance of the greatest writers. Of course Cowper was un- 
 happy at school, as he was unhappy always ; and of course too 
 we are speaking of Westminster only. For Dr. Pitman and the 
 oculist there is nothing to say. 
 
 In scholarship Cowper seems to have succeeded. He was 
 not, indeed, at all the sort of man to attain to that bold, 
 strong-brained, confident scholarship which Bentley carried to 
 such an extreme, and which, in almost every generation since, 
 some Englishman has been found of hard head and stiff-clayed 
 memory to keep up and perpetuate. His friend Thurlow was 
 the man for this pursuit, and the man to prolong the just 
 notion that those who attain early proficiency in it are likely 
 men to become Lord Chancellors. Cowper's scholarship was 
 simply the general and delicate impression which the early 
 study of the classics invariably leaves on a nice and susceptible 
 mind. In point of information it was strictly of a common 
 nature. It is clear that his real knowledge was mostly confined 
 to the poets, especially the ordinary Latin poets and Homer, and 
 that he never bestowed any regular attention on the historians, or 
 orators, or philosophers of antiquity, either at school or in after 
 years. Nor indeed would such a course of study have in reality 
 been very beneficial to him. The strong, analytic, comprehen- 
 sive, reason-giving powers which are required in these dry and 
 rational pursuits were utterly foreign to his mind. All that 
 was congenial to him, he acquired in the easy intervals of appa- 
 rent idleness. The friends whom he made at Westminster, and 
 who continued for many years to be attached to him, preserved 
 the probable tradition that he was a gentle and gradual, rather 
 than a forcible or rigorous learner. 
 
 The last hundred years have doubtless seen a vast change in 
 the common education of the common boy. The small and 
 pomivorous animal which we so call is now subjected to a 
 treatment very elaborate and careful, — that contrasts much 
 with the simple alternation of classics and cuffs which was 
 
William Cowper, 
 
 263 
 
 formerly so fashionable. But it may be doubted whether for a 
 peculiar mind such as Cowper's, on the intellectual side at least, 
 the tolerant and corpuscular theory of the last century was not 
 preferable to the intolerant and never-resting moral influence 
 that has succeeded to it. Some minds learn most when they 
 seem to learn least. A certain, placid, unconscious, equable 
 in-taking of knowledge suits them, and alone suits them. To 
 succeed in forcing such men to attain great learning is simply 
 impossible ; for you cannot put the fawn into the ' Land Trans- 
 port.' The only resource is to allow them to acquire gently 
 and casually in their own way ; and in that way they will often 
 imbibe, as if by the mere force of existence, much pleasant and 
 well-fancied knowledge. 
 
 From Westminster Cowper went at once into a solicitor's 
 office. Of the next few years (he was then about eighteen) we 
 do not know much. His attention to legal pursuits was, accord- 
 ing to his own account, not very profound ; yet it could not 
 have been wholly contemptible, for his evangelical friend, Mr. 
 Newton, who, whatever may be the worth of his religious 
 theories, had certainly a sound, rough judgment on topics 
 terrestrial, used in after years to have no mean opinion of the 
 value of his legal counsel. In truth, though nothing could be 
 more out of Cowper's way than abstract and recondite jurispru- 
 dence, an easy and sensible mind like his would find a great 
 deal which was very congenial to it in the well-known and per- 
 fectly settled maxims which regulate and rule the daily life of 
 common men. No strain of capacity or stress of speculative 
 intellect is necessary for the apprehension of these. A fair and 
 easy mind, which is placed within their reach, will find it has 
 learnt them, without knowing when or how. 
 
 After some years of legal instruction, Cowper chose to be 
 called to the bar, and took chambers in the Temple accordingly. 
 He never, however, even pretended to practise. He passed his 
 time in literary society, in light study, in tranquil negligence. 
 He was intimate with Colman, Lloyd, and other wits of tliose 
 
264 
 
 William Cowper, 
 
 times. He wrote an essay in the Connoisseur^ the kind of 
 composition then most fashionable, especially with such literary 
 gentlemen as were most careful not to be confounded with the 
 professed authors. In a word, he did ' nothing,' as that word is 
 understood among the vigorous, aspiring, and trenchant part of 
 mankind. Nobody could seem less likely to attain eminence. 
 Every one must have agreed that there was no harm in him, 
 and few could have named any particular good which it was 
 likely that he would achieve. In after days he drew up a 
 memoir of his life, in which he speaks of those years with deep 
 self-reproach. It was not indeed the secular indolence of the 
 time which excited his disapproval. The course of life had 
 not made him more desirous of worldly honours, but less ; and 
 nothing could be further from his tone of feeling than regret 
 for not having strenuously striven to attain them. He spoke 
 of those years in the Puritan manner, using words which liter- 
 ally express the grossest kind of active Atheism in a vague and 
 vacant way ; leaving us to gather from external sources whether 
 they are to be understood in their plain and literal signification, 
 or in that out-of-the-way and technical sense in which they 
 hardly have a meaning. In this case the external evidence is so 
 clear that there is no difficulty. The regrets of Cowper had 
 reference to offences which the healthy and sober consciences 
 of mankind will not consider to deserve them. A vague, 
 literary, omnitolerant idleness was perhaps their worst feature. 
 He was himself obliged to own that he had always been con- 
 sidered ' as one religiously inclined, if not actually religious,' 
 and the applicable testimony, as well as the whole form and 
 nature of his character, forbid us to ascribe to him the slightest 
 act of licence or grossness. A reverend biographer has called 
 his life at this time, ' an unhappy compound of guilt and 
 wretchedness.' But unless the estimable gentleman thinks it 
 sinful to be a barrister and wretched to live in the Temple, it 
 is not easy to make out what he would mean. In point of 
 iiilellectual cultivation, and with a view to preparing himself 
 
Williain Cowper, 
 
 265 
 
 for writing his subsequent works, it is not possible be should 
 have spent his time better. He then acquired that easy, 
 familiar knowledge of terrestrial things — the vague and general 
 information of the superficies of all existence — the acquaintance 
 with life, business, hubbub, and rustling matter of fact, which 
 seem odd in the recluse of Olney — and enliven so effectually 
 the cucumbers of the ' Task.' It has been said that at times 
 every man wishes to be a man of the world, and even the most 
 rigid critic must concede it to be nearly essential to a writer on 
 real life and actual manners. If a man has not seen his brother, 
 how can he describe him ? As this world calls happiness and 
 blamelessness, it is not easy to fancy a life more happy — at 
 least with more of the common elements of happiness, — or 
 more blameless than those years of Cowper. An easy temper, 
 light fancies, — hardly as yet broken by shades of melancholy 
 brooding ; — an enjoying habit, rich humour, literary, but not 
 pedantic companions, a large scene of life and observation, 
 polished acquaintance and attached friends : these were his, and 
 what has a light life more ? A rough hero Cowper was not and 
 never became, but he was then, as ever, a quiet and tranquil 
 gentleman. If De Beranger's doctrine were true, ' Le honheur 
 tient au savoir-vivre,' there were the materials of existence here. 
 What, indeed, would not De Beranger have made of them ? 
 
 One not unnatural result or accompaniment of such a life 
 was that Cowper fell in love. There were in those days two 
 young ladies, cousins of Cowper, residents in London, to one 
 of whom, the Lady Hesketh of after years, he once wrote : — 
 ' My dear Cousin, — I wonder how it happened, that much as 
 I love you, I was never in love with you.' No similar provi- 
 dence protected his intimacy with her sister. Theodora Cowper, 
 ' One of the cousins with whom Thurlow used to giggle and 
 make giggle in Southampton-row,' was a handsome and vigor- 
 ous damsel. ' What ! ' said her father, ' What will you do if 
 you marry William Cowper ? ' meaning, in the true parental 
 spirit, to intrude mere pecuniary ideas. ' Do, sir ! ' she replied, 
 
266 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 ' Wash all day, and ride out on the great dog all night ! ' a 
 spirited combination of domestic industry and exterior excite- 
 ment. It is doubtful, however, whether either of these species 
 of pastime and occupation would have been exactly congenial 
 to Cowper. A gentle and refined indolence must have made 
 him an inferior washerman, and perhaps to accompany the 
 canine excursions of a wife ' which clear-starched,' would have 
 hardly seemed enough to satisfy his accomplished and placid 
 ambition. At any rate, it certainly does seem that he was not 
 a very vigorous lover. The young lady was, as he himself 
 oddly said : — 
 
 * Through tedious years of doubt and pain, 
 Fixed in her choice and faithful . . . hut in vain* 
 
 The poet does indeed partly allude to. the parental scruples 
 of Mr. Cowper, her father ; but house-rent would not be so 
 high as it is, if fathers had their way. The profits of builders 
 are eminently dependent on the uncontrollable nature of the 
 best affections ; and that intelligent class of men have had a 
 table compiled from trustworthy data, in which the chances of 
 parental victory are rated at '000000000 1, and those of the 
 young people themselves at '999999999, — in fact, as many 
 nines as you can imagine ' It has been represented to me,' 
 says the actuary, ' that few young people ever marry without 
 some objection, more or less slight, on the part of their parents ; 
 and from a most laborious calculation, from data collected in 
 quarters both within and exterior to the bills of mortality, I 
 am led to believe that the above figures represent the state of 
 the case accurately enough to form a safe guide for the pecu- 
 niary investments of the gentlemen, &c. &c.' It is not likely 
 that Theodora Cowper understood decimals, but she had a strong 
 opinion in favour of her cousin, and a great idea, if we rightly 
 read the now obscure annals of old times, that her father's 
 objections might pretty easily have been got over. In fact, 
 we think so even now, without any prejudice of affection, in 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 267 
 
 our cool and mature judgment. Mr. Cowper the aged had 
 nothing to say, except that the parties were cousins — a valuable 
 remark, which has been frequently repeated in similar cases, 
 l3ut which has not been found to prevent a mass of matches 
 both then and since. Probably the old gentleman thought 
 the young gentleman by no means a working man, and ob- 
 jected — believing that a small income can only be made more 
 by unremitting industry, — and the young gentleman admitting 
 this horrid and abstract fact, and agreeing, though perhaps 
 tacitly, in his uncle's estimate of his personal predilections, 
 did not object to being objected to. The nature of Cowper was 
 not, indeed, passionate. He required beyond almost any man 
 the daily society of amiable and cultivated v^ omen. It is clear 
 that he preferred such gentle excitement to the rough and 
 argumentative pleasures of more masculine companionship. 
 His easy and humorous nature loved and learned from female 
 detail. But he had no overwhelming partiality for a par- 
 ticular individual. One refined lady, the first moments of 
 shyness over, was nearly as pleasing as another refined lady. 
 Disappointment sits easy on such a mind. Perhaps, too, he 
 feared the anxious duties, the rather contentious tenderness of 
 matrimonial existence. At any rate, he acquiesced. Theodora 
 never married. Love did not, however, kill her — at least, if it 
 did, it was a long time at the task, as she survived these events 
 more than sixty years. She never, seemingly, forgot the past. 
 
 But a dark cloud was at hand. If there be any truly pain- 
 fid fact about the world now tolerably well established by 
 ample experience and ample records, it is that an intellectual 
 and indolent happiness is wholly denied to the children of men. 
 That most valuable author, Lucretius, who has supplied us and 
 others with an inexhaustible supply of metaphors on this topic, 
 ever dwells on the life of his gods with a sad and melancholy 
 feeling that no such life was possible on a crude and cumber- 
 some earth. In general, the two opposing agencies are marriage 
 and money \ either of these breaks the lot of literar}' and re- 
 
268 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 fined inaction at once and for ever. The first of these, as we 
 have seen, Cowper had escaped. His reserved and negligent 
 reveries were still free, at least from the invasion of affection. 
 To this invasion, indeed, there is commonly requisite the ac- 
 quiescence or connivance of mortality ; but all men are born, 
 not free and equal, as the Americans maintain, but, in the 
 old world at least, basely subjected to the yoke of coin. It is 
 in vain that in this hemisphere we endeavour after impecuniary 
 fancies. In bold and eager youth we go out on our travels. 
 We visit Baal bee, and Paphos, and Tadmor, and Cythera, — 
 ancient shrines and ancient empires, seats of eager love or 
 gentle inspiration. We wander far and long. We have nothing 
 to do with our fellow-men. What are we, indeed, to diggers 
 and counters ? We wander far ; we dream to wander for ever, 
 but we dream in vain. A surer force than the subtlest fascina- 
 tion of fancy is in operation. The purse-strings tie us to our 
 kind. Our travel-coin runs low, and we must return, away 
 from Tadmor and Baalbec back to our steady, tedious industry 
 and dull work, to ' la vieille Europe (as Napoleon said) qui 
 ennuieJ It is the same in thought. In vain we seclude our- 
 selves in elegant chambers, in fascinating fancies, in refined 
 reflections. ' By this time,' says Cowper, ' my patrimony being 
 nearly all spent, and there being no appearance that I should 
 ever repair the damage by a fortune of my own getting, I 
 began to be a little apprehensive of approaching want.' How- 
 ever little one is fit for it, it is necessary to attack some 
 drudgery. The vigorous and sturdy rouse themselves to the 
 work. They find in its regular occupation, clear decisions, 
 and stern perplexities, a bold and rude compensation for the 
 necessary loss or diminution of light fancies and delicate 
 musings, — 
 
 ' The sights which youthful poets dream, 
 On summer eve by haunted stream.' 
 
 ]^ut it was not so with Cowper. A peculiar and slight nature 
 unfitted him for so rough and harsh a resolution. The lion 
 
William Cozvper. \ 269 
 
 may eat straw like the ox, and the child put his head on the 
 cockatrice' den ; but will even then the light antelope be equal 
 to the heavy plough ? Will the gentle gazelle, even in those 
 days, pull the slow waggon of ordinary occupation ? 
 
 The outward position of Cowper was, indeed, singularly 
 fortunate. Instead of having to meet the long labours of an 
 open profession, or the anxious decisions of a personal business, 
 he had the choice among several lucrative and quiet public 
 offices, in which very ordinary abilities would suffice, and scarcely 
 any degree of incapacity would entail dismissal, or reprimand, 
 or degradation. It seemed at first scarcely possible that even 
 the least strenuous of men should be found unequal to duties so 
 little arduous or exciting. He has himself said — 
 
 * Lucrative ojQBces are seldom lost 
 For want of powers proportioned to the post ; 
 Give e'en a dunce the employment he desiresA 
 ^^^nd he soon finds the talents it requires ; ^ 
 A business with an income at its heels, 
 Furnishes always oil for its own wheels.' 
 
 The place he chose was called the Clerkship of the Journals of 
 the House of Lords, one of the many quiet haunts which then 
 slumbered under the imposing shade of parliamentary and aris- 
 tocratic privilege. Yet the idea of it was more than he could 
 bear. 
 
 '■ In the beginning/ he writes, ' a strong opposition to my friend's 
 right of nomination began to show itself. A powerful party was 
 formed among the Lords to thwart it, in favour of an old enemy of 
 the family, though one much indebted to its bounty ; and it appeared 
 plain that, if we succeeded at last, it would only be by fighting our 
 ground by inches. Every advantage, as I was told, would be sought 
 for, and eagerly seized, to disconcert us. I was bid to expect an 
 examination at the bar of the House, touching my sufiiciency for the 
 post I had taken. Being necessarily ignorant of the nature of that 
 business, it became expedient that I should visit the office daily, in 
 order to qualify myself for the strictest scrutiny. All the horror of 
 my fears and perplexities now returned. A thunderbolt would have 
 
270 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 been as welcome to me as this intelligence. I knew, to demonstra- 
 tion, that ujion these terms the clerkship of the journals was no place 
 for me. To require my attendance at the bar of the House, that I 
 might there publicly entitle myself to the office, was, in effect, to 
 exclude me from it. In the meantime, the interest of my friend, 
 the honour of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances, all 
 urged me forward ; all pressed me to undertake that which I saw to 
 be impracticable. They whose spirits are formed like mine, to 
 whom a public exhibition of themselves, on any occasion, is mortal 
 2)oison, may have some idea of the horrors of my situation ; others 
 can have none. 
 
 ' My continual misery at length brought on a nervous fever : quiet 
 forsook me by day, and peace by night ; a finger raised against me 
 was more than I could stand against. In this posture of mind, I 
 attended regularly at the office ; where, instead of a soul upon the 
 rack, the most active spiiits were essentially necessary for my 
 purpose. I expected no assistance from anybody there, all the inferior 
 clerks being under the influence of my opponent ; and accordingly I 
 received none. The journal books were indeed thrown open to me — 
 a thing which could not be refused ; and from which, perhaps, a 
 man in health, and with a head turned to business, might have 
 gained all the information he wanted ; but it was not so with me. 
 I read without perception, and was so distressed, that, had every 
 clerk in the office been my friend, it could have availed me little ; 
 for I was not in a condition to receive instruction, much less to elicit 
 it out of manuscripts, without direction. Many months went over 
 me thus employed ; constant in the use of means, despairing as to 
 the issue.* 
 
 As the time of trial drew near, his excitement rapidly in- 
 creased. A short excursion into the country was attended 
 with momentary benefit ; but as soon as he returned to town 
 he became immediately unfit for occupation, and as unsettled 
 as ever. He gi-ew first to wish to become mad, next to believe 
 that he should become so, and only to be afraid that the ex- 
 pected delirium might not come on soon enough to prevent 
 his appearance for examination before the lords, — a fear, the 
 bare existence of which shows how slight a barrier remained 
 between him and the insanity which he fancied that he longed 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 271 
 
 for. He then began to contemplate suicide, and not unna- 
 turally called to mind a curious circumstance : 
 
 *I well recollect, too/ he writes, ' that when I was about eleven 
 years of age, my father desired me to read a vindication of self- 
 murder, and give him my sentiments upon the question : I did so, 
 and argued against it. My father heard my reasons, and was silent, 
 neither approving nor disapproving ; from whence I inferred that 
 he sided with the author against me ; though all the time, I believe, 
 the true motive for his conduct was, that he wanted, if he could, to 
 think fav ourably of the state of a departed friend, who had some 
 years before destroyed himself, and whose death had struck him 
 with the deepest affliction. But this solution of the matter never 
 once occurred to me, and the cii-cumstance now weighed mightily 
 with me.' 
 
 And he made several attempts to execute his purpose, all which 
 are related in a ' Narrative,' which he drew up after his re- 
 covery ; and of which the elaborate detail shows a strange and 
 most painful tendency to revive the slightest circumstances of 
 delusions which it would have been most safe and most whole- 
 some never to recall. The curiously careful style, indeed, of 
 the narration, as elegant as that of the most flowing and feli- 
 citous letter, reminds one of nothing so much as the studiously 
 beautiful and compact handwriting in which Rousseau used to 
 narrate and describe the most incoherent and indefinite of his 
 personal delusions. On the whole, nevertheless — for a long 
 time, at least — it does not seem that the life of Cowper was in 
 real danger. The hesitation and indeterminateness of nerve 
 which rendered him liable to these fancies, and unequal to 
 ordinary action, also prevented his carrying out these terrible 
 visitations to their rigorous and fearful consequences. At last, 
 however, there seems to have been possible, if not actual 
 danger : 
 
 * Not one hesitating thought now remained, but I fell gTeedily to 
 the execution of my purpose. My garter was made of a broad 
 piece of scarlet binding, with a sliding buckle, being sewn together 
 at the ends ; by the helj) of the buckle I formed a noose, and fixed 
 
272 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 it about my neck, straining it so tight that I hardly left a passage 
 for my breath, or for the blood to circulate ; the tongue of the 
 buckle held it fast. At each corner of the bed was placed a wreath 
 of carved work, fastened by an iron pin, which passed up through 
 the midst of it : the other part of the garter, which made a loop, I 
 slipped over one of these, and hung by it some seconds, drawing 
 up my feet under me, that they might not touch the floor ; but the 
 iron bent, and the carved work slipped off", and the garter with it. 
 I then fastened it to the frame of the tester, winding it round, and 
 tying it in a strong knot. The frame broke short, and let -me down 
 again. 
 
 ' The third effort was more likely to succeed. I set the door 
 open, which reached within afoot of the ceiling; by the help of a 
 chair I could command the top of it, and the loop being lai'ge 
 enough to admit a large angle of the door, was easily fixed so as not 
 to slip off again. I pushed away the chair with my feet, and hung 
 at my whole length. While I hung there, I distinctly heard a voice 
 say three times, ' ^Tis over ! ' Though I am sure of the fact, and was 
 so at the time, yet it did not at all alarm me, or affect my resolution. 
 I hung so long that I lost all sense, all consciousness of existence. 
 
 *' When I came to myself again, I thought myself in hell ; the 
 sound of my own dreadful groans was all that I heard, and a feeling 
 like that produced by a flash of lightning just beginning to seize 
 upon me, passed over my whole body. In a few seconds I found 
 myself fallen on my face to the floor. In about half a minute I re- 
 covered my feet : and, reeling and staggering, tumbled into bed again. 
 
 By the blessed providence of God, the garter which had held 
 me till the bitterness of temporal death was past, broke just before 
 eternal death had taken place upon me. The stagnation of the 
 blood under one eye, in a broad crimson spot, and a red circle 
 round my neck, showed plainly that I had been on the brink of 
 eternity. The latter, indeed, might have been occasioned by the 
 pressure of the garter, but the former was certainly the effect of 
 strangulation ; for it was not attended with the sensation of a bruise, 
 as it must have been, had I, in my fall, received one in so tender 
 a part. And I rather think the circle round my neck was owing to 
 the same cause ; for the part was not excoriated, not at all in pain. 
 
 ' Soon after I got into bed, I was surprised to hear a noise in 
 tlie dining-room, where the laundress was lighting a fire ; she had 
 found the door unbolted, notwithstanding my design to fasten it, 
 and must have passed the bed-chamber door while I was hanging 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 273 
 
 on it, and yet never perceived me. She heard me fall, and presently 
 came to ask me if I was well ; adding, she feared I had been in a fit. 
 
 ' I sent her to a friend, to whom I related the whole affair, and 
 dispatched him to my kinsman at the coffee-house. As soon as the 
 latter arrived, I pointed to the broken garter, which lay in the 
 middle of the room, and apprised him also of the attempt I had been 
 making. His words were, " My dear Mr. Cowper, you terrify me ! 
 To be sure you cannot hold the office at this rate, — where is the 
 deputation % " I gave him the key of the di-awer where it was de- 
 posited;; and his business requiring his immediate attendance, he 
 took it away with him ; and thus ended all my connection with the 
 Parliament office.* 
 
 It must have been a strange scene ; for, so far as appears, 
 the outward manners of Cowper had undergone no remarkable 
 change. There was always a mild composure about them, which 
 would have deceived any but the most experienced observer ; 
 and it is probable that Major Cowper, his 'kinsman' and inti- 
 mate friend, had very little or no suspicion of the conflict which 
 was raging beneath his tranquil and accomplished exterior. 
 What a contrast is the ' broad piece of scarlet binding ' and the 
 red circle, ' showing plainly that I had been on the brink of 
 eternity,' to the daily life of the easy gentleman ' who con- 
 tributed some essays to the " St. James's Magazine," and more 
 than one to the "St. James's Chronicle,"' living 'soft years' 
 on a smooth superficies of existence, away from the dark reali- 
 ties which are, as it were, the skeleton of our life, — which 
 seem to haunt us like a death's head throughout the narrative 
 that has been quoted ! 
 
 It was doubtless the notion of Cowper's friends, that when 
 all idea of an examination before the Lords was removed, by 
 the abandonment of his nomination to the office in question, 
 the excitement which that idea had called forth woidd very soon 
 pass away. But that notion was an error. A far more com- 
 plicated state of mind ensued. If we may advance a theoiy 
 on a most difficult as well as painful topic, we would say that 
 religion is very rarely the proximate or impulsive cause of mad- 
 
 VOL. I. T 
 
William Coivper. 
 
 Dess. The real and ultimate cause (as we speak) is of course 
 that unknown something which we variously call pre-disposition, 
 or malady, or defect. But the critical and exciting cause 
 seems generally to be some comparatively trivial external oc- 
 casion, which falls within the necessary lot and life of the 
 person who becomes mad. The inherent excitability is usu- 
 ally awakened by some petty casual stimulant, which looks 
 positively not worth a thought — certainly a terribly slight 
 agent for the wreck and havoc which it makes. The consti- 
 tution of the human mind is such, that the great general 
 questions, problems, and difficulties of our state of being are 
 not commonly capable of producing that result. They appear 
 to lie too far in the distance, to require too great a stretch of 
 imagination, to be too apt (for the very weakness of our minds' 
 sake, perhaps) to be thrust out of view by the trivial occurrences 
 of this desultory world, — to be too impersonal, in truth, to 
 cause the exclusive, anxious, aching occupation which is the 
 common prelude and occasion of insanity. Afterwards, on the 
 other hand, when the wound is once struck, when the petty 
 circumstance has been allowed to work its awful consequence, 
 religion very frequently becomes the predominating topic of 
 dekision. It would seem as if, when the mind was once set 
 apart by the natural consequences of the disease, and secluded 
 from the usual occupations of, and customary contact with, 
 other minds, it searched about through all the universe for 
 causes of trouble and anguish. A certain pain probably exists ; 
 and even in insanity, man is so far a rational being that he 
 seeks and craves at least the outside and semblance of a reason 
 for a suffering, which is really and truly without reason. Some- 
 thing must be found to justify its anguish to itself. And 
 naturally the great difficulties inherent in the very position of 
 man in this world, and trying so deeply the faith and firmness 
 of the wariest and wisest minds, are ever ready to present 
 plausible justifications oi causeless depression. An anxious 
 melancholy is not without very perplexing sophisms and very 
 painful illustrations, with which a morbid mind can obtain not 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 275 
 
 only a fair logical position, but even apparent argumentative 
 victories, on many points, over the more hardy part of mankind. 
 The acuteness of madness soon uses tbese in its own wretched 
 and terrible justification. No originality of mind is necessary 
 for so doing. Great and terrible systems of divinity and 
 philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a 
 wise man mad — which read like professed exculpations of a 
 contemplated insanity. 
 
 'To this moment,' writes Cowper, immediately after the 
 passage which has been quoted, * I had felt no concern of a 
 spiritual kind.' But now a conviction fell upon him that he 
 was eternally lost. ' All my worldly sorrows,' he says, ' seemed 
 as if they had never been ; the terrors which succeeded them 
 seemed so great and so much more afflicting. One moment I 
 thought myself expressly excluded by one chapter; next by 
 another.' He thought the curse of the barren fig-tree was pro- 
 nounced with an especial and designed reference to him. All day 
 long these thoughts followed him. He lived nearly alone, and 
 his friends were either unaware of the extreme degree to which 
 his mind was excited, or unalive to the possible alleviation with 
 which new scenes and cheerful society might have been attended. 
 He fancied the people in the street stared at and despised him 
 — that ballads were made in ridicule of him — that the voice of 
 his conscience was eternally audible. He then bethought him 
 of a Mr. Madan, an evangelical minister, at that time held in 
 much estimation, but who afterwards fell into disrepute by the 
 publication of a work on marriage and its obligations (or rather 
 its TiOTi-obligations), which Cowper has commented on in a con- 
 troversial poem. That gentleman visited Cowper at his request, 
 and began t(. explain to him the gospel. 
 
 *■ He spoke/ says Cowper, * of original sin, and the corruption of 
 every man born into the world, whereby every one is a child of wrath. 
 I perceived something like hope dawning in my heart. This doctrme 
 set me more on a level with the rest of mankind, and made my condi- 
 tion appear less desperate.' 
 
 T 2 
 
William Cowper, 
 
 * Next he insisted on the all -atoning efficacy of the blood of Jesus, 
 and His righteousness, for our justification. While I heard this part 
 of his discourse, and the Scriptures on which he founded it, my heart 
 began to burn within me ; my soul was pierced with a sense of my 
 bitter ingratitude to so merciful a Saviour ; and those tears, which I 
 thought impossible, burst forth freely. I saw clearly that my case re- 
 quired such a remedy, and had not the least doubt within me but that 
 this was the gospel of salvation. 
 
 * Lastly, he urged the necessity of a lively faith in Jesus Christ ; 
 not an assent only of the understanding, but a faith of application, an 
 actually laying hold of it, and embracing it as a salvation wrought out 
 for me personally. Here I failed, and deplored my want of such a 
 faith. He told me it was the gift of God, which he trusted He would 
 bestow upon me. I could only reply, " I wish He would : " a very 
 irreverent petition, but a very sincere one, and such as the blessed 
 God, in His due time, was pleased to answer.' 
 
 It does not appear that previous to this conversation he had 
 ever distinctly realised the tenets which were afterwards to have 
 so much influence over him. For the moment they produced a 
 good effect, but in a few hours their novelty was over — the 
 dark hour returned, and he awoke from slumber with a 'stronger 
 alienation from God than ever.' The tenacity with which the 
 mind in moments of excitement appropriates and retains very 
 abstract tenets, that bear even in a slight degree on the topic of 
 its excitement, is as remarkable as the facility and accuracy with 
 which it apprehends them in the midst of so great a tumult. 
 Many changes and many years rolled over Cowper — years of 
 black and dark depression, years of tranquil society, of genial 
 labour, of literary fame, but never in the lightest or darkest 
 hour was he wholly unconscious of the abstract creed of Martin 
 Madan. At the time indeed, the body had its rights, and main- 
 tained them. 
 
 ' While I traversed the apartment, expecting every moment that 
 the earth would open her mouth and swallow me, my conscience 
 scaring me, and the city of refuge out of reach and out of sight, a 
 strange and horrible darkness fell upon me. If it were possible that 
 a heavy blow could light on the brain without touching the skull, 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 277 
 
 such was the sensation I felt. I clapped my hand to my forehead, 
 and cried aloud, through the pain it gave me. At every stroke my 
 thoughts and expressions became more wild and incoherent ; all that 
 remained clear was the sense of sin, and the expectation of punish- 
 ment. These kept undisturbed possession all through my illness, 
 without interruption or abatement.' 
 
 It is idle to follow details further. The deep waters had 
 passed over him, and it was long before the face of bis mind was 
 dry or green again. 
 
 He was placed in a lunatic asylum, where be continued 
 many months, and which be left apparently cured. After some 
 changes of no moment, but which by his own account evinced 
 many traces of dangerous excitement, be took up bis abode at 
 Huntingdon, with the family of Unwin ; and it is remarkable how 
 soon the taste for easy and simple, yet not wholly un intellectual 
 society, which bad formerly characterised him, revived again. 
 The delineation cannot be given in any terms but bis own : — 
 
 ' We breakfast commonly between eight and nine; till eleven, we 
 read either the Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful preacher of 
 these holy mysteries ; at eleven we attend divine sei-vice, which is 
 performed here twice every day ; and from twelve to three we separate, 
 and amuse ourselves as we please. During that interval, I either read, 
 in my own apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden. e 
 seldom sit an hour after dinner, but if the weather permits, adjourn 
 to the garden, where, with Mrs, Unwin and her son, I have generally 
 the pleasui-e of religious conversation till tea-time. If it rains, or is 
 too windy for walking, we either converse within doors, or sing some 
 liymns of Martin's collection, and by the help of Mrs. Unwin's harp - 
 sichdrd, make up a tolerable concert, in which our hearts, I hope, are 
 the best and most musical performers. After tea we sally forth to 
 walk in good earnest. Mrs. Unwin is a good walker, and we have 
 generally travelled about four miles before we see home again. When 
 the days are short, we make this excursion in the former part of the 
 day, between church time and dinner. At night we read, and con- 
 verse, as before, till supper, and commonly finish the evening either 
 with hymns, or a sermon, and last of all the family a]^e called to 
 prayers. I need not tell you, that such a life as this is consistent with 
 the utmost cheerfulness ; accordingly we are all happy, and dwell to- 
 
278 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 gether in unity as brethren. Mrs. Unwin has almost a maternal 
 affection for me, and I have something very like a filial one for her, 
 and her son and I are brothers. Blessed bo the God of our salvation 
 for such companions, and for such a life — above all, for a heart to like it.* 
 
 The scene was not however to last as it was. Mr. Unwin, 
 the husband of Mrs. Unwin, was suddenly killed soon after, 
 and Cowper removed with Mrs. Unwin to Olney, where a new 
 epoch of his life begins. 
 
 The curate of Olney at this time was John Newton, a man 
 of great energy of mind, and well known in his generation for 
 several vigorous books, and still more for a very remarkable 
 life. He had been captain of a Liverpool slave ship — an occu- 
 pation in which he had quite energy enough to have succeeded, 
 but was deeply influenced by serious motives, and became one 
 of the strongest and most active of the Low Church clergymen 
 of that day. He was one of those men who seem intended to 
 make excellence disagreeable. He was a converting engine. 
 The whole of his own enormous vigour of body — the whole 
 steady intensity of a pushing, impelling, compelling, unoriginal 
 mind — all the mental or corporeal exertion he could exact from 
 the weak or elicit from the strong, were devoted to one sole 
 purpose — the effectual impact of the Calvinistic tenets on the 
 parishioners of Olney. Nor would we hint that" his exertions 
 were at all useless. There is no denying that there is a certain 
 stiff, tough, agricultural, clayish English nature, on which the 
 aggressive divine produces a visible and good effect. The hardest 
 and heaviest hammering seems required to stir and vv^arm that 
 close and coarse matter. To impress any sense of the super- 
 natural on so secular a substance is a great good, though that 
 sense be expressed in false or irritating theories. It is unpleas- 
 ant, no doubt, to hear the hammering ; the bystanders are in 
 an evil case ; you might as well live near an iron-ship yard. 
 Still the blows do not hurt the iron. Something of the sort is 
 necessary to beat the coarse ore into a shining and useful shape ; 
 certainly that does so beat it. But the case is different when 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 279 
 
 the hund'ed-handed divine desires to hit others. The very 
 system which, on account of its hard blows, is adapted to the 
 tough and ungentle, is by that very reason unfit for the tremu- 
 lous and tender. The nature of many men and many women is 
 such that it will not bear the daily and incessant repetition of 
 some certain and indisputable truths. The universe has of 
 course its dark aspect. Many tremendous facts and difficulties 
 can be found which often haunt the timid and sometimes inca- 
 pacitate the feeble. To be continually insisting on these, and 
 these only, will simply render both more and more unfit for the 
 duties to which they were born. And if this is the case with 
 certain fact and clear truth, how much more with uncertain 
 error and mystic exaggeration ! Mr. Newton was alive to the 
 consequence of his system : ' I believe my name is up about the 
 country for preaching people mad ; for whether it is owing to 
 the sedentary life women lead here, &c. &c., I suppose we have 
 near a dozen in different degrees disordered in their heads, and 
 most of them, I believe, truly gracious people,"^ He perhaps 
 found his peculiar views more generally appreciated among this 
 class of young ladies than among more healthy and rational 
 people, and clearly did not wholly condemn the delivering them, 
 even at this cost, from the tyranny of the ' carnal reason.' 
 
 No more dangerous adviser, if this world had been searched 
 over, could have been found for Cowper. What the latter 
 required was prompt encouragement to cheerful occupation, 
 quiet amusement, gentle and unexhausting society. Mr. New- 
 ton thought otherwise. His favourite motto was Perimus in 
 licitis. The simple round of daily pleasures and genial employ- 
 ments which give instinctive happiness to the happiest natures, 
 and best cheer the common life of common men, was studiously 
 watched and scrutinised with the energy of a Pmitan and the 
 watchfulness of an inquisitor. Mr. Newton had all the tastes and 
 habits which go to form what in the Catholic system is called 
 a spiritual director. Of late years it is well known that the 
 institution, or rather practice of confession, has expanded into 
 
28o 
 
 Williain Cowper. 
 
 a more potent and more imperious organisation. You are ex- 
 pected by the priests of the Eoman Church not only to confess 
 to them what you have done, but to take their advice as to what 
 you shall do. The future is under their direction, as the past 
 was beneath their scrutiny. This was exactly the view which 
 Mr. Newton took of his relation to Cowper. A natural aptitude 
 for dictation — a steady, strong, compelling decision, — great 
 self-command, and a sharp perception of all impressible points 
 in the characters of others, — made the task of guiding 'weaker 
 brethren ' a natural and pleasant pursuit. To suppose a shrink- 
 ing, a wounded, and tremulous mind, like that of Cowper' t?, 
 would rise against such bold dogmatism, such hard volition, such 
 animal nerve, is to fancy that the beaten slave will dare the lash 
 which his very eyes instinctively fear and shun. Mr. Newton's 
 great idea was that Cowper ought to be of some use. There 
 was a great deal of excellent hammering hammered in the 
 parish, and it was sinful that a man with nothing to do should 
 sit tranquil. Several persons in the street had done what they 
 ought not ; football was not unknown ; cards were played ; 
 flirtation was not conducted ' improvingly.' It was clearly 
 Cowper's duty to put a stop to such things. Accordingly he 
 made him a parochial implement ; he set him to visit painful 
 cases, to attend at prayer meetings, to compose melancholy 
 hymns, even to conduct or share in conducting public services 
 himself. It never seems to have occurred to him that so fragile 
 a mind would be unequal to the burden — that a bruised reed 
 does often break ; or rather if it did occur to him, he regarded 
 it as a subterranean suggestion, and expected a supernatural 
 interference to counteract the events at which it hinted. Yet 
 there are certain rules and principles in this world which seem 
 earthly, but which the most excellent may not on that account 
 venture to disregard. The consequence of placing Cowper in 
 exciting situations was a return of his excitement. It is painful 
 to observe, that though the attack resembled in all its main 
 features his former one, several montlis passed before Mr. New- 
 
William Cowper, 
 
 28j 
 
 ton would permit any proper physical remedies to be applied, 
 and then it was too late. We need not again recount details. 
 Many months of dark despondency were to be passed before he 
 returned to a simple and rational mind. 
 
 The truth is, that independently of the personal activity 
 and dauntless energy which made Mr. Newton so little likely to 
 sympathise with such a mind as Cowper's, the former lay under 
 a still more dangerous disqualification for Cowper's predominant 
 adviser, viz., an erroneous view of his case. His opinion exactly 
 coincided with that which Cowper first heard from Mr. Madan 
 during his first illness in London. This view is in substance 
 that the depression which Cowper originally suffered from was 
 exactly what almost all mankind, if they had been rightly aware 
 of their true condition, would have suffered also. They were 
 'children of wrath,' just as he was; and the only difference 
 between them was, that he appreciated his state and they did 
 not, — showing, in fact, that Cowper was not, as common persons 
 imagined, on the extreme verge of insanity, but, on the contrary, 
 a particularly rational and right-seeing man. So far, Cowper 
 says, with one of the painful smiles which make his ' Narrative ' 
 so melancholy, ' my condition was less desperate.' That is, his 
 counsellors had persuaded him that his malady was rational, 
 and his sufferings befitting his true position, — no difficult task, 
 for they had the poignancy of pain and the pertinacity of mad- 
 ness on their side : the efficacy of their arguments was less 
 when they endeavoured to make known the sources of con- 
 solation. We have seen the immediate effect of the first 
 exposition of the evangelical theory of faith. When 
 applied to the case of the morbidly-despairing sinner, that 
 theory has one argumentative imperfection which the logical 
 sharpness of madness will soon discover and point out. The 
 simple reply is, ' I do not feel the faith which you describe. I 
 wish I could feel it ; but it is no use trying to conceal the fact, 
 I am conscious of nothing like it.' And this was substantially 
 Cowper's reply on his first interview with Mr. Madan. It was 
 
282 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 a simple denial of a fact solely accessible to his personal con- 
 sciousness ; and, as such, unanswerable. And in this intellectual 
 position (if such it can be called) his mind long rested. At 
 the commencement of his residence at Olney, however, there 
 was a decided change. Whether it were that he mistook the 
 glow of physical recovery for the peace of spiritual renova- 
 tion, or that some subtler and deeper agency was, as he sup- 
 posed, at work, the outward sign is certain ; and there is no 
 question but that during the first months of his residence at 
 Olney, and his daily intercourse with Mr. Newton, he did feel, 
 or supposed himself to feel, the faith which he was instructed 
 to deem desirable, and he lent himself with natural pleasure to 
 the diffusion of it among those around him. But this theory 
 of salvation requires a metaphysical postulate, which to many 
 minds is simply impossible. A prolonged meditation on unseen 
 realities is sufficiently difficult, and seems scarcely the occupa- 
 tion for which common human nature was intended ; but more 
 than this is said to be essential. The meditation must be suc- 
 cessful in exciting certain feelings of a kind peculiarly delicate, 
 subtle, and (so to speak) unstable. The wind bloweth where it 
 listeth ; but it is scarcely more partial, more quick, more unac- 
 countable, than the glow of an emotion excited by a supernatu- 
 ral and unseen object. This depends on the vigour of imagina- 
 tion which has to conceive that object — on the vivacity of feel- 
 ing which has to be quickened by it — on the physical energy 
 which has to support it. The very watchfulness, the scrupulous 
 anxiety to find and retain the feeling, are exactly the most un- 
 favourable to it. In a delicate disposition like that of Cowper, 
 such feelings revolt from the inquisition of others, and shrink 
 from the stare of the mind itself. But even this was not the 
 worst. The mind of Cowper was, so to speak, naturally terres- 
 trial. If a man wishes for a nice appreciation of the details 
 of time and sense, let him consult Cowper's miscellaneous letters. 
 Each simple event of every day — each petty object of external 
 observation or inward suggestion, is there chronicled with a fine 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 283 
 
 and female fondness, a wise and happy faculty, let us say, of 
 deriving a gentle happiness from the tranquil and passing hour. 
 The fortunes of the hares — Bess who died young, and Tiney 
 who lived to be nine years old — the miller who engaged their 
 affections at once, his powdered coat having charms that were 
 irresistible — the knitting-needles of Mrs. Unwin — the qualities 
 of his friend Hill, who managed his money transactions — 
 
 * An honest man, close buttoned to the chin, 
 Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within ' — 
 
 live in his pages, and were the natural, insensible, unbiassed 
 occupants of his faocy. It is easy for a firm and hard mind 
 to despise the minutiae of life, and to pore and brood over 
 an abstract proposition. It may be possible for the highest, 
 the strongest, the most arduous imagination to live aloof 
 from common things — alone with the unseen world, as some 
 lived their whole lives in memory with a world which has passed 
 away. But it seems hardly possible that an imagination such 
 as Cowper's — which was rather a detective fancy, perceiving the 
 . charm and essence of things which are seen, than an eager, 
 actuating, conceptive power, embodying, enlivening, empower- 
 ing those which are not seen — should leave its own home — 
 the domus et tellus — the sweet fields and rare orchards which 
 it loved, — and go out alone apart from all flesh into the track- 
 less and fearful and unknown Infinite. Of course, his timid 
 mind shrank from it at once, and returned to its own fireside. 
 After a little, the idea that he had a true faith faded away« 
 Mr. Newton, with misdirected zeal, sought to revive it by in- 
 citing him to devotional composition ; but the only result was 
 the volume of ' Olney Hymns ' — a very painful record, of which 
 the burden is 
 
 * My former hopes are fled, 
 My terror now begins ; 
 I feel, alas ! that I am dead 
 In trespasses and sins. 
 
284 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 ' Ah, whither shall I fly % 
 I hear the thunder roar; 
 The law proclaims destruction nigh, 
 And vengeance at the door.' 
 
 ' The Preacher ' himself did not conceive such a store of 
 melancholy forebodings. 
 
 The truth is, that there are two remarkable species of minds 
 on which the doctrine of Calvinism acts as a deadly and fatal 
 poison. One is the natural, vigorous, bold, defiant, hero-like 
 character, abounding in generosity, in valour, in vigour, and 
 abounding also in self-will, and pride, and scorn. This ia the 
 temperament which supplies the world with ardent hopes and 
 keen fancies, with springing energies, and bold plans, and noble 
 exploits ; but yet, under another aspect and in other times, is 
 equally prompt in desperate deeds, awful machinations, deep 
 and daring crimes. It one day is ready by its innate heroism 
 to deliver the world from any tyranny ; the next it ' hungers 
 to become a tyrant ' in its turn. Yet the words of the poet 
 are ever true and are ever good, as a defence against the cold 
 narrators who mingle its misdeeds and exploits, and profess to 
 believe that each is a set-off and compensation for the other. 
 You can ever say — 
 
 It is idle to tell such a mind that, by an arbitrary irrespec- 
 tive election, it is chosen to happiness or doomed to perdition. 
 The evil and the good in it equally revolt at such terms. It 
 thinks, 'Well, if the universe be a tyranny, if one man is 
 doomed to misery for no fault, and the next is chosen to 
 pleasure for no merit — if the favouritism of time be copied 
 into eternity — if the highest heaven be indeed like the meanest 
 earth, — then, as the heathen say, it is better to suffer injustice 
 than to inflict it, better to be the victims of the eternal des- 
 
 * Still he retained, 
 ' Mid much abasement, what he had received 
 From Nature, an intense and glowing mind.' 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 285 
 
 potism than its ministers, better to curse in hell than serve in 
 heaven,' And the whole burning soul breaks away into what 
 is well called Satanism — into wiklness, and bitterness, and 
 contempt. 
 
 Cowper had as little in common with this proud. Titanic, 
 aspiring genius as any man has or can have, but his mind was 
 equally injured by the same system. On a timid, lounging, 
 gentle, acquiescent mind, the effect is precisely the contrary — 
 singularly contrasted, but equally calamitous. ' I am doomed, 
 you tell me, already. One way or other the matter is already 
 settled. It can be no better, and it is as bad as it can be. Let 
 me alone ; do not trouble me at least these few years. Let me 
 at least sit sadly and bewail myself. Action is useless. I will 
 brood upon my melancholy and be at rest ; ' the soul sinks into 
 ' passionless calm and silence unreproved,' flinging away ' the 
 passionate tumult of a clinging hope,' which is the allotted 
 boon and happiness of mortality. It was, as we believe, straight 
 towards this terrible state that Mr. Newton directed Cowper. 
 He kept him occupied with subjects which were too great for 
 him ; he kept him away from his natural life ; he presented to 
 him views and opinions but too well justifying his deep and 
 dark insanity ; he convinced him that he ought to experience 
 emotions which were foreign to his nature ; he had nothing to 
 add by way of comfort, when told that those emotions did not 
 and could not exist. Cowper seems to have felt this. His 
 second illness commenced with a strong dislike to his spiritual 
 adviser, and it may be doubted if there ever was again the 
 same cordiality between them. Mr. Newton, too, as was na- 
 tural, was vexed at Cowper' s calamity. His reputation in the 
 * religious world ' was deeply pledged to conducting this most 
 ' interesting case ' to a favourable termination. A failure was 
 not to be contemplated, and yet it was obviously coming and 
 coming. It was to no purpose that Cowper acquired fame and 
 secular glory in the literary world. This was rather adding gall 
 to bitterness. The unbelievers in evangelical religion would be 
 
286 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 able to point to one at least, and that the best known among 
 its proselytes, to whom it had not brought peace — whom it had 
 rather confirmed in wretchedness. His literary fame, too, took 
 Cowper away into a larger circle, out of the rigid decrees and 
 narrow ordinances of his father-confessor, and of course the 
 latter remonstrated. Altogether there was not a cessation, but 
 a decline and diminution of intercourse. But better, accord- 
 ing to the saying, had they never met or never parted. If a 
 man is to have a father-confessor, let him at least choose a 
 sensible one. The dominion of Mr. Newton had been exercised, 
 not indeed with mildness, or wisdom, or discrimination, but, 
 nevertheless, with strong judgment and coarse acumen — with a 
 bad choice of ends, but at least a vigorous selection of means. 
 Afterwards it was otherwise. In the village of Olney there was 
 a schoolmaster, whose name often occurs in Cowper's letters, — 
 a foolish, vain, worthy sort of man : what the people of the 
 west call a ' scholard,' that is, a man of mare knowledge and 
 less sense than those about him. He sometimes came to 
 Cowper to beg old clothes, sometimes to instruct him with 
 literary criticisms, and is known in the ' Correspondence ' as 
 ' Mr. Teedon, who reads the " Monthly Eeview," ' ' Mr. Teedon, 
 whose smile is fame.' Yet to this man, whose harmless follies 
 his humour had played with a thousand times, Cowper, in his 
 later years, and when the dominion of Mr. Newton had so far 
 ceased as to leave him, after many years, the use of his own 
 judgment, resorted for counsel and guidance. And the man 
 had visions, and dreams, and revelations ! ! But enough of such 
 matters. 
 
 The peculiarity of Cowper's life is its division into marked 
 periods. From his birth to his first illness he may be said to 
 have lived in one world, and for some twenty years afterwards, 
 from his thirty-second to about his fiftieth year, in a wholly 
 distinct one. Much of the latter time was spent in hopeless 
 despondency. His principal companions during that period 
 were Mr. Newton, about whom we have been writing, and Mrd. 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 287 
 
 Unwin, who may be said to have broken the charmed circle of 
 seclusion in which they lived by inciting Cowper to continuous 
 literary composition. Of Mrs. Unwin herself ample memorials 
 remain. She was, in truth, a most excellent person — in mind 
 and years much older than the poet — as it were by profession 
 elderly, able in every species of preserve, profound in salts, and 
 pans, and jellies ; culinary by taste ; by tact and instinct 
 motherly and housewifish. She was not, however, without 
 some less larderiferous qualities. Lady Hesketh and Lady 
 Austen, neither of them very favourably-prejudiced critics, de- 
 cided so. The former has written, ' She is very far from grave ; 
 on the contrary, she is cheerful and gay, and laughs de hon coeiir 
 upon the smallest provocation. Amidst all the little puritani- 
 cal words which fall from her de terns en terns ^ she seems to 
 have by nature a great fund of gaiety. ... I must say, too, 
 that she seems to be very well read in the English poets, as 
 appears by several little quotations which she makes from time 
 to time, and has a true taste for what is excellent in that way.' 
 This she showed by persuading Cowper to the composition of 
 his first volume. 
 
 As a poet, Cowper belongs, though with some differences, 
 to the school of Pope. Great question, as is well known, has 
 been raised whether that very accomplished writer was a poet at 
 all ; and a secondary and equally debated question runs side by 
 side, whether, if a poet, he were a great one. With the 
 peculiar genius and personal rank of Pope we have in this 
 article nothing to do. But this much may be safely said, that 
 according to the definition which has been ventured of the poe- 
 tical art, by the greatest and most accomplished master of the 
 other school, his works are delicately-finished specimens of 
 artistic excellence in one branch of it. ' Poetry,' says Shelley, 
 who was surely a good judge, ' is the expression of the imagina- 
 tion,' by which he meant of course not only the expression of 
 the interior sensations accompanying the faculty's employment, 
 but likewise, and more emphatically, the exercise of it in the 
 
288 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 delineation of objects which attract it. Now society, viewed as 
 a whole, is clearly one of those objects. There is a vast as- 
 semblage of human beings, of all nations, tongues, and languages, 
 each with ideas, and a personality and a cleaving mark of its 
 own, yet each having somewhat that resembles something of all, 
 much that resembles a part of many — a motley regiment, of 
 various forms, of a million impulses, passions, thoughts, fancies, 
 motives, actions ; a 'many-headed monstered thing;' a Bashi 
 Bazouk array ; a clown to be laughed at ; a hydra to be spoken 
 evil of; yet, in fine, our all— the very people of the whole 
 earth. There is nothing in nature more attractive to the fancy 
 than this great spectacle and congregation. Since Herodotus 
 went to and fro to the best of his ability over all the earth, the 
 spectacle of civilisation has ever drawn to itself the quick eyes 
 and quick tongues of seeing and roving men. Not only, says 
 Groethe, is man ever interesting to man, but ' properly there is 
 nothing else interesting/ There is a distinct subject for poetry 
 — at least according to Shelley's definition — in selecting and 
 working out, in idealising, in combining, in purifying, in inten- 
 sifying the great features and peculiarities which make society, 
 as a whole, interesting, remarkable, fancy-taking. No doubt it 
 is not the object of poetry to versify the works of the eminent 
 narrators, 'to prose,' according to a disrespectful description, 
 'o'er books of travelled seamen,' to chill you with didactic 
 icebergs, to heat you with torrid sonnets. The difficulty of 
 reading such local narratives is now great — so great that a 
 gentleman in the reviewing department once wished ' one man 
 would go everywhere and say everything,' in order that the 
 limit of his labour at least might be settled and defined. And 
 it would certainly be much worse if palm trees were of course to 
 be in rhyme, and the dinner of the migrator only recoun table in 
 blank verse. We do not wish this. We only maintain that 
 there are certain principles, causes, passions, affections, acting 
 on and influencing communities at large, permeating their life, 
 ruling their principles, directing their history, working as a 
 
William Cozvper. 
 
 289 
 
 subtle and wandering principle over all their existence. These 
 liave a somewhat abstract character, as compared with the soft 
 ideals and passionate incarnations of purely individual character, * 
 and seem dull beside the stirring lays of eventful times in 
 which the earlier and bolder poets delight. Another cause co- 
 operates. The tendency of civilisation is to pare away the 
 oddness and licence of personal character, and to leave a mono- 
 tonous agreeableness as the sole trait and comfort of mankind. 
 This obviously tends to increase the efficacy of general prin- 
 ciples, to bring to view the daily efficacy of constant causes, to 
 suggest the hidden agency of subtle abstractions. Accordingly, 
 as civilisation augments and philosophy grows, we commonly 
 find a school of ' common-sense poets,' as they may be called, 
 arise and develop, who proceed to depict what they see around 
 them, to describe its natura naturans, to delineate its natura 
 naturata, to evolve productive agencies, to teach subtle ramifi- 
 cations. Complete, as the most characteristic specimen of this 
 class of poets, stands Pope. He was, some one we think has 
 said, the sort of person we cannot even conceive existing in a 
 barbarous age. His subject was not life at large, but fashionable 
 life. He described the society in which he was thrown — the 
 people among whom he lived. His mind was a hoard of small 
 maxims, a quintessence of petty observations. When he de- 
 scribed character, he described it, not dramatically, nor as it is 
 in itself ; but observantly and from without, calling up in the 
 mind not so much a vivid conception of the man, of the real, 
 corporeal, substantial being, as an idea of the idea which a 
 metaphysical bystander might refine and excruciate concerning 
 him. Society in Pope is scarcely a society of people, but of 
 pretty little atoms, coloured and painted with hoops or in coats 
 — a miniature of metaphysics, a puppet-show of sylphs. He 
 elucidates the doctrine, that the tendency of civilised poetry is 
 towards an analytic sketch of the existing civilisation. Nor is 
 the effect diminished by the pervading character of keen judg- 
 ment and minute intrusive sagacity ; for no great painter of 
 
 VOL. I. U 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 English life can be without a rough sizing of strong sense, or he 
 would fail from want of sympathy with his subject. Pope 
 exemplifies the class and type of ' common-sense ' poets who 
 substitute an animated ' ca^aZo^ue raisonne^ of working thouglits 
 and operative principles — a sketch of the then present society, 
 as a whole and as an object, for the KXia avhpcbv, the tale of 
 which is one subject of early verse, and the stage effect of living, 
 loving, passionate, impetuous men and women, which is the 
 special topic of another. 
 
 What Pope is to our fashionable and town life, Cowper is to 
 our domestic and rural life. This is perhaps the reason why he 
 is so national. It has been said no foreigner can live in the 
 country. We doubt whether any people, who felt their whole 
 heart and entire exclusive breath of their existence to be 
 concentrated in a great capital, could or would appreciate such 
 intensely provincial pictures as are the entire scope of Cowper's 
 delineation. A good many imaginative persons are really 
 plagued with him. Everything is so comfortable ; the tea-urn 
 hisses so plainly, the toast is so warm, the breakfast so neat, the 
 food so edible, that one turns away, in excitable moments, a 
 little angrily from anything so quiet, tame, and sober. Have 
 we not always hated this life ? What can be worse than regular 
 meals, clock-moving servants, a time for everything, and every- 
 thing then done, a place for everything, without the Irish alle- 
 viation — ' Sure, and I'm rejiced to say, that's jist and exactly 
 where it isn't,' a common gardener, a slow parson, a heavy as- 
 sortment of near relations, a placid house flowing with milk and 
 sugar — all that the fates can stuff together of substantial com- 
 fort, and fed and fatted monotony? Aspiring and excitable 
 youth stoutly maintains it can endure anything much better 
 than the 'gross fog Boeotian' — the torpid, in-door, tea-tabular 
 felicity. Still a great deal of tea is really consumed in the 
 English nation. A settled and practical people are distinctly 
 in favour of heavy relaxations, placid prolixities, slow comforts. 
 A state between the mind and the body, something intermediate, 
 
William Cowper, 
 
 291 
 
 half-way from tlie newspaper to a nap — this is what we may call 
 the middle-life theory of the influential English gentleman — 
 the true aspiration of the ruler of the world. 
 
 * 'Tis then the understanding takes repose 
 In indolent vacuity of thought, 
 And sleeps and is refreshed. Meanwhile the face 
 Conceals the mood lethargic with a mask 
 Of deep deliberation.* 
 
 It is these in-door scenes, this common world, this gentle 
 round of ' calm delights,' the trivial course of slowly-moving 
 pleasures, the petty detail of quiet relaxation, that Cowper 
 excels in. The post-boy, the winter's evening, the newspaper, 
 the knitting needles, the stockings, the waggon — these are his 
 subjects. His sure popularity arises from his having held up 
 to the English people exact delineations of what they really 
 prefer. Perhaps one person in four hundred understands Words- 
 worth, about one in eight thousand may appreciate Shelley, but 
 there is no expressing the small fraction who do not love dul- 
 ness, who do not enter into 
 
 * Homehorn happiness, 
 Fireside enjoyments, intimate delights. 
 And all the comforts that the lowly roof 
 Of undisturbed retirement, and the houi'S 
 Of long uninterrupted evening know.' 
 
 His objection to the more exciting and fashionable pleasures 
 was perhaps, in an extreme analysis, that they put him out. 
 They were too great a task for his energies — asked too much for 
 his spirits. His comments on them rather remind us of Mr. 
 Rush worth — Miss Austen's heavy hero's remark on the theatre, 
 ' I think we went on much better by ourselves before this was 
 thought of, doing, doing, doing nothing^ 
 
 The subject of these pictures, in point of interest, may be 
 what we choose to think it, but there is no denying great 
 merit to the execution. The sketches have the highest merit — 
 suitableness of style. It would be absurd to describe a post- 
 
 u 2 
 
William Cowpe7^. 
 
 boy as sonneteers their mistress — to cover his plain face with 
 fine similes — to put forward the ' brow of Egypt ' — to stick meta- 
 phors upon him, as the Americans upon Greneral Washington. 
 The only merit such topics have room for is an easy and dextrous 
 plainness— a sober suit of well-fitting- expressions — a free, work- 
 ing, flowing, picturesque garb of words adapted to the solid 
 conduct of a sound and serious world, and this merit Cowper s 
 style has. On the other hand, it entirely wants the higher and 
 rarer excellences of poetical expression. There is none of the 
 choice art which has studiously selected the words of one class 
 of great poets, or the rare, untaught, unteachable felicity which 
 has vivified those of others. No one, in reading Cowper, stops 
 as if to draw his breath more deeply over words which do not 
 so much express or clothe poetical ideas, as seem to intertwine, 
 coalesce, and be blended with the very essence of poetry itself. 
 
 Of course a poet could not deal in any measure with such 
 subjects as Cowper dealt with, and not become inevitably, to a 
 certain extent, satirical. The ludicrous is in some sort the 
 imagination of common life. The ' dreary intercourse ' of which 
 Wordsworth makes mention, would be dreary, unless some peo- 
 ple possessed more than he did the faculty of making fun. A 
 universe in which Dignity No. I. conversed decorously with 
 Dignity No. II. on topics befitting their state, would be perhaps 
 a levee of great intellects and a tea-table of enormous thoughts ; 
 but it would want the best charm of this earth — the medley of 
 great things and little, of things mundane and things celestial, 
 things low and things awful, of things eternal and things of half 
 a minute. It is in this contrast that humour and satire have 
 their place — pointing out the intense unspeakable incongruity 
 of the groups and juxtapositions of our world. To all of these 
 which fell under his own eye, Cowper was alive. A gentle sense 
 of propriety and consistency in daily things was evidently 
 characteristic of him ; and if he fail of the highest success in 
 this species of art, it is not from an imperfect treatment of the 
 scenes and conceptions which he touched, but from the fact that 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 293 
 
 the follies with which he deals are not the greatest follies — that 
 there are deeper absurdities in human life than John Gilpin 
 touches upon — that the superficial occurrences of ludicrous life 
 do not exhaust, or even deeply test, the mirthful resources of 
 our minds and fortunes. 
 
 As a scold, we think Cowper failed. He had a great idea of 
 the use of railing, and there are many pages of laudable invec- 
 tive against various vices which we feel no call whatever to 
 defend. But a great vituperator had need to be a great hater ; and 
 of any real rage, any such gall and bitterness as great and irritable 
 satirists have in other ages let loose upon men, of any thorough, 
 brooding, burning, abiding detestation, he was as incapable as 
 a tame hare. His vituperation reads like the mild man's whose 
 wife ate up his dinner, ' Really, Sir, I feel quite angry ! ' Nor 
 has his language any of the sharp intrusive acumen which 
 divides in sunder both soul and spirit, and makes fierce and 
 unforgettable reviling. 
 
 Some people may be surprised, notwithstanding our lengthy 
 explanation, at hearing Cowper treated as of the school of Pope. 
 It has been customary, at least with some critics, to speak of 
 him as one of those who recoiled from the artificiality of that 
 great writer, and at least commenced a return to a simple 
 delineation of outward nature. And of course there is consi- 
 derable truth in this idea. The poetry (if such it is) of Pope 
 would be just as true if all the trees were yellow and all the 
 grass flesh-colour. He did not care for ' snowy scalps,' or ' roll- 
 ing streams,' or ' icy halls,' or ' precipice's gloom.' Nor, for that 
 matter, did Cowper either. He, as Hazlitt most justly said, 
 was as much afraid of a shower of rain as any man that ever 
 lived. At the same time, the fashionable life described by Pope 
 has no reference whatever to the beauties of the material uni- 
 verse, never regards them, could go on just as well in the soft, 
 sloppy, gelatinous existence which Dr. Whewell (who knows) 
 says is alone possible in Jupiter and Saturn. But tlie rural life 
 of Cowper's poetry has a constant and necessary reference to the 
 
294 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 country, is identified with its features, cannot be separated 
 from it even in fancy. Grreen fields and a slow river seem all the 
 material of beauty Cowper had given him. But what was more 
 to the purpose, his attention was well concentrated upon them. 
 As he himself said, he did not go more than thirteen miles from 
 home for twenty years, and very seldom as far. He was, there- 
 fore, well able to find out all that was charming in Olney and 
 its neighbourhood, and as it presented nothing which is not to 
 be found in any of the fresh rural parts of England, what he 
 lias left us is really a delicate description and appreciative deli- 
 neation of the simple essential English country. 
 
 However, it is to be remarked that the description of nature 
 in Cowper differs altogether from the peculiar delineation of the 
 same subject, which has been so influential in more recent 
 times, and which bears, after its greatest master, the name 
 Wordsworthian. To Cowper nature is simply a background, a 
 beautiful background no doubt, but still essentially a locus in 
 quo — a space in which the work and mirth of life pass and are 
 performed. A more professedly formal delineation does not 
 occur than the following ; — 
 
 * O Winter ! ruler of the inverted year, 
 Thy scattered hair with sleet-like ashes filled, 
 Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks 
 Fi-inged with a beard made white with other snows 
 Than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds, 
 A leafless bi'anch thy sceptre, and thy throne 
 A sliding car, indebted to no wheels. 
 But urged by storms along its slippery way ; 
 I love thee, all unlovely as thou seemest. 
 And dreaded as thou art. Thou holdest the sun 
 A prisoner in the yet undawning east, 
 Shortening his joui*ney between morn and noon, 
 And hurrying him, impatient of his stay, 
 Down to the rosy west ; but kindly still 
 Compensating his loss with added hours 
 Of social converse and instructive ease. 
 And gathering, at short notice, in one gi oup 
 
 i 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 295 
 
 The family dispersed, and fixing thought, 
 Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares. 
 I crown thee King of intimate delights, 
 Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness, 
 And all the comforts that the lowly roof 
 Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours 
 Of long uninterrupted evening know. 
 No rattling wheels stop short before these gates/ 
 
 After a very few lines he returns within doors to the oc- 
 cupation of man and woman — to human tasks and human 
 pastimes. To Wordsworth, on the contrary, nature is a religion. 
 So far from being unwilling to treat her as a special object of 
 study, he hardly thought any other equal or comparable. He 
 was so far from holding the doctrine that the earth was made 
 for men to live in, that it would rather seem as if he thought 
 men were created to see the earth. The whole aspect of nature 
 was to him a special revelation of an immanent and abiding 
 power — a breath of the pervading art — a smile of the Eternal 
 Mind — according to the lines which every one knows, — 
 
 * A sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused ; 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things.' 
 
 Of this haunting, supernatural, mystical view of nature Cowper 
 never heard. Like the strong old lady who said, ' ^he was born 
 before nerves were invented,' he may be said to have lived 
 before the awakening of the detective sensibility which reveals 
 this deep and obscure doctrine. 
 
 In another point of view, also, Cowper is curiously con- 
 trasted with Wordsworth, as a delineator of nature. The 
 delineation of Cowper is a simple delineation. He makes a 
 
296 
 
 Willia7n Cowper. 
 
 sketch of the object before him, and there he leaves it, Words- 
 worth, on the contrary, is not satisified unless he describe not 
 only the bare outward object which others see, but likewise the 
 reflected high-wrought feelings which that object excites in a 
 brooding, self-conscious mind. His subject was not so much 
 nature, as nature reflected by Wordsworth. Years of deep 
 musing and long introspection had made him familiar with 
 every shade and shadow in the many-coloured impression which 
 the universe makes on meditative genius and observant sensi- 
 bility. Now these feelings Cowper did not describe, because, 
 to all appearance, he did not perceive them. He had a great 
 pleasure in watching the common changes and common aspects 
 of outward things, but he was not invincibly prone to brood 
 and pore over their reflex effects upon his own mind : 
 
 * A primrose by the river's brim, 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And it was nothing more.' 
 
 According to the account which Cowper at first gave of his 
 literary occupations, his entire design was to communicate the 
 religious views to which he was then a convert. He fancied 
 that the vehicle of verse might bring many to listen to truths 
 which they would be disinclined to have stated to them in 
 simple prose. And however tedious the recurrence of these 
 theological tenets may be to the common reader, it is certain 
 tha,t a considerable portion of Cowper's peculiar popularity may 
 be traced to their expression. He is the one poet of a class 
 which have no poets. In that once large and still considerable 
 portion of the English world, which regards the exercise of 
 the fancy and the imagination as dangerous — snares, as they 
 speak — distracting the soul from an intense consideration of 
 abstract doctrine, Cowper's strenuous inculcation of those doc- 
 trines has obtained for him a certain toleration. Of course 
 all verse is perilous. The use of single words is harmless, but 
 tlie employment of two, in such a manner as to form a rhyme — 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 297 
 
 the regularities of interval and studied recurrence of the same 
 sound, evince an attention to time, and a partiality to things of 
 sense. Most poets must be prohibited ; the exercise of the 
 fancy requires watching. But Cowper is a ticket-of-leave man. 
 He has the chaplain's certificate. He has expressed himself 
 ' with the utmost propriety.' The other imaginative criminals 
 must be left to the fates, but he may be admitted to the sacred 
 drawing-room, though with constant care and scrupulous suv- 
 veillance. Perhaps, however, taken in connection with his 
 diseased and peculiar melancholy, these tenets really add to the 
 artistic effect of Cowper's writings. The free discussion of 
 daily matters, the delicate delineation of domestic detail, the 
 passing narrative of fugitive occurrences, would seem light and 
 transitory, if it were not broken by the interruption of a 
 terrible earnestness, and relieved by the dark background of a 
 deep and foreboding sadness. It is scarcely artistic to describe 
 the ' painted veil which those who live call life,' and leave wholly 
 out of view and undescribed Hhe chasm sightless and drear,' 
 which lies always beneath and around it. 
 
 It is of the Task more than of Cowper's earlier volume 
 of poems that a critic of his poetry must more peculiarly be 
 understood to speak. All the best qualities of his genius are 
 there concentrated, and the alloy is less than elsewhere. He was 
 fond of citing the saying of Dryden, that the rhyme had often 
 helped him to a thought — a great but very perilous truth. 
 The difficulty is, that the rhyme so frequently helps to the 
 wrong thought — that the stress of the mind is recalled from the 
 main thread of the poem, from the narrative, or sentiment, or 
 delineation, to some wayside remark or fancy, which the casual 
 resemblance of final sound suggests. This is fatal, unless either 
 a poet's imagination be so hot and determined as to bear down 
 upon its objects, and to be unwilling to hear the voice of any 
 charmer who might distract it, or else the nature of the poem 
 itself should be of so desultory a character that it does not 
 much matter about the sequence of the thought — at least 
 
298 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 within great and ample limits, as in some of Swift's casual 
 rhymes, where the sound is in fact the connecting link of unity. 
 Now Cowper is not often in either of these positions ; he al- 
 ways has a thread of argument on which he is hanging his 
 illustrations, and yet he has not the exclusive interest or the 
 undeviating energetic downrightness of mind which would en- 
 sure his going through it without idling or turning aside ; 
 consequently the thoughts which the rhyme suggests are con- 
 stantly breaking in upon the main matter, destroying the 
 emphatic unity which is essential to rhythmical delineation. 
 His blank verse of course is exempt from this defect, and there 
 is moreover something in the nature of the metre which fits it 
 for the expression of studious and quiet reflection. The Taslz 
 too was composed at the healthiest period of Cowper's later 
 life, in the full vigour of his faculties, and with the spur the 
 semi-recognition of his first volume had made it a common 
 subject of literary discussion, whether he was a poet or not. 
 Many men could endure — as indeed all but about ten do 
 actually in every generation endure— to be without this dis- 
 tinction ; but few could have an idea that it was a frequent point 
 of argument whether they were duly entitled to possess it or 
 not, without at least a strong desire to settle the question by 
 some work of decisive excellence. This the Task achieved 
 for Cowper. Since its publication his name has been a house- 
 hold word — a particularly household word in English literature. 
 The story of its composition is connected with one of the most 
 curious incidents in Cowper's later life, and has given occasion 
 to a good deal of writing. 
 
 In the summer of 1781 it happened that two ladies called 
 at a shop exactly opposite the house at Olney where Cowper and 
 Mrs. Unwin resided. One of these was a familiar and perhaps 
 tame object, — a Mrs. Jones, — the wife of a neighbouring par- 
 son ; the other, however, was so striking, that Cowper, one of 
 the shyest and least demonstrative of men, immediately asked 
 Mrs. Unwin to invite her to tea. This was a great event, as it 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 299 
 
 would appear that few or no social interruptions, casual or con- 
 templated, then varied what Cowper called the ' duality of his 
 existence.' This favoured individual was Lady Austen, a person 
 of what ^Ir. Hayley terms ' colloquial talents ; ' in truth an 
 energetic, vivacious, amusing, and rather handsome lady of the 
 world. She had been much in France, and is said to have 
 cauo'ht the facility of manner and love of easy society, which 
 is the unchanging characteristic of that land of change. She 
 was a fascinating person in the great world, and it is not diffi- 
 cult to imagine she must have been an excitement indeed at 
 Olney. She was, however, most gracious ; fell in love, as 
 Cowper says, not only with him but with Mrs. Unwin ; was 
 called ' Sister Ann,' laughed and made laugh, was every way 
 so great an acquisition that his seeing her appeared to him 
 to show * strong marks of providential interposition.' He 
 thought her superior to the curate's wife, who was a ' valuable 
 person,' but had a family, &c. &c. The new acquaintance had 
 much to contribute to the Olney conversation. She had seen 
 much of the world, and probably seen it well, and had at least 
 a good deal to narrate concerning it. Among other interesting- 
 matters, she one day recounted to Cowper the story of John 
 Gilpin, as one which she had heard in childhood, and in a short 
 time the poet sent her the ballad, which every one has liked 
 ever since. It was written, he sa\^s, no doubt truly, in order 
 to relieve a iBt of terrible and uncommon despondency ; but 
 altogether, for a few months after the introduction of this new 
 companion, he was more happy and animated than at any other 
 time after his first illness. Clouds, nevertheless, began to show 
 themselves soon. The circumstances are of the minute and 
 female kind, which it would require a good deal of writing to 
 describe, even if we knew them perfectly. The original cause 
 of misconstruction was a rather romantic letter of Lady Austen, 
 drawing a sublime picture of what she expected from Cowper's 
 friendship. Mr. Scott, the clergyman at Olney, who had taken 
 the place of Mr. Newton, and who is described as a dry and 
 
300 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 sensible man, gave a short account of what he thought was the 
 real embroilment. ' Who,' said he, ' can be surprised that two 
 women should be daily in the society of one man and then 
 quarrel with one another ? ' Cowper's own description shows 
 how likely this was. 
 
 * From a scene of the most uninterrupted retirement/ he says 
 to Mr. Unwin, 'we have passed at once into a state of constant 
 engagement. Not that our society is much multiplied ; the addition 
 of an individual has made all this difference. Lady Austen and 
 we pass our days alternately at each other's chdteau. In the morning 
 I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the afternoon wind 
 thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus probably did Samson, and 
 thus do I ; and were both those heroes living, I should not fear to 
 challenge them to a trial of skill in that business, or doubt to beat 
 them both. As to killing lions and other amusements of that kind, 
 with which they were so delighted, I should be their humble servant 
 and beg to be excused.' 
 
 Things were in this state when she suggested to him the 
 composition of a new poem of some length in blank verse, 
 and on being asked to suggest a subject, said. Well, write upon 
 that ' sofa,' whence is the title of the first book of the Task, 
 According to Cowper's own account, it was this poem which 
 was the cause of the ensuing dissension. 
 
 * On her first settlement in our neighbourhood, I made it my 
 own particular business (for at that time I was not employed in 
 writing, having published my first volume, and not begun my 
 second) to pay my devoirs to her ladyship every morning at eleven. 
 Customs very soon become laws, I began the Task ; for she was 
 the lady who gave me the Sofa for a subject. Being once engaged 
 in the work, I began to feel the inconvenience of my morning 
 attendance. We had seldom breakfasted ourselves till ten : and 
 the intervening hour was all the time that I could find in the whole 
 day for writing ; and occasionally it would happen that the half of 
 that hour was all that I could secure for the purpose. But there 
 was no remedy. Long usage had made that which at first was 
 optioiial, a point of good manners, and consequently of necessity, 
 and I was forced to neglect the Tasky to attend upon the Muse who 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 had inspired the subject. But she had ill health, and before I had 
 quite finished the work was obliged to repair to Bristol.' 
 
 And it is possible that this is the true account of the 
 matter. Yet we fancy there is a kind of awkwardness and con- 
 straint in the manner in which it is spoken of. Of course, 
 the plain and literal portion of mankind have set it down at 
 once that Cowper was in love with Lady Austen, just as they 
 married him over and over again to Mrs. Unwin. But of a strong 
 passionate love, as we have before explained, we do not think 
 Cowper capable, and there are certainly no signs of it in this 
 case. There is, however, one odd circumstance. Years after, 
 when no longer capable of original composition, he was fond 
 of hearing all his poems read to him except ' John Gilpin.' 
 There were recollections, he said, connected with those verses 
 which were too painful. Did he mean, the worm that dieth 
 not — the reminiscence of the animated narratress of that not 
 intrinsically melancholy legend ? 
 
 The literary success of Cowper opened to him a far larger 
 circle of acquaintance, and connected him in close bonds with 
 many of his relations, who had looked with an unfavourable eye 
 at the peculiar tenets which he had adopted, and the peculiar 
 and recluse life which he had been advised to lead. It is to 
 these friends and acquaintance that we owe that copious corre- 
 spondence on which so much of Cowper's fame at present rests. 
 The complete letter-writer is now an unknown animal. In the 
 last century, when communications were difficult, and epistles 
 rare, there were a great many valuable people who devoted a 
 good deal of time to writing elaborate letters. You wrote letters 
 to a man whom you knew nineteen years and a half ago, and 
 told him what you had for dinner, and what your second cousin 
 said, and how the crops got on. Every detail of life was described 
 and dwelt on, and improved. The art of writing, at least of 
 writing easily, was comparatively rare, which kept the number 
 of such compositions within narrow limits. Sir Walter Scott 
 says he knew a man who remembered that the London post- 
 
302 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 bag once came to Edinburgh with only one letter in it. 
 One can fancy the solemn conscientious elaborateness with 
 which a person would write, with the notion that his letter 
 would have a whole coach and a whole bag to itself, and travel 
 two hundred miles alone, tlie exclusive object of a red guard's 
 care. The only thing like it now — the deferential minuteness 
 with which one public office writes to another, conscious 
 that the letter will travel on her Majesty's service three doors 
 down the passage — sinks by comparison into cursory brevity. No 
 administrative reform will be able to bring even the official mind 
 of these days into the grave inch-an-hour conscientiousness with 
 which a confidential correspondent of a century ago related the 
 growth of apples, the manufacture of jams, the appearance of 
 flirtations, and other such things. All the ordinary incidents 
 of an easy life were made the most of ; a party was epistolary 
 capital, a race a mine of wealth. So deeply sentimental was 
 this intercourse, that it was much argued whether the affections 
 were created for the sake of the ink, or ink for the sake of the 
 affections. Thus it continued for many years, and the fruits 
 thereof are written in the volumes of family papers, which 
 daily appear, are praised as ' materials for the historian,' and 
 consigned, as the case may be, to posterity or oblivion. All 
 this has now passed away. Sir Kowland Hill is entitled to the 
 credit, not only of introducing stamps, but also of destroying 
 letters. The amount of annotations which will be required to 
 make the notes of this day intelligible to posterity is a 
 wonderful idea, and no quantity of comment will make them 
 readable. You might as well publish a collection of telegraphs. 
 The careful detail, the studious minuteness, the circumstantial 
 statement of a former time, is exchanged for a curt brevity or 
 only half-intelligible narration. In old times, letters were 
 written for people who knew nothing and required to be told 
 everything. Now they are written for people who know 
 everything except the one thing which the letter is designed to 
 explain to them. It is impossible in some respects nob to regret 
 
William Cozvpe7\ 
 
 303 
 
 the old practice. It is well that each age should write for itself 
 a faithful account of its habitual existence. We do this to a 
 certain extent in novels, but novels are difficult materials for 
 an historian. They raise a cause and a controversy as to how 
 far they are really faithful delineations. Lord Macaulay is even 
 now under criticism for his use of the plays of the seventeenth 
 century. Letters are generally true on certain points. The 
 least veracious man will tell truly the colour of his coat, the 
 hour of his dinner, the materials of his shoes. The unconscious 
 delineation of a recurring and familiar life is beyond the reach 
 of a fraudulent fancy. Horace Walpole was not a very scrupulous 
 narrator ; yet it was too much trouble even for him to tell lies 
 on many things. His set stories and conspicuous scandals are 
 no doubt often unfounded, but there is a gentle undercurrent of 
 daily unremarkable life and manners which he evidently assumed 
 as a datum for his historical imagination. Whence posterity 
 will derive this for the times of Queen Victoria it is difficult to 
 fancy. Even memoirs are no resource; they generally leave 
 out the common life, and try at least to bring out the uncommon 
 events. 
 
 It is evident that this species of composition exactly har- 
 monised with the temperament and genius of Cowper. Detail 
 was his forte and quietness his element. Accordingly, his deli- 
 cate humour plays over perhaps a million letters, mostly descrip- 
 tive of events which no one else would have thought worth 
 narrating, and yet which, when narrated, show to us, and will 
 show to persons to whom it will be yet more strange, the familiar, 
 placid, easy, ruminating, provincial existence of our great grand- 
 fathers. Slow, Olney might be, — indescribable, it certainly was 
 not. We seem to have lived there ourselves. 
 
 The most copious subject of Cowper's correspondence is his 
 translation of Homer. This was published by subscription, and 
 it is pleasant to observe the healthy facility with which one of the 
 shyest men in the world set himself to extract guineas from every 
 one he had ever heard of. In several cases he was very successful. 
 
o04 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 The University of Oxford, he tells us, declined, as of course it 
 would, to recognise the principle of subscribing towards literary 
 publications ; but other public bodies and many private persons 
 were more generous. It is to be wished that their aid had con- 
 tributed to the production of a more pleasing work. The fact 
 is, Cowper was not like Agamemnon. The most conspicuous 
 feature in the Grreek heroes is a certain brisk, decisive activit}^, 
 which always strikes and always likes to strike. This quality is 
 faithfully represented in the poet himself. Homer is the brisk- 
 est of men. The Grermans have denied that there was any 
 such person ; but they have never questioned his extreme 
 activity. ' From what you tell me, sir,' said an American, ' I 
 should like to have read Homer. I should say he was a go-ahead 
 party.' Now this is exactly what Cowper was not. Plis genius 
 was domestic, and tranquil, and calm. He had no sympathy, 
 or little sympathy, even with the common, half-asleep activities 
 of a refined society ; an evening party was too much for him ; 
 a day's hunt a preposterous excitement. It is absurd to expect 
 a man like this to sympathise with the stern stimulants of a 
 barbaric age, with a race who fought because they liked it, and 
 a poet who sang of fighting because he thought their taste 
 judicious. As if to make matters worse, Cowper selected a 
 metre in which it would be scarcely possible for any one, however 
 gifted, to translate Homer. The two kinds of metrical compo- 
 sition most essentially opposed to one another are ballad poetry 
 and blank verse. The very nature of the former requires a 
 marked pause and striking rhythm. Every line should have 
 a distinct end and a clear beginning. It is like martial music, 
 there should be a tramp in the very versification of it : — 
 
 * Armour rusting in his halls 
 On the blood of Clifford calls ; 
 " Quell the Scot," exclaims the lance, 
 Bear me to the heart of France, 
 Is the longing of the shield : 
 Tell thy name, thou trembHng field. 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 305 
 
 Field of deatb, where'er thou be, 
 Groan thou with our victory.' 
 
 And this is the tone of Homer. The grandest of human 
 tongues marches forward with its proudest steps : the clearest 
 tones call forward — the most marked of metres carries him 
 on : — 
 
 * Like a reappearing star, 
 Like a gloiy from afar — ' 
 
 he ever heads, and will head, ' the flock of war.' Now blank 
 verse is the exact opposite of all this. Dr. Johnson laid down 
 that it was verse only to the eye, which was a bold dictum. 
 But without going this length it will be safe to say, that of all 
 considerable metres in our language it has the least distinct 
 conclusion, least decisive repetition, the least trumpet-like 
 rhythm ; and it is this of which Cowper made choice. He had 
 an idea that extreme literalness was an unequalled advantage, 
 and logically reasoned that it was easier to do this in that metre 
 than in any other. He did not quite hold with Mr. Cobbett 
 that the ' gewgaw fetters of rhyme were invented by the monks 
 to enslave the people ; ' but as a man who had due experience 
 of both, he was aware that it is easier to write two lines of dif- 
 ferent endings than two lines of the same ending, and supposed 
 that by taking advantage of this to preserve the exact gram- 
 matical meaning of his author, he was indisputably approximat- 
 ing to a good translation. ' Whether,' he writes, ' a translation 
 of Homer may be best executed in blank verse or in rhyme is a 
 question in the decision of which no man finds difficulty who 
 has ever duly considered what translation ought to be, or who 
 is in any degree practically acquainted with those kinds of ver- 
 sification. . . , No human ingenuity can be equal to the 
 task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, express- 
 ing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense, of 
 the original.' And if the true object of translation were to save 
 the labour and dictionaries of construing schoolboys, there is 
 
 YOL. I. X 
 
3o6 
 
 William Cowper. 
 
 no question but this slavish adherence to the original would be 
 the most likely to gain the approbation of those diminutive but 
 sure judges. But if the object is to convey an idea of the 
 general tone, scope, and artistic effect of the original, the me- 
 chanical copying of the details is as likely to end in a good 
 result as a careful cast from a dead man's features to produce a 
 living and speaking being. On the whole, therefore, the con- 
 demnation remains, that Homer is not dull, and Cowper is. 
 
 With the translation of Homer terminated all the brightest 
 period of Cowper's life. There is little else to say. He under- 
 took an edition of Milton — a most difficult task, involving the 
 greatest and most accurate learning, in theology, in classics, in 
 Italian — in a word, in all ante-Miltonic literature. By far the 
 greater portion of this lay quite out of Cowper's path. He had 
 never been a hard student, and his evident incapacity for the 
 task troubled and vexed him. A man who had never been able 
 to assume any real responsibility was not likely to feel com- 
 fortable under the weight of a task which very few men would 
 be able to accomplish. Mrs. Unwin too fell into a state of 
 helplessness and despondency; and instead of relying on her 
 for cheerfulness and management, he was obliged to manage 
 for her, and cheer her. His mind was unequal to the task. 
 Grradually the dark cloud of melancholy, which had hung about 
 him so long, grew and grew, and extended itself day by day. 
 In vain Lord Thurlow, who was a likely man to know, assured 
 him that his spiritual despondency was without ground ; he 
 smiled sadly, but seemed to think that at any rate he was not 
 going into Chancery. In vain Hayley, a rival poet, but a good- 
 natured, blundering, well-intentioned, incoherent man, went 
 to and fro, getting the Lord Chief Justice and other dignitaries 
 to attest, under their hands, that they concurred in Thurlow's 
 opinion. In vain, with far wiser kindness, his relatives, especi- 
 ally many of his mother's family, from whom he had been 
 long divided, but who gradually drew nearer to him as they 
 were wanted, endeavoured to divert his mind to healthful labour 
 
William Cowper. 
 
 307 
 
 and tranquil society. The day of these things had passed 
 away — the summer was ended. He became quite unequal to 
 original composition, and his gi-eatest pleasure was hearing his 
 own writings read to him. After a long period of hopeless 
 despondency he died on April 25, in the first year of this 
 century ; and if he needs an epitaph, let us say, that not in 
 vain was he Nature's favourite. As a higher poet sings : — 
 
 * And all day long I number yet, 
 All seasons through, another debt, 
 Which I, wherever thou art met, 
 
 To thee am owing ; 
 An instinct call it, a bhnd sense, 
 A happy, genial influence. 
 Coming one knows not how noi* whence, 
 
 Nor whither going.' 
 
 * * * * * ■ 
 
 * If stately passions in me bui-n, 
 
 And one chance look to thee should turn, 
 I drink out of an humbler urn, 
 
 A lowlier pleasure; 
 The homely sympathy that heeds 
 The common life our nature bieeds ; 
 A wisdom fitted to the needs 
 
 Of hearts at leisure.* 
 
 2 2 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 LETTERS ON THE FRENCH COUP D'ETAT OF 1851. 
 
 (Addressed to the Editor of ' The Inquirer.') 
 
 Lettek I. 
 
 THE DICTATORSHIP. 
 
 Paris : Jan. 8, 1852. 
 Sir, — You have asked me to tell you what I think of French 
 affairs. I shall be pleased to do so ; but I ought perhaps to begin 
 by cautioning you against believing, or too much heeding, what I 
 say. However, I do not imagine that I need do so ; for with your 
 experience of the public journals, you will be quite aware that it is 
 not difficult to be an ' occasional correspondent.' Have your boots 
 polished in a blacking-shop, and call the interesting officiator an ' in- 
 telligent oumier ; ' be shaved, and cite the coiffeur as ' a person in 
 rather a superior station ; ' call your best acquaintance ' a well-in- 
 formed person,' and all others ' persons whom I have found to be 
 occasionally not in error,' and — abroad, at least — you will soon have 
 matter for a newspaper letter. I should quite deceive you if I pro- 
 fessed to have made these profound researches; nor, like Sii* Francis 
 Head, * do I no longer know where I am,' because the French Pi'esi- 
 dent has asked me to accompany him in his ride. My perception of 
 personal locality has not as yet been so tried. I only know what a 
 person who is in a foreign country during an important political 
 catastrophe cannot avoid knowing, what he runs against, what is 
 beaten into him, what he can hardly help healing, seeing, and re- 
 flecting. 
 
 That Louis Napoleon has gone to Notre Dame to return thanks 
 to God for the seven millions and odd suffrages of the French people 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 — that he has taken up his abode at the Tuileries, and that he has 
 had new napoleons coined in his name — that he has broken up the 
 trees of liberty for firewood — that he has erased, or is erasing (for 
 they are many), Liberie, Egalite, and Fraternite from the National 
 buildings, — all these things are so easy and so un-English, that I 
 am pretty sui-e, with you, they will be thought signs of pompous 
 impotence, and I suppose many people will be inclined to believe 
 the best comment to be the one which I heard — ^ Mon Dieu, il a 
 sauve la France : la rue du Coq s^appelle maintenant la rue de 
 I'Aigle.r^ 
 
 I am inclined, however, to imagine that this idea would be utterly 
 erroneous ; that, on the contrary, the President is just now, at least, 
 1 eally strong and really popular ; that the act of December 2nd did 
 succeed and is succeeding ; that many, that most, of the inferior people 
 do really and sincerely pray JDomine Salvum fac Napoleonem. 
 
 In what I have seen of the comments of the English press upon 
 l ecent events here, two things are not quite enough kept apart — I 
 mean the temporary dictatorship of Louis Napoleon to meet and cope 
 with the expected crisis of '52, and the continuance of that dicta- 
 torship hereafter, — the new, or as it is called, the ^as-Empire — in a 
 word, the coming Constitution and questionable political machinery 
 with which ' the nephew of my uncle ' is now proposing to endow 
 France. Of course, in reality these two things are separate. It is 
 one thing to hold that a military rule is required to meet an urgent 
 and temporary difficulty : another, to advocate the continuance of such 
 a system, when so critical a necessity no longer exists. 
 
 It seems to me, or would seem, if I did not know that I was con- 
 ti'adicted both by much English writing and opinion, and also by 
 many most competent judges here, that the first point, the temporary 
 dictatorship, is a tolerably clear case ; that it is not to be complicated 
 with the perplexing inquiiy what form of government will pei'ma- 
 nently suit the French people ; — that the President was, under the 
 actual facts of the case, quite justified in assuming the responsibility, 
 though of course I allow that responsibility to be tremendous. My 
 reasons for so believing I shall in this letter endeavour to explain, 
 except that I shall not, I fancy, have room to say much on the moral 
 defensibility or indefensibility of the coup d'etat ; nor do I imagine 
 
 ' The general reader may not before have read, that the Eue du Coq 
 I'Honore is an old and well-known street in Paris, and that notwithstanding 
 the substitution of the eagle for cock as a military emblem, there is no 
 thought of changing its name. 
 
The Co2tp d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 that you want from me any ethical speculation — that is manu- 
 factured in Printing-house Square ; but I shall give the best account 
 I can of the matter-of-fact consequences and antecedents of the New- 
 Revolution, of which, in some sense, a resident in France may feel 
 without presumption that he knows something hardly so well known 
 to those at home. 
 
 The political justification of Louis Napoleon is, as I apprehend, 
 to be found in the state of the public mind which immediately pre- 
 ceded the coup cVetat. It is very rarely that a country expects a 
 revolution at a given time; indeed, it is perhaps not common for 
 ordinaiy persons in any country to anticipate a revolution at all; 
 though profound people may speculate, the mass will ever expect to- 
 morrow to be as this day at least, if not more abundant. But once 
 name the day, and all this is quite altered. As a general rule the 
 very people who would be most likely to neglect general anticipation 
 are exactly those most likely to exaggerate the proximate conse- 
 quences of a certain impending event. At any rate, in France five 
 weeks ago, the tradespeople talked of May, '52, as if it were the 
 end of the world. Civilisation and Socialism might probably endure, 
 but buying and selling would surely come to an end ; in fact, they 
 anticipated a worse era than February, '48, when trade was at a 
 standstill so long that it has hardly yet recovered, and when the 
 Government stocks fell 40 per cent. It is hardly to be imagined 
 upon what petty details the dread of political dissolution at a fixed 
 and not distant time will condescend to intrude itself. I was present 
 when a huge Flamande, in appearance so intrepid that I respectfully 
 pitied her husband, came to ask the character of a bonne. I was 
 amazed to hear her say, ' I hope the girl is strong, for when the revo- 
 lution comes next May, and I have to turn off my helper, she will 
 have enough to do.' It seemed to me that a political apprehension 
 must be pretty general, when it afiected that most non-speculative of 
 speculations, the reckoning of a housewife. With this feeling, every- 
 body saved their money : who would spend in luxuries that which 
 might so soon be necessary and invaluable ! This economy made 
 commerce, — especially the peculiarly Parisian trade, which is almost 
 wholly in articles that can be spared — worse and worse ; the more 
 depressed trade became, the more the traders feared, and the moi-e 
 they feared, the worse all trade inevitably grew. 
 
 I apprehend that this feeling extended very generally among all 
 the classes who do not find or make a livelihood by litei ature or by 
 politics. Among the clever people, who understood the subject, very 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 likely the expectation was extremely different ; but among the stupid 
 ones who mind their business, and have a business to mind, there was 
 a universal and excessive tremor. The only notion of '52 was 
 * on se hattra dans la rue* Their dread was especially of Socialism ; 
 they expected that the followers of M. Proudhon, who advisedly and 
 expressly maintains ' anarchy ' to be the best form of Government, 
 would attempt to carry out their theories in action, and that the 
 division between the Legislative and Executive power would so 
 cripple the party of order as to make their means of resistance for 
 the moment feeble and difficult to use. The more sensible did not, I 
 own, expect the annihilation of mankind : civilisation dies hard ; the 
 organised sense in all countries is strong ; but they expected vaguely 
 and crudely that the party which in '93 ruled for many months, 
 and which in June '48 fought so fanatically against the infant 
 republic, would certainly make a desperate attack, — might for some 
 time obtain the upper hand. Of course, it is now matter of mere 
 argument whether the danger was real or unreal, and it is in some 
 quarters rather the fashion to quiz the past fear, and to deny that any 
 Socialists anywhere exist. In spite of the literary exertions of 
 Proudhon and Louis Blanc, in spite of the prison quarrels of Blanqui 
 and Barbes — there are certainly found people who question whether 
 anybody buys the books of the two former, or cares for the incar- 
 cerated dissensions of the two latter. But however this may be, it is 
 certain that two days after the coup d^etat a mass of persons thought 
 it worth while to erect some dozen barricades, and among these, and 
 superintending and directing their every movement, there certainly 
 were, for I saw them myself, men whose physiognomy and accoutre- 
 ments exactly resembled the traditional Montagnard, sallow, stern, 
 compressed, with much marked features, which expressed but resisted 
 suffering, and brooding one-ideaed thought, men who from their youth 
 upward had for ever imagined, like Jonah, that they did well — im- 
 mensely well — to be angry, men armed to the teeth, and ready, like the 
 soldiers of the first Republic, to use their arms savagely and well in 
 defence of theories broached by a Robespierre, a Blanqui, or a Barbes, 
 gloomy fanatics, o?;er-priiicipled ruffians. I may perhaps be mistaken 
 in reading in their features the characters of such men, but I know 
 that when one of them disturbed my superintendence of barricade- 
 making with a stern allez vous-en, it was not too slowly that I de- 
 parted, for I felt that he would rather shoot me than not. Having 
 seen these people, I conceive that they exist. But supposing that 
 they wei-e all simply fabulous, it would not less be certain that they 
 
The Coup d'Etat ^1851. 313 
 
 were believed to be, and to be active ; nor would it impau* the fact 
 that the quiet classes awaited their onslaught in morbid apprehension, 
 with miserable and craven, and I fear we ought to say, commercial 
 disquietude. 
 
 You will not be misled by any highflown speculations about 
 liberty or equality. You will, I imagine, concede to me that the first 
 duty of a government is to ensure the security of that indu try 
 which is the condition of social life and civilised cultivation ; that 
 especially in so excitable a country as France it is necessary that the 
 dangerous classes should be saved from the strong temptation 
 of long idleness ; and that no danger could be more formidable than 
 six months' beggary among the revolutionary ouvriers, immediately 
 preceding the exact period fixed by European as well as French 
 opinion for an apprehended convulsion. It is from this state of 
 things, whether by fair means or foul, that Louis Napoleon has de- 
 livered France. The effect was magical. Like people who have 
 nearly died because it was prophesied they would die at a specified 
 time, and instantly recovered when they found or thought that the 
 time was gone and past, so France, timorously anticipating the fated 
 revolution, in a moment revived when she found or fancied that it was 
 come and over. Commerce instantly improved ; New Year's Day, 
 when all the Boulevards are one continued fair, has not (as I am told) 
 been for some years so gay and splendid ; people began to buy, and 
 consequently to sell ; for though it is quite possible, or even probable, 
 that new misfortunes and convulsions may be in store for the French 
 people, yet no one can say when they will be, and to wait till revolu- 
 tions be exhausted is but the best Parisian for our old acquaintance 
 Rusticus expectat. Clever people may now prove that the dreaded 
 peril was a simple chimera, but they can't deny that the fear of it 
 was very real and painful, nor can they dispute that in a week 
 after the coup d'etat it had at once, and apparently for ever, passed 
 away. 
 
 I fear it must be said that no legal or constitutional act could 
 have given an equal confidence. What was wanted was the assur- 
 ance of an audacious Government, which would stop at nothing, 
 scruple at nothing, to seciu-e its own power and the tranquillity of the 
 country. That assurance all now have; a man who will in this 
 manner dare to dissolve an assembly constitutionally his superiors, 
 then prevent their meeting by armed force ; so well and so sternly 
 repress the fii-st beginning of an outbreak, with so little misgiving 
 assume and exercise sole power, — may have enormous other defects, 
 
314 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 but is certainly a bold ruler — most probably an unscrupulous one — 
 little likely to flinch from any inferior trial. 
 
 Of Louis Napoleon, whose personal qualities are, for the moment, 
 so important, I cannot now speak at length. But I may say that, with 
 whatever other deficiencies he may have, he has one excellent advantage 
 over other French statesmen — he has never been a professor, nor a 
 journalist, nor a promising barrister, nor, by taste, a litterateur. He 
 has not confused himself with history ; he does not think in leading 
 articles, in long speeches, or in agreeable essays. But he is capable of 
 observing facts rightly, of reflecting on them simply, and acting 
 on them discreetly. And his motto is Dan ton's, De Vaudace et 
 toujours de Vaudace, and this you know, according to Bacon, in 
 time of revolution, will carry a man far, perhaps even to ultimate 
 victory, and that ever-future millennium ' la consolidation de la 
 France.^ 
 
 But on these distant questions I must not touch. I have en- 
 deavoured to show you what was the crisis, how strong the remedy, 
 and what the need of a dictatorship. I hope to have convinced you 
 that .the first was imminent, the second efiectual, and the last ex- 
 pedient. I remain yours, Amicus. 
 
 Letter II. 
 
 THE MORALITY OF THE COUP D'ETAT 
 
 Pakis : Jan. 15, 1852. 
 
 Sir, — I know quite well what will be said about, or in answer 
 to, my last letter. It will be alleged that I think everything in 
 France is to be postponed to the Parisian commerce — that a Consti- 
 tution, Equality, Liberty, a Representative Government, are all to be 
 set aside if they interfere even for a moment with the sale of etrennes 
 or the manufacture of gimcracks. 
 
 I, as you know, hold no such opinions : it would not be necessary 
 for me to undeceive you, who would, I rather hope, never suspect me 
 of that sort of folly. But as St. Athanasius aptly observes, ' for the 
 sake of the women who may be led astray, I will this very instant 
 explain my sentiments.' 
 
 Contrary to Sheridan's rule, I commence by a concession. I cer- 
 tainly admit, indeed I would, upon occasion, maintain, bonbons and 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 315 
 
 bracelets to be things less important tlian common law and Constitu- 
 tional action. A cowp d'etat would, I may allow, be mischievously 
 supererogatory if it only promoted the enjoyment of what a lady in the 
 highest circles is said to call ' bigotry and virtue.' But the real ques- 
 tion is not to be so disposed of. The Parisian trade, the jewellery, 
 the baubles, the silks, the luxuiies, which the Exhibition showed 
 us to be the characteristic industry of France, are very dust in the 
 balance if weighed against the hands and arms which their manufac- 
 ture employs — the industrial habits which their regular sale rewards 
 — the hrniger and idle weariness which the certain demand for them 
 prevents. For this is the odd peculiarity of commercial civilisation. 
 The life, the welfare, the existence of thousands depend on their 
 being paid for doing what seems nothing when done. That 
 gorgeous dandies should wear gorgeous studs — that pi-etty girls 
 should be prettily dressed — that pleasant drawing-rooms should 
 be pleasantly attii'ed — may seem, to people of our age, sad trifling. 
 But grave as we are, we must become graver still when we reflect on 
 the horrid sufiering which the sudden cessation of large luxurious con- 
 sumption would certainly create, if we imagine such a city as Lyons to 
 be, without warning, turned out of work, and the population feelingly 
 told ' to cry in the streets when no man regardeth.' 
 
 The first duty of society is the preservation of society. By the 
 sound work of old-fashioned generations — by the singular pains- 
 taking of the slumberers in churchyards — by dull care — by stupid 
 industry, a certain social fabric somehow exists ; people contrive to 
 go out to their work, and to find work to employ them actually until 
 the evening, body and soul are kept together, and this is what mankind 
 have to show for their six thousand yeai's of toil and trouble. 
 
 To keep up this system we must sacrifice everything. Parliaments, 
 libei-ty, leading articles, essays, eloquence, — all are good, but they are 
 secondary ; at all hazards, and if we can, mankind must be kept 
 alive. And observe, as time goes on, this fabric becomes a tenderer 
 and a tenderer thing. Civilisation can't bivouac ; dangers, hardships, 
 sufferings, lightly borne by the coarse muscle of earlier times, are 
 soon fatal to noble and cultivated organisation. Women in early ages 
 are masculine, and, as a return match, the men of late years are be- 
 coming women. The strong apprehension of a Napoleonic invasion 
 has, perhaps, just now caused more substantial misery in England 
 than once the wars of the Poses. 
 
 To apply this ' screed of doctrine ' to the condition of France. I 
 do not at all say that, hut for the late cou^ d'etat, French civilisation 
 
3i6 
 
 The Coitp d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 would certainly have soon come to a final end. Some people might 
 have continued to take their meals. Even Socialism would hardly 
 abolish eau sucree. But I do assert that, according to the common 
 belief of the common people, their common comforts were in consi- 
 derable danger. The debasing torture of acute apprehension was eating 
 into the crude pleasure of stupid lives. No man liked to take a long 
 bill ; no one could imagine to himself what was coming. Fear was 
 paralysing life and labour, and as I said at length, in my last, fear, so 
 intense, whether at first reasonable or unreasonable, will, ere long, in- 
 vincibly justify itself. May 1852 would, in all likelihood, have been 
 an evil and bloody time, if it had been preceded by six months' famine 
 among the starvable classes. 
 
 At present all is changed. Six weeks ago society was living from 
 hand to mouth : now she feels sure of her next meal. And this, in a 
 dozen words, is the real case — the political excuse for Prince Louis Na- 
 poleon. You ask me, or I should not do so, to say a word or two on 
 the moral question and the oath. You are aware how limited my 
 means of doing so are. I have forgotten Paley, and have never read 
 the Casuists, But it certainly does not seem to me proved or clear, 
 that a man who has sworn, even in the most solemn manner, to see 
 another drown, is therefore quite bound, or even at liberty, to stand 
 placidly on the bank. What ethical philosoj)her has demonstrated 
 this 1 Coleridge said it was difficult to advance a new error in morals, 
 — yet this, I think, would be one ; and the keeping of oaths is pecu- 
 liarly a point of mere science, for Christianity, in terms at least, only 
 forbids them all. And supposing I am right, such certainly was the 
 exact position of Louis Napoleon. He saAv society, I will not say 
 dying or perishing — for I hate unnecessarily to overstate my point, — 
 in danger of incurring extreme and perhaps lasting calamities, 
 likely not only to impair the happiness, but moreover to debase 
 the character of the French nation, and these calamities he could 
 prevent. Now who has shown that ethics require of him to have 
 held his hand 1 
 
 The severity with which the riot was put down on the first Thursday 
 in December has, I observe, produced an extreme effect in England ; 
 and with our happy exemption from martial bloodshed, it must, of 
 course, do so. But better one ^meute now than many in May, be it 
 ever remembered. There are things more demoralising than death, 
 and among these is the sickly-apprehensive sufieiing for long months 
 of an entire people. 
 
 Of course you understand th^it I am not holding up Louis Napoleon 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 317 
 
 as a complete standard either of ethical scrupulosity or disinterested 
 devotedness ; veracity has never been the family failing — for the great 
 Emperor was a still greater liar. And Prince Louis has been long 
 placing what, morality apart, is the greatest political misfortune to any 
 statesman — a visibly selfish game. Yery likely, too, the very high 
 heroes of history — a Washington, an Aristides, by Carlyle profanely 
 called * favourites of Dryasdust,' would have extricated the country more 
 easily, and perhaps more completely from its scrape. Their ennobling 
 rectitude would have kept M. de Girardin consistent, and induced M. 
 Thiers to vote for the Revision of the Constitution ; and even though, 
 as of old, the Mountain were deafer than the uncharmed adder, a suf- 
 ficient number of self-seeking Conservatives might have been induced 
 by perfect confidence in a perfect President, to mend a crotchety per- 
 formance, that was visibly ruining, what the poet calls, ' The ever- 
 ought-to-be-conserved-thing,' their country. 
 
 I remember reading, several years ago, an article in the Westmin- 
 ster Review^ on the lamented Armand Carrel, in which the author, 
 well known to be one of our most distinguished philosphers, took 
 occasion to observe that what the French most wanted was, ^unliomme 
 de caractere,' Everybody is aware — for all except myself know French 
 quite perfectly — that this expression is not by any means equivalent 
 to our common phrase, a ' man of character,' or ' respectable indivi- 
 dual,' it does not at all refer to mere goodness : it is more like what we 
 sometimes say of an eccentric country gentleman, ' He is a character ; ' 
 for it denotes a singular preponderance of peculiar qualities, an accom- 
 plished obstinacy, an inveterate fixedness of resolution and idea that 
 enables him to get done what he undertakes. The Duke of Wellington 
 is, ' par excellence, homm,e de caractere ; ' Lord Palmerston rather so ; 
 Mr. Cobden a little ; Lord John Russell not at all. Now exactly this, 
 beyond the immense majority of educated men, Louis Napoleon is, as 
 a pointed writer describes him : — ' The Pi-esident is a superior man, 
 but his superiority is of the sort that is hidden under a dubious exte- 
 rior : his life is entirely internal ; his speech does not betray his in- 
 spiration ; his gesture does not copy his audacity ; his look does not 
 reflect his ardour ; his step does not reveal his resolution ; his whole 
 mental nature is in some sort repressed by his physical : he thinks 
 and does not discuss ; he decides and does not deliberate ; he acts 
 without agitation ; he speaks, and assigns no reason ; his best friends 
 are unacquainted with him; he obtains their confidence, but never 
 asks it.' Also his whole nature is, and has been, absorbed in the task 
 which he has undertaken. For many months, his habitual expression 
 
3i8 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 lias been exactly that of a gambler who is playing for his highest and 
 last stake ; in society it is said to be the same — a general and diffu- 
 sive politeness, but an ever-ready reflection and a constant resei've. 
 His great qualities are rather peculiar. He is not, like his uncle, a 
 creative genius, who will leave behind him social institutions such as 
 those which nearly alone, in this changeful country, seem to be always 
 exempt fro'm every change ; he will suggest little ; he has hardly an 
 organising mind ; but he will coolly estimate his own position and 
 that of France ; he will observe all dangers and compute all chances. 
 He can act — he can be idle : he may work what is ; he may administer 
 the country. Any how il /era son possible, and you know, in the nine- 
 teenth century, how much and how rare that is. 
 
 I see many people are advancing beautiful but untrue ethics about 
 his private character. Thus I may quote as follows from a very esti- 
 mable writer : — 'On the 15th of October, he requested his passports 
 and left Aremberg for London. In this capital he remained from the 
 end of 1838 to the month of August 1840. In these twenty months, 
 instead of learning to command armies and govern empires, his days 
 and nights, when not given to frivolous pleasures, were passed on the 
 turf, in the betting-room, or in clubs where high play and desperate 
 stakes roused the jaded energy of the hlase gambler.' — (A. V. Kirwan, 
 Esq., Barrister-at-Law, in Fr user's Magazine^ 
 
 The notion of this gentleman clearly is, that a betting man can't in 
 nature be a good statesman ; that horse-racing is providentially op- 
 posed to political excellence \ that * by an interesting illustration of 
 the argument from design, we notice an antithesis alike marvellous 
 and inevitable,' between turf and tariffs. But, setting Paley for a mo- 
 ment apart, how is a man, by circumstances excluded from military 
 and political life, and by birth from commercial pursuits, really and 
 effectually to learn administration? Mr. Kirwan imagines that he 
 should read all through Burke, common-place Tacitus, collate Cicero, 
 and annotate Montesquieu. Yet take an analogous case. Suppose a 
 man, shut out from trading life, is to qualify himself for the practical 
 management of a counting-house. Do you fancy he will do it 'by a 
 judicious study of the principles of political economy,' and by elabo- 
 rately re-reading Adam Smith and John Mill % He had better be at 
 Newmarket, and devote his heures perdues to the Oaks and the St. 
 Leger. He may leai'n there what he will never acquire from literary 
 study — the instinctive habit of applied calculation, which is essential 
 to a merchant and extremely useful to a statesman. Where, too, did 
 Sir Boljert Walpole learn business, or Charles Fox, or anybody in the 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 319 
 
 eighteenth century'? And after all, M. Michel de Bonrges gave the 
 real solution of the matter. ' Louis Napoleon/ said the best orator of 
 the Mountain, ' may have had rather a stormy youth (laughter). But 
 don't suppose that any one in all France imagines you, you Messieurs, 
 of the immaculate majority, to be the least better (sensation). I am 
 not speaking to saints' (uproar). If compared with contemporary 
 French statesmen, and the practical choice is between him and 
 them, the President will not seem what he appears when measured 
 by the notions of a people who exact at least from inferior func- 
 tionaries a rigid decorum in the 'pettiest details of their private 
 morals. 
 
 I have but one last point to make about this coup d''etat, and 
 then I will release you from my writing. I do not know whether 
 you in England rightly realise the French SociaKsm. Take, for 
 instance, M. Proudhon, who is perhaps their ideal and perfect 
 type. He was representant de la Seine in the late Assembly, elected, 
 which is not unimportant, after the publication of his books and on 
 account of his opinions. In his ' Confessions d^un Revolutionnaire, 
 a very curious book — for he writes extremely well — after main- 
 taining that our well-known but, as we imagine, advanced friends, 
 Ledru Rollin, and Louis Blanc, and Barbes, and Blanqui are all reac- 
 tionnaires, and clearly showing, to the grief of mankind, that once 
 the legislator of the Luxembourg wished to preserve * equilibrium,' 
 and the author of the provincial circulars to maintain the ' tranquillity,' 
 Le gives the following bond fide and amusing account of his own in- 
 vestigations : — 
 
 * I commenced my task of solitary conspiracy by the study of the social- 
 isms of antiquity, necessary, in my judgment, to determine the law, whether 
 practical or theoretical, of progress. These socialisms I found in the Bible. 
 A memoir on the institution of the Sabbath — considered with regard to 
 morals, to health, and in its relation to the family and the city— procured 
 for me a bronze medal from my academy. From the faith in which I had 
 been reared, I had precipitated myself head-long, head-foremost, into pure 
 reason, and already, what was wonderful and a good omen, when I made 
 Moses a philosopher and a socialist, I was greeted with applause. If I am 
 now in error, the fault is not merely mine. Was there ever a similar 
 seduction 1 
 
 * But I studied, above all, with a view to action. I cared little for acade- 
 mical laurels. I had no leisure to become savant, still less a litterateur or an 
 archiBologist. I began immediately upon political economy. 
 
 * I had assumed as the rule of my investigations that every principle 
 which, pushed to its consequences, should end in a contradiction, must be 
 considered false and null ; and that if this principle had been developed into 
 
320 
 
 The Cottp d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 an institution, the institution itself must be considered as factitious, as 
 Utopian. 
 
 * Furnished with this criterion, I chose for the subject of investigation 
 what I found in society the most ancient, the most respectable, the most 
 universal, the least controverted, — property. Everybody knows what hap- 
 pened ; after a long, a minute, and, above all, an impartial analysis, I arrived, 
 as an algebraist guided by his equations, to this surprising conclusion. Pro- 
 perty, consider it as you will, — refer it to what principle you may, is a con- 
 tradictory idea ; and as the denial of property carries with it of necessity 
 that of authority, I deduced immediately from my first axiom also this corol- 
 lary, not less paradoxical, the true form of government is anarchy. Lastly, 
 finding by a mathematical demonstration that no amelioration in the economy 
 of society could be arrived at by its natural constitution, or without the con- 
 currence and reflective adhesion of its members ; observing, also, that there 
 is a definite epoch in the life of societies, in which their progress, at first 
 unreflecting, requires the intervention of the free reason of man, I concluded 
 that this spontaneous and impulsive force {cette force d' impulsion spontanee), 
 which we call Providence, is not everything in the affairs of this world : 
 from that moment, without being an Atheist, I ceased to worship God. He'll 
 get on without j'-our so doing, said to me one day the Constitutio/mel. Well : 
 perhaps he may.' 
 
 These theories have been expanded into many and weary volumes, 
 and condensed into the famous phrase, ' La Fropriete c^est le vol ; ' 
 and have procured their author, in his own sect, reputation and 
 authority. 
 
 The Constitutionnel had another hit against M. Proudhon, a day or 
 two ago. They presented their readers with two decrees in due official 
 form (the walls were at the moment covered with those of the 2nd of 
 December), as the last ideal of what the straightest sect of the 
 Socialists particularly desii'e. It was as follows : — ' Nothing any 
 longer exists. Nobody is charged with the execution of the aforesaid 
 decree. Signed, Vacuum.' 
 
 Such is the speculation of the new reformers— what their prac- 
 tices would be I can hardly tell you. My feeble income does not 
 allow me to travel to the Basses Alpes and really investigate the 
 subject ; but if one quarter of the stories in circulation are in the 
 least to be believed (we are quite dependent on oral information, for 
 the Government papers deal in asterisks and ' details unfit for 
 publication,' and the rest are devoted to the state of the navy and 
 say nothing), the atrocities rival the nauseous corruption of what our 
 liberal essayist calls ' J acobin carrion,' the old days of Carrier and 
 Bar^re. This is what people here are afraid of; and that is why I 
 write such things, — and not to horrify you, or amuse you, or bore you — 
 anything rather than that ; and they think themselves happy in find- 
 
The Coup d'Etat d?/ 1851. 
 
 321 
 
 ing a man who, with or without whatever other qualities or defects, 
 will keep them from the vaunted Millennium and much-expected 
 Jacquerie. I hope you think so, too — and that I am not, as they 
 say in my native Tipperary, ' Whistling jigs to a milestone.' I am, 
 sir, yours truly, Amicus. 
 
 P.S. — You will perhaps wish me to say something on the great 
 event of this week, the exile of the more dangerous members of the 
 late Assembly, and the transportation of the Socialists to Cayenne. 
 Both measures were here expected ; though I think that both lists 
 are more numerous than was anticipated : but no one really knew 
 what would be done by this silent Government. You will laugh at 
 me when I tell you that both measures have been well received : but 
 properly limited and understood, I am persuaded that the fact is so. 
 
 Of course, among the friends of exiled rcpresentants, among the 
 litterateurs throughout whose ranks these measures are intended to 
 * strike terror and inspire respect,' you would hear that there never 
 was such tyranny since the beginning of mankind. But among the 
 mass of the industrious classes —between whom and the politicians 
 there is internecine war — I fancy that on tui-ning the conversation 
 to either of the most recent events, you would hear something of 
 this sort : — ' Qa ne m^occupe pas J * What is that tomeV ^ Je suis pour 
 la tranquillite, moi.' * I sold four brooches yesterday.' The Social- 
 ists who have been removed from prison to the colony, it is agreed 
 were ' pestilent fellows perverting the nation,' and forbidding to pay 
 tribute to M. Bonaparte. Indeed, they can hardly expect commercial 
 sympathy. * Our national honour rose — our stocks fell,' is Louis 
 Blanc's perpetual comment on his favourite events, and it is difficult 
 to say which of its two clauses he dwells upon with the intenser relish. 
 It is generally thought by those who think about the matter, that 
 both the transportation, and in all cases, certainly, the exile will 
 only be a temporary measure, and that the great mass of the people 
 in both lists will be allowed to return to their homes when the 
 present season of extreme excitement has passed over. Still, I am not 
 prepared to defend the number of the transportations. That strong 
 measures of the sort were necessary, I make no doubt. If Socialism 
 exist, and the fear of it exist, something must be done to re-assure 
 the people. You will understand that it is not a j udicial proceeding 
 either in essence or in form ; it is not to be considered as a punish 
 ment for what men have done, but as a perfect precaution against 
 what they may do. Certainly, it is to be regretted that the cause 
 
 vol.. I. Y 
 
322 
 
 The Coup d' Etat of 185 1. 
 
 of order is so weak as to need such measures ; but if it is so weak, 
 the Government must no doubt take them. Of course, however, ' our 
 brethren,' who are retained in such numbers to write down Prince 
 Louis, are quite right to use without stint or stopping this most 
 un-English proceeding; it is their case, and you and I from old 
 misdeeds know pretty well how it is to be managed. There will be 
 no imputation of reasonable or humane motives to the Government, 
 and no examination of the existing state of France : — let both these 
 come from the other side — but elegiac eloquence is inexhaustibly 
 exuded — the cruel corners of history are ransacked for petrifying 
 precedents — and I observe much excellent weeping on the Cromwell- 
 ian deportations and the ten years' exile of Madame de Stael. But 
 after all they have missed the tempting parallel — I mean the * rather 
 long * proscription list which Octavius — ' Vancien neveu de Vanci^n 
 oncle ' — concocted with Mark Antony in the marshes of Bononia, 
 and whereby they thoroughly purged old Rome of its turbulent 
 and revolutionary elements. I suspect our estimable contemporaries 
 regret to remember of how much good order, long tranquillity, ' heata 
 pleno Gopia cornu ' and other many * little comforts ' to the civilised 
 world that very * strong ' proceeding, whether in ethics justifiable or 
 not, certainly was in fact the beginning and foundation. 
 
 The fate of the African generals is much to be regretted, and 
 the Government will incur much odium if the exile of General 
 Changarnier is prolonged any length of time. He is doubtless 
 * dangerous ' for the moment, for his popularity with the army is 
 considerable, and he divides the party of order ; he is also a practical 
 man and an unpleasant enemy, but he is much respected and little 
 likely (I fancy) to attempt anything against any settled Government. 
 
 As for M. Thiers and M. Emile de Girardin — the ablest of the 
 exiles — I have heard no one pity them ; they have played a selfish 
 game — they have encountered a better player — they have been 
 beaten — and this is the whole matter. You will remember that it 
 was the adhesion of these two men that procured for M. Bonaparte 
 a large part of his first six millions. M. de Girardin, whom 
 General Cavaignac had discreetly imprisoned and indiscreetly set 
 free, wrote up the ' opposition candidate ' daily, in the Fresse (he 
 has since often and often tried to write him down,) and M. Thiers 
 was his Privy Councillor. * Mon cher Prince,' they say, said the 
 latter, * your address to the people won't do at all. I'll get one 
 of the redacteurs of the Constitutionnel to draw you up something 
 tolerable.* You remember the easy patronage with which Cicero 
 
The Coup d'Etat of \'^^\. 
 
 323 
 
 speaks in his letter of the ' boy ' that was outwitting him all 
 the while. But, however, observe I do not at all, notwithstand- 
 ing my Latin, insinuate or assert that Louis Napoleon, though a 
 considerable man, is exactly equal to keep the footsteps of Augustus. 
 A feeble parody may suffice for an inferior stage and not too gigantic 
 generation. Now I really have done. 
 
 Letter IIL 
 
 ON TEE NEW CONSTITUTION OF FRANCE, AND THE 
 APTITUDE OF THE FRENCH CHARACTER FOR 
 NATIONAL FREEDOM. 
 
 Paris : January 20, 1852. 
 
 Sir, — ^We have now got our Constitution. The Napoleonic era 
 has commenced; the term of the dictatorship is fixed and the con- 
 solidation of France is begun. You will perhaps anticipate from the 
 conclusion of the last letter, that a propos of this great event, I should 
 gratify you with bright anticipations of an Augustan age, and a 
 quick revival of Catonic virtue, with an assurance that the night is 
 surely passed and the day altogether come, with a solemn invoca- 
 tion to the rising luminary, and an original panegyric on the ' golden 
 throned morning.' 
 
 I must always regret to disappoint any one ; but I feel obliged to 
 entertain you instead with torpid philosophy, constitutional details, 
 and a dull disquisition on national character. 
 
 The details of the new institutions you will have long ago learnt 
 from the daily papers. I believe they may be fairly and nearly 
 accurately described as the Constitution of the Consulate, minus the 
 ideas of the man who made it. You will remember that, besides the 
 First Magistrate, the Senate, the House of E«presentatives, the 
 Council of State (which we may call, in legal language, the ' common 
 form ' of continental constitution), the ingenious Abbe Si^yes had 
 devised some four principal peculiarities, which wore to be remembered 
 to all time as master-pieces of political invention. These were the 
 utter inaction of the First Magistrate, copied, as I believe, from the 
 English Constitution — the subordination to him of two Consuls, one 
 to administer peace and the other war, who were intended to be the 
 real hands and arms of the Government — the silence of the Senate — 
 the double and very peculiar election of the House of Representatives. 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 
 
 The Coup d^Etat of 185 t. 
 
 Napoleon the Great, as we are now to speak, struck out the first of 
 these, being at the moment working some fifteen hours a day at the 
 reorganisation of France. He said plainly and rather sternly that he 
 had no intention of doing nothing — the ideologue went to the wall — 
 the * excellent idea ' put forth in happy forgetfulness of real facts and 
 real people was instantly abandoned — for the Grand Elector was sub- 
 stituted a First Consul, who, so far from being nothing, was very soon 
 the whole Government. Napoleon the Little, as I fear the Parisian 
 multitude may learn to call him, has effaced the other three * strokes 
 of statesmanship.' The new Constitution of France is exactly the 
 ' common form ' of political conveyancing, 'plus the Idee Napoleonienne 
 of an all-suggesting and all-administering mind. 
 
 I have extremely little to tell you about its reception; it has 
 made no ' sensation,' not so much as even the * fortified camps ' 
 which his Grace is said to be devising for the defence of our own 
 London. Indeed, ' II a peur ' is a very common remark (conceivable 
 to everybody who knows Hhe Duke,') and it would seem even a 
 refreshing alleviation of their domestic sorrows. In fact, home 
 politics are now the topic ; geography and the state of foreign in- 
 stitutions are not, indeed, the true Parisian line — but it has, in fine, 
 been distinctly discovered that there are no salons in Cayenne, which, 
 once certain, the logical genius of the nation, with incredible swift- 
 ness, deduced the clear conclusion that it was better not to go there. 
 Seiiously, I fancy — for I have no data on which to found real 
 knowledge of so delicate a point — the new Constitution is regarded 
 merely as what Father Newman would call a ' preservative addition' 
 or a * necessary development,' essential to the ' chronic continuance ' 
 of the Napoleonic system ; for the moment the mass of the people 
 wish the President to govern them, but they don't seem to me 
 to care how. The political people, I suppose, hate it, because for 
 some time it will enable him, if not shot, to govern effectually. I 
 say, if not shot — for people are habitually recounting under their 
 breath some new story of an attempt at assassination, which the 
 papers suppress. I am inclined to think that these rumours are 
 pure lies ; but they show the feeling. You know, according to 
 the Constitution of 1848, the President would now be a mere outlaw, 
 and whoever finds him may slay him, if he can. It is true that the 
 elaborate masterpiece of M. Marrast is already fallen into utter 
 oblivion (it is no more remembered than yesterday's Times, or the 
 political institutions of Saxon Mercia); but nevertheless such, ac- 
 cording to the antediluvian regimef would be the law, and it is 
 
The Coup d'Etat ^/ 1851. 
 
 325 
 
 possible that a mindful Montagnard may upon occasion recall even 
 so insignificant a circumstance. 
 
 I have a word to say on the Prologue of the Pj-esident. When I 
 first began to talk politics with French people, I was much impressed 
 by the fact to which he has there drawn attention. You know that 
 all such conversation, when one of tae interlocutors is a foreigner, 
 speaking slowly and but imperfectly the language of the country in 
 which he is residing, is j^retty much in the style of that excellent work 
 which was the terror of our childhood — Joyce's * Scientific Dialogues ' 
 — wherein, as you may remember, an accomplished tutor, with a 
 singular gift of scholastic improvisation, instructs a youthful pupil 
 exceedingly given to feeble questions and auscultatory repose. Now, 
 when I began in Parisian society thus to enact the role of ' George ' 
 or * Caroline,' I was, I repeat, much struck with the fact that the 
 Emperor had done everything : to whatever subject my diminutive 
 inquiry related, the answer was nearly universally the same — an elegy 
 on Napoleon. Nor is this exactly absurd ; for whether or not ' the 
 nephew ' is right in calling the uncle the greatest of modern statesmen, 
 he is indisputably the modern statesman who has founded the greatest 
 number of existing institutions. In the pride of philosophy and in 
 the madness of an hour, the Constituent Assembly and the Convention 
 swept away not only the monstrous abuses of the old regime^ but that 
 regime itself — its essence and its mechanism, utterly and entirely. 
 They destroyed whatever they could lay their hands on. The conse- 
 quence was certain — when they tried to construct they found they had 
 no materials. They left a vacuum. No greater benefit could have 
 been conferred on politicians gifted with the creative genius of Napo- 
 leon. It was like the fire of London to Sir Christopher Wren. With 
 a fertility of invention and an obstinacy in execution, equalling, if 
 not surpassing, those of Csesar and Charlemagne, he had before him 
 an open stage, more clear and more vast than in historical times 
 fortune has ever ofifered to any statesman. He was nearly in the 
 position of the imagined legislator of the Greek legends and the Greek 
 philosophers — he could enact any law, and rescind any law. Ac 
 cordingly, the educational system, the banking system, the financial 
 system, the municipal system, the administrative system, the civil 
 legislation, the penal legislation, the commercial legislation (besides 
 all manner of secondary creations — public buildings and public 
 institutions without number), all date from the time, and are more 
 or less deeply inscribed with the genius, the firm will, and un- 
 resting energies of Napoleon. And this, which is the great strength 
 
326 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 of the present President, is the great difficulty — I fear the insur- 
 mountable difficulty — in the way of Henry the Fifth. The first re- 
 volution is to the French what the deluge is to the rest of mankind ; 
 the whole system then underwent an entire change. A French 
 politician will no more cite as authority the domestic policy of Colbert 
 or Louvois than we should think of going for ethics and aesthetics to 
 the bigamy of Lamech, or the musical accomplishments of Tubal 
 Cain. If the Comte de Chambord be (as it is quite on the cards that 
 he may be), within a few years restored, he must govern by the 
 instrumentality of laws and systems, devised by the politicians whom 
 he execrates and denounces, and devised, moreover, often enough, 
 especially to keep out him and his. It is difficult to imagine that a 
 strong Government can be composed of materials so inharmonious. 
 Meanwhile, to the popular imagination, ' the Emperor ' is the past ; 
 the House of Bourbon is as historical as the House of Yalois ; a 
 peasant is little oftener reminded of the ' third dynasty ' than of the 
 long-haired kings. 
 
 In discussing any Constitution, there are two ideas to be first got 
 rid of. The first is the idea of om' barbai'ous ancestors — now happily 
 banished from all civilised society, but still prevailing in old manor- 
 houses, in rui-al parsonages, and other curious repositories of moulder- 
 ing ignoi'ance, and which in such arid solitudes is thus expressed : 
 ' Why can't they have Kings, Lords and Commons, like we have % 
 What fools foreigners are.' The second pernicious mistake is, like the 
 former, seldom now held upon system, but so many hold it in bits and 
 fragments, and without system, that it is still rather formidable. I 
 allude to the old idea which still here creeps out in conversation, and 
 sometimes in writing, — that politics are simply a subdivision of im- 
 mutable ethics ; that there are certain rights of men in all places and 
 all times, which are the sole and sufficient foundation of all govern- 
 ment, and that accordingly a single stereotype Government is to make 
 the tour of the world — that you have no more right to deprive a Dyak 
 of his vote in a ' possible ' Polynesian Parliament, than you have to 
 steal his mat. 
 
 Burke first taught the world at large, in opposition to both, and 
 especially to the latter of these notions, that politics are made of time 
 and place— that institutions are shifting things, to be tried by and 
 adjusted to the shifting conditions of a mutable world — that, in fact, 
 politics are but a piece of business — to be determined in every case by 
 the exact exigencies of that case; in plain English — by sense and 
 circumstances. 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 327 
 
 This was a great stop in political philosophy — though it now 
 seems the events of 1848 have taught thinking persons (I fancy) 
 further. They have enabled us to say that of all these circumstances 
 so affecting political problems, by far and out of all question the most 
 important is national character. In that year the same experiment 
 — the experiment, as its friends say, of Liberal and Constitutional 
 Government — as its enemies say, of Anarchy and Revolution — was 
 tried in every nation of Europe — with what varying futures and 
 differing results ! The effect has been to teach men — not only specu- 
 latively to know, but practically to feel, that no absurdity is so great 
 as to imagine the same species of institutions suitable or possible for 
 Scotchmen and Sicilians, for Germans and Frenchmen,, for the English 
 and the Neapolitans. With a well-balanced national character (we now 
 know) liberty is a stable thing. A really practical people will work 
 in poetical business, as in private business, almost the absurdest, the 
 feeblest, the most inconsistent set of imaginable regulations. Similarly, 
 or rather reversely, the best institutions will not keep right a nation 
 that will go wrong. Paper is but paper, and no virtue is to be dis- 
 covered in it to retain within due boundaries the undisciplined 
 passions of those who have never set themselves seriously to restrain 
 them. In a word — as people of 'large roundabout common-sense* 
 will (as a rule) somehow get on in life — (no matter what their 
 circumstances or their fortune) — so a nation which applies good judg- 
 ment, forbearance, a rational and compromising habit to the manage- 
 ment of free institutions, will certainly succeed; while the more 
 eminently gifted national character will but be a source and germ of 
 endless and disastrous failure, if, with whatever other eminent 
 qualities, it be deficient in these plain, solid, and essential requisites. 
 
 The formation of this character is one of the most secret of 
 marvellous mysteries. Why nations have the character we see them 
 to have is, speaking generally, as little explicable to our shallow per- 
 spicacity, as why individuals, our friends or our enemies, for good or 
 for evil, have the character which they have ; why one man is stupid 
 and another clever — why another volatile and a fourth consistent — 
 this man by instinct generous, that man by instinct niggardly. I am 
 not speaking of actions, you observe, but of tendencies and tempta- 
 tions. These and other similar problems daily crowd on our observa- 
 tion in millions and millions, and only do not puzzle us because we are 
 too familiar with their difficulty to dream of attempting their solution. 
 Only this much is most certain, — all men and all nat^'ons have a 
 character, and that character, when once taken, is, I do not say 
 
328 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 uncliangeable — religion modifies it, catastrophe annihilates it — but 
 the least changeable thing in this ever- varying and changeful world. 
 Take the soft mind of the boy, and (strong and exceptional aptitudes 
 and tendencies excepted) you may make him merchant, barrister, 
 butcher, baker, surgeon, or apothecary. But once make him an apo- 
 thecary, and he will never afterwards bake wholesome bread — make 
 him a butcher, and he will kill too extensively, even for a surgeon — 
 make him a barrister, and he will be dim on double entry, and crass 
 on bills of lading. Once conclusively form him to one thing, and no 
 art and no science will ever twist him to another. Nature, says the 
 philosopher, has no Delphic daggers ! — no men or maids of all work — 
 she keeps one being to one pursuit — to each is a single choice afforded, 
 but no more again thereafter for ever. And it is the same with 
 nations. The Jews of to-day are the Jews in face and torm of the 
 Egyptian sculptures ; in character they are the Jews of Moses — the 
 negro is the negro of a thousand years — the Chinese, by his own 
 account, is the mummy of a million. ' Kaces and their varieties,' says 
 the historian, ' seem to have been created with an inward nisus 
 diminishing with the age of the world.' The people of the South are 
 yet the people of the South, fierce and angry as their summer sun — 
 the people of the North are still cold and stubborn like their own 
 North wind — the people of the East * mark not, but are still ' — the 
 people of the West ' are going through the ends of the earth, and 
 walking up and down in it.' The fact is certain, the cause beyond us. 
 The subtle system of obscure causes, whereby sons and daughters 
 resemble not only their fathers and mothers, but even their great- 
 great-grandfathers and their great-great-grandmothers, may very likely 
 be destined to be very inscrutable. But as the fact is so, so moreover, 
 in history, nations have one character, one set of talents, one list of 
 temptations, and one duty — to use the one and get the better of the 
 other. There are breeds in the animal man just as in the animal dog. 
 When you hunt with gi-ey hounds and course with beagles, then, and 
 not till then, may you expect the inbred habits of a thousand years 
 to pass away, that Hindoos can be free, or that Englishmen will be 
 slaves. 
 
 I need not prove to you that the French have a national character. 
 Nor need I try your patience with a likeness of it. I have only to 
 examine whether it be a fit basis for national freedom. I fear you 
 will laugh when I tell you what I conceive to be about the most 
 essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be pro- 
 gressive, permanent, and on a large scale ; it is much stupidity. I see 
 
The Coitp d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 329 
 
 you are surprised — you are going to say to me, as Socrates did to 
 Polus, * My young friend, of course you are right ; but will you explain 
 what you mean % — as yet you are not intelligible.* I will do so as well 
 as I can, or endeavour to make good what I say — not by an h 'priori 
 demonstration of my own, but from the details of the present, and the 
 facts of history. Not to begin by wounding any present susceptibili- 
 ties, let me take the Roman character — for, with one great exception 
 — I need not say to whom I allude — they are the great political 
 people of history. Now, is not a cei*tain dullness their most visible 
 characteristic? What is the history of their speculative mind'? — a 
 blank. What their literature % — a copy. They have left not a single 
 discovery in any abstract science ; not a single perfect or well-formed 
 work of high imagination. The Greeks, the perfection of narrow and 
 accomplished genius, bequeathed to mankind the ideal forms of self-ido- 
 lising art — the Romans imitated and admired ; the Greeks explained 
 the laws of nature ^ — the Romans wondered and despised ; the Greeks 
 invented a system of numerals second only to that now in use — the 
 Romans counted to the end of their days with the clumsy apparatus 
 which we still call by their name \ the Greeks made a capital and 
 scientific calendar — the Romans began their month when the Pontifex 
 Maximus happened to spy out the new moon. Throughout Latin 
 literature, this is the perpetual puzzle — Why are we free and they 
 slaves % we prsetors and they barbers % Why do the stupid people 
 always win, and the clever people always lose % I need not say that, 
 in real sound stupidity, the English are unrivalled. You'll hear more 
 wit, and better wit, in an Irish street row than would keep West- 
 minster Hall in humour for five weeks. Or take Sii' Robert Peel — 
 our last great statesman, the greatest Member of Parliament that ever 
 lived, an absolutely perfect transacter of public business — the type of 
 the nineteenth century Englishman, as Sir R. Walpole was of the 
 eighteenth. Was there ever such a dull man? Can any one, without 
 horror, foresee the reading of his memoirs % A clairvoyante, with the 
 book shut, may get on ; but who now, in the flesh, will ever endure 
 the open vision of endless recapitulation of interminable Hansard. 
 Or take Mr. Tennyson's inimitable description : — 
 
 * No little lily-handed Baronet he, 
 A gTeat broad-shouldered genial Englishman, 
 A lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep, 
 A raiser of huge melons and of pine, 
 A patron of some thirty charities, 
 A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 
 A quarter sessions cli airman, abler none. 
 
330 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 Whose company so soporific % His talk is of truisms and bullocks ; 
 his head replete with rustic visions of mutton and turnips, and a 
 cerebral edition of Burn's ' Justice ! ' Notwithstanding, he is the salt 
 of the earth, the best of the English breed. Who is like him for 
 sound sense % But I must restrain mv enthusiasm. You don't want 
 me to tell you that a Frenchman — a real Frenchman — can't be stupid ; 
 esprit is his essence, wit is to him as water, hons-mots as bonbons. He 
 reads and he learns by reading ; levity and literature are essentially 
 his line. Observe the consequence. The outbreak of 1848 was 
 accepted in every province in France ; the decrees of the Parisian mob 
 were received and registered in all the municipalities of a hundred 
 cities ; the Revolution ran like the fluid of the telegraph down the 
 Chemin de fer du Nord \ it stopped at the Belgian frontier. Once 
 brought into contact with the dull phlegm of the stupid Fleming, the 
 poison was powerless. You remember what the Norman butler said 
 to Wilkin Flammock, of the fulling mills, at the castle of the Garde 
 Douloureuse : * that draught which will but warm your Flemish hearts, 
 will put wildfire into Noi man bi-ains ; and what may only encourage 
 your countrymen to man the walls, will make ours fly over the battle- 
 ments.' Les braves Belies, I make no doubt, were quite pleased to 
 observe what folly was being exhibited by those very clever French, 
 whose tongue they want to speak, and whose litei-ature they try to 
 imitate. In fact, what we opprobiiously call stupidity, though not 
 an enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favourite resource 
 for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion. It 
 enforces concentration ; people who learn slowly, learn only what 
 they must. The best security for people's doing their duty is, that 
 they should not know anything else to do ; the best security for 
 fixedness of opinion is, that people should be incapable of comprehend- 
 ing what is to be said on the other side. These valuable truths are 
 no discoveries of mine. They are familiar enough to people whose 
 business it is to know them. Hear what a dense and aged attorney 
 says of your peculiarly promising barrister : — ' Sharp ! oh yes, yes ! 
 he's too sharp by half. He is not safe ; not a minute, isn't that young 
 man.' * What style, sir,' asked of an East India Director some youth- 
 ful aspirant for literary renown, * is most to be preferred in the 
 composition of ofllcial despatches 1 ' ' My good fellow,' responded the 
 ruler of Hindostan, ' the style as we like is the Humdrum.' I extend 
 this, and advisedly maintain that nations, just as individuals, may be 
 too clever to be practical, and not dull enough to bo free. 
 
 How far this is true of the Fi'onch, and how f ir the gross deficiency 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 331 
 
 I have indicated is modified by their many excellent qualities, I hope 
 at a future time to inquire. 
 
 I am, sir, yours truly, 
 
 Amicus. 
 
 Letter IV. 
 
 ON THE APTITUDE OF THE FRENCH CHARACTER 
 FOR NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Paris : Jan. 29, 1852. 
 
 Sir, — There is a simple view of the subject on which I wrote to 
 you last week, that I wish to bring under your notice. The experi- 
 ment (as it is called) of establishing political freedom in France is now 
 sixty years old ; and the best that we can say of it is, that it is an 
 experiment still. There have been perhaps half-a-dozen new begin- 
 nings — half-a-dozen complete failures. I am aware that each of these 
 failures can be excellently explained — each beginning shown to be 
 quite necessary. But there are certain reasonings which, though 
 outwardly irrefragable, the crude human mind is always most un- 
 willing to accept. Among these are different and subtle explications 
 of several apparently similar facts. Thus, to choose an example 
 suited to the dignity of my subject, if a gentleman from town 
 takes a day's shooting in the country, and should chance (as has hap- 
 pened) at first going off, to miss some six times running, how lumi- 
 nously soever he may ' explain ' each failui-e as it occurs, however 
 ' expanded a view ' he may take of the whole series, whatever popular 
 illustrations of projectile philosophy he may propound to the bird- 
 slaying agriculturists — the impression on the crass intelligence of 
 the gamekeeper will quite clearly be * He beint noo shot homsoever 
 • — aint thickeer.' Similarly, to compare small things with great, 
 when I myself read in Thiers and the many other philosophic his- 
 torians of this literary country, various and excellent explanations of 
 their many mischances ; —of the failure of the constitution of 1791 — 
 of the constitution of the year 3 — of the constitution of the year 
 5 — of the charte — oi the system of 1830 — and now we may add, 
 of the second republic — the annotated constitution of M. Dupin, — 
 I can't help feeling a suspicion lingering in my ciude and unculti- 
 vated intellect — that some common principle is at work in all and 
 each of these several cases — that over and above all odd mischances, 
 so many bankruptcies a little suggest an unfitness for the trade ; that 
 
332 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 besides the ingenious reasons of ingenious gentlemen, there is some 
 lurking quality, or want of a quality, in the national character of 
 the French nation which renders them but poorly adapted for the 
 form of freedom and constitution which they have so often, with 
 such zeal and so vainly, attempted to establish. 
 
 In my last letter I suggested that tliis might be what I ven- 
 tured to call a ' want of stupidity.' I will now tiy to describe what 
 I mean in more accurate, though not, perhaps, more intelligible 
 words. 
 
 I believe that I am but speaking what is agreed on by competent 
 observers, when I say that the essence of the French character is a 
 certain mobility ; that is, as it has been defined, a certain ' excessive 
 sensibility to 'present impressions,' which is sometimes ' levity,' — for 
 it issues in a postponement of seemiiigly fixed piinciples to a mo- 
 mentary temptation or a transient whim ; sometimes ' impatience ' 
 — as leadiQg to an exaggerated sense of existing evils ; often ' excite- 
 ment,' — a total absorption in existing emotion ; oftener ' incon- 
 sistency ' — the sacrifice of old habits to present emergencies ; and yet 
 other unfavourable qualities. But it has also its favourable side. 
 The same man who is drawn aside from old principles by small 
 pleasures, who can't bear pain, who forgets his old friends when he 
 ceases to see them, who is liable in time of excitement to be a one- 
 idea being, with no conception of anything but the one exciting 
 object, yet who nevertheless is apt to have one idea to- day and quite 
 another to-morrow (and this, and more than this, may I fancy be said 
 of the ideal Frenchman) may and will have the subtlest perception 
 of existing niceties, the finest susceptibility to social pleasure, the 
 keenest tact in social politeness, the most consummate skilfulness in 
 the details of action and administration, — may, in short, be the best 
 companion, the neatest man of business, the lightest homme de salon j 
 the acutest diplomat of the existing world. 
 
 It is curious to observe how this reflects itself in their literature. 
 * I will believe,' remarks Montaigne, ' in anything rather than in any 
 man's consistency.' What observer of English habits — what person 
 inwardly conscious of our dull and unsusceptible English nature, 
 would ever say so. Kather in our country obstinacy is the commonest 
 of the vices, and perseverance the cheapest of the virtues. Again, 
 when they attempt history, the principal peculiarity (a few exceptions 
 being allowed for) is an utter incapacity to desciibe graphically a 
 long-passed state of society. Take, for instance — assuredly no im- 
 favourable example — M. Guizot. His books, I need not say, are 
 
The Coup (VEtat of 1851. 
 
 333 
 
 nearly unrivalled for eloquence, for philosophy and knowledge ; you 
 read there, how in the middle age there were many * principles : ' the 
 principle of Legitimacy, the principle of Feudalism, the principle of 
 Democracy ; and you come to know how one grew, and another de- 
 clined, and a third crept slowly on ; and the mind is immensely 
 edified, when perhaps at the 315th page a proper name occurs, and 
 you mutter, ' Dear me, why, if there were not people in the time of 
 Charlemagne ! Who would have thought that % ' But in return for 
 this utter incapacity to describe the people of past times, a French- 
 man has the gift of perfectly describing the people of his own. No 
 one knows so well — no one can tell so well — the facts of his own life. 
 The French memoirs, the French letters are, and have been, the ad- 
 miration of Europe. Is not now Jules Janin unrivalled at pageants 
 and prima donnas ? 
 
 It is the same in poetry. As a recent writer excellently remarks, 
 *A French Dante, or Michael Angelo, or Cervantes, or Murillo, or 
 Goethe, or Shakespeare, or Milton, we at once perceive to be a mere 
 anomaly; a supposition which may indeed be proposed in terms, but 
 which in reality is inconceivable and impossible.' Yet, in requital as 
 it were of this great deficiency, they have a wonderful capacity for 
 expressing and delineating the poetical and voluptuous element of 
 everyday life. We know the biography of De Beranger. The young 
 ladies whom he has admired — the wine that he has preferred — the 
 fly that buzzed on the ceiling, and interrupted his delicious and di'eam- 
 ing solitude, are as well known to us as the recollections of our own 
 lives. As in their common furniture, so in their best poetry. The 
 materials are nothing ; reckon up what you have been reading, and 
 it seems a congeries of stupid trifles ; begin to read, — the skill of the 
 workmanship is so consummate, the art so high and so latent, that 
 while time flows silently on, our fancies are enchanted and our 
 memories indelibly impressed. How often, asks Mr. Thackeray, 
 have we read De Beranger — how often Milton? Certainly, since 
 Horace, there has been no such manual of the philosophy of this 
 world. 
 
 I will not say that the quality which I have been trying to de- 
 lineate is exactly the same thing as ' cleverness.' But I do allege that 
 it is sufficiently near it for the rough purposes of popular writing. 
 For this quickness in taking in — so to speak — the present, gives a 
 corresponding celerity of intellectual apprehension, an amazing readi- 
 ness in catching new ideas and maintaining new theories, a versatility 
 of mind which enters into and comprehends everything as it passes, 
 
334 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 a concentration in what occurs, so as to use it for every purpose of 
 illustration, and consequently (if it lia})pen to be combined with the 
 least fancy), quick repartee on the subject of the moment, and hons- 
 mots also without stint and without end — and these qualities are 
 rather like what we style cleverness. And what T call a proper stupidity 
 keeps a man from all the defects of this character; it chains the 
 gifted possessor mainly to his old ideas ; it takes him seven weeks to 
 comprehend an atom of a new one ; it keeps him from being led 
 away by new theories — for there is nothing which bores him so 
 much ; it restrains him within his old pursuits, his well-known habits, 
 his tried expedients, his verified conclusions, his traditional beliefs. 
 He is not tempted to ' levity,' or * impatience,' for he does not see the 
 joke, and is thick-skinned to present evils. Inconsistency puts him 
 out, — ' What I says is this here, as I was a saying yesterday,' is his 
 notion of historical eloquence and habitual discretion. He is very 
 slow indeed to be ' excited,' — his passions, his feelings, and his 
 affections are dull and tardy strong things, falling in a certain known 
 direction, fixing on certain known objects, and for the most part acting 
 in a moderate degree, and at a sluggish pace. You always know 
 where to find his mind. 
 
 Now this is exactly what, in politics at least, you do not know 
 about a Frenchman. I like — I have heard a good judge say — to hear 
 a Frenchman talk. He strikes a light, but what light he will strike 
 it is impossible to predict. I think he doesn't know himself. Now, 
 I know you see at once how this would o})erate on a Parliamentary 
 Government, but I give you a gentle illustration. All England 
 knows Mr. Disraeli, the witty orator, the exceedingly clever littera- 
 teMT, tbe versatile politician ; and all England has made up its mind 
 that the stupidest country gentleman would be a better Home 
 Secretary than the accomplished descendant of the ' Caucasian race.' 
 Now suppose, if you only can, a House of Commons all Disraelis, 
 and do you imagine that Parliament would work ? It would be 
 what M. Proudhon said of some French assemblies, * a box of 
 matches.' 
 
 The same quality acts in another way, and produces to English 
 ideas a most marvellous puzzle, both in the philosophical literature 
 and the political discussion of the French. I mean their passion 
 for logical deduction. The habitual mode of argument is to get 
 hold of some large principle ; to begin to deduce immediately ; and 
 to reason down from it to the most trivial details of common 
 action. II faut etre consequent avec soi-mcme — is their fundamental 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 335 
 
 maxim ; and in a world the essence of which is compromise, they 
 coukl not well have a worse. I hold, metaphysically perhaps, that 
 this is a consequence of that same impatience of disposition to which 
 I have before alluded. Nothing is such a bore as looking for your 
 principles — nothing so pleasant as working them out. People who 
 have thought, know that inquiry is sufiering. A child a stumbling 
 timidly in the dark is not more different from the same child playing 
 on a sunny lawn, than is the philosopher gi'oping, hesitating, doubt- 
 ing and blundering about his primitive postulates, from the same 
 philosopher proudly deducing and commenting on the certain con- 
 sequences of his established convictions. On this account Mathe- 
 matics have been called the paradise of the mind. In Euclid at 
 least, you have your priuciples, and all that is required is acuteness 
 in working them out. The long annals of science are one continued 
 commentary on this text. Read in Bacon, the beginner of intel- 
 lectual philosophy in England, and every page of the ' Advancement 
 of Learning ' is but a continued warning against the tendency of the 
 human mind t j start at once to the last generalities from a few and 
 and imperfectly observed particulars. Read in the ' Meditations ' of 
 Descartes, the beginner of intellectual philosophy in France, and in 
 every page (once I read five) you will find nothing but the strictest, 
 the best, the most lucid, the most logical deduction of all things 
 actual and possible, from a few principles obtained without evidence, 
 and retained in defiance of probability. Deduction is a game, and 
 induction a grievance. Besides, clever impatient people want not 
 only to learn, but to teach. And instruction expresses at least the 
 allegevl possession of knowledge. The obvious way is to shorten the 
 painful, the slow, the tedious, the wearisome process of preliminary 
 inquiry — to assume something pretty — to establish its consequences — 
 discuss their beauty — exemplify their importance — extenuate their 
 absurdities. A little vanity helps all this. Life is short — art is long 
 - truth lies deep - take some side — found your school — open your 
 lecture-rooms — tuition is dignified — learning is low. 
 
 I do not know that I can exhibit the way these qualities of the 
 French character operate on their opinions, better than by telling you 
 how the Roman Catholic Church deals with them. I have rather at- 
 tended to it since I came here ; it gives sermons almost an interest, 
 their being in French— and to those curious in intellectual matters 
 it is worth observing. In other times, and even now in out-of- 
 the-way Spain, I suppose it may be so, the Catholic Church was 
 opposed to inquiry and reasoning. But it is not so now, and 
 
 1 
 
336 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 here. Loudly — from the pens of a hundred writers — from the 
 tongues of a thousand pulpits - in every note of thrilling scorn and 
 exulting deiision, she proclaims the contrary. Be she Christ's work- 
 man, or Anti-Christ's, she knows her work too well. — ' Reason, 
 Keason, Reason ! ' — exclaims she to the philosophers of this world — 
 ' Put in practice what you teach, if you would have others believe 
 it; be consistent; do not prate to us of private judgment when you 
 are but yourselves repeating what you heard in the nursery- -ill- 
 mumbled remnants of a Catholic tradition. No ! exemplify what 
 you command, inquire and make search— seek, though we warn you 
 that ye will never find — yet do as ye will. Shut yourself up in a 
 room — make your mind a blank — go down (as ye speak) into the 
 " depths of your consciousness" — scrutinise the mental structm'e — 
 inquire for the elements of belief — spend years, your best years, in 
 the occupation ; and at length — when your eyes ai::e dim, and your 
 brain hot, and your hand unsteady — then reckon what you have 
 gained : see if you cannot count on your fingers the certainties you 
 have reached : reflect which of them you doubted yesterday, which 
 you may disbelieve to-morrow ; or rather, make haste — assume 
 at random some essential credenda — write down your inevitable 
 postulates — enumerate yom* necessary axioms — toil on, toil on — spin 
 your spider's web — adore your own souls — or, if you prefer it, choose 
 some German nostrum — try the intellectual intuition, or the ' pure 
 reason,' or the * intelligible ' ideas, or the mesmeric clairvoyance — 
 and when so or somehow you have attained your results, try them 
 on mankind. Don't go out into the highways and hedges — it's un- 
 necessary. Ring the bell — call in the servants — give them a course 
 of lectures — cite Aristotle — review Descartes — panegyrise Plato — 
 and see if the bonne will understand you. It is you that say " Vox 
 populi- — Vox Dei;" but you see the people reject you. Or, suppose 
 you succeed — what you call succeeding — your books are read ; for 
 three weeks, or even a season, you are the idol of the salons ; your 
 hard words are on the lips of women ; then a change comes — a new 
 actress appears at the Theatre Frangais or the Opera — her charms 
 eclipse your theories ; or a great catastrophe occurs — political liberty 
 (it is said) is annihilated — il faut se /aire mouchard^ is the observa- 
 tion of scoffers. Any how, you are forgotten — fifty years may be 
 the gestation of a philosophy, not three its life — before long, before 
 you go to your grave, your six disciples leave you for some newer 
 master, or to set up for themselves. The poorest priest in the re- 
 mote region of the Basses Alpes has moic power over men's souls 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 337 
 
 than human cultivation ; his ill-mouthed masses move women's souls 
 — can you? Ye scoff at Jupiter. Yet he at least was believed in — 
 you never have been ; idol for idol, the (dethroned is better than the 
 wjithroned. No, if you would reason — if you would teach — if you 
 would speculate, come to us. We have our premises ready ; years 
 upon years before you were born, intellects whom the best of you de- 
 light to magnify, toiled to systematise the creed of ages ; years upon 
 years after you are dead, better heads than yours will find new matter 
 there to define, to divide, to arrange. Consider the hundred volumes 
 of Aquinas — which of you desire a higher life than that ? To deduce, 
 to subtilise, discriminate, systematise, and decide the highest truth, 
 and to be believed. Yet such was his luck, his enjoyment. He was 
 what you would be. No, no — Credite, credite. Ours is the life of 
 speculation — the cloister is the home for the student. Philosophy 
 is stationary — Catholicism progressive. You call — we are heard,' 
 &c., &c., &c. So speaks each preacher according to his ability. 
 And when the dust and noise of present controversies have passed 
 away, and in the silence of the night, some grave historian writes 
 out the tale of half-forgotten times, let him not forget to observe 
 that skilfully as the mediaeval church subdued the superstitious 
 cravings of a painful and barbarous age — in after years she dealt 
 more discerningly still with the feverish excitement, the feeble 
 vanities, and the dogmatic impatience of an over-intellectual 
 generation. 
 
 And as in religion — so in politics, we find the same desire to teach 
 rather than to learn — the same morbid appetite for exhaustive and 
 original theories. It is as necessary for a public writer to have a sys- 
 tem as it is for him to have a pen. His course is obvious ; he assumes 
 some grand principle — the principle of Legitimacy, or the principle of 
 Equality, or the principle of Fraternity — and thence he reasons down 
 without fear or favour to the details of every-day politics. Events 
 are judged of, not by tlieir relation to simple causes, but by their 
 bearing on a remote axiom. Nor are these speculations mere 
 exercises of philosophic ingenuity. Four months ago, hundreds of 
 able writers were debating with the keenest ability and the most 
 ample array of generalities, whether the country should be govei'ned 
 by a Legitimate Monarchy, or an illegitimate ; by a Social, or an 
 old-fashioned Republic ; by a two-chambered Constitution, or a one- 
 chambered Constitution; on 'Revision,' or Non-revision; on the 
 claims of Louis Napoleon, or the divine right of the national re- 
 
 VOL. I. Z 
 
338 
 
 The Coitp d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 presentation. Can any intellectual food be conceived more danger- 
 ous or more stimulating for an over-excitable population % It is the 
 same in Parliament. The description of the Church of Corinth may 
 stand for a description of the late Assembly : every one had a psalm, 
 had a doctrine, had a tongue, had a revelation, had an interpreta- 
 tion. Each member of the Mountain had his scheme for the re- 
 generation of mankind ; each member of the- vaunted majority had 
 his scheme for newly consolidating the Government ; Orleanist hated 
 Legitimist, Legitimist Orleanist ; moderate Republican detested un- 
 diluted Republican; scheme was set against scheme, and theory 
 against theory. No two Conservatives would agree what to con- 
 serve ; no Socialist could practically associate with any other. No 
 deliberative assembly can exist with every member wishing to lead, 
 and no one wishing to follow. Not the meanest Act of Parliament 
 could be carried without more compromise than even the best French 
 statesmen were willing to use on the most important and critical 
 affairs of their country. Rigorous reasoning would not manage a 
 parish-vestry, much less a great nation. In England, to carry half 
 your own crotchets, you must be always and everywhere willing to 
 carry half another man's. Practical men must submit as well as 
 rule, concede as well as assume. Popular government has many 
 forms, a thousand good modes of procedure ; but no one of those 
 modes can be worked, no one of those forms will endure, unless by 
 the continual application of sensible heads and pliable judgments to 
 the systematic criticism of stiff axioms, rigid principles, and incar- 
 nated propositions. I am, &c., Amicus. 
 
 P.S. — I was in hopes that I should have been able to tell you 
 of the withdrawal of the decree relative to the property of the 
 Orleans family. The withdrawal was announced in the Gonstitu- 
 tionnel of yesterday ; but I regret to add was contradicted in the 
 Patrie last evening. I need not observe to you that it is an act for 
 which there is no defence, moral or political. It has immensely 
 weakened the Government. 
 
 The change of Ministry is also a great misfortune to Louis 
 Napoleon. M. de Morny, said to be a son of Queen Hoi-tense (if 
 you believe the people in the salons, the President is not the son 
 of his father, and everybody else is the son of his mother), was a 
 statesman of the class best exemplified in England by the late Lord 
 Melbourne— an acute, witty, fashionable man, acquainted with Pari- 
 sian persons and things, and a consummate judge of public opinion. 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 339 
 
 M. Persigny was in exile with the President, is said to be much 
 attached to him, to repeat his sentiments and exaggerate his pre- 
 judices. I need not point out which of the two is just now the 
 sounder counsellor. 
 
 Letter V, 
 
 ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE PRINCE-PRESIDENT. 
 
 SiR, — The many failures of the French in the attempt to estab- 
 lish a predominantly Parliamentary Government have a strong 
 family likeness. Speaking a little roughly, I shall be right in say- 
 ing that the Constitutions of France have perished, both lately and 
 formerly, either in a street-row or under the violence of a military 
 power, aided and abetted by a diffused dread of impending street- 
 rows, and a painful experience of the effects of past ones. Thus 
 the Constitution of 1791 (the first of the old series) perished on 
 August 10, amid the exultation of the brewer Santerre. The last 
 of the old series fell on the 18 Brumaii-e, under the hands of Na- 
 poleon, when the 5 per cents, were at 12, the whole country in 
 disorder, and all ruinable persons ruined. The Monarchy of 1830 
 began in the riot of the three days, and ended in the riot of February 
 24 ; the Pepublic of February perished but yesterday, mainly from 
 terror that Paris might again see such days as the ' days of June.' 
 
 I think all sensible Englishmen who review this history (the 
 history of more than sixty years) will not be slow to divine a con- 
 clusion peculiai'ly agreeable to our orderly national habits, viz., that 
 the first want of the French is somebody or something able and 
 willing to keep down street-rows, to repress the frightful elements 
 of revolution and disorder which, every now and then, astonish 
 Europe ; capable of maiatairiing, and desirous to maintain, the order 
 and tranquillity which are (all agree) the essential and primary pre- 
 requisites of industry and civilisation. If any one seriously and 
 calmly doubts this, I am afraid nothing that I can further say will 
 go far in convincing him. But let him read the account of any 
 scene in any French revolution, old or new, or, better, let him come 
 here and learn how people look back to the time I have mentioned 
 (to June, 1848), when the Socialists, — not under speculative philo- 
 sophers like Proudhon or Louis Blanc, but under practical rascals 
 
 z 2 
 
340 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 and energetic murderers, like Sobrier and Can.ssidiere — made their 
 last and final stand, and against them, on the other side, the National 
 Guard (mostly solid shop-keepers, three-parts ruined by the events 
 of February) fought (I will not say bravely or valiantly, but) furi- 
 ously, frantically, savagely, as one reads in old books that half-starved 
 burgesses in beleaguered towns have sometimes fought for the food of 
 their children ; let any sceptic hear of the atrocities of the friends 
 of order and the atrocities of the advocates of disorder, and he will, 
 I imagine, no longer be sceptical on two points, — he will hope that if 
 he ever have to fight it will not be with a fanatic Socialist, nor against 
 a demi-bankrupt fighting for ' his shop ; ' and he will admit, that in 
 a country subject to collisions between two such excited and excitable 
 combatants, no earthly blessing is in any degree comparable to a 
 power which will stave off, long delay, or permanently prevent the 
 actual advent and ever-ready apprehension of such bloodshed. 1 
 therefore assume that the first condition of good government in this 
 country is a really strong, a reputedly strong, a continually strong 
 Executive power. 
 
 Now, on the face of matters, it is certainly true that such a power 
 is perfectly consistent with the most perfect, the most ideal type of 
 Parliamentary government. Hather I should say, such and so strong 
 an executive is a certain consequence of the existence of that ideal 
 and rarely found type. If there is among the people, and among 
 their representatives, a strong, a decided, an unflinching preference for 
 particular Ministers, or a particular course of policy, that coui'se of 
 policy can be carried out, and will be carried out, as certainly as by 
 the Czar Nicholas, whose Ministers can do exactly what they will. 
 There was something very like this in the old days of King George III., 
 of Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Perceval. In those times, I have been told, the 
 great Treasury oflficial of the day, Mr. George Rose (still known to the 
 readers of Sydney Smith) had a habit of observing, upon occasion of 
 anything utterly devoid of decent defence, ' Well, well, this is a 
 little too bad ; we must apply our majority to this difiiculty.' The 
 effect is very plain ; while Mr. George Pose and his betters respected 
 certain prejudices and opinions, then all but universal in Pailiament, 
 they in all other matters might do precisely what they would ; and in 
 all out of the way matters, in anything that Sir John could not 
 understand, on a point of cotton-spinning or dissent, be as absolute as 
 the Emperor Napoleon. But the case is (as we know by experience 
 of what passes under our daily observation) immensely altered, when 
 there is no longer this strong, compact, irrefragable, * following ; ' no 
 
The Coup d'Etat ^/ 1851. 
 
 341 
 
 distinctly divided, definite faction, no regular opposition to be daily 
 beaten, no regular official party to be always victorious— but, instead, 
 a mere aggregate of ' independent members,' each thinking for himself, 
 propounding, as the case may be, his own sense or his own nonsense — 
 one, profound ideas applicable to all time ; another, something meri- 
 torious from the Eton Latin grammar, and a mangled republication of 
 the morning's newspaper ; some exceedingly philosophical, others only 
 crotchetty, but, what is my point, each acting on his own head, 
 assuming not Mr. Pitt's infallibility, but his own. Again, divide a 
 political assembly into three parties, any two of which are greater 
 than the third, and it will be always possible for an adroit and dexter- 
 ous intriguer (M. Thiers has his type in most assemblies) to combine, 
 three or four times a fortnight, the two opposition parties into a majo- 
 rity on some interesting question — on some matter of importance. 
 The best government possible under the existing circumstances will be 
 continually and, in a hazardous state of society, even desperately and 
 fatally weakened. We have had in our own sensible House of Com- 
 mons — aye, and among the most stupid and sensible portion of it, the 
 country gentlemen — within these few years, a striking example of how 
 far party zeal, the heat of disputation, and a strong desire for a deep 
 revenge will carry the best intentioned politicians in destroying the 
 executive efficiency of an obnoxious Government. I mean the division 
 of the House of Commons on the Irish Army Bill, which ended in the 
 resignation of Sir Robert Peel. You remember on that occasion the 
 country party, under the guidance of Lord G. Bentinck, in the teeth 
 of the Irish policy which they had been advocating and supporting all 
 their lives, and which they would advocate and support again now, 
 in the teeth of their previous votes, and (I am not exaggerating 
 the history) almost of their avowed present convictions, defeated a 
 Government, not on a question of speculative policy or recondite 
 importance, but upon the precautionary measures necessary (according 
 to every idea that a Tory esquire is capable of entertaining) for pre- 
 venting a rebellion, the occurrence of which they were told (and as the 
 event proved, told truly) might be speedy, hourly, and immediate. 
 Of course I am not giving any opinion of my own about the merits 
 of the question. The Whigs may be right ; it may be good to have 
 shown the world how little terrible is the bluster of Irish agitation. 
 But I cite the event as a striking example of an essential evil in a 
 three-sided Parliamentary system, as practically showing that a 
 generally well-meaning opposition will, in defiance of their own 
 habitual principles, cripple an odious executive, even in a matter of 
 
342 
 
 The Coup (TEtat of 1851. 
 
 street-rows and rebellions. I won't weary you with tediously pointing 
 the moral. If such things are done in the green tree, what may be 
 done in the diy % If party zeal and disputation excitement so huriy 
 men away in our own grave, business-like experienced country — 
 what may we expect from a vain, a volatile, an ever-changing race ? 
 
 Nor am I drawing a French Assembly from mere history, or 
 from my own imagination. In the late Chamber, the great subject 
 of the very last Annual Register, there were not only three parties 
 but four. There was a pei'petually shifting element of 200 members, 
 calling itself the Mountain, which had in its hands the real casting- 
 vote between the President's Government and the Constitutional 
 opposition. In the very last days of the Constitution they voted 
 against, and thereby negatived, the proposition of the questors for 
 arming the Assembly ; partly because they disliked General Chan- 
 garnier, and detested General Cavaignac ; partly because, being ex- 
 ti'eme Socialists, they would not arm anybody who was likely to use 
 his arms against their friends on the barricades. The same party was 
 preparing to vote for the Bill on the Responsibility of the President, 
 actually, and according to the design of its promoters, in the nature of 
 a bill of indictment against him, because they feared his rigour and 
 efficiency in repressing the anticipated convulsion. The question, the 
 critical question. Who shall prevent a new revolution % was thus 
 actually, and owing to the lamentable divisions of the friends of 
 order, in the hands of the Parliamentary representatives of the very 
 men who wished to effect that revolution, was determined, I may say, 
 ultimately, and in the last resort by the party of disorder. 
 
 Nor on lesser questions was there any steady majority, any dis- 
 tinctive deciding faction, any administering phalanx, anybody regularly 
 voting with anybody else, often enough, or in number enough, to 
 make the legislative decision regular, consistent, or respectable. Their 
 very debates were unseemly. On anything not pleasing to them, the 
 Mountain (as I said) a yellow and fanatical generation — had (I am 
 told) an engaging knack of rising en masse and screaming until they 
 were tired. It will be the same, I do not say in degree (for the 
 Mountain would certainly lose several votes now, and the numbers of 
 the late Chamber were unreasonably and injudiciously large), but, in 
 a measure, you will be always subject to the same disorder — a fluc- 
 tuating majority, and a minority, often a ruling minority, favourable 
 to rebellion. The cause, as I believe, is to be sought in the peculiari- 
 ties of the French character, on which I dwelt, prolixly, I fear, and ad 
 nrmseam, in my last two letters. If you have to deal with a mobile ^ 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 343 
 
 a clever, a versatile, an intellectual, a dogmatic nation, inevitably, and 
 by necessary consequence, you will have conflicting systems — every 
 man speaking his own words, and always giving his own suff*rage to 
 what seems good in his own eyes — many holding to-day what they 
 will regret to-morrow — a crowd of crotchetty theories and a heavy 
 percentage of philosophical nonsense — a great opportunity for subtle 
 stratagem and intriguing selfishness — a miserable division among the 
 friends of tranquillity, and a great power thrown into the hands of 
 those who, though often with the very best intentions, are practically, 
 and in matter of fact, opposed both to society and civilisation. And, 
 moreover, beside minor inconveniences and lesser hardships, you will 
 indisputably have periodically — say three or four times in fifty years 
 — a great crisis ; the public mind much excited, the people in the 
 streets swaying to and fro with the breath of every breeze, the discon- 
 tented cavriers meeting in a hundred knots, discussing their real 
 sujBTerings and their imagined grievances, with lean features and angiy 
 gesticulations ; the Parliament, all the while in permanence, very ably 
 and eloquently expounding the whole subject, one man proposing this 
 scheme, and another that ; the Opposition expecting to oust the Minis- 
 ters, and ride in on the popular commotion ; the Ministers fearing to 
 take the odium of severe or adequate repressive measures, lest they 
 should lose their salary, their places and their majority : finally, a 
 great crash, a disgusted people, overwhelmed by revolutionary violence, 
 or seeking a precarious, a pernicious, but after all a precious pro- 
 tection from the bayonets of military despotism. Louis Philippe met 
 these dangers and difficulties in a thoroughly characteristic manner. 
 He bought his majority. Being a practical and not over sentimental 
 puLlic functionary, he went into the market and purchased a sufficient 
 number of constituencies and members. Of course the convenances 
 were carefully preserved ; grossness of any kind is too jarring for 
 French susceptibility ; the purchase money was not moxQ coin (which 
 indeed the buyers had not to offer), but a more gentlemanly com- 
 modity — the patronage of the Government. The electoral colleges 
 were extremely small, the number of public functionaries is enormous; 
 so that a very respectable body of electors could always be expected 
 to have, like a four-year old barrister (since the County Courts), 
 an immense prejudice for the existing Government. One man hoped 
 to be Maire, another wanted his son got into St. Cyr or the Poly- 
 technic School, and this could be got, and was daily got (I am writing 
 what is hardly denied) by voting for the Government candidate. In 
 a word, a sufficient proportion of the returns of the electoral coUegea 
 
344 
 
 The Cottp d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 resembled the returns from Harwich or Devonport, only that the 
 Government was the only biddei- ; for there are not, I fancy, in any 
 country but England, people able and willing to spend, election after 
 election, great sums of money for procuring the honour of a seat in a 
 representative assembly. In fact, to copy the well-known phrase, just 
 as in the time of Burke, certain gentlemen had the expressive nick- 
 name of the King's friends, so these constituencies may aptly be 
 called the King's constituencies. Of course, on the face of it, this 
 system worked, as far as business went, excellently well. For eighteen 
 years the tranquillity was maintained. France, it may be, has never 
 enjoyed so much calm civilisation, so much private happiness; and 
 yet, after all such and so long blessings, it fell in a mere riot — it fell 
 unregretted. It is a system which no wise man can wish to see 
 restored ; it was a system of regulated corruption. 
 
 But it does not at all follow, nor I am sui*e will you be apt so to 
 deduce, that because I imagine that France is unfit for a Government 
 in which a House of Commons is, as with us, the sovereign power in 
 the State, I therefore believe that it is fit for no freedom at all. Our 
 own constitutional history is the completest answer to any such idea. 
 For centuries, the House of Commons was habitually, we know, but a 
 third-rate power in the State. First the Crown, then the House of 
 Lords, enjoyed the ordinary and supreme dominion ; and down almost 
 to our own times the Crown and House of Lords, taken together, were 
 much more than a sufficient match for the people's House ; but yet we 
 do not cease to proclaim, daily and hourly, in season and out of season, 
 that the English people never have been slaves. It may, therefi>re, 
 well be that our own country having been free under a Constitution in 
 which the representative element was but third-rate in power and 
 dignity, France and other nations may contrive to enjoy the advantage 
 from institutions in which it is only second-rate. 
 
 Now, of this sort is the Constitution of Louis Napoleon. I am 
 not going now, after prefacing so much, to discuss its details ; indeed, 
 I do not feel competent to do so. What should we say to a French- 
 man's notion of a 5^. householder, or the fourth and fifth clauses of the 
 New Beform Bill % and I quite admit that a paper building of this 
 sort can hardly be safely criticised till it is carried out on terra firma^ 
 till we see not only the theoretic ground-plan, but the actual inhabited 
 structure. The life of a constitution is in the spirit and disposition of 
 tiiose who work it; and we can't yet say in the least what that, in 
 this case, will be ; but so far as the constitution shows its meaning on 
 the face of it, it clearly belongs to the class which I have named. The 
 
The Cotip d'Etat of 1851, 
 
 345 
 
 Corps Legislatif is not the administering body, it is not even what 
 pei'haps it might with advantage have been, a petitioning and remon- 
 strating body ; but it possesses the Legislative veto, and the power 
 of stopping en masse the supplies. It is not a working, a ruling, 
 or an initiative, or supremely decisive, but an immense checking 
 power. It will be unable to change Ministers, or aggTavate the 
 course of revolutions; but it could arrest an unpopular war — it 
 could reject an unpopular law — it is, at least in theory, a powerful 
 and important drag-chain. Out of the mouths of its adversaries this 
 system possesses what I have proved, or conjectured, or assumed to 
 be the prime want of the French nation — a strong executive. The 
 objection to it is that the objectors find nothing else in it. We con- 
 fess there is no doubt now of a power adequate to repress street- 
 rows and revolutions. 
 
 At the same time, I guard myself against intimating any opinion 
 on the particular minutiae of this last effort of institutional inven- 
 tion. I do not know enough to form a judgment ; I sedulously, at 
 present, confine myself to this one remark, that the new Govern- 
 ment of France belongs, in theory at least, to the right class of 
 Constitutions — the class that is most exactly suited to French habits, 
 French nature, French social advantages, French social dangers — 
 the class I mean, in which the representative body has a consul- 
 tative, a deliberative, a checking and a minatory — not as with us a 
 supreme, nearly an omnipotent, and exclusively initiatory function. 
 
 I am, yours, &c. 
 
 Amicus. 
 
 P.S. — You may like five words on a French invasion. I can't 
 myself imagine, and what is more to the point, I do not observe 
 that anybody here has any notion of, any such inroad into England 
 as was contemplated and proposed by General Changarnier. No one 
 in the actual conduct of affairs, with actual responsibility for affairs, 
 not, as the event proved, even Ledru Rollin, could, according to me, 
 encounter the risk and odium of such a hateful and horribly dan- 
 gerous attempt. But, T regret to add, there is a contingency which 
 sensible people here (so far as I have had the means of judging) 
 do not seem to regard as at all beyond the limits of rational pro- 
 bability, by which a war between England and France would most 
 likely be superinduced ; that is, a French invasion of Belgium. I 
 do not mean to assure you that this week or next the Prince-Pre- 
 sident will make a razzia in Brussels. But I do mean that it is 
 
34^ 
 
 The Coup cVEtat of 1851. 
 
 thought not improbable that somehow or other, on some wolf-and- 
 the-lamb pretext, he may pick a quarrel with King LeojDold, and 
 endeavour to restore to the French the * natural limit ' of the Rhine. 
 Now, I have never seen the terms of the guarantee which the shrewd 
 and cautious Leopold exacted from England before he would take 
 the throne of Belgium ; but as the only real risk was a French 
 aggression upon this tempting territory, I do not make any doubt 
 but that the expressions of that instrument bind us to go to war 
 in defence of the country whose limits and independence we have 
 guaranteed. And in this case, an invasion of England would be as 
 admissible a military movement as an invasion of France. I hope, 
 therefore, you will use your best rhetoric to induce people to put our 
 pleasant country in a state of adequate and tolerable defence. 
 
 I see by the invaluable Galignani, that some excellent people at 
 Manchester are indulging in a little arithmetic. ' Suppose,' say they, 
 'all the French got safe, and each took away 50^., now how much do 
 you fancy it would come to (40,000 men by 50Z., nought's nought is 
 nought, nought and carry two) — compared to the existing burden of 
 the National Debt? Was there ever such amiptble infatuation! It 
 is not what the French could carry off, but what they would leave 
 behind them, which is in the reasonable apprehension of reasonable 
 persons. The funds at 50 — broken banks — the Gazette telling you 
 who had not failed — Downing-street vide Wales — destitute families, 
 dishonoured daughters, one-legged fathers — the mourning shops utterly 
 sacked — the customers in tears — a pale widow in a green bonnet — the 
 Exchange in ruins — five notches on St. Paul's — and a big hole in the 
 Bank of England ; — these, though but a few of the certain conse- 
 quences of a French visit to London, are quite enough to terrify even 
 an adamantine editor and a rather reckless correspondent. 
 
 Letter VI. 
 
 THE FRENCH NEWSPAPER PRESS. 
 
 Paris : Feb. 10. 
 
 Sir, — We learn from an Oriental narrative in considerable circu- 
 lation, that the ancient Athenians were fond of news. Of course 
 they were. It is in the nature of a mass of clever and intellectual 
 people living together to want something to talk about. Old ideas 
 
The Coitp d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 347 
 
 — common ascertained truths — are good things enough to live by, 
 but are very rare, and soon sufficiently discussed. Something 
 else — true or false, rational or nonsensical — is quite essential ; and, 
 therefore, in the old literary world men gathered round the travel- 
 ling sophist, to learn from him some thought, crotchet, or specula- 
 tion. And what the vagabond speculators were once, that, pretty 
 exactly, is the newspaper now. To it the people of this intellectual 
 capital look for that daily mental bread, which is as essential to 
 them as the less ethereal sustenance of ordinary mortals. With the 
 spread of education this habit travels downward. Not the literary 
 man only, but the ouvrier and the bourgeois, live on the same food. 
 This day's Siech is discussed not only in gorgeous dra\^ing-rooms, 
 but in humble reading-rooms, and still humbler workshops. Ac- 
 cording to the printed notions of us journalists, this is a matter 
 of pure rejoicing. The influence of the Press, if you believe writers 
 and printers, is the one sufficient condition of social well-being. Yet 
 there are many considerations which make very much against this 
 idea : I can't go into several of them now, but those that I shall 
 mention are suggested at once by matters before me. First, news- 
 paper people are the only traders that thrive upon convulsion. In 
 quiet times, who cares for the paper 1 In times of tumult, who does 
 not] Commonly, the PcdriQ (the Glohe of this country) sells, I 
 think, for three sous : on the evening of the coup d^etat, itinerant 
 ladies were crying under my window, * Demdndez la Patrie — Journal 
 du soir — trente sous — Journal du soir;' and I remember witnessing, 
 even in our sober London, in February 1848, how bald fathers of 
 families paid large sums, and encountered bare-headed the unknown 
 inclemencies of the night aii*, that they might learn the last news 
 of Louis Philippe, and, if possible, be in at the death of the revo- 
 lutionary Parisians. ' Happy,' says the sage, ' are the people whose 
 annals are vacant ; ' but ' woe ! woe ! woe ! ' he might add, * to the 
 wretched journalists that have to compose and sell leading articles 
 therein.' 
 
 I am constrained to say that, even in England, this is not without 
 its unfavourable influence on literary morals. Take in the Times, 
 and you will see it assumed that every year ought to be an era. 
 ' The Government does nothing,' is the indignant cry, and simple 
 people in the country don't know that this is merely a civilised /agon 
 de parltr for * I have nothing to say.' Lord John Russell must 
 alter the suff'rage, that we may have something pleasant in our 
 columns. 
 
348 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 I am afraid matters are worse here. The leading French jour- 
 nalist is, as you know, the celebrated Emile de Girardin, and, so far 
 as I can learn anything about him, he is one of the most fickle 
 politicians in existence. Since I have read the Presse regularly, 
 it has veered from every point of the compass well-nigh to every 
 other — now for, now against, the revision of the constitution, — 
 now lauding Louis Napoleon to the skies — now calling him plairi 
 M. Bonaparte, and insinuating that he had not two ideas, and was 
 incapable of moral self-government — now connected with the Ked 
 party, now praising the majority ; but all and each of these veeiings 
 and shiftings determined by one most simple and certain principle 
 — to keep up the popular excitement, to maintain the gifted M. de 
 Gh-ardin at the head of it. Now a man who spends his life in stimu- 
 lating excitement and convulsion is really a political incendiary ; and 
 however innocent and laudable his brother exiles may be, the old 
 editor and founder of the Presse is, as I believe, now only paying 
 the legitimate penalty of systematic political arson. 
 
 When a foreigner — at least an Englishman — begins to read the 
 French papers, his first idea is ' How well these fellows write ! Why, 
 every one of them has a style, and a good style too. Keally, how 
 clear, how acute, how clever, how perspicuous ; I wish our journalists 
 would learn to write like this ; ' but a little experience will modify 
 this idea — at least I have found it so. I read for a considerable time 
 these witty periodicals with pleasiu-e and admiration ; after a little 
 while I felt somehow that I took them up with an efibrt, but I 
 fancied, knowing my disposition, that this was laziness ; when on a 
 sudden, in the waste of Galignani, I came across an article of the 
 Morning Herali. Now you'll laugh at me, if I tell you it was a 
 real enjoyment. There was no toil, no sharp theory, no pointed ex- 
 pression, no fatiguing brilliancy, in fact, what the man in Lord 
 Byron desired, ' no nothing,' but a dull, creeping, satisfactory 
 sensation that now, at least, there was nothing to admire. As 
 long walking in picture galleries makes you appreciate a mere wall, 
 so I felt that I understood for the first time that really dulness 
 had its interest. I found a pure refreshment in coming across 
 what possibly might be latent sense, but was certainly superficial 
 stupidity. 
 
 I think there is nothing we English hate like a clever but pro- 
 longed controversy. Now this is the life and soul of the Parisian 
 press. Everybody writes against everybody. It is not mere sly hate 
 or solemn invective, nothing like what we occasionally indulge in, 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 
 
 349 
 
 about the misdemeanours of a morning contemporary. But they 
 take the other side's article piece by piece, and comment on him, and, 
 as they say in libel cases, innuendo him, and satisfactorily show that, 
 according to his arithmetic, two and two make five ; useful knowledge 
 that. It is really good for us to know that some fellow (you never 
 heard of him) it rather seems can't add up. But it interests people 
 here — (^est logique they tell you, and if you are trustful enough to 
 answer ^ 3Ion Dieu, c^est ennuyeux, je n'en sais rien^ they look as if 
 you sneered at the Parthenon. 
 
 It is out of these controversies that M. de Girardin has attained 
 his power and his fame. His articles (according to me, at least) have 
 no facts and no sense. He gives one all pure reasoning — little 
 scrappy syllogisms ; as some one said most unjustly of old Hazlitt, 
 he * writes pimples.' But let an unfortunate writer in the Assemblee 
 Nationale, or anywhere else, make a little refreshing blunder in his 
 logic, and next morning small punning sentences (one to each para- 
 graph like an equation) come rattling down on him : it is clear as 
 noonday that somebody said 'something followed,' and it does not 
 follow, and it is so agreed in all the million cabinets de lecture 
 after due gesticulation ; and, moreover, that M. de Girardin is the 
 man to expose it, and what clever fellows they are to appreciate 
 him ; but what the truth is, who cares'? The subject is forgotten. 
 
 Now all this, to my notion, does great harm. Nothing destroys 
 common-place like the habit of arguing for arguing's sake ; nothing 
 is so bad for public matters as that they should be treated, not as 
 the data for the careful formation of a sound judgment, but as a 
 topic or background for displaying the shining qualities of public 
 writers. It is no light thing this. M. de Gii-ardin for many years 
 has gained more power, more reputation, more money than any of 
 his rivals ; not because he shows more knowledge — he shows much 
 less ; not because he has a wiser judgment — he has no fixed judgment 
 at all ; but because he has a more pointed, sharp way of exj)Osing 
 blunders, intrinsically paltry, obvious to all educated men ; and does 
 not care enough for any subject to be diverted from this logical 
 trifling by a serious desire to convince anybody of anything. 
 
 Don't think I wish to be hard on this accomplished gentleman. 
 I am not going to require of hack-writers to write only on what 
 they understand — if that were the law, what a life for the sub-editor ; 
 I should not be writing these letters, and how seldom and how 
 timidly would the morning journals creep into the world. Nor do I 
 expect, though I may still, in sentimental moods, desire, middle- 
 
350 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 aged journalists to be buoyed up by chimerical visions of improving 
 mankind. 
 
 You know what our eminent chef (by Thackeray profanely called 
 Jupiter Jeames) has been heard to say over his gin and water, in an 
 
 easy and voluptuous moment : ' Enlightenment be , I want the 
 
 fat fool of a thick-headed reader to say, " Just my own views," 
 else he ain't pleased, and may be he stops the paper.' I am not 
 going to require supernatural excellence from writers. Yet there are 
 limits. If I were a chemist, I should not mind, I suppose, selling 
 now and then, a deleterious drug on a due affidavit of rats, then 
 and there filed before me ; yet I don't feel as if I could live com - 
 fortably on the sale of mere arsenic. I fancy I should like to sell 
 something wholesome occasionally. So, though one might, upon oc- 
 casion, egg on a riot, or excite to a breach of the peace, I should not 
 like to be every day feeding on revolutionary excitement. Nor 
 should I like to be exclusively selling diminutive, acute, quibbling 
 leaders (what they call in the Temple special demurrers), certain to 
 occuj^y people with small fallacies, and lead away their minds from 
 the great questions actually at issue. 
 
 Sometimes I might like to feel as if I understood what I wrote 
 on, but of course with me this indulgence must be very rare. You 
 know in France journalism is not only an occupation, it is a career. As 
 in far-off Newcastle a coalfitter's son looks wistfully to the bar, in 
 the notion that he too may emulate the fame and fortune of Lord 
 Eldon or Lord Stowell, so in fair Provence, a pale young aspirant 
 packs up his little bundle in the hope of rivalling the luck and fame 
 of M. Thiers; he comes to Paris — he begins, like the great historian, 
 by dining for thirty sous in the Palais Eoyal, in the hope that after 
 long years of labour and jealousy he, too, may end by sleeping amid 
 curtains of white muslin lined with pink damask. Just consider for 
 a moment what a difference this one fact shows between France 
 and England. Here a man who begins life by writing in the news- 
 papers, has an appreciable chance of arriving to be Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs. The class of public writers is the class from 
 which the equivalent of Lord Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston, or Lord 
 Granville will most likely be chosen. Well, well, under that regime 
 you and I might have been important people ; we might have 
 handled a red box, we might have known what it was to have a 
 reception, to dine with the Queen, to be respectfully mystified by 
 the covps diplomatique. But angry Jove forbade — of course we can 
 hardly deny that he was wrong, — and yet if the revolutions of 1848 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 351 
 
 have clearly brought out any fact, it is the utter failure of news- 
 paper statesmen. Everywhere they have been tried : everywhere 
 they have shown great talents for intrigue, eloquence, and agitation 
 — how rarely have they shown even fair aptitude for ordinary ad- 
 ministration ; how frequently have they gained a disreputable renown 
 by a laxity of principle surpassing the laxity of their aristocratic 
 and courtly advei^saries ! Such being my imperfect account of my im- 
 pei-fect notions of the French press, I can't altogether sympathise 
 in the extreme despondency of many excellent persons at its tem- 
 porary silence since the cowp d'etat. I might even rejoice at it, if 
 I thought that the Parisian public could in any manner be broken 
 of their dependence on the morning's article. But I have no such 
 hope ; the taste has got down too deep into the habits of the peo- 
 ple \ some new thing will still be necessary ; and every Government 
 will find some of its most formidable difficulties in their taste for 
 political disputation and controversial excitement. The ban must 
 sooner or later be taken off ; the President sooner or later must 
 submit to censure and ridicule, and whatever laws he may propose 
 about the press, there is none which scores of ingenious men — now 
 animated by the keenest hatred, will not try every hazard to evade. 
 What he may do to avoid this is as yet unknown. One thing, how- 
 ever, I suppose is pretty sure, and I fancy quite wise. The press 
 will be restrained from discussing the principles of the Government. 
 Socialists will not be allowed to advocate a Democratic Pepublic. 
 Legitimists will not be allowed to advocate the cause of Henii 
 Cinq, nor Orleanists the cause of the Comte de Paris. Such indul- 
 gence might be tolerable in more temperate countries, but experience 
 shows that it is not safe now and here. 
 
 A really sensible press, arguing temperately after a clear and 
 satisfactory exposition of the facts, is a gi-eat blessing in any coun- 
 try. It would be still more a blessing in a country where, as I 
 tried to explain formerly, the representative element must play (if 
 the public secmity is to be maintained) a rather secondaiy part. 
 It would then be a real stimulus to deliberate inquiiy and rational 
 judgment upon public affairs ; to the formation of common- sense 
 views upon the great outlines of public business; to the cultiva- 
 tion of sound moral opinions and convictions on the internal and 
 international duties of the State. Even the actual press which we 
 may expect to see here, may not be pernicious. It will doubtless 
 stimulate to many factious proceedings, and many interruptions of 
 the public pi-osperity ; it may very likely conduce to drive the Pieei- 
 
352 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 dent (contrary, if not to his inclination, at least to his personal 
 interest) into foreign hostilities and international aggression ; but it 
 may be, notwithstanding, useful in preventing j3rivate tyranny, in 
 exposing wanton oppression, in checking long suffering revenge; it 
 may prevent acts of spoliation like what they call here le prewAer 
 vol de Vaigle — ^the seizure of the Orleans property ; — in a word, being 
 certain to oppose the executive, where the latter is unjust its enemy 
 will be just. 
 
 I had hopes that this letter would be the last with which I should 
 tease you ; but I find I must ask you to be so kind as to find room 
 for one. and only for one more. I am, yours, &c., 
 
 Amicus. 
 
 Letter VII. 
 
 CONCLUDING LETTER. 
 
 Paris : Feb. 19, 1852. 
 
 Sir, — There is a story of some Swedish Abbe, in the last century, 
 who wrote an elaborate work to prove the then constitution of his 
 country to be immortal and indestructible. While he was correct- 
 ing the proof sheets, a friend brought him word that — behold ! the 
 King had already destroyed the said polity. * Sir,' replied the 
 gratified author, * our Sovereign, the illustrious Gustavus, may cer- 
 tainly overthrow the Constitution, but never my hook* I beg to 
 parody this sensible remark ; for I wish to observe to you, that even 
 though Louis Napoleon should turn out a bad and mischievous ruler, 
 he won't in the least refute these letters. 
 
 What I mean is as follows. Above all things, I have designed to 
 prove to you that the French are by character unfit for a solely and 
 predominantly Parliamentary government ; that so many and so 
 great elements of convulsion exist here, that it will be clearly neces- 
 sary that a strong, vigorous, anti-barricade executive should, at 
 whatever risk and cost, be established and maintained ; that such an 
 Assembly as the last is irreconcileable with this ; in a word, that 
 riots and revolutions must, if possible, come to an end, and only such 
 a degree of liberty and democracy be granted to the French nation, 
 as is consistent with the consolidated existence of the order and 
 tranquillity which are equally essential to rational freedom and civil- 
 ised society. 
 
The Cotip d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 In order to combine the maintenance of order and tranquillity 
 with the maximum of possible liberty, I hope that it may in the 
 end be found possible to admit into a political system a representative 
 and sufficiently democratic Assembly, without that Assembly assum- 
 ing and arrogating to itself those nearly omnipotent powei'S, which 
 in our country it properly and rightfully possesses, but which in the 
 history of the last sixty years, we have, as it seems to me, so many 
 and so cogent illustrations that a French Chamber is, by genius and 
 constitution, radically incapable to hold and exercise. I hope that 
 some checking. Consultative, petitioning Assembly — some /3ouX>/, in 
 the real sense of the term, — some Council^ some provision by which 
 all grave and deliberate public opinion (I do not speak more defi- 
 nitely, because an elaborate Constitution, from a foreigner, must be an 
 absurdity) may organise and express itself — yet at the same time, 
 without utterly hampering and directing — and directing amiss — 
 those more simple elements of national polity on which we must, 
 after all, rely for the prompt and steady repression of barricade- 
 making and bloodshed. 
 
 I earnes ly desire to believe that some such system as this may be 
 found in practice possible ; for otherwise, unless I quite misread his- 
 tory, and altogether mistake what is under my eyes, after many more 
 calamities, many more changes, many more great Assemblies abound- 
 ing in Vergniauds and Berryers, the essential deficiencies of debating 
 Girondin statesmen will become manifest, the uncompact, unpractical, 
 over volatile, over logical, indecisive, ineflectual rule of Gallican 
 Parliaments will be unequivocally manifest (it is novo plain, I 
 imagine, but a truth so humiliating must be wi-itten large in lettei s 
 of blood before those that run will read it), and no medium being 
 held or conceived to be possible, the nation will sink back, not con- 
 tented but discontented, not trustfully but distrustfully, under the 
 rule of a military despot ; and if they yield to this, it will be 
 from no faith, no loyalty, no credulity ; it will be from a sense — a 
 hated sense — of unqualified failure, a miserable scepticism in the 
 probable success and the possible advantages of long-ti-ied and ill- 
 tried rebellion. 
 
 Now, whether the Constitution of Louis Napoleon is calculated to 
 realise this ideal and intermediate system, is, till we see it at work, 
 doubtful and disputable. It is not the question so much of what it 
 may be at this moment, as of what it may become in a brief period, 
 when things have begun to assume a more normal state, and the public 
 mind shall be relaxed from its present and painful tension. How- 
 
 VOL. I. A A 
 
354 
 
 The Coup (TEtat of 1851. 
 
 ever, I should be deceiving you, if I did not inform you that the state 
 of men's minds towards the Prince-President is not, so far as I can 
 make it out, what it was the day after the cou^ d'etat. The measures 
 taken against the Socialists are felt to have been several degrees too 
 severe, the list of exiles too numerous ; the confiscation of the Orleans* 
 property could not but be attended with the worst effect : the law 
 announced by the Government organs respecting or rather against the 
 Press, is justly (though you know from my last letter I have no par- 
 tiality for French newspapers) considered to be absurdly severe, and 
 likely to countenance much tyranny and gross injustice; above all, 
 instead of maintaining mere calm and order, the excessive rigour, and 
 sometimes the injustice, of the President's measures, have produced a 
 bi'eathless pause (if I may so speak) in public opinion ; political 
 conversation is a whispered question, what will he do next % Firstly, 
 the Government is dull, and the French want to be amused ; secondly, 
 it is going to spoil the journals (depreciate newspapers to a French- 
 man, disparage nuts to a monkey) ; thirdly, it is producing (I do not 
 say it has yet produced, but it has made a beginning in producing) 
 a habit of apprehension ; — in fact, I believe the French opinion of the 
 Prince-President is near about that of the interesting damsel in 
 George Sand's comedy, concerning her uninteresting pretendu : ' Vous 
 Vaimez ? n'est-ce pas ? ' * Ou% oui, oui, certainement je Vaime. Oui, 
 oui, mille fois, oui, Je dis que oui. Je vous assure. Au moins je fais 
 mon possible ci V aimer : ' the first attachment is not extinct, but 
 people have begun — awful symptom — to add the withering and final 
 saving clause. Yet it is, I imagine, a great mistake to suppose that 
 the present Constitution, if it work at all, will permanently work as a 
 despotism, or that the Corps Legislatif will be without a measure of 
 popular influence ; the much more helpless Tribunal was not so in 
 the much more troublesome times of the Consulate. And the source 
 of such influence and the manner of its operation may be, I imagine, 
 well enough traced in the nature of the forces whereby Louis 
 Napoleon holds his power. 
 
 A truly estimable writer says, I know, * that the Legislative body 
 cannot have, by possibility, any analogy with the consultative and 
 petitioning senate of the Plantagenets,' nor can any one deny that the 
 likeness is extremely faint (no illustration ever yet ran on all fours), 
 the practical differences clear and convincing. But yet, according 
 to the light which is given me now, I afiirm that for one vital purpose, 
 —the resisting and criticising any highly unpopular acts of a highly 
 unpopular Government, — the Corps Legislatif of Louis Napoleon 
 
The Cotip d'Etat ^/ 1851. 
 
 355 
 
 must, and will, inevitably possess a power compared with which the 
 forty-day followers of the feudal noblesse seem as impotent as a 
 congregation of Quakers ; a force the peculiarity of which is that you 
 can't imprison, can't dissolve, can't annihilate it — I mean, of course, 
 the moral power of civilised opinion. You may put down news- 
 papers, dissolve Parliaments, imprison agitators, almost stop con- 
 versation, but you can't stop thought. You can't prevent the silent;, 
 slow, creeping, stealthy progress of hatred, and scorn, and shame. 
 You can't attenuate easily the stern justice of a retarded retaliation. 
 These influences aflfect the great reservoir of physical force — they act 
 on the army. A body of men enlisted daily from the people take to 
 the barracks the notions of the people ; in spite of new associations, 
 the first impressions are apt to be retained ; you overlay them, but 
 they remain. What is believed elsewhere and out of doors gives 
 them weight. Each soldier has relations, friends, a family — he knows 
 what they think. Much more with the officers. These are men 
 moving in Parisian society, accessible to its influences, responsible to 
 its opinion, apt to imbibe its sentiments. Certainly esprit de corps— 
 the habit of obedience, the instinct of discipline, are strong, and will 
 carry men far ; but certainly, also, they have natural limits. Men 
 won't stand being cut, being ridiculed, being detested, being despised, 
 daily and for ever, and that for measui'es which their own under- 
 standings disapprove o£ Remember thei-e is not here any question 
 of barbarous bands overawing a civilised and imperial city; no 
 question of ugly Croats keeping down cultivated Italians ; it is but a 
 question of French gentlemen and French peasantry in uniform acting 
 in opposition to other French gentlemen and other French peasants 
 without uniform. Already there has been talk (I do not say well- 
 founded, but still the matter was named) of breaking two or three 
 hundred officers, for speaking against the Orleans decrees. Do you 
 fancy that can be done every day ? Do you imagine that a Par- 
 liament, whatever its nominal functions may be (remember those of 
 the old regime), speaking the sense of the people about the question of 
 the day, in a time of convulsion, and in a critical hour, would not be 
 attended to, or at any rate thought of and considered, by an army 
 taken from the people — commanded by men selected from and every 
 day mixing with common society and very ordinary mankind. The 
 2nd of December showed how readily such troops will support a 
 decided and popular President against an intriguing, divided, im- 
 potent Chamber. But such hard blows won't beai* repetition. Soldiers 
 — French soldiers, I take it especially, from their quickness and 
 
356 
 
 The Coup (T Etat of 185 1. 
 
 intelligence, are neither deaf nor blind. If there be truth in history 
 or speculation, national forces can't long be used against the nation : 
 they are unmerciful, and often cruel to feeble minorities ; they are 
 ready now for a terrible onslaught on mere Socialists, just as of old 
 they turned out cheerfully for awful dragonnades on the ill-starred 
 Protestants; but once let them know and feel that everybody is 
 against them — that they are alone, that their acts are contemned and 
 their persons despised, — and gradually, or all at once, discipline and. 
 habit surely fail, men murmur or desert, officers hesitate or disobey, 
 one regiment is dismissed to the Cabyles, another relegated to rural 
 solitudes ; at last, most likely in the decisive moment of the whole 
 history, the rulers, who relied only on their troops, are afraid to call 
 them out j they hesitate, send spies and commissioners to inquire. 
 ' Vive le Gouvernement Provisoire ! ' — the black and roaring multitude 
 rises and comes on ; but two seconds, and the obnoxious institutions 
 are lost in the flood ; nothing is heard but the cry of the hour, sound- 
 ing shrill and angry over the waste of Revolution — ' Vive le Diahle ! ' 
 With such a force behind them, a French Parliament, of whatever 
 nature, with whatever written duties, is, if at the head of the move- 
 ment, in the critical hour, apt to be stronger than the strongest of 
 the Barons. 
 
 Nor do I concur with those who censure the President for 
 ' recommending ' avowedly the candidates he approves. It is a part 
 of the great question, How is universal suflfrage to be worked suc- 
 cessfully in such a country as France ? The peasant proprietors have 
 but one political idea that they wish the Prince to govern them ; 
 — they wish to vote for the candidate most acceptable to him, and 
 they wish nothing else. Why is he wrong in telling them which 
 candidate that is? 
 
 Still, no doubt, the reins are now strained a great deal too tight. 
 It is possible, quite possible, that a majority in this Parliament may 
 be packed, but what I would impress on you is that it can't always 
 be packed. Sooner or later constituencies who wish to oppose the 
 Government will, in spite of maires and prefets, elect the opposition 
 candidate : it is in the nature of any, even the least vigorous system 
 of popular election, to struggle forwards and progressively attain to 
 some fair and reasonable correspondence with the substantial views 
 and opinions of the constituent people. 
 
 I therefore fall back on what I told you before— my essential 
 view or crotchet about the mental aptitudes and deficiencies of the 
 French people. The French, said Napoleon, are des machines nerveuses. 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 357 
 
 The point is, can their excitable, volatile, superficial, ovei-logical, 
 uncompromising character be managed and manipulated as to fit them 
 for enteiing on a practically uncontrolled system of Parliamentaiy 
 Government % "Will not any large and omnipotent Assembly re- 
 semble the stormy Constituent and the late Chamber, rather than the 
 business-like, formal, ennui-diSiising Parliament to which in oui- free 
 and dull country we are felicitously accustomed % Can one be so im- 
 proved as to keep down a riot % I foresee a single and but a single 
 objection. I fancy, indeed I know, that there is a school of political 
 thinkers not yet in possession of any great influence, but, perhaps, 
 a little on the way thereto, which has improved or invented a capital 
 panacea, whereby all nations are, within very moderate limits of 
 time, to be surely and certainly fitted for political freedom ; and that 
 no matter how formed — how seemingly stable — how long ago cast 
 and constructed, be the type of popular charai;ter to which the said 
 remedy is sought to be applied. This panacea is the foundation or 
 restoration of provincial municipalities. Now, I am myself prepared 
 to go a considerable length with the school in question. I do myself 
 think, that a due and regular consideration of the knotty points of 
 paving and lighting, and the deciding in the last resort upon them, 
 is a valuable discipline of national character. It exei-cises people's 
 minds on points they know, in things of which there is a test. 
 Yery few people are good judges of a good Constitution ; but every- 
 body's eyes are excellent judges of good light; every man's feet are 
 profound in the theory of agreeable stones. Yet I can't altogether 
 admit, nevertheless, that municipalities are the sufficient and sole, 
 though they may be very likely an essential pre-requisite of political 
 freedom. There is the great instance of Hindostan to the contrary. 
 The whole old and national system of that remarkable country — a 
 syst;em in all probability as ancient as the era of Alexander, is a 
 village system ; and one so curious, elaborate, I fancy I might say so 
 profound, that the best European observers — Sir Thomas Mum-o, 
 and that sort of people — are most strenuous for its being retained 
 unimpaired. According to them, the village hardly heard of the 
 Imperial Government, except for the purpose of Imperial taxation. 
 The business of life through that whole vast territory has always 
 been practically determined by potails and parish-vestries, and yet 
 nevertheless and in spite of this capital and immemorial municipal 
 system, our subjects, the Hindoos, are still slaves and still likely to 
 be slaves ; still essentially slavish, and likely, I much fear, very long 
 indeed to remain so. It is therefore quite certain that rural and 
 
358 
 
 The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 provincial institutions won't so alter and adapt all national characters, 
 as to fit all nations for a Parliamentary Constitution ; consequently, 
 the onus prohandi is on those who assert that it will so alter and 
 mould the French. Again, I assure you that the French do think of 
 paving and lighting ; not enough, perhaps, but still they have begun. 
 The country is, as you know, divided into departments, arrondisse- 
 ments, and communes ; in each of these there is a council, variously 
 elected, but, in all cases, popularly and from the district, which has 
 the sole control over the expenditure of the particular locality for 
 every special and local purpose, and which, if I am rightly informed, 
 has, in theory at least, the sole initiative in every local improve- 
 ment. The defect, I fancy, is that in the exercise of these, con 
 siderable bodies are hampered and controlled by the veto and super- 
 vision of the central authority. The rural councils discuss and 
 decide what in their judgment should be then done and what money 
 should be so spent ; the better sort of the agricultural population 
 have much more voice in the latter than have the corresponding 
 class in England, in the determination and imposition of our own 
 county rate ; but it is the central authority which decides whether 
 such proposals and recommendations shall in fact be carried out. 
 In a word, the provinces have to ash leave of the Parisian Ministry 
 of the Interior. Now I admit this is an abuse. I should maintain 
 that elderly gentlemen with bald heads and local influence ought 
 to feel that they, in the final resort, settle and determine all truly 
 local matters. Human nature likes its own road, its own bridge, 
 its own lapidary obstacles, its own deceptive luminosity. But I ask 
 again, can you fancy that these luxuries, to whatever degree in- 
 dulged in, alter and modify in any essential particular, the levity and 
 volatility of the French character % How much light to how much 
 logic ? How many paving stones to how much mobility 1 I can't 
 foresee any such change. And even if so, what in the meantime 1 
 We are left then, I think, to deal with the French character 
 pretty much as we find it. What stealthy, secret, unknown, ex- 
 cellent forces may, in the wisdom of Providence, be even now 
 modifying this most curious intellectual fabric, neither you nor I 
 can know or tell. Let us hope they may be many. But if we in- 
 dulge, and from the immense records of revolutionary history, I 
 think, with due distrust, we may legitimately and even beneficially 
 indulge, in system-building and speculation, we must take the data 
 which we have, and not those which we desire or imagine. Louis 
 
The Coup d'Etat of 185 1. 
 
 359 
 
 Napoleon has proposed a system : English writers by the thousand (if 
 I was in harness instead of holiday-making I should be most likely 
 among them) proclaim his system an evil one. What then? Do 
 you know what Father Newman says to the religious reformers, 
 rather sharply, but still well, ' Make out first of all where you stand 
 —draw up your creed — write down your catechism.' So I answer to 
 the English eloquence, * State first of all what you would have — 
 di-aw up your novel system for the French Government — write down 
 youi' political Constitution.' Don't criticise but produce ; do not find 
 fault but propose — and when you have proposed upon theory and 
 have created upon paper, let us see whether the system be such a 
 one as will work, in fact, and be accepted by a wilful nation in 
 reality — otherwise your work is nought. 
 
 And mind, too, that the system to be sketched out must be fit 
 to protect the hearths and homes of men. It is easy to compose 
 politics if you do but neglect this one essential condition. Four 
 years ago, Europe was in a ferment with the newest ideas, the best 
 theories, the most elaborate, the most artistic Constitutions. There 
 was the labour, and toil, and trouble, of a million intellects, as 
 good, taken on the whole, perhaps, as the world is likely to see, — 
 of old statesmen, and literary gentlemen, and youthful enthusiasts, 
 all over Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean, from the 
 frontiers of Russia to the Atlantic Ocean. Well, what have we 
 gained % A Parliament in Sardinia ! Surely this is a lesson against 
 proposing politics which won't work, convening assemblies that can't 
 legislate, constructing executives that aren't able to keep the peace, 
 founding Constitutions inaugurated with tears and eloquence, soon 
 abandoned with tears and shame ; beginning a course of fair auguries 
 and liberal hopes, but one from whose real dangers and actual suffer- 
 ings a frightened and terrified people, in the end, flee for a temporary, 
 or may be a permanent, refuge under a military and absolute ruler. 
 
 Mazzini sneers at the selfishness of shopkeepers — I am for the 
 shopkeepers against him. There are people who think because they 
 are Republican there shall be no more ' cakes and ale.' Aye, verily, 
 but there will though; or else stiffish ginger will be hot in the 
 mouth. Legislative Assemblies, leading articles, essay eloquence — 
 such are good — very good, — useful — very useful. Yet they can be 
 done without. We can want them. Not so with all things. The 
 selling of figs, the cobbling of shoes, the manufacturing of nails, — 
 these are the essence of life. And let whoso frameth a Constitu- 
 tion of his comitry think on these things. 
 
36o 
 
 The Coitp d'Etat of 1851. 
 
 I conclude, as I ought, with my best thanks for the insertion of 
 these letters; otherwise I was so full of the subject that I might 
 have committed what Disraeli calls 'the extreme act of human 
 fatuity,' I might have published a pamphlet : from this your kind- 
 ness has preserved me, and I am proportionally grateful. 
 
 I am, yours, Amicus. 
 
 1 
 
11. 
 
 C^SARISM AS IT EXISTED IN 1865. 
 
 [Lest the preceding letters should be supposed to express Mr. Bagehot's 
 complete and final judgment on the character of the imperial regime of 
 Louis Napoleon, it has been thought well to publish a paper which he 
 contributed to the Economist after a visit to France in 1865, of a nature 
 to correct the misapprehensions to which the somewhat youthful essays 
 which precede might give rise. It appeared soon after the publication 
 of the Emperor's Life of Julius Ceesar.] 
 
 That the French Empei-or should have spare leisure and unoccupied 
 reflection to write a biography, is astonishing, but if he wished to 
 write a biography, his choice of a subject is very natural. Julius 
 Caesar was the first who tried on an imperial scale the character- 
 istic principles of the French Empire, — as the first Napoleon revived 
 them, as the third Napoleon has consolidated them. The notion 
 of a demagogue ruler, both of a fighting demagogue and a talking 
 demagogue, was indeed familiar to the Greek Republics ; but their 
 size was small, and their history unemphatic. On the big page of 
 universal history, Julius Caesar is the first instance of a democratic 
 despot. He overthrew an aristocracy — a corrupt, and perhaps efiete 
 aristocracy, it is true, but still an aristocracy — by the help of the 
 people, of the unorganised people. He said to the numerical majo- 
 rity of Roman citizens, ' I am your advocate and your leader : make 
 me supreme, and I will govern for your good, and in your name.' 
 This is exactly the principle of the French Empire. No one will ever 
 make an approach to understanding it, who does not separate it alto- 
 gether, and on principle, from the despotisms of feudal origin and 
 legitimate pretensions. The old Monarchies claim the obedience of 
 the people upon grounds of duty. They say they have consecrated 
 claims to the loyalty of mankind. They appeal to conscience, even 
 to religion. But Louis Napoleon is a Benthamite despot. He is for 
 the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' He says, *I am 
 where I am, because I know better than any one else what is good 
 for the French people, and they know that I know better.' He is 
 not the Lord's anointed ; he is the people's agent. 
 
362 
 
 CcEsarism as it Existed in 1865. 
 
 We cannot here discuss what the effect of this system was in 
 ancient times. These columns are not the hest place for an histoi'ical 
 dissertation ; but we may set down very briefly the results of some 
 close and recent observation of the system as it now exists, as it is at 
 work in France. Part of its effects are well understood in England, 
 but a part of them are, we think, but mistily seen and imperfectly 
 apprehended. 
 
 In the first place, the French Empire is really the hest finished 
 democracy which the world has ever seen. What the many at the 
 moment desire is embodied with a readiness, and efliciency, and a 
 completeness which has no parallel, either in past history or present 
 experience. An absolute Government with a popular instinct has the 
 unimpeded command of a people renowned for orderly dexterity. A 
 Frenchman will have arranged an administrative organisation really 
 and effectually, while an Englishman is still bungling, and a German 
 still reflecting. An American is certainly as rapid, and in some measure 
 as efficient, but his speed is a little headlong, and his execution is 
 very rough ; he tumbles through much, but he only tumbles. A 
 Frenchman will not hurry ; he has a deliberate perfection in detail, 
 which may always be relied on, for it is never delayed. The French 
 Emperor knows well how to use these powers. His bureaucracy is 
 not only endurable, but pleasant. An idle man who wants his politics 
 done for him, has them done for him. The welfare of the masses — 
 the present good of the present multitude — is felt to be the object of 
 the Government and the law of the polity. The Empire gives to the 
 French the full gratification of their main wishes, and the almost 
 artistic culture of an admirable workmanship, of an administration 
 finished as only Frenchmen can finish it, and as it never was finished 
 before. 
 
 It belongs to such a Government to care much for material 
 prosperity, and it does care. It makes the people as comfortable as 
 they will permit. If tJiey are not more comfortable, it is their own 
 fault. The Government would give them free trade, and consequent 
 diffused comfort, if it could. No former French Government has done 
 as much for free trade as this Government. No Government has 
 striven to promote railways, and roads, and industry, like this 
 Government. France is much changed in twelve years. Not exactly 
 by the mere merit of the Empire, for it entered into a great inheri- 
 tance ; it succeeded to the silent work of the free monarchy which 
 revolution had destroyed and impeded. There were fruitful and 
 vigorous germs of improvement ready to be elicited — ready to start 
 
CcBsarism as it Existed in 363 
 
 forth — but under an unintelligent Government they would not have 
 started forth ; they would have lain idle and dead, but under the 
 adroit culture of the present Government, they have grown so as to 
 amaze Europe and France itself. 
 
 If, indeed, as is often laid down, the 'present happiness of the 
 grejitest number was the characteristic object of the Government, it 
 would be dijfficult to make out that any probable French Government 
 would be better, or indeed nearly so good, as the present. The intel- 
 ligence of the Emperor on economical subjects — on the bread and 
 meat of the people— is really better than that of the classes opposed 
 to him. He gives the present race of Frenchmen more that is good 
 than any one else would give them, and he gives it them in their own 
 name. They have as much as they like of all that is good for them. 
 But if not the present happiness of the greatest number, but their 
 future elevation, be, as it is, the true aim and end of Government, our 
 estimate of the Empire will be strangely altered. It is an admirable 
 Government for present and coarse purposes, but a detestable 
 Government for future and refined purposes. 
 
 In the first place, it stops the teaching apparatus ; it stops the 
 effectual inculcation of important thought upon the mass of mankind. 
 All other mental efibrt but this, the Empire not only permits but 
 encourages. The high intellect of Paris is as active, as well re- 
 presented, as that of London, and it is even more keen. Intellect 
 still gives there, and has always given, a distinctive position. To 
 be a Memhre de VInstitut is a recognised place in France; but 
 in London, it is an ambiguous distinction to be a * clever fellow.' 
 The higher kinds of thought are better discussed in Parisian society 
 than in London society, and better argued in the Revue cles Deux 
 Mondes than in any English periodical. The speculative thought of 
 France has not been killed by the Empire ; it is as quick, as rigorous, 
 as keen as ever. But though still alive, it is no longer powerful ; it 
 cannot teach the mass. The Revue is permitted, but newspapers — • 
 effectual newspapers — are forbidden. A real course of free lectures on 
 popular subjects would be impossible in Paris. Agitation is forbidden, 
 and it is agitation, and agitation alone, which teaches. The crude 
 mass of men bear easily philosophical treatises, refined articles, elegant 
 literature ; there are but two instruments penetrative enough to reach 
 their opaque minds — the newspaper article and the popular speech, 
 and both of these are forbidden. 
 
 In London the reverse is ti-ue. We may say that only the loudest 
 sort of expression is permitted to attain its due effect. The popular 
 
3^4 
 
 Ccssarism as it Existed in 1865. 
 
 organs of literature so fill men's minds with incomplete thoughts, 
 that delibei-ate treatment, that cai-eful inquiry, that quiet thought 
 have no hearing. People are so deafened with the loud reiteration 
 of many half-truths, that they have neither cui'iosity nor energy for 
 elaborate investigation. The very word ' elaborate ' is become a re- 
 proach : it produces something which the mass of men do not like, 
 because it is above them, — which is tiresome, because it needs in- 
 dustry, — difficult, because it wants attention, — complicated, because it 
 is true. On the whole, perhaps, English thought has rarely been so 
 unfinished, so piecemeal, so ragged as it is now. We have so many 
 little discussions, that we get no full discussion ; we eat so many sand- 
 wiches, that we spoil our dinner. And on the Continent, accordingly, 
 the speculative thought of England is despised. It is believed to be 
 meagre, uncultivated, and immature. We have only a single com- 
 pensation. Our thought may be poor and rough and fragmentary, 
 but it is effectual. With our newspapers and our speeches — with our 
 clamorous multitudes of indifferent tongues — we beat the ideas of the 
 few into the minds of the many. The head of France is a better 
 head than ours, but it does not move her limbs. The head of England 
 is in comparison a coarse and crude thing, but rules her various frame 
 and regulates her whole life. 
 
 France, as it is, may be happier because of the Empire, but France 
 in the future will be more ignorant because of the Empire. The daily 
 play of the higher mind upon the lower mind is arrested. The pre- 
 sent Government has given an instalment of free trade, but it could 
 not endure an agitation for free trade. A democratic despotism is 
 like a theocracy ; it assumes its own correctness. It says, ' I am the 
 representative of the people ; I am here because I know what they 
 wish, because I know what they should have.' As Cavaignac once said, 
 ' A Government which permits its principles to be questioned is a lost 
 Government.' All popular discussion whatever which aspires to teach 
 the Government is radically at issue with the hypothesis of the Em- 
 pire. It says that the Csesar, the omniscient representative, is a mis- 
 taken representative, that he is not fit to be Csesar. 
 
 The deterioration of the future is one inseparable defect of the im- 
 perial organisation, but it is not the only one, — for the moment, it is 
 not the greatest. The greatest is the corruption of the present. A 
 greater burden is imposed by it upon human nature than human 
 nature will bear. Everything requires the support, aid, countenance 
 of the central Government, and yet that Government is expected to 
 keep itself pure. Concessions of railways, concessions of the privi- 
 
Ccssarism as it Existed in 1865. 
 
 365 
 
 lege of limited liability, — on a hundi-ed subjects, legal permission, 
 administrative help, are necessary to money-making. You concentr;ite 
 upon a small body of leading official men the power of making men's 
 fortunes, and it is simple to believe they will not make their own 
 fortunes. The veiy principle of the system is to concentrate power, 
 and power is money. Sir Robert Walpole used to say, ' No honest 
 man could be a "Minister;"' and in France the temptations would 
 conquer all men's honesty. The system requires angels to work it, 
 and perhaps it has not been so fortunate as to find angels. The nod 
 of a minister on the Bourse is a fortune, and somehow or other 
 ministers make fortunes. The Bourse of Paris is still so small, that 
 a leading capitalist may produce a great impiession on it, and a lead- 
 ing capitalist w^orking with a great minister, a vast impression. 
 Accordingly, all that goes with sudden wealth ; all tbat follows from 
 the misuse of the two temptations of civilisation, money and women, 
 is concentrated round the Imperial court. The Empeior v/ould cure 
 much of it if he could, but what can he do % They say he has said 
 that he will not change his men. He will not substitute fleas that 
 are hungry for fleas which at least are partially satisfied. He is right. 
 The defect belongs to the system, to these men ; an enormous concen- 
 tration of power in an industrial system ensures an accumulation of 
 pecuniary temptation. 
 
 These are the two main disadvantages which France suffers from 
 her present Government ; the greater part of the price which she has 
 to pay for her present happiness. She endures the daily pi-esence of 
 an efficient immorality ; she sacrifices the educating apparatus which 
 would elevate Frenchmen yet to be born. But these two disadvan- 
 tages are not the only ones. 
 
 France gains the material present, but she does not gain the 
 material futui'e. All that secures present industry, her Govei-nment 
 confers ; in whatever needs confidence in the future she is powerless. 
 Credit in France, to an Englishman's eye, has almost to be created. 
 The country deposits in the Bank of France are only 1,000,000^. 
 sterling ; that bank has fifty-nine branches, is immeasurably the 
 gi-eatest country bank in France. All discussions on the currency 
 come back to the cours force ^ to the inevitable necessity of making 
 inconvertible notes an irrefusable tender during a revolution. If 
 you propose the simplest opei'ations of credit to a French bankei-, he 
 says, ' You do not remember 1848 ; I do.' And what is the answei' % 
 The present Government avowedly depends on, is ostentatiously con- 
 centrated in, the existing Csesar. Its existence depends on the per- 
 
366 
 
 Ccesarism as it Existed in 1865. 
 
 manent occupation of the Tuileries by an extraordinary man. The 
 democratic despot — the representative despot — must have the sagacity 
 to divine the people's will and the sagacity to execute it. What is the 
 likelihood that these will be hereditary % Can they be expected in 
 the next heirs — a child for Emperor, and a woman for Regent % The 
 present happiness of France is happiness on a short life-lease ; it may 
 end with the life of a man who is not young, who has not spared him- 
 self, who has always thought, who has always lived. 
 
 Such are the characteristics of the Empire as it is. Such is the 
 nature of Csesar's Government as we know it at the present. We 
 scarcely expect that even the singular ability of Napoleon III. will be 
 able to modify, by an historical retrospect, the painful impressions left 
 by actual contact with a living reality.^ 
 
 ' [As a curious illustration of Mr. Bagehot's estimate of the character of 
 the third Empire, I may mention that all the earlier part of this paper, all 
 that which dwelt on the good side of the imperial regime in relation to 
 matters of material prosperity, was reproduced in the French ofl&cial journals, 
 while all the equally true and even more useful criticism on its moral defi- 
 ciencies, was carefully omitted, — Editor.] 
 
3^7 
 
 III. 
 
 MEMOIR OF THE RIGHT HOIST. JAMES WILSON.^ 
 
 Perhaps some of the subscribers to the Economist would not be 
 unwilling to read a brief memoir of Mr. Wilson, even if the events 
 narrated were in no respect peculiar. They might possibly be in- 
 terested in the biography of an author of whose writings they have 
 read so many, even if the narrative related no marked transitions 
 and no characteristic events. But there were in Mr. "Wilson's life 
 several striking changes. The scene shifts from the maniifactoi-y 
 of a small Scotch hatter in a small Scotch town, to London — to 
 the Imperial Parliament — to the English Ti'easury — to the Council 
 Board of India. Such a biography may be fairly expected to have 
 some interest. The life perhaps of no Political Economist has been 
 more eventful. 
 
 James Wilson was born at Hawick, in Roxburghshire, on June 
 3, 1805. His father, of whose memory he always spoke with marked 
 respect, was a thriving man of business, extensively engaged in the 
 woollen manufacture of that place. He was the fourth son in a 
 family of fifteen children, of whom, however, only ten reached ma- 
 turity. Of his mother, who died when he was very young, he 
 scai'cely retained any remembrance in after life. As to his early 
 years little is now recollected, except that he was a very mild and 
 serious boy, usually successful during school hours, but not usually 
 successful in the play- ground. 
 
 As Mr. Wilson's father was an influential Quaker, he was sent 
 when ten years old to a Quaker school at Ackworth, where he con- 
 tinued for four years. At that time — it may surprise some of those 
 who knew him in later life to be told — he was so extremely fond 
 of books as to wish to be a teacher ; and as his father allowed his 
 sons to choose their line in life, he was sent to a seminary at Earl's 
 Colne in Essex, to qualify himself for that occupation. But the taste 
 did not last long. As we might expect, the natural activity of his 
 
 ' This was published as a supplement to the Economist, soon after Mr. 
 Wilson's death in 1860. 
 
368 Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson, 
 
 disposition soon induced him to regret his choice of a sedentary life. 
 He wrote to Hawick, ' I would rather be the most menial servant 
 in my father's mill than be a teacher;' and he was permitted to 
 return home at once. 
 
 Many years later he often narrated that, after leaving Earlscome, 
 he had much wished to study for the Scottish bar, but the rules of 
 the Society of Friends, as then understood, would not allow his father 
 to consent to the plan. He was sometimes inclined half to regret 
 that he had not been able to indulge this taste, and he was much 
 pleased at being told by a great living advocate that * if he had gone 
 to the bar he would have been very successful.' But at the time 
 there was no alternative, and at sixteen he accordingly commenced a 
 life of business. He did not, however, lose at once his studious 
 predilections. For some years at least he was in the habit of reading 
 a good d"al, very often till late in the night. It was indeed then that 
 he acquired almost all the knowledge of books which he ever possessed. 
 In later life he was much too busy to be a regular reader, and he 
 never acquired the habit of catching easily the contents of books or 
 even of art'cles in the interstices of other occupations. Whatever he 
 did, he did thoroughly. He would not read even an article in a 
 newspaper if he could well help doing so ; but if he read it at all, it 
 was with as much slow, deliberate attentioD as if he were perusing a 
 Treasury minute. 
 
 At the early age we have mentioned he commenced his business 
 life by being appi-enticed to a small hat manufacturer at Hawick ; 
 and it is still remembered that he showed remarkable care and 
 diligence in mastering all the minutiae of the trade. There was, 
 indeed, nothing of the amateur man of business about him at any 
 time. After a biief interval, his father pui-chased his master's busi- 
 ness for him and for an elder brother, named William, and the two 
 brotheis in conjunction continued to carry it on at Hawick during 
 two or three years with much energy. So small a town, however, 
 as Hawick then was, afforded no scope for enterprise in this branch 
 of manufacture, and they resolved to transfer themselves to London. 
 
 Accordingly, in 1824, Mr. Wilson commenced a mercantile life in 
 London (the name of the firm being Wilson, Irwin, & Wilson), and 
 was very prosperous and successful for many yeai's. His pecuniary 
 gains were considerable, and to the practical instruction which he 
 then obtained he always asciibcd his success as an economist and a 
 financier. ' Before I was twenty years of age,' he said at Devonport 
 in 1859, ' I was a partner in a firm in London, and I can only say 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon, James Wilson. 369 
 
 if there is in my life one event which I regard with satisfaction 
 more than another, it is that I had then an opportunity of obtain- 
 ing experience by observation which has contributed in the main to 
 what little public utility I have since been to my country. During 
 ifhese few years I became acquainted — well acquainted — with the 
 middle classes of this country. I also became acquainted in some 
 degree with the working classes ; and also, to a great extent, with 
 the foreign commerce of this country in pretty nearly all parts of the 
 world; and I can only say the information and the experience I 
 thus derived have been to me in my political career of greater 
 benefit than I can now describe.' 
 
 In 1831, the firm of Wilson, Irwin, & Wilson was dissolved 
 by mutual consent. But Mr. Wilson (under the firm of James 
 Wilson & Co.) continued to carry on the same kind of business, and 
 continued to obtain the same success. He began in 1824 with 
 2,000^., the gift of his father, and in 1837 was worth nearly 25,000^. 
 — a fair result for so short a period, and evincing a steady busi- 
 ness-like capacity and judgment ; for it was the fruit not of sudden 
 success in casual speculation, but of regular attention during several 
 years to one business. From circumstances which we shall presently 
 state, he was very anxious that this part of his career should be very 
 clearly understood. 
 
 During these years Mr. Wilson led the usual life of a pros- 
 perous and intellectual man of business. He married,^ and formed 
 an establishment suitable to his means, first near his manufactory 
 in London, and afterwards at Dulwich. He took great pleasure in 
 such intellectual society as he could obtain ; was specially fond of 
 conversing on political economy, politics, statistics, and the other 
 subjects with which he was subsequently so busily occupied. ^ 
 Through life it was one of his remarkable peculiarities to be a very 
 animated man, talking by preference and by habit on inanimate 
 
 ' He was married on January 5, 1832, to Miss Elizabeth Preston, of New- 
 castle, and this has given rise to a statement that he was once in business at 
 Newcastle. This is, however, an entire mistake. He was never in business 
 anywhere except at Hawick and London. It may be added, that on the oc- 
 casion of his marriage he voluntarily ceased to be a member of the Society 
 of Friends, for whom he always, however, retained a high respect. During 
 the rest of his life he was a member of the Church of England. 
 
 2 Among his friends of this period should be especially mentioned Mr. G. 
 R. Porter, of the Board of Trade, the author of The Progress of the Natioiiy 
 whose mind he described twenty years later as the most accurate he had ever 
 known. 
 
 YOL. I. 
 
370 Memoir of the Right Hon, Jaines Wilson. 
 
 subjects. All the verve, vigour, and life which lively people put into 
 exciting pursuits, he put into topics which are usually thought very 
 dry. He discussed the Currency or the Corn Laws with a relish and 
 energy which made them interesting to almost every one. 'How 
 pleasant it is,' he used to say, 'to talk a subject out,' and he fre- 
 quently suggested theories in the excitement of conversation upon 
 his favourite topics which he had never thought of before, but to 
 which he ever afterwards attached, as was natural, much importance. 
 The instructiveness of his conversation was greatly increased as his 
 mind progressed and his experience accumulated. But his genial 
 liveliness and animated vigour were the same during his early years 
 of business life as they were afterwards when he filled important 
 offices of state in England and in Calcutta. Few men can have 
 led a more continuously prosperous and happy life than he did during 
 those years. Unfortunately it was not to continue. 
 
 In 1836, or thereabouts, Mr. Wilson was unfortunately induced 
 to commence a speculation in indigo, in conjunction with a gentle- 
 man in Scotland. It was expected that indigo would be scarce, and 
 that the price would rise rapidly in consequence. Such would indeed 
 appear to have been the case for a short period, since the first pur- 
 chases in which Mr. Wilson took part yielded a profit. In conse- 
 quence of this success, he was induced to try a larger venture, — 
 indeed to embark most of his disposable capital. Unfortunately, the 
 severe crisis of 1837 distui^bed the usual course of all trades, and 
 from its efiect or from some other cause, indigo, instead of rising 
 rapidly, fell rapidly. The effect on Mr. Wilson's position may be 
 easily guessed. A very great capitalist would have been able to 
 hold till better times, but he was not. ' On January 1/ he said 
 at Devonport, ' in a given year, my capital was nearer 25,000/., than 
 24,000/., and it was all lost.' Numerous stories were long circulated 
 most of them exaggerated, and the remainder wholly untrue, as to 
 this period of misfortune in Mr. Wilson's life ; but the truth is very 
 simple. As is usual in such cases, various arrangements were pro- 
 posed and agreed to, were afterwards abandoned, and others substituted 
 for them. A large bundle of papers carefully preserved by him 
 records with the utmost accuracy the whole of the history. The final 
 result will be best described in his own words at Devonport, which 
 precisely correspond with the balance sheets and other documents 
 still in existence They are part of a speech in answer to a calum- 
 nious rumour that had been circulated in the town : — 
 
 * Now, how did I act on this occasion % and this is what this 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon, Jmnes Wilson. 371 
 
 placard has reference to. By my own means alone, I was enabled at 
 once to satisfy in full all claims against me individually, and to 
 provide for the early payment of one-half of the whole of the de- 
 mands against the firm, consisting of myself and three partners. I 
 was further enabled, or the fii-m was enabled, at once to assign pro- 
 perty of sufficient value, as was supposed, to the full satisfaction of 
 the whole of the remainder of the liabilities. An absolute agree- 
 ment was made, an absolute release was given to all the partners ; 
 there was neither a bankruptcy nor insolvency, neither was the busi- 
 ness stopped for one day. The business was continued under the new 
 firm, with which I remained a partner, and from which I ultimately 
 retii-ed in good circumstances. Some years afterwards it turned out 
 that the foreign property which was assigned for the remaining half 
 of the debts of the old firm, of which I was formerly a partner, 
 proved insufficient to discharge them. The legal liability was, as 
 you know, all gone; the arrangement had been accepted — an ar- 
 rangement calculated and believed by all parties to be sufficient to 
 satisfy all claims in full ; but when the affau's of the whole concern 
 were fully wound up, finding that the foreign property had not 
 realised what was anticipated, I had it, I am glad to say, in my power 
 to place at my banker's, having ascertained the amount, a sum of 
 money to discharge all the remainder of that debt, which I considered 
 morally, though not legally, due. This I did without any kind of 
 solicitation — the thing was not named to me, and I am quite sui-e 
 never were the gentlemen more taken by sui'prise than when a friend 
 of mine waited on them privately in London, and presented each 
 of them with a cheque for the balance due to them. Now, perhaps, 
 I have myself to blame for this anonymous attack. I probably 
 brought it on myself, for I always felt that if this matter were made 
 public, it might look like an act of ostentatious obtrusion on my part, 
 and therefore, when I put aside the sum of money necessary for the 
 purpose, I made a request, in the letter I wrote to my bankers, desir- 
 ing them as an especial favour that they would instruct their clerks 
 to mention the matter to no one; and in order that it should be 
 perfectly private, I employed a personal friend of my own in the city 
 of London, in whose care I placed the whole of the cheques, to wait 
 on those gentlemen and present each of them with a cheque, and 
 I obtained from him a promise, and he from them, not to name the 
 circumstance to any one.' The secrecy thus enjoined was well pre- 
 served. Many of the most intimate friends of Mr. Wilson, and his 
 family also, were entirely unacquainted with what he fiad done, and 
 
 B li 2 
 
372 Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson, 
 
 learnt it only througli the accidental medium of an electioneering 
 speech. It may be added, too, that some of those who knew the 
 circumstances, and who have watched Mr. Wilson's subsequent 
 career, believe that at no part of his life did he show greater busi- 
 ness ability, self command, and energy, than at the crisis of his 
 mercantile misfortunes. 
 
 It is remarkable that the preface to Mr. Wilson's first pamphlet, on 
 the * Influences of the Corn Laws,' is dated March 1, 1839, the 
 precise time at which he was negotiating with his creditors for a 
 proper arrangement of his affairs ; and to those who have had an 
 opportunity of observing how completely pecuniary misfortune un- 
 nerves and unmans men — mercantile men, perhaps, more than any 
 others — it will not seem unwoi'thy of remark that a careful pamphlet, 
 with elaborate figures, instinct in every line with vigour and energy, 
 should emanate from a man struggling with extreme pecuniary cala- 
 mity, and daily harrassed with the painful details of it. 
 
 After 1839 Mr. Wilson continued in business for several years, 
 and with very fair success, considering that his capital was much 
 diminished, and that the hat manufacture was in a state of transition. 
 He finally retired in 1844, and invested most of his capital in the 
 foundation and extension of the Economist. 
 
 These facts prove, as we believe, the conclusion which he was very 
 desirous to make clear — that, though unfortunate on a particular 
 occasion, Mr. Wilson was by no means, as a rule, unsuccessful in 
 business. He did not at all like to have it said that he was fit to lay 
 down the rules and the theory of business, but not fit to transact 
 business itself. And the >iv^hole of his life, on the contrary, proves 
 that he possessed an unusual capacity for affairs — an extraordinary 
 transacting ability. 
 
 It may, however, be admitted that Mr. Wilson was in several 
 respects by no means an unlikely man to meet, especially in early life, 
 with occasional misfortune. To the last hour of his life he was always 
 sanguine. He naturally looked at everything in a bright and cheerful 
 aspect ; his tendency was always to form a somewhat too favourable 
 judgment both of things and men. One proof of this may be suffi- 
 cient : he was five years Secretary of the Treasury, and he did not 
 leave it a suspicious man. 
 
 Moreover, Mr. Wilson's temperament was very active and his 
 mind was very fertile. And though in many parts of business these 
 gifts are very advantag''ous, in many also they are very dangerous, if 
 not absolutely disadvantageous. Frequently they are temptations. 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 373 
 
 Capital is always limited \ often it is very limited ; and therefore a 
 man of business, who is managing his own capital, has only defined 
 resources, and can engage only in a certain number of undertakings. 
 But a pei^on of active temperament and fertile mind will soon chafe 
 at that restriction. His inventiveness will show him many ways in 
 which money might easily be made, and he cannot but feel that with 
 his energies he would like to make it. If he have besides a sanguine 
 temperament, he will beheve that he can make it. The records of 
 unfortunate commerce abound in instances of men who have been 
 unsuccessful because they had great mind, great energy, and great 
 hope, but had not money in proportion. Some part of this descrip- 
 tion was, perhaps, applicable to Mr. Wilson in 1839, but exactly how 
 much cannot, after the lapse of so many years, be now known with 
 any accuracy. 
 
 Mr. Wilson's position in middle life was by no means unsuitable 
 to a writer on the subjects in which he afterwards attained eminence. 
 He had acquii-ed a great knowledge of business through a long course 
 of industrious years ; he had proved by habitual success in business 
 that his habitual judgment on it was sound and good. If he had 
 been a man of only ordinary energy and only ordinary ability, he 
 would probably have continued to grow regularly richer and richer. 
 But by a single error natural to a very sanguine temperament and a 
 very active mind, he had destroyed a great part of the results of his 
 industry. He had a new career to seek. He was willing to expend 
 on it the whole of his great energies. He was ready to take all the 
 pains which were necessary to fit himself for success. When he wrote 
 his first pamphlet he used to say that he thought * the sentence s never 
 would come right.* In later life he considered three leading articles 
 in the Economist, full of facts and figures, an easy morning's work, 
 which would not prevent his doing a good deal else too. Mr. Wilson 
 was a finished man of business obliged by necessity to become a writer 
 on business. Perhaps no previous education and no temporary cir- 
 cumstances could be conceived more likely to train a great financial 
 writer and to stimulate his powers. 
 
 In 1839, Mr. Wilson published his ' Influences of the Corn Laws 
 in 1840, the ' Fluctations of Currency, Commerce, and Manufactures;' 
 in 1841, 'The Be venue; or. What should the Chancellor do?' in 
 September, 1843, he established the 'Economist.' The origin of the 
 latter may be interesting to our readers, Mr. Wilson proposed to the 
 editor of the Examiner that he should furnish gratuitously a certain 
 amount of writing to that journal on economical and financial sub- 
 
374 Me7noir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 
 
 j3cts ; but the offer was cbclined, though with some regret, on account 
 of the expense of type and paper. A special paper was, therefore, 
 established, which proved in the end as important as the Examiner 
 itself. From the first, Mr. Wilson was the sole proprietor of the 
 Economist, though he obtained pecuniary assistance — especially from 
 the kindness of Lord Radnor. lie embarked some capital of his own 
 in it from the first, and afterwards repaid all loans made to him for 
 the purpose of establishing it. 
 
 It would not be suitable to the design of this memoir to give any 
 criticism of Mr. Wilson's pamphlets, still less would it become the 
 Economist to pronounce in any manner a judgment on itself. Never- 
 theless, it is a part of the melancholy duty we have undertaken to give 
 some account of Mr. Wilson's characteristic position as a writer on 
 Political Economy, and of tha somewhat peculiar mode in which he 
 dealt with that subject. 
 
 Mr. Wilson dealt with Political Economy like a practical man. 
 Persons more familiar with the literature of science might very easily 
 be found. Mr. Wilson's faculty of reading was small, nor had he any 
 taste for the more refined abstractions in which the more specially 
 scientific political economists had involved themselves. * Political 
 Economy,' said Sydney Smith, ' is become, in the hands of Malthus 
 and Ricardo, a school of metaphysics. All seem to agree what is to 
 be done ; the contention is how the subject is to be divided and defined. 
 Meddle with no such matters.'' We are far from alleging that this 
 saying is just ; nor would Mr. Wilson have by any means assented 
 to it. But though he would have disavowed it in theory, it never- 
 theless embodies his instinctive feeling and characteiistic practice. He 
 * meddled with no such matters ; ' though he did not deny the utility of 
 theoretical refinements, he habitually and steadily avoided them. 
 
 Mr. Wilson's predominating power was what may be called a 
 business- imagination. He had a great power of conceiving transac- 
 tions. Political economy was to him the science of buying and 
 selling, and of the ordinary bargains of men he had a very steady and 
 distinct conception. In explaining such subjects he did not begin, 
 as political economists have been wittily said to do, with ' Suppose a 
 a man upon an island,' but ' What they do in the city is this.' ' The real 
 course of business is so and so.' Most men of business will think this 
 characteristic a great merit, and even a, theoi-etical economist should 
 not consider it a defect. The practical value of the science of poli- 
 tical economy (the observation is an old one as to all sciences) lies in 
 its ' middle principles.' The extreme abstractions from which such 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. jfames Wilson. 375 
 
 intermediate maxims are scientifically deduced lie at some distance 
 from ordinary experience, and ai-e not easily made intelligible to most 
 persons, and when they are made intelligible, most persons do not 
 know how to use them. But the intermediate maxims themselves are 
 not so difficult ; they are easily comprehended and easily used. They 
 have in them a practical life, and come home at once to the * business ' 
 and the ' bosoms ' of men. It was in these that Mr. Wilson excelled. 
 His ' business-imagination ' enabled him to see ' what men did,' and 
 ' why they did it ' why they ought to do it/ and 'why they ought 
 not to do it.' His very clear insight into the real nature of mercantile 
 transactions made him a great and almost an instinctive master of 
 statistical selection. He could not help picking out of a mass of figures 
 those which would tell most. He saw which were really material ; he 
 put them prominently and plainly forward, and he left the rest alone. 
 Even now if a student of Parliamentary papers should alight on a 
 return ' moved for by Mr. Wilson,' he will do well to give to it a more 
 than ordinary attention, for it will be sure to contain something 
 attainable, intelligible, and distinct. 
 
 Mr. Wilson's habit of always beginning with the facts, always 
 arguing from the facts, and always ending with a result applicable to 
 the facts, obtained for his writings an influence and a currency more 
 extensive than would have been anticipated for any writings on 
 political economy. It is not for the Economist to speak of the 
 Economist) but we may observe that through the pages of this 
 journal certain doctrines, whether true or false, have been difi'used, 
 far more widely than they ever were in England before— far more 
 widely than from their somewhat abstract nature we could expect 
 them to be difiused — far more widely than they are difi'used in any 
 other country but this. The business-like method and vigorous 
 simplicity of Mr. Wilson's arguments converted very many ordinary 
 men of business, who would have distrusted any theoretical and 
 abstruse disquisition, and would not have appreciated any elaborate 
 refinements. Nor was this special infiuence confined to mercantile 
 men. It penetrated where it could not be expected to penetrate. 
 The Duke of Wellington was, perhaps, more likely to be prejudiced 
 against a theoretical political economist than any eminent man of 
 his day ; he belonged to the ' prescientific period ; ' he had much of 
 the impatient practicality incident to military insight; he was not 
 likely to be very partial to the * doctrines of Mr. Huskisson * ; — 
 nevertheless, the Duke early pointed out Mr. Wilson's writings to 
 Lord Brougham as possessing especial practical value ; and when the 
 
37^ Memoir of the Rigrd Hon, James Wilson, 
 
 Duke at a much later period was disposed to object to the repeal of 
 the Navigation Laws, Mr. Wilson had a special interview to convince 
 him of its expediency. 
 
 Nor is this faculty of exposition by any means a trifling power. 
 On many subjects it is a common saying ' that he only discovers who 
 proves ; ' but in practical politics we may almost say that he only 
 discovers who convinces. It is of no use to have practical truths 
 received by extraordinary men, unless they are also accepted by 
 oi'dinary men. Whether Mr. Wilson was exactly a great writer, we 
 will not discuss : but he was a great belief producer ; he had upon his 
 own subjects a singular gift of efficient argument — a peculiar power 
 of bringing home his opinions by convincing reasonings to con vincible 
 persons. 
 
 The time at which Mr. Wilson commenced his career as an 
 economical writer was a singularly happy one. An economical cen- 
 tury has elapsed since 1839. The Corn Laws were then in full force, 
 and seemed likely to continue so ; the agriculturists believed in them, 
 and other classes acquiesced in them ; the tentative reforms of Mr. 
 Huskisson were half forgotten ; our tariff perhaps contained some 
 specimen of every defect — it certainly contained many specimens of 
 most defects; duties abounded which cramped trade, which con- 
 tributed nothing to the exchequer, which were maintained that a 
 minority might believe they profited at the expense of the majority ; 
 all the now settled principles of commercial policy were unsettled ; 
 the * currency ' was under discussion ; the Bank of England had been 
 reduced to accept a loan from the Bank of France ; capitalists were 
 disheartened and operatives disaffected ; the industrial energies, which 
 have since multiplied our foreign commerce, were then effectually 
 impeded by legislative fetters and financial restraints. On almost all 
 of these restraints Mr. Wilson had much to say. 
 
 Upon the Corn Laws, Mr. Wilson developed a theory which was 
 rare when he first stated it, but which was generally adopted after- 
 wards, and which subsequent experience has confirmed. He was 
 fond of narrating an anecdote which shows his exact position in 1839. 
 There had just been a meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League at 
 Manchester, and some speakers had maintained, with more or less 
 vehemence, that the coming struggle was to be one of class against 
 class, inasmuch as the Corn Laws were beneficial to the agricultui'ists, 
 though they were injurious to manufacturers. The tendency of the 
 argument was to set one part of the nation against another part. 
 Mr. Wilson was travelling in the North, and was writing in a 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson, 377 
 
 railway carriage part of the 'Influences of the Corn Laws.' By 
 chance a distinguished member of the League, whom Mr. Wilson did 
 not know, happened to travel with him, and asked him what he was 
 about. ' I am wiiting on the Corn Laws,' said Mr. Wilson, ' some- 
 thing in answer to the rubbish they have been talking at Manchester.' 
 
 * You are a bold man,' was the reply ; ' Protection is a difficult 
 doctrine to support by argument.' But it soon appeared that Mr. 
 Wilson was the better Free trader of the two. He held that the Com 
 Laws were injurious to all classes; that the agriculturists suffered 
 from them as much as the manufacturers ; that, in consequence, it 
 was ' rubbish ' to raise a class enmity on the subject, for the interest 
 of all classes was the same. ' We cannot too much lament,' he says 
 in his ' Influences of the Corn Laws,' ' and deprecate the spirit of 
 violence and exaggeration with which this subject has always been 
 approached by each party, which no doubt has been the chief cause 
 why so little of real truth or benefit has resulted from the efibrts of 
 either \ the arguments on either side have been supported by such 
 absm-d and magnified statements of the influences of those prohibitory 
 laws on their separate interestSj as only to furnish each other with a 
 good handle to turn the whole argument into i-idicule. It therefore 
 appears to be necessary to a just settlement of this great question, 
 that these two parties should be first reconciled to a correct view of 
 the real influences thus exerted over their interests, and the interests 
 of the country at large ; to a conviction that the imaginary fears of 
 change on the one hand, and the exaggerated advantages expected on 
 the other hand, are equally without foundation; that there are in 
 reality no difierences in the solid interests of either party ; and that 
 individuals, communities, or countries can only be prosperous in 
 proportion to the prosperity of the whole.' And he proposed to prove 
 
 * that the agricultural interest has derived no 'benefit, but great 
 injury, from the existing laws ; and that the fears and apprehensions 
 entertained of the ruinous consequences which would result to this 
 interest by the adoption of a free and liberal policy with respect to 
 the trade in corn, are without any foundation ; that the value of this 
 property, instead of being depreciated, in the aggregate, would be 
 rather enhanced, and the general interests of the owners most deci- 
 dedly enhanced thereby ; ' and, * that while incalculable benefit would 
 arise to the manufacturing interest and the working population gene- 
 rally, in common with all classes of the community, from the 
 adoption of suck policy, nothing can be more erroneous than the 
 belief that the price of provisions or labour would on the average be 
 
37^ Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 
 
 thereby cheapened, but that, on the contrary, the tendency would 
 rather be to pi'oduce, by a state of generally increased prosperity, a 
 higher average rate of each.' 
 
 Whatever might be thought in 1839, in 1860 we can on one 
 point have no doubt whatever. The repeal of the Corn Laws has 
 been followed by the exact effect which Mr. Wilson anticipated. 
 Whether his argument was right or wrong, the result has corre- 
 sponded with his anticipation. The agriculturists have prospered 
 more — the manufiicturers, the merchants, the operatives, all classes 
 in a word, have prospered moi'e since the Corn Laws were repealed, 
 than they ever did before. As to abstract questions of politics there 
 will always be many controversies ; but upon a patent contempora- 
 neous fact of this magnitude there cannot be a controversy. 
 
 It is indisj)utable also that, for the purposes of the Anti-Corn 
 Law agitation, Mr. Wilson's view was exceed *ngly opportune. Mr. 
 Cobden said not long ago (we quote the substance correctly even if 
 the words are wrong), ' I never made any progress with the Corn 
 Law question while it was stated as a question of class against class.' 
 And a careful inquirer will find that such is the real moral of the 
 whole struggle. If it had continued to be considered soJely or 
 mainly as a manufacturer's question, it might not have been settled 
 to this hour. In support of this opinion, Mr. Wilson made many 
 speeches at the meetings of the Anti-Corn Law League, though he 
 had little taste for the task of agitation. 
 
 We cannot give even an analysis of Mr. Wilson's arguments — 
 our space is too brief — but we will enumerate one or two of the 
 principal points. 
 
 He maintained that, under our protective laws, the agriculturists 
 never had the benefit of a high price, and always sufiered the evil of 
 a low price. When our crop was scanty, it was necessary to sell the 
 small quantity at a high piice, or the farmer could not be remu- 
 nerated. But exactly at that moment foreign corn was permitted by 
 law to be imported. In consequence, during bad years the farmer 
 was exposed to difiiculty and disaster, which were greater because, in 
 expectation of an English demand, large stocks were often hoai-ded on 
 the Continent, and at once poured in to prevent the home-grower 
 compensating himself for a bad harvest by an equivalent rise of 
 price. 
 
 Nor was the farmer better off in very plentiful years. There 
 was a surplus in this country, and that surplus could not be exported, 
 for the price of wheat was always lower abroad than here. The 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 379 
 
 effect is evident. As corn is an article of the first necessity, a certain 
 quantity of it will always be consumed, but more than that quantity 
 will not be readily consumed. A slight surplus is, therefore, invari- 
 ably found to lower the price of such articles excessively. In very 
 good years the farmer had to sell his crop at an unremuneratingly 
 low price, while in very bad years he was prevented from obtaining 
 the high price which alone could compensate him for his outlay. 
 Between the effects of the two sorts of years his con di Lion was de- 
 plorable, and Parliamentary committees were constantly appointed to 
 investigate it. 
 
 Mr. Wilson also explained how much these fluctuations in price 
 contracted the home demand for agricultural produce. The manu- 
 facturing districts were, he showed, subjected by the Corn Laws to 
 alternate periods of great excitement and great depression. When 
 corn was very cheap, the mass of the community had much to spend 
 on other things ; when coi-n was very dear, they had veiy little to 
 spend on those things. In consequence, the producers of ' other 
 things ' were sometimes stimulated by a great demand, and at other 
 times deadened by utter slackness. The labouring classes in the 
 manufacturing districts acquired in periods of plenty a certain taste 
 for what to them were luxuries, and in peiiods of scarcity were 
 naturally soured at being deprived of them. The manufacturers were 
 frequently induced to invest additional capital by sudden augmenta- 
 tions of demand, and were often ruined by its sudden cessation. It 
 was therefore impossible that the manufacturing classes could be steady 
 customers of the agriculturists, for theii* own condition was fluctuating 
 and unsteady. 
 
 Mr. Wilson also showed that if the landed interest was injured 
 by the effects of the Corn Laws, this was of itself enough to injure 
 the manufacturing interests. 
 
 * The connection,' he wrote, * between the manufacturer and the landed 
 interest in this country is much closer than is generally admitted or believed ; 
 not only is the manufacturer dependent on the landed interest for the large 
 portion of his goods which they immediately consume, but also for a very 
 large portion of what he exports to the most distant countries. All commerce 
 is, either directly or indirectly, a simple exchange of the surplus products of 
 one country for those of another. It is therefore a first essential that we 
 should be able to take the cotton of America, the sugar and coffee of India, 
 the silk and teas of China, before they can take our manufactures ; and if 
 this be necessary, then must it follow that in proportion to the extent to 
 which we can take their produce, will they be enabled to take our manufac- 
 tures. Therefore, whatever portion of these products is consumed in this 
 country by the landed interest, must to thai extent enable the manufacturer 
 
380 Memoir of the Right Hon, James Wilson, 
 
 to export his goods in return ; and thus any causes which increase this ability 
 on the part of the landed interest to consume, must give a corresponding 
 additional ability to the manufacturers to export. Every pound of coffee or 
 sugar, every ounce of tea, every article of luxury, the produce of foreign 
 climes, whether consumed within the castles and halls of our wealthiest 
 landowners, or in the humble cottages of our lowliest peasantry, alike repre- 
 sent some portion of the exports of this country. On the other hand, the 
 dependence of the landowner is no less twofold on the manufacturer and 
 merchant. He is not only dependent upon them for their own immediate 
 consumption, but also for the consumption of whatever food enters into the 
 cost price of their goods. Although the English farmer does not export his 
 corn or his other produce in the exact shape and form in which he produces 
 them, they constitute not the less on that account a distinct portion of the 
 exports of this country, and that in the best of all possible forms. Just as 
 much as the manufacturer exports the wool or the silk which enters into the 
 fabrics of those materials, does he export the corn which paid for the labour 
 of spinning and weaving them. It would be an utter impossibility that this 
 country could consume its agricultural produce but for our extensive manu- 
 facturing population ; or that the value of what would be consumed could 
 be near its present rate. If without this aid our agricultural produce were 
 as great as it now is, a large portion would have to seek a market in distant 
 countries : it would then have to be exported in the exact form in which it 
 is produced ; the expenses of which being so large would reduce very greatly 
 from its value and net price, and the landed interest would be immediately 
 affected thereby. But, as it is, the produce of the land is exported in the 
 condensed form of manufactured goods, at a comparatively "trifling expense, 
 which secures a high value to it here. Thus, for example, a few bales of 
 silk or woollen goods may contain as much wheat in their value as would 
 freight a whole ship. To this advantage the landed interest is indebted, 
 exclusively, for the very superior value of property and produce in this 
 country to any other ; because, by our great manufacturing superiority, a 
 market is found for our produce over the whole world, conveyed in the 
 cheapest and most condensed form. While the Chinese, or Indians, buy our 
 cottons, our silks, or our woollens, they buy a portion of the grain and other 
 produce of the land of this country ; and therefore the producer here, while 
 indulging in the delicacies or luxuries of Oriental climes, may only be con- 
 suming a portion of the golden heads of wheat which had gracefully waved 
 in his own fields at a former day. Is it not, therefore, sufficiently clear that 
 no circumstance whatever can either improve or injure one of these interests 
 without immediately in the same way atfecting the other ? The connection 
 is so close that it is impossible to separate or distinguish them. Any circum- 
 stance which limits our commerce must limit our market for agricultural 
 produce ; and any possible circumstance which deteriorates the condition of 
 our agriculturists must deteriorate our commerce, by limiting our imports, 
 and consequently our exports. These are general principles, and are capable 
 of extension to the whole world, in all places, and at all times ; and the same 
 principle as is thus shown to connect and combine the different interests of 
 any one country, just as certainly operates in producing a similar effect be- 
 tween different countries ; and we ardently hope, ere long, to find not only 
 the petty jealousies between different portions of the same community en- 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilsoit, 381 
 
 tirely removed, but that all countries will learn that a free and unrestricted 
 co-operation with each other in matters of commerce can only tend to the 
 general benefit and welfare of all.' 
 
 We do not say that these propositions were exactly discoveries 
 of Mr. Wilson. During the exciting discussion of a great public 
 question, the most impoi-tant truths which relate to it are ' in the 
 air' of the age; many persons see them, or half- see them; and it is 
 impossible to trace the precise parentage of any of them. But we 
 do say that these opinions were exactly suited to the broad and prac- 
 tical understanding of Mr. Wilson ; that they were very effectively 
 illustrated by him — more effectively probably than by any other 
 writer ; that he thought them out for himself with but little know- 
 ledge of previous theories ; that they, piincipally, raised Free Trade 
 from a class question to a national question ; that to them, whether 
 advocated by Mr. Wilson or by others, the success of the Anti-Corn 
 Law agitation was in a great measure owing ; that whatever doubt 
 may formerly have been felt, an ample trial has now proved them to 
 be true. 
 
 Mr. Wilson's pamphlet entitled 'The Ee venue; or, What should 
 the Chancellor do ?' which attracted considerable attention when it 
 was published in 1841, is worth reading now, though dated so many 
 years ago ; for it conta.ins an outline of the financial policy which Sir 
 Kobert Peel commenced, and which Mr. Gladstone has now almost 
 completed. This pamphlet, which is not very short (it has 27 
 moderate pages), was begun as an article for the Morning Chronicle, 
 but proved too long for that purpose. It was written with almost 
 inconceivable rapidity — nearly all, we believe, in a single night — 
 though its principles and its many figures will bear a critical scrutiny 
 even now. 
 
 In the briefest memoir of Mr. Wilson it is necessary to say some- 
 thing of the currency ; but it will not be advisable to say very much. 
 If, however, we could rely on the patience of our readers, we should 
 say a good deal. On no subject, perhaps, did Mr. Wilson take up a 
 more characteristic position. He saw certain broad princii)les dis- 
 tiuctly and steadily, and to these he firmly adhered, no matter what 
 refined theories were suggested, or what the opinion of others 
 might be. 
 
 Mr. Wilson was a stern bullionist. He held that a five-pound 
 note was a promise to pay five pounds. He answered Sii- R. Peel's 
 question, * What is a pound ? ' with Sir Robert's own answer. He 
 said it was a certain specified quantity of gold metal. He held that 
 
382 Memoir^ of the Right Hon. James Wilson, 
 
 all devices for aiding industry by issuing inconvertible notes were 
 certainly foolish, and might perhaps be mischievous. He held that 
 industry could only be really aided by additional capital — by new 
 machines, new instruments, new raw material ; that an addition to a 
 paper currency was as useless to aid deficient capital as it was to feed 
 a hungry population. 
 
 Mr. Wilson held, secondly, that the sine qud non, the great pre- 
 requisite to a good paper currency, was the maintenance of an adequate 
 reserve by the issuer. He believed that a banker should look at his 
 liabilities as a whole — the notes which he has in circulation and the 
 deposits he has in his ledger taken together; and should retain a 
 sufficient portion of them (say one-third) in cash, or in something 
 equivalent to cash, in daily readiness to pay them at once. Mr. 
 Wilson considered that bankers might be trusted to keep such a 
 reserve, as they would be ruined, sooner or later, if they did not ; and 
 if the notes issued by them were always convertible at the pleasure of 
 the holder, he believed that the currency would never be depreciated. 
 
 He thought, however, that, as bank-notes must pass from hand to 
 hand in the market, and as in practice most persons — most traders, 
 especially — must take them in payment whether they wish to do so 
 or not, some special security might properly be required for their 
 payment. He would have allowed any one who liked to issue bank- 
 notes on depositing Consols to a sufficient amount — the amount, that 
 is, of the notes issued, and an adequate percentage in addition. 
 
 Lastly, Mr. Wilson believed that the bank-note circulation exer- 
 cised quite a secondary and unimportant influence upon prices and 
 upon transactions, in comparison with the auxiliary currency of 
 cheques and credits, which has indefinitely augmented during the last 
 thirty yeai'S. So far from regarding the public as constantly ready 
 for an unlimited supply of bank-notes, he thought that it was only 
 in times of extreme panic, when this auxiliary currency is diminished 
 and disturbed, that the bank-notes in the hands of the public either 
 could or would be augmented. He believed that the public only 
 kej)t in their hands as many notes as they wanted for their own con- 
 venience, and that all othei's were in the present day paid back to 
 the banker immediately and necessarily. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, the currency is not discussed in Eng- 
 land with very exact reference to abstract piinciples. The popular 
 question of every thinker is, ' Are you in favour of Peel's Bill, or 
 are you against it ? ' And this mode of discussing the subject always 
 placed Mr. Wilson in a position of some difficulty. He concurred in 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 383 
 
 the aim of Sir R. Peel, but objected to his procedure. He wished to 
 secure the convertibiKtj of the bank-note. He believed that the Act 
 of 1844 indirectly induced the Bank Directors to keep more bullion 
 than they would keep otherwise, and in so far he thought it bene- 
 ficial ; but he also thought that the advantages obtained by it were 
 purchased at a needless price ; that they might have been obtained 
 much more cheaply ; that the machinery of the Act aggravated every 
 panic ; that it tended to fix the attention of the public on bank-notes, 
 and so fostered the mischievous delusion that the augmented issue of 
 paper currency would strengthen industry ; that it neglected to take 
 account of other forms of credit which are equally important with 
 bank-notes ; that, '/or one week in ten years ' — the week of panic — 
 it created needless and intense apprehension, and so tended to cause 
 the ruin of some solvent commercial men. In brief, though he fully 
 believed the professed object of Sir R. Peel — the convertibility of the 
 bank-note — to be beneficial and inestimable, he as fully believed the 
 special means selected by him to be inconvenient and pernicious. 
 
 Opinions akin to Mr. Wilson's, if not identical with them, are 
 very commonly now entertained, both by practical men of business 
 and by professional economists. The younger school of thinkers who 
 have had before them the working of the Act of 1844 and the events 
 of 1847 and 1857, and are not committed by any of the older con- 
 troversies, are especially inclined to them. Yet from peculiar causes 
 they have not been so popular as Mr. Wilson's other opinions. His 
 views of finance and of the effect of Free Trade, which were half 
 heresies when he announced them, have now become almost axioms. 
 But the truth of his currency theory is still warmly controverted. 
 The reason is this : — Sir B. Peel's Act is a sort of compromise which 
 is suited to the English people. It was probably intended by its 
 author as a preliminary step ; it undoubtedly suits no strict theory ; 
 it certainly has great marks of incompleteness ; but, ' it works tole- 
 rably well ; ' if it produces evils at a crisis, ' crises come but seldom ; ' 
 in ordinary times commerce ' goes on very fairly.' The pressure of 
 practical evil upon the English people has never yet been so great as 
 to induce them to face the unpleasant difficulties of the abstract 
 currency question. Mr. Wilson's opinions have, therefore, never 
 been considered by practical men for a practical object, and it is 
 only when so considered that any opinions of his can be duly esti- 
 mated. Their essentially moderate character, too, is unfavoui-able 
 to them — not, indeed, among careful inquirers, but in the hubbub of 
 public controversy. The only great party which has as yet attacked 
 
384 Memoh' of the Right Hon, James Wilson, 
 
 Sir Kobert Peel's Bill is that which desires an extensive issue of 
 inconvertible currency; but to them Mr. Wilson was as much 
 opposed as Sir Robert Peel himself. The two watchwords of the 
 controversy are ' caution ' and ' expansion : ' the advocates of the 
 Act of 1844 have seized on the former, the Birmingham school on 
 the latter; the intermediate, and, as we think, juster opinions of Mr. 
 Wilson have had no party cry to aid them, and they have not as yet 
 therefore obtained the practical influence which he never ceased to 
 anticipate and to hope for them. No moi'e need be said upon the 
 currency question — perhaps we have already said too much ; but to 
 those who knew Mr. Wilson well, no subject is more connected with 
 his memory : he was so fond of expounding it, that its very techni- 
 calities are, in the minds of some, associated with his voice and 
 image. 
 
 But it was not by mere correctness of economical speculation that 
 Mr. Wilson was to rise to eminence. A very accurate knowledge of 
 even the more practical aspects of economical science is not of itself 
 a productive source of income. By the foundation of the Economist 
 Mr. Wilson secured for himself, during the rest of his life, competence 
 and comfort, but it was not solely or simply by writing good political 
 economy in it. The organisation of a first-rate commercial paper in 
 1843 requii'ed a great inventiveness and also a great discretion. 
 Nothing of the kind then existed ; it was not known what the public 
 most wished to know on business interests ; the best shape of com- 
 municating information had to be invented in detail. The labour of 
 creating such a paper and of administering it during its early stages 
 is very great ; and might well deter most men even of superior ability 
 from attempting it. At this period of his life Mr. Wilson used to 
 superintend the whole of the Economist ; to write all the important 
 leaders, nearly all of the unimportant ones ; to make himself master 
 of every commercial question as it arose ; to give practical details as 
 to the practical aspects of it ; to be on the watch for every kind of 
 new commercial information ; to spend hours in adapting it to the 
 daily wants of commercial men. He often woi-ked till far into the 
 moi-ning, and impressed all about him with wonder at the anxiety, 
 labour, and exhaustion he was able to undergo. As has been stated, 
 for some months after the commencement of the Economist he was 
 still engaged in his former business ; and after he relinquished that, 
 he used to write the City article and also leaders for the Morning 
 Chronicle, at the very time that he was doing on his own paper far 
 more than most men would have had endurance of mind or strength 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 385 
 
 of body for. Long afterwards he used to speak of this period as far 
 more exhausting than the most exhausting part of a laborious public 
 life. ' Our public men/ he once said, ' do not know what anxiety 
 means ; they have never known what it is to have their own position 
 dependent on their own exertions.' In 1843, and for some time 
 afterwards, he had himself to bear extreme labour and great anxiety 
 together ; and even his iron frame was worn and tiied by the 
 couj unction. 
 
 Within seven years from the foundation of the Economist, Mr. 
 Wilson dealt effectively and thoroughly with three first-rate subjects 
 — the railway mania, the famine in Ireland, and the panic of 1847, in 
 adcUtion to the entire question of Free Trade, which was naturally 
 the main topic of economical teaching in those years. On all these 
 three tojjics he explained somewhat original opinions, which were 
 novelties, if not paradoxes then, though they are very genei-ally be- 
 lieved now. To his writings on the railway mania he was especially 
 fond of recurring, since he believed that by his warnings, very effec- 
 tively brought out and very constantly reiterated, he had ^ saved 
 several men their fortunes ' at that time. 
 
 The success of the Economist, and the advantage which the pro- 
 prietor of it would derive from a first-hand acquaintance with political 
 life, naturally led him to think of gaining a seat in Parliament, and m\ 
 accidental conversation at Lord Kadnor's table fixed his attention on 
 the borough of Westbury. After receiving a requisition, he visited 
 the place, explained his political sentiments at much length ' from an 
 old cart,' and believed that he saw sufficient chances of success to 
 induce him to take a house there. He showed considerable abilities 
 in electioneering, and a close observer once said of him, ' Mr. Wilson 
 may or may not be the best political economist in England, Lul, 
 depend upon it he is the only political economist who would ever 
 come in for the borough of Westbury.* Though nominally a borough, 
 the constituency is half a rural one, mrich under the influence of 
 certain Conservative squires. The Liberal party were in 1847 only 
 endeavouring to emancipate themselves from a yoke to which they 
 have now again succumbed. Except for Mr. Wilson's constant watch- 
 fulness, his animated geniality, his residence on the spot, his know- 
 ledge of every voter by sight, the Liberal party might never have 
 been successful there. A certain expansive frankness of manner and 
 a wonderful lucidity in explaining his opinions almost to any one, 
 gave Mr. Wilson great advantages as a popular candidate ; and it was 
 very remarkable to find these qualities connected with a strong tusto 
 
 VOL. I. C C 
 
386 Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 
 
 for treating very dry subjects upon professedly abstract principles. 
 So peculiar a combination had the success which it merited. In the 
 summer of 1847 he was elected to serve in Parliament for Westbury. 
 
 Mr. Wilson made his first speech in the House of Commons on the 
 motion for a Committee to inquire into the commercial distress at 
 that time prevalent. And it was considered an act of intellectual 
 boldness for a new member to explain his opinions on so difficult a 
 subject as the currency, especially as they were definitely opposed to a 
 measure supported by such overwhelming Parliamentary authority as 
 the Act of 1844 then was. Judging from the report in 'Hansard/ 
 and from the recollections of some who heard it, the speech was a 
 successful one. It is very clear and distinct, and its tone is very 
 emphatic, without ever ceasing to be considerate and candid. It con- 
 tains a sufficient account of Mr. Wilson's tenets on the currency — so 
 good an account, indeed, that when he read it ten years later, in the 
 panic of 1857, he acknowledged that he did not think he could add 
 a word to it. At the time, however, the test of its Parliamentary 
 success was not the absolute correctness of its abstract principles, but, 
 to use appropriate and technical language, ' its getting a rise out of 
 Peel.' Sir Pobert had used some certainly inconclusive arguments in 
 favour of his favourite measure, and Mr. Wilson made that inconcln- 
 siveness so very clear that he thought it necessary to rise 'and 
 explain,' which, on such a subject, was deemed at the moment a great 
 triumph for a first speech. 
 
 As might be expected from so favourable a commencement, Mr. 
 Wilson soon established a Parliamentary reputation. He was not a 
 formal orator, and did not profess to be so. But he had great powers 
 of exposition, singular command of telling details upon his own subjects, 
 a very pleasing voice, a grave but by no means inanimate manner — 
 qualities which are amply sufficient to gain the respectful attention 
 of the House of Commons. And Mr. Wilson did gain it. But 
 speaking is but half, and in the great majority of cases by far the 
 smaller half, of the duties of a member of Parliament. Mr. Wilson 
 was fond of quoting a saying of Sir P. Peel's, ' That the way to get 
 on in the House of Commons was to take a place and sit there.' 
 He adopted this rule himself, was constant in his attendance at the 
 House, a good listener to other men, and always ready to take trouble 
 with troublesome matters. These plain and business-like qualities, 
 added to his acknowledged ability and admitted acquaintance with 
 a large class of subjects upon which knowledge is rare, gave Mr. 
 Wilson a substantial influence in the House of Commons in an un- 
 
 ,1 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon, James Wilson. 387 
 
 usually short time. The Corn Laws had been repealed, the pitched 
 battle of Free Trade had been fought and won, but much yet re- 
 mained to be done in carrying out its principles with effective pie- 
 cision, in applying them to articles other than corn, in exposing the 
 fallacies still abundantly current, and in answering the exceptional 
 case, which every trade in succession set up for an exceptional 
 protection. These were painful and complex matters of detail, 
 wearisome to very many persons, and rewarding with no edat those 
 who took the trouble to master and explain them. But Mr. Wilson 
 shrank fi-om no detail. For several years before he had a seat in the 
 House, he had been used to explain such topics in countless conversa- 
 tions with the most prominent Free-traders and in the Economist. 
 He now did so in the House of Commons, and his influence corre- 
 spondingly increased. He was able to do an important work better 
 than any one else could do it ; and, in English public life, real work 
 rightly done at the right season scarcely ever fails to meet with a 
 real reward. 
 
 That Mr. Wilson early acquired considerable Parliamentary repu- 
 tation is evinced by the best of all proofs. He was offered office 
 before he had been six months in the House of Commons, thousfh he 
 had, as the preceding sketch will have made evident, no aristocratic 
 connections — though he was believed to be a poorer man than he 
 really was — though writing political articles for newspapers has never 
 been in England the sure introduction to political power which it 
 formerly was in France — though, on the contrary, it has in general 
 been found a hindrance. In a case like Mr. Wilson's, the prize of 
 office was a sure proof of evident prowess in the Parliamentary arena. 
 
 The office which was offered to Mr. Wilson was one of the Secre- 
 taryships of the Board of Control. Mr. Wilson related at Hawick 
 his reluctance to accept it, and his reason. Never having given any 
 special attention to Indian topics, he thought it would be absurd and 
 ridiculous in him to accept an office which seemed to require much 
 special knowledge. But Lord John Russell, with ' that knowledge of 
 public affairs which long experience ensures,' at once explained to 
 him that a statesman, under our Parliamentary system, must be pre- 
 pared to serve the Queen ' whenever he may be called on ; ' and ac 
 cordingly that he must be ready to take any office which he can fill, 
 without at all considering whether it is that which he can best fill. 
 After some deliberation, Mr. Wilson acknowledged the wisdom of 
 this advice, and accepted the office offered him. Long afterwards, 
 in the speech at Hawick to which we have alluded, he said that 
 
 c c 2 
 
388 Memoir of the Right Hon, y antes Wilson. 
 
 without the preliminaiy knowledge of India which he acquired at 
 the Board of Control, he should never have been able to undertake 
 the regulation of her finances. 
 
 When once installed in his ofiice, he devoted himself to it with 
 his usual unwearied industry. And at least on one occasion he had 
 to deal with a congenial topic. The introduction of railways into 
 India was opposed on many gi'ounds, most of which are now for- 
 gotten — such as ' the effect upon the native mind/ ' the impossibility 
 of inducing the Hindoos to travel in that manner/ and the like ; and 
 more serious difficulties occuiTcd in considering the exact position 
 which the Government should assume with regard to such great 
 undertakings in such singular circumstances — the necessity on the 
 one hand, in an Asiatic country where the State is the sole motive 
 power, of the Government's doing something — and the danger, on the 
 other hand, of interfering with private enterprise, by its doing, or 
 attempting to do, too much. Mr. Wilson applied himself vigorously 
 to all these difficulties ; he exercised the whole of his personal in- 
 fluence, and the whole of that which was given to him by his situa- 
 tion, in dissipating the fanciful obstacles which were alleged to be 
 latent in the unknown tendencies of the Oriental mind; while he 
 certainly elaborated — and he believed that he originally suggested — 
 the peculiar form of State guarantee upon the faith of which so many 
 millions of English capital have been sent to develop the industry of 
 India. 
 
 Besides discharging the duties of his office, Mr. Wilson repre- 
 sented the Government of the day on several Committees connected 
 with his peculiar topics, and especially on one which fully investigated 
 the Sugar question. Of the latter, indeed, he became so fully master 
 that some people fancied he must have been in the trade ; so complete 
 was the familiarity which he displayed with ' brown muscovado,' 
 * white clayed,' and all oth?r technical terms which are generally in- 
 scrutably puz iing to Parliamentary statesmen. On a Parliamentary 
 Committee Mr. Wilson appeared to great advantage. Though suf- 
 ficiently confident of the truth of his own opinions, he had essentially 
 a fair mind; he always had the greatest confidence that if the facts 
 were probed the correctness of what he believed would be established, 
 and, therefore, he was always ready to probe the facts to the bottom. 
 He was likewise a great master of the Soci-atic art of inquuy ; he 
 was able to frame a series of consecutive questions which gradually 
 brought an unwilling or a hostile witness to conclusions at which he 
 by no means wished to arrive. His cxaminytion-in-chief, too, was as 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson, 389 
 
 good as his cross-examination, and the animated interest which he 
 evinced in the subject relieved the dreariness which a rehearsed 
 extraction of premeditated answers commonly involves. The exami- 
 nation of Lord Overstone before the Committee of 1848 on Com- 
 mei-cial Distress, that of Mr. Weguelin before the Committee on the 
 Bank Acts in 1857, and several of the examinations before the Com- 
 mittee on Life Tnsui-ance, of which he was the Chairman, may be 
 consulted as models in theii* respective kinds. And it should be 
 stated that no man could be less overbearing in examination or cross- 
 examination ; much was often extracted from a witness which he did 
 not wish to state, but it was always extracted fairly, quietly, and by 
 seemingly inevitable sequence. 
 
 Mr. Wilson continued at the Boai-d of Control till the resignation 
 of Lord John Russell's Cabinet in the spring of 1852. He took part 
 in the opposition of the Liberal party to Lord Derby's Government, 
 and was very deeply interested in the final settlement of the Free 
 Trade question which was effected by the accession of the Protectionist 
 party to office. After a very severe contest he was re-elected for 
 Westbury in July 1852, and on the formation of the Aberdeen 
 Government he accep>ted the office of Financial Secretary to the 
 Treasury, which he continued to hold for five years, until the dissolu- 
 tion of Lord Palmerston's administration in the spring of 1857, and 
 upon his efficiency in which his remarkable reputation as an official 
 administrator was mainly based. 
 
 The Financial Secretaryship of the Treasury is by no means one 
 of the most conspicuous offices in the Government, and but few 
 persons who have not observed political life closely are at all aware 
 eitlier of its difficulty or of its importance. The office is, indeed, a 
 curious example of the half gi-otesque way in which the abstract 
 theory of our historical Constitution contrasts with its practical 
 working. In the theory of the Constitution — a theory which may 
 still be found in popular compendiums — there is an officer called the 
 Lord High Treasurer, who is to advise the Crown and be responsible 
 to the country for all public moneys. In practice, there is no such 
 fimctionary : by law his office is ' in commission.' Certain Lords 
 Commissioners are supposed to form a Board at which financial 
 subjects are discussed, and which is responsible for their due adminis- 
 tration. In practice, there is no such discussion and no such respon- 
 sibility. The functions of the Junior Lords of the Treasury, though 
 not entirely nominal, are but slight. The practical administration of 
 our expenditure is vested in the First Lord of the Treasury, the 
 
390 Memoir of the Right Hon, jf antes Wilson. 
 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Financial Secretary of the 
 Treasury. And of these three the constitutional rule is, that the 
 First Lord of the Treasury is only officially responsible for decisions 
 in detail when he chooses to interfere in those decisions. Accordingly, 
 when a First Lord, as was the case with Sir Peel, takes a great 
 interest in financial questions, the Chancellor of the Exchequer does 
 the usual woi-k of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Secretary of 
 the Treasury has in comparison nothing to do. But when, as was the 
 case in the Governments of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston, the 
 Prime Minister takes no special interest in finance, the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer is very fully employed in the transaction of his own 
 pi oper business, and an enormous mass of work, some of it of extreme 
 importance, falls to the Secretary of the Treasury. Of late yeai-s, 
 the growth of the miscellaneous civil expenditu^-e of the country has 
 greatly augmented that work, great as it was before. In general, it 
 may be said that the whole of the financial detail of our national 
 expenditure is more or less controlled by the Secretary of the 
 Treasury ; that much of it is very closely controlled by him ; and 
 that he has vast powers of practical discretion, if only he be a man of 
 ability, industry, and courage. 
 
 For such an office as this Mr. Wilson had very peculiar qualifi- 
 cations. He was perfectly sure to be right in a plain case ; and by 
 far the larger part of the ordinaiy business of the Government, as 
 of individuals, consists of plain cases. A man who is thoroughly sure 
 to decide eflfectually and correctly the entire mass of easy, obvious 
 cases, is a safer master of practical life than one eminently skilled in 
 difficult cases, but deficient in the more rudimentary qualification. 
 Nor is the power of certainly deciding plain cases rightly, by any 
 means very common, especially among very intellectual men. A 
 certain taint of subtlety, a certain tendency to be wise above the 
 case in hand, mars the practical efficiency of many men whose con- 
 versation and whose powers would induce us to expect that they 
 would be very efficient. Mr. Wilson had not a particle of these 
 defects. He struck off each case with a certain sledge-hammer 
 efficiency, and every plain case at least with infallible accuracy. 
 
 It might seem overstrained eulogy — a eulogy which he would not 
 have wished — to claim for Mr. Wilson an equally infallible power of 
 deciding complicated cases. As to such cases there will always be 
 a doubt. Plain matters speak for themselves : they do not requii-e a 
 dissertation to elucidate them : every man of business, as soon as he 
 hears the I'ight decision of them, knows that it is the right decision. 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 39 1 
 
 But with more refined matters it is not so ; as to points involving an 
 abstract theory, like that of the currency, there will and must be 
 differences of judgment to the end of time. We would not, therefore, 
 whatever may be our own opinion, claim for Mr. Wilson as infallible 
 a power of deciding difficult questions as he certainly possessed of 
 deciding plain questions. But we do claim for him even in such 
 matters the greatest secondary excellence, if, indeed, a secondary 
 excellence it be. Mr. Wilson was pei^fectly certain to be intelligible 
 in the most difficult case. Whether he did right or did wrong, must, 
 as we have said, be from the nature of the subject-matter very argu- 
 able. But what he did and why he did it, was never in doubt for a 
 moment. The archives of the Treasury contain countless minutes 
 from his pen, many of them written with what most men would call 
 rapidity, just while the matter was waiting for decision, and on all 
 sorts of subjects, many of them very complicated ones — yet it may 
 be doubted whether any one of those minutes contains a single sen- 
 tence not thoroughly and conspicuously clear. The same excellence 
 which has been shown in countless articles in the Economist appears 
 in his business-like documents. Wherever his leading articles were 
 wi-itten and under whatever circumstances — and some of the most 
 elaborate of them were written under rather strange circumstances 
 (for he could catch up a pen and begin to write on the most involved 
 topic, at any time, in any place, and, as a casual observer would 
 think, without any premeditation) — but wherever and however 
 these articles might be written, it may be safely asserted that they 
 do not contain a sentence which a man of business need read twice 
 over, or which he would not find easily and certainly intelligible. At 
 the Treasury it was the same. However complicated or involved the 
 matter to be decided might be — however much it might be loaded 
 with detail or perplexed by previous controversy — Mr. Wilson never 
 failed to make immediately clear the exact opinion he formed upon it, 
 the exact grounds upon which he formed it, and the exact course of 
 action which he thought should be adopted upon it. Many persons 
 well acquainted with practical life will be disposed to doubt whether 
 extreme accuracy of decision is not almost a secondary merit as 
 compared with a perfect intelligibility. In many cases it may be 
 better to have a decision which every one can understand, though 
 with some peicentage of error, than an elaborately accurate decision 
 of which the gi-ounds and reasons are not easily grasped, and a plan 
 of action which, from its refined complexity, is an inevitable mystery 
 to the greater number of practical persons. But, putting aside this 
 
392 Memoir of the Right Hon. J antes Wilson. 
 
 abstract discussion, we say without fear of contradiction or of doubt, 
 that Mr. Wilson added to bis almost infallible power of deciding 
 plain cases, an infallible certainty of being entirely intelligible in 
 complicated cases. Men of business will be able to imagine the 
 administrative capacity cei-tain to be produced by the union of exti eme 
 excellence in both qualities. 
 
 One subsidiary faculty that Mr. Wilson possessed, which was very 
 iiseful to him in the multifarious business of the Treasury, was an 
 extraordinary memory. On his own subjects and upon transactions 
 in which he had taken a decisive part, he seemed to recollect anything 
 and everything. He was able to answer questions as to business 
 transacted at the Treasury after the lapse of months and even of years 
 without referring to the papers, and with a perfect certainty of sub- 
 stantial accuracy. He would say, without the slightest effort and 
 without the slightest idea that he was doing anything extraordinary : 
 * Such and such a person came to me at the Treasury, and said so and 
 so, and this is what I said to him.' And it is quite possible that he 
 might i-emember the precise sums of money which were the subject of 
 conversation. A more useful memory for the purposes of life was 
 pei'haps never possessed by any one. In the case of great literary 
 memories, such as that of Lord Macaulay and of others, the fortunate 
 possessor has a continued source of ^pleasurable and constantly recur- 
 ring recollections ; he has a full mind constantly occupied with its 
 own contents, recurring to its long loved passages from its favourite 
 authors constantly and habitually. But Mr. Wilson never recurred 
 to the transactions in which he had been engaged except when he was 
 asked about them ; he lived as little in the past perhaps as is possible 
 for an intellectual person ; but the moment the spring was touched by 
 a question or by some external necessity, all the details of the past 
 transaction started into his memory completely, vividly, and perfectly. 
 He had thus the advantage of always remembering his business, and 
 also the advantage of never being burdened by it. Very few persons 
 can ever have had in equal measure the two merits of a fresh judgment 
 and a full mind. 
 
 Mr. Wilson's memory was likewise assisted by a very even judg- 
 ment. It was easier to him to remember what he had done, because, 
 if he had to do the same thing again, he would be sure to do it in 
 jnecisely the same way. He was not an intolerant person, but the 
 qualities he tolerated least easily were flightiness and inconsistency of 
 purpose. He had furnished his mind, so to say, with fixed principles, 
 and he hated the notion of a mind which was unfurnished. 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 393 
 
 All these mental qualities taken together go fai* to make up tlib 
 complete idea of a perfect administrator of miscellaneous financial 
 business, such as that of the English Treasury now is. And Mr. Wilson 
 had the physical qualities also. An iron constitution which feared 
 110 labour, and was very rarely incapacitated even for an hour by any 
 i'lness, enabled him to accomplish with ease and unconsciously an 
 amount of work which few men would not have shrunk from. In 
 the country, where his habits were necessarily more obvious, he 
 habitually spent the whole day from eleven till eight, with som<o 
 slight interval for a short ride in the middle of the day, over his 
 Treasury bag ; and as such was his notion of a holiday, it may be 
 easily conceived that in London, when he had still more to do in a 
 morning, and had to spend almost every evening in the House of 
 Commons, his work was greater than an ordinary constitution could 
 have borne. And it was. work of a rather peculiar kind. Some men 
 of routine habits spend many hours over their work, but do not labour 
 vei-y intensely at one time ; other men of more excitable natures work 
 impulsively, and clear off everything they do by eager efibrts in a 
 short time. But INIr. Wilson in some sense did both. Although his 
 hours of labour were so very protracted, yet if a casual observer hap- 
 j}3r.ed to enter his library at any moment, he would find him with his 
 blind down to exclude all objects of external interest, his brow work- 
 ing eagerly, his eye fixed intently on the figures before him, and, very 
 likely, his rapid pen passing fluently over the paper. He had all the 
 labour of the chronic worker, and all the labour of the impulsive 
 worker too. And those admitted to his intimacy used to wonder 
 that he was never tiied. He came out of his library in an evening 
 more ready for vigorous conversation — more alive to all subjects of 
 daily interest — more quick to gain new information — more ready to 
 expound complicated topics, than others who had only passed an easy 
 day of idleness or ordinary exertion. 
 
 By the aid of this varied combination of powers, Mr. Wilson was 
 aWe to grapi^le with the miscellaneous financial business of the 
 country with very unusual efiiciency. Most men would have found 
 the office work of the Secretary of the Treasury quite enough, but 
 he was always ready rather to take away labour and responsibilities 
 from other departments than to throw off any upon them. Nor was 
 his efficiency confined to the labours of his office. The Financial 
 Scci-etary of the Treasury has a large part of the financial business of 
 the House of Commons under his control, and is responsible for its 
 accurate arrangement. The passing a measure through the House of 
 
394 Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 
 
 Commons is a matter of detail ; and in the case of the financial 
 measures of the Government, a large part of this — the dullest part, 
 and the most unenvied — falls to the Secretary of the Treasury. He 
 is expected to be the right hand of the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 in all the most wearisome part of the financial business of the House 
 of Commons ; and we have the best authority for stating that, under 
 two Chancellors of the Exchequer very different from one another in 
 many respects, Mr. Wilson performed this part of his duties with 
 singular efficiency, zeal, and judgment. 
 
 The Financial Secretary of the Treasury is likewise expected to 
 answer all questions asked in the House as to the civil estimates — 
 a most miscellaneous collection of figures, as any one may satisfy 
 himself by glancing at them. Mr. Wilson's astonishing memory and 
 great power of lucid exposition enabled him to fulfil this part of his 
 duty with very remarkable efficiency. He gave the dates and the 
 figures without any note, and his exposition was uniformly simple, 
 emphatic, and intelligible, even on the most complicated subjects. The 
 great rule, he used to say, was to answer exactly the exact question ; if 
 you attempted an elaborate exposition, collatei'al issues were necessarily 
 raised, a debate ensued, and the time of the House was lost. 
 
 Mr. Wilson's mercantile knowledge and mercantile sympathies 
 were found to be of much use in the consolidation of the Customs in 
 1853, and he took great interest in settling a scheme for the payment 
 of the duties in cheques instead of bank-notes, by which the cir- 
 culation has been largely economised and traders greatly benefited. 
 During the autumn of 1857, his long study of the currency question, 
 and his first-hand conversancy with the business of the City, wei-e 
 valuable aids to the Administration of the day in the anxious re- 
 sponsibilities and rapidly shifting scenes of an extreme commei'cial 
 crisis. It would be impossible to notice the number of measures in 
 which he took part as Secretary of the Treasury, and equally im- 
 possible to trace his precise share in them. That office ensures to 
 its holder substantial power, but can rarely give him legislative fame. 
 
 On two occasions duiing his tenure of office at the Treasury, Mr. 
 Wilson was offered a different post. In the autumn of 1856 he was 
 offered the Chairmanship of Inland Eevenue, a permanent office of 
 considerable value then vacant, which he declined because he did not 
 consider the income necessary, and because (what some people would 
 think odd) it did not afford sufficient occupation. It was a 'good 
 l)illow,' he said, *but he did not wish to lie down.' The second 
 oillco offered him was the Yico-Prcsidency of the Board of Trade in 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilso7i. 395 
 
 1855, which would have been a step to him in oflScial rank, but 
 which would have entailed a new election, and he did not feel quite 
 secure that the electors of Westbury would again return him. He 
 did not, however, by any means wish for the change, as the Yice- 
 Presidency of the Board of Trade, though nominally superior, is in 
 real power far infeiior to the Secretaryship of the Ti'easury. 
 
 In the general election of 1857, Mr. Wilson was returned for 
 Devonport, for which place he continued to sit till his departure for 
 India. He went out of office on the dissolution of Lord Palmerston's 
 Administration in the spring of 1858, and took an active part in the 
 Liberal opposition to Lord Derby's Government, though it may be 
 remarked that he carefully abstained from using the opportunities 
 afforded him by his long experience at the Treasury, of harassing his 
 less expeiienced successors in financial office by needless and petty 
 difficulties. 
 
 On the return of the Liberal party to power, Mr. Wilson was 
 asked to resume his post at the Treasury, but he declined, as, after 
 five years of laborious service, he wished to have an office of which 
 the details were less absorbing. He accepted, however, the Vice- 
 Piesidency of the Board of Trade — an office which is not in itself 
 atti-active, but which gives its possessor a sort of claim to be President 
 of the Board at the next vacancy. The office of President is fre- 
 quently accompanied by a seat in the Cabinet, and Mr. Wilson's 
 r eputation on all subjects connected with trade was so firmly estab- 
 lished that in his case it would have been practically impossible to 
 pass him over, even if it had been wished. He had, however, secured 
 so firm a position in official circles by his real efficiency, that the 
 dispensers of patronage were, as he believed, likely to give him 
 whatever he desired as soon as the exigencies of pai'ty enabled them 
 to do so. 
 
 He had not been long in office before he had good reason for 
 thinking that he would be offered by the Government the office of 
 Financial Member of the Council of India under very peculiar cir- 
 cumstances. There had never before been such an officer. One 
 member of Council had since 1833 been always sent out from 
 England, but he had always been a lawyer, and his functions were 
 those of a jurist and a regulative administrator, not those of a 
 financier. The mutiny of the Sepoys in 1857 had, however, left 
 behind it a deficit with which the financiers of India did not seem to 
 be able to cope, and which a cumbrous financial system did not give 
 them the best means of vanquishing. There was a general impression 
 
39^ Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 
 
 that some one with an English training and English habits of business 
 would have a better chance of overcoming the most pressing difficulty 
 of India than any one on the spot. And there was an equally 
 general impression that if any one were to be sent from England to 
 India with such an object, Mr. Wilson was the right person. He 
 united high financial reputation, considerable knowledge of India 
 acquii'ed at tlje Board of Control, tried habits of business, long 
 experience at the English Treasury, to the sagacious readiness in 
 dealing with new situations which self-made men commonly have, 
 but which is commonly wanting in others. 
 
 On personal grounds Mr. Wilson was disinclined to accept the 
 office. He was on the thi-eshold of the Cabinet here ; he was entitled 
 by his long tenure of office at the Treasury to a pension which would 
 merge in the salary of Indian Councillor ; the emoluments of the 
 latter office were not necessary to him ; his life was very heavily 
 insuied for the benefit of his family ; though he had never during his 
 tenure of office at the Treasury been connected dii*ectly or indirectly 
 with any kind of commercial undertaking (the Economist alone ex- 
 cepted), some investments which he made in land and sedulities, 
 entii-ely beyond the range of politics, had been very fortunate ; since 
 the year 1844 everything of a pecuniary kind in which he had been 
 concerned had not only prospered, but remarkably prospered ; he felt 
 himself sufficiently rich to pursue the career of prosperous usefulness 
 and satisfied ambition that seemed to be before him here. There was 
 no consideration of private interest which could induce him to under- 
 take anxious and dangerous duties in India ; he even ran some 
 pecuniary risk in leaving this country, as it was possible that in the 
 vicissitudes of newspaper property the Economist might again need the 
 a- tention of its proprietor and founder. On public gi'ounds, however, 
 he believed that it was his duty to accept the office ; he took a keen 
 interest in Indian finance ; believed that the difficulties of it might be 
 conquered, and thought that in even attempting to conquer them he 
 would be doing the greatest and most lasting public service that it 
 was in his power to accomplish. 
 
 He accordingly accepted the office of Financial Member of the 
 Council of India, and proceeded to make somewhat melancholy ar- 
 rangements for leaving this country. He broke up his establishment 
 here, bade farewell to his constituents at Devonport and to the in- 
 habitants of his native place, attended some infiuential public meetings 
 in towns deeply interested in the commerce of India, and on October 
 20, 1859, left England, as it proved, for ever. 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 397 
 
 Of Mr. Wilson's policy in India it would not be proper to give 
 more than a very brief sketch here. That policy is still fresh in the 
 memory of the pubhc; it has been veiy frequently explained and 
 discussed in the Economist ; it is still being tried ; and, though he was 
 fully persuaded of the expediency of his measures, he would not have 
 wished for too warm a eulogy of them while they are as yet untested 
 by the event. In almost the last letter which the present writer 
 received from him, there was a sort of reprimand for permitting thin 
 journal to draw too great an attention to his plans, and to ascribe the 
 merit of them too exclusively to him, and too little to the Govern- 
 ment of which he was a member. 
 
 On his arrival in India he found that the Governor-General was 
 on a tour in the Upper Provinces of India, and before doing any 
 business of importance at Calcutta he ti-avelled thither. This journey 
 he thought very advantageous, because it gave him a great insight 
 into the nature of the country, and enabled him to consult the most 
 ex])erienced revenue officei'S of many lai-ge districts on their respective 
 resources, and on the safest mode of making those resources available 
 to the public. He was much struck with the capabilities of the 
 country, and wrote to England in almost so many words ' that it was 
 a fine country to tax.' On the other hand, however, he was well 
 aware of the difficulty of his task. The only two possible modes of 
 taxation are direct and indirect, and in the case of India thei-e is a 
 difficulty in adopting either. If we select indirect taxation and 
 impose duties on consumable commodities, the natives of India meet 
 us by decHning to consume. Their wants are few, and they will 
 forego most of them if a tax can be evaded thereby. On the other 
 hand, if we adopt in India a direct tax on property or income, there 
 is great difficulty in finding out what each man's property or income 
 is. In England we trust each person to tell us the amount of li's 
 income, but even here the results are not wholly satisfactory; and it 
 would be absui-d to fancy that we can place as much reliance upon 
 the veracity of Orientals as upon that of Englishmen. 
 
 . These difficulties, however, Mr. Wilson w-as prepared to meet. On 
 February 18, 1860, he proposed his Budget to the Legislative Council 
 at Calcutta, and the reception given to it by all classes was remarkably 
 fa\ ourable. He announced, indeed, a scheme of heavy taxation, but 
 the Indian public had been living for a considerable time under a sen- 
 tence of indefinite taxation, and they were glad to know the worst. 
 Anything distinct was better than vague suspense, and, as usual, Mr. 
 Wilson contrived to make his meaning ve7'y distinct. His bearing also 
 
39^ Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 
 
 exercised a great influence over tlie Anglo-Indian public. In England 
 he had been remarkable among official men for his constant animation 
 and thorough naturalness of manner : in his office he was as much 
 himself as at a dinner-table or in the House of Commons : he had no 
 tinge of supercilious politeness or artificial blandness. In any new 
 scene of action — especially in such a scene as Biitish India — these 
 qualities were sure to tell beneficially. Plain directness and emphatic 
 simplicity were the external qualities most likely to be useful at 
 Calcutta, and these were Mr. Wilson's most remarkable qualities. 
 
 The principal feature of Mr. Wilson's Budget was the Income 
 Tax, which he avowedly framed after the English fashion. It is true 
 that but little reliance can, perhaps, be placed on the statements of 
 Oiientals as to their wealth. It is very possible that the complicated 
 machineiy of forms and notices which is in use here may not be 
 applicable in India. All this Mr. Wilson well knew. But he 
 thought that our Indian subjects should have an opportunity of 
 stating their income before they were taxed upon it. If they should 
 state it untruly, or should decline to state it, it might be necessary to 
 tax them arbitrarily. But he did not think it would be decent — 
 that it would be civilised — to begin with an arbitrary assessment. 
 By the Income Tax Act which he framed, it is enacted that other 
 modes may be substituted if in any instance the English mode of 
 assessment should prove inapplicable. In other woids, if our Oiiental 
 fellow-subjects will not tell us the truth when they are asked, we 
 must tax them as best we can, and they cannot justly complain of 
 unfairness and inequality. We would have been mathematically just, 
 if they had given us the means. 
 
 The reception of Mr. Wilson's Budget was universally favourable 
 until the publication of the minute of Sir C. Trevelyan, which, as 
 was inevitable, produced a serious reaction. Heavy taxation can 
 never be very pleasant, and in the Presidency of Madras Sir Charles 
 gave the sanction of the Government — of the highest authority the 
 people saw — to the hope that they would not be taxed. The prompt 
 recall of Sir Charles, however, did much to convince the natives of 
 the firm determination of the English Government, and Mr. Wilson 
 hoped that the ordeal of criticism through which his measures had to 
 pass would ultimately be favourable to them. It certainly secured 
 them from the accusation of being prepai-ed in haste, but it purchased 
 this benefit at the loss to the public of much precious time, and to 
 Mr. Wilson of precious health. Of the substance of this minute it 
 is sufficient to say that its fundamental theory that additional taxation 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson, 399 
 
 of any sort was unnecessary in India, has scarcely been believed by 
 any one except its author. Almost every one has deemed it too 
 satisfactory to be true. 
 
 On another point Mr. Wilson's Budget has been criticised in 
 England, though not in India. It has been considered to be a pro- 
 tective Budget. The mistake has arisen from not attending to what 
 that Budget is. The changes made by Mr. Wilson in the impoi't 
 duties were two. ' The first was a reduction fi'om twenty to ten p'^r 
 cent, upon a long list of articles, including haberdashery, millinery, 
 and hosiery, all part of the cotton trade ; the second was an increase 
 in the duty upon cotton yarn from five to ten per cent., thus creating 
 a uniform tarifi" of ten per cent.' ^ Of these two, it is plain the 
 reduction from twenty per cent, to ten was not a change that would 
 operate as a protection to Indian industry ; and the increase of the 
 duty on yarn has a contrary tendency. Yarn is an earlier, cloth a 
 later, stage of manufacture, and in Mr. Wilson's own words, ' it is a 
 low duty on yarn and a high duty on cloth that encourages native 
 weaving.' For the effect of the genei-al system of high Customs 
 duties in India Mr. Wilson is not responsible, but his predecessors., 
 What he did has no protective tendency. 
 
 If the Income Tax should, as may be fairly hoj)ed, become a per- 
 manent part of the financial system of India, it will serve for a con- 
 siderable period to keep Mr. Wilson's name alive there. So efficient 
 an expedient must always attract the notice of the public, and must 
 in some degree preserve the remembi-ance of the Minister by whom 
 it was proposed. Mr. Wilson, hoAvever, undertook two other 
 measures of very gi-eat importance. One of these has been frequently 
 described as the introduction into India of the English system of 
 public accounts. But it would be more truly described as the intro- 
 duction of a rational system of public accounts. There are three 
 natural steps in national finance, which are certainly clearly marked 
 in our English system, but which have a necessary existence inde- 
 pendent of that recognition. These three are — first, the estimate of 
 future expenditure ; secondly, what we call the Budget, that is the 
 official calculation of the income by which the coming expenditure is 
 to be defrayed \ thirdly, the audit which shows what the expenditure 
 has been and how it has been met. The system of finance which Mr. 
 Wilson found in India neglected these fundamental distinctions. 
 There wei-e no satisfactory estimates of future expenditui-e, and no 
 
 1 Econovnst of Sept. 8, 18G0, p. 97?. 
 
400 Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 
 
 satisfactory calculation of future income. In consequence, the calcu- 
 lations of the official departments have been wrong by millions 
 sterling, and English statesmen have felt great difficulty not only in 
 saying how the deficit was to be removed, but likewise in ascertaining 
 what the amount of the deficit was. At the time of his death, Mr. 
 Wilson was eagei'ly occupied in endeavouring to introduce a better 
 system. 
 
 Mr. Wilson will likewise be remembered as the first Minister 
 who endeavoured to introduce into India a Government paper cur- 
 rency. On March 3, 1860, he introduced into the Legislative Council 
 an elaborate plan for this purpose, which, with a slight modification 
 by Sir C. Wood — curious in the theory of the currency, but practically 
 not very important — will speedily, it is probable, be the fundamental 
 currency law — the ' Peel's Act ' of British India. 
 
 The exact mode in which Mr. Wilson regarded these great objects, 
 will perhaps be better ex^olained by two extracts from his latest 
 letters than by any other means. On July 4, he wrote to a friend : — 
 
 ' Firmness and justice are the only policy for India : no vacilla- 
 tion, or you are gone. They like to be governed ; and respect an iron hand, 
 if it be but equal and just. I have, I think, more confidence than ever 
 that the taxes will be established and collected, and without" disturbance. 
 But the task is still an enormous one. I must retrench yet at least three 
 and a half millions, and get the same sum from my new taxes to make both 
 ends meet. I am putting the screw on very strongly, but rather by an im- 
 proved policy in army and police than in reductions of salaries and est a- 
 blishments, which cannot be made. I have set myself jive great points of 
 policy to introduce and carry out. 
 
 * 1. To extend a system of sound taxation to the great trading classes, 
 who hitherto have been exempted, though chiefly benefited by our enormously 
 increased civil expenditure. 
 
 *2. To establish a paper currency. 
 
 *3. To reform and remodel our financial system, by a plan of annual 
 budgets and estimates, with a Pay Department to check issues, and keep 
 them within the authorised limits, — and an eifective audit. 
 
 '4. A great police system of semi-military organisation, but usually of 
 purely civil application, which, dear though it be, will be cheaper by half a 
 million than our present wretched and expensive system, — and by which we 
 shall be able to reduce our native army to at least one-third; — and by which 
 alone we can utilise the natives as an arm of defence without the danger of 
 congregating idle organised masses. 
 
 ' 5. Public works and roads, with a view to increased production of cotton, 
 flax, wool, and European raw materials. 
 
 ' The four first I have made great progress in : the latter must follow. 
 But you will call it "a large order." However, you have no idea of the in- 
 creased capacity of the mind for undertaking a special service of this kind 
 when removed to a new scene of action, and when one throws oil all the 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilso7t. 401 
 
 cares of engagements less or more trivial by which one is surrounded in 
 ordinary life, and throws one's whole soul into such a special service, and par- 
 ticularly when one feels assured of having the power to carry it out, I can- 
 not tell you with what ease one determines the largest and gravest question 
 here compared with in England ; and I am certain that the more one can 
 exercise real power, there is by far the greater tendency to moderation, care, 
 and prudence.' 
 
 In a second letter, dated July 19, he wrote to the same friend 
 from Barrackpore : — 
 
 *The Indian Exchequer is a huge machine. The English Treasury is 
 nothing to it for complexity, diversity, and remoteness of the points of 
 action. Our great enemies are time and distance ; and with all our frontier 
 territories there is scarcely a day passes that we have not an account of some 
 row or inroad. It is a most unwieldly Empire to be governed on the prin- 
 ciple of forcing civilisation at every point of it. One day it is the frontier 
 of Scinde and a quarrel with our native chiefs, which our Eesident must 
 check ; another, it is an intrigue between Heraut and Cabul, with a report 
 of Kussian forces in the background ; the next, there is a raid upon our 
 Punjab frontiers to be chastised ; then come some accounts of coolness, or 
 misunderstanding, or unreasonable demands from our ally in Nepaul ; then 
 follow some inroads from the savage tribes which inhabit the mountains to 
 the rear of Assam and up the Burrampootra ; then we have reported brawls 
 in Burmah and Pegu, and disputes among the hill tribes whose relations to 
 the British and the Burmah Governments are ill defined ; then we have 
 'Central India, with our loyal chiefs Scindiah and Holkar, independent princes 
 with most turbulent populations, which could not be kept in order a day 
 without the presence of British troops and of the Governor-General's Agent 
 Besides all these, we have among ourselves a thousand questions of internal 
 administration, rendered more difficult by the ill-defined relations between 
 the Supreme and the Subordinate Governments — the latter always striving 
 to encroach, the former to hold its own. Hence, questions do not come be- 
 fore us simply on their merits, but often as involving these doubtful rights. 
 Then we have Courts of Justice to reform, as well as all other institutions of 
 a domestic kind not to reform alone, but to extend to new territories. Then 
 we have a deficit of 7,000,000^., and had a Government teaching the people 
 that all could be done without new taxes. But unfortunately all, except the 
 taxes, are a present certainty — they 2,xq a future contingency. What will 
 they yield ? I have no precise knowledge. I think from three to four millions 
 a year when in full bloom : this financial year not more than a million. 
 
 ' I have now got a Military Finance Commission in full swing ; a Civil 
 Finance Commission also going : I am reorganising the Finance, Pay, and 
 Accountant-General's Department, in order to get all the advantage of the 
 English system of estimates, Pay Office, and Audit : — and this with as little 
 disturbance of existing plans as possible. The latter is a point I have es- 
 pecially aimed at. On the whole, and almost without an exception, I have 
 willing allies in all the existing Offices. No attompt that I see is anywhere 
 made to thwart or impede. 
 
 ' You can well understand, then, how full my hands are, if to all these 
 VOL. I. D D 
 
402 Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 
 
 you add the new currency arrangements ; you will not then wonder that my 
 health has rendered it necessary to come down here for a day or two to get 
 some fresh air.' 
 
 It will be observed that in the last extract Mr. Wilson alludes to 
 his impaired health. For some time after his arrival in India he 
 seemed scarcely to feel the climate. He certainly did not feel it as 
 much as might have been anticipated. He worked extremely hard ; 
 scarcely wrote a private letter, but devoted the whole of his great 
 energies to the business around him. His letters for a considerable 
 time abound with such expressions as ' Notwithstanding all my hard 
 work, my health is excellent.' From the commencement of the rainy 
 season at Calcutta, however, he ceased to be equally well, his state 
 began to arouse the apprehensions of experienced observers, and he 
 was warned that he should retire for a short time to a better climate. 
 He would not, however, do so until his financial measures had ad- 
 vanced sufficiently far for him to leave them. His position was a 
 very peculiar one. In general, if one administrator leaves his post, 
 another is found to fill it up. But Mr. Wilson was a unique man at 
 Calcutta. He was sent there because he had certain special qualifica- 
 tions, which no one there possessed ; and, accordingly, he had no one 
 to rely on in his peculiar functions save himself. His presence on the 
 spot was likewise very important. The administration of a depart- 
 ment can be frequently transacted by letter, but the organisation of 
 new departments and new schemes requires the unremitting attention 
 of the organiser — the impulse of his energy. The interest, too, which 
 Mr. Wilson took in public business was exceptionally great, and no 
 one who knew him well would suppose that he would leave Calcutta 
 while necessary work, or what he deemed so, was to be done there. 
 
 Nor was labour the sole trial to which his constitution was ex- 
 posed. The success of measures so extensive as his, must ever be a 
 matter of anxious doubt until the event decides ; and in his case there 
 were some momentary considerations to aggravate that anxiety. There 
 was no experience of such taxation as he had proposed, and the efiect 
 of it must therefore be difficult to foresee. Moreover, for a brief 
 period, a famine seemed to be imminent in Upper India, which must 
 have disturbed the whole operation of his financial schemes. In his 
 debilitated state of health this last source of anxiety seemed much to 
 weigh upon him. 
 
 About the middle of July he went for a week to Barrackpore, 
 near Calcutta. The change was, however, too slight, and, as might 
 be expected, he returned to Calcutta without any material benefit. 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 403 
 
 From that time the disease gradually augmented, and on the evening 
 of August 2, he went to bed never to rise from it again. For many 
 days he contiuiied to be very ill, and his family expeiienced the usual 
 alternations of hope and fear. He was quite aware of his critical 
 state, and made all necessary arrangements with his habitual delibera- 
 tion and calmness. 
 
 Lord Canning saw him on the 9 th for the last time, and was 
 much struck with the change which illness had made in him. He 
 believed that he saw death in his face, and was deeply impressed with 
 the vivid interest which, even in the last stage of weakness, he took 
 in public affairs, with his keen desii-e for the success of his plans, and 
 with the little merit which he was disposed to claim for his own share 
 in them. 
 
 It was hoped that he would be strong enough to bear removal, and 
 it was intended to delay the mail steamer for a few hours to take him 
 to sea— the usual remedy at Calcutta for diseases of the climate. But 
 when the time came there was no chance that his strength would be 
 adequate to the effort. During the whole of the 11th he sank rapidly, 
 and at half past six in the evening he breathed his last. 
 
 The mourning in Calcutta was more universal than had ever 
 been remembered. He had not been long in India, but while he had 
 been there he filled a conspicuous and great part ; he had done so 
 much, that there were necessarily doubts in the minds of some as to 
 the expediency of part of it. No such doubts, however, were thought 
 of now. ' That he should have come out to die here ! ' — ' That he 
 should have left a great English career for this ! ' — were the phrases in 
 every one's mouth. The funeral was the largest ever known at 
 Calcutta. It was attended by almost the entire population, from the 
 Governor-General downwards, and not a single voice, on any ground 
 whatever, dissented from the general grief. 
 
 Very little now remains to be said. A few scattered details, some 
 of them perhaps trivial, must complete this sketch. 
 
 Mr. Wilson's face was striking, though not handsome. His features 
 were irregular, but had a peculiar look of mind and energy, while a 
 strongly marked brow and very large eyebrows gave to all who saw 
 him an unfailing impression of massive power and firm determination. 
 
 Mr. Wilson's moral character in its general features resembled his 
 intellectual. He was not a man of elaborate scruples and difficult 
 doubts, and he did not much like those who were. His conscientious- 
 ness was of a plain, but very practical kind ; he had a single-minded 
 rectitude which wont straight to the pith of a moral difliculty— which 
 
404 Memoir of the Right Hon. James IVilson, 
 
 showed him what he ought to do. On such subjects he was some- 
 what intolerant of speculative reasoning. ' The common sense is so 
 and so/ he used to say, and he did not wish to be plagued with any- 
 thing else. 
 
 In one respect his manner did not uniformly give a true impres- 
 sion of him. He always succeeded in conveying his meaning, in stating 
 what he wished to have done and why he wished it ; he never failed 
 to convince any one of his inexhaustible vigour and his substantial 
 ability ; but he sometimes did fail in giving a true expression to his 
 latent generosity and real kindliness. He shrank almost nervously 
 from the display of feeling, and sometimes was thought by casual 
 observers to feel nothing, when in reality he was much more sensitive 
 than they were. Another peculiarity which few persons would have 
 attributed to him aided this mistake. It may seem strange in a 
 pi-actised Secretary of the Treasuiy, but he used to say that through 
 life he had suffered far more from shyness than from anything else. 
 Only very close observers could have discovered this, for his manner 
 was haljitually impressive and unfaltering. But common acquaint- 
 ances, sometimes even persons who saw him on business, erroneously 
 imputed to unthinking curtness, that which was due in truth to ner- 
 vous hesitation. 
 
 With his subordinates in oflSce he was, however, very cordial. 
 He discussed matters of business with them, listened carefully to their 
 suggestions or objections^ and very frequently was guided by their 
 recommendations. He had no paltry desire to monopolise the whole 
 credit of what might be done. He probably worked harder than any 
 Secretary of the Treasury before or since ; bub so far from depi esising 
 those below him, he encouraged their exertions, co-operated with 
 them, and was ever ready to bear hearty testimony to the tried merit 
 of efficient public servants. He was also quite willing to forget the 
 temporary misunderstandings which are so apt to occur among earnest 
 men who take different views of public affairs. He was eminently 
 tolerant. Though he had almost always a strong conviction of his 
 own, he never felt the least wish to silence discussion. Believing 
 that his own opinions were true, he was only the more confident that 
 the more the subject was discussed, the more true they would be found 
 to be. Few men ever transacted so much important business with so 
 little of i;he pettiness of personal feeling. 
 
 . In the foregoing sketch Mr. Wilson has of necessity been re- 
 garded almost exclusively as a i)ublic man, but his private life has 
 mnny remarkable features, if it were proper to enlarge on them. 
 
Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 405 
 
 His enjoyment of simple pleasures, of society, of scenery, of his home, 
 was very vi\dd. No one who saw him in his unemployed moments 
 would have believed that he was one of the busiest public men of his 
 time. He never looked worn or jaded, and always contributed more 
 than his share of geniality and vivacity to the scene around him. 
 Like Sir Walter Scott, he loved a bright light ; and the pleasantest 
 society to him was that of the cheerful and the young. 
 
 The universal regret which has been expressed at Mr. Wilson's 
 death is the best tribute to his memory. It has been universally felt 
 that on his special subjects and for his peculiar usefulness he was ' a 
 finished man,' and in these respects he has left few such behind him. 
 The qualities which he had the opportunity of displaying were those 
 of an administrator and a financier. But some of those who knew 
 him best, behoved that he only wanted an adequate opportunity to 
 show that he had also many of the higher qualities of a statesman ; 
 and it was the feeling that he would perhaps have such an opportunity 
 which reconciled them to his departure for India. As will have 
 been evident from this narrative, he was placed in many changing 
 circumstances, and in the gradual ascent of life was tried by many 
 increasing difficulties. But at every step his mind grew with the 
 occasion. We at least believe that he had a great sagacity and a 
 great equanimity, which might have been fitly exercised on the very 
 greatest afiaii-s. But it was not so to be. 
 
 The intelligence of Mr. Wilson's death was formally communicated 
 by the Indian to the Home Government in the following despatch : — 
 
 * To the Right Honourable Sir Charles Wood, Bart., G.C.B., Secretary of State 
 
 for India. 
 
 * SiE, — The painful task is imposed upon us of announcing to Her Majesty's 
 Government the death of our colleague, the Right Honourable James Wilson. 
 
 * 2. This lamentable event took place on the evening of Saturday, the 11th, 
 after an illness of a few days. 
 
 ' 3. We enclose a copy of the notification by which we yesterday communi- 
 cated the mournful intelligence to the public. The funeral took place at the 
 time mentioned in the notification ; and the great respect in which our 
 lamented colleague was held was evinced by a very large attendance of the 
 general community, in addition to the public officers, civil and military. 
 
 < 4. We are unable adequately to express our sense of the great loss which 
 the public interests have sustained in Mr. Wilson's death. We do not doubt, 
 however, that this will be as fully appreciated by Her Majesty's Government, 
 as it is by ourselves, and as we have every reason to believe it will be by the 
 community generally throughout India. 
 
 *5. But we should not satisfy our feelings in communicating this sad 
 occurrence to Iler Majesty's Government, if we did not state our belief that 
 
4o6 Memoir of the Right Hon. James Wilson. 
 
 the fatal disease which has removed Mr. Wilson from amongst us was in a 
 great degree the consequence of his laborious application to the duties of his 
 high position, and of his conscientious determination not to cease from the 
 prosecution of the important measures of which he had charge, until their 
 success was ensured. Actuated by a self-denying devotion to the objects for 
 which he came out to this country, Mr. "Wilson continued to labour indefati- 
 gably long after the general state of his health had become such as to cause 
 anxiety to the physician who attended him, and it was within a few days 
 only after the Income Tax had become law, and when, at the earnest request 
 of his medical adviser, he was preparing to remove from Calcutta for the 
 remainder of the rainy season, that he was seized with the illness that has 
 carried him off. 
 
 < 6. It is our sincere conviction that this eminent public servant sacrificed 
 his life in the discharge of his duty.— We have, &c., 
 
 ' Canning. 
 
 » H B. E. Frere. 
 
 * C. Beadon. 
 
 *FoRT William, August 13.' 
 
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