illness which he had in 1868 he deliberately abandoned the attempt, and
held, I believe rightly, that his political judgment was all the sounder,
as well as his health the better, for a quieter life. Indeed, he used to
say of himself that it would be very difficult for him to find a borough
which would be willing to elect him its representative, because he was
‘between sizes in politics.’ Nevertheless in 1866 he was very nearly
elected for Bridgewater, but was by no means pleased that he was so near
success, for he stood to lose, not to win, in the hope that if he and
his party were really quite pure, he might gain the seat on petition.
He did his very best, indeed, to secure purity, though he failed. As a
speaker, he did not often succeed. His voice had no great compass, and
his manner was somewhat odd to ordinary hearers; but at Bridgewater he
was completely at his ease, and his canvass and public speeches were
decided successes. His examination, too, before the Commissioners sent
down a year or two later to inquire into the corruption of Bridgewater
was itself a great success. He not only entirely defeated the somewhat
eagerly pressed efforts of one of the Commissioners, Mr. Anstey, to
connect him with the bribery, but he drew a most amusing picture of the
bribable electors whom he had seen only to shun. I will quote a little
bit from the evidence he gave in reply to what Mr. Anstey probably
regarded as home-thrusts:—
‘42,018. (_Mr. Anstey._) Speaking from your experience of
those streets, when you went down them canvassing, did any
of the people say anything to you, or in your hearing, about
money?—Yes, one I recollect standing at the door, who said,
“I won’t vote for gentlefolks unless they do something for
I. Gentlefolks do not come to I unless they want something
of I, and I won’t do nothing for gentlefolks, unless they do
something for me.” Of course, I immediately retired out of that
house.
‘42,019. That man did not give you his promise?—I retired
immediately; he stood in the doorway sideways, as these rustics
do.
‘42,020. Were there many such instances?—One or two, I
remember. One suggested that I might have a place. I
immediately retired from him.
‘42,021. Did anybody of a better class than those voters,
privately, of course, expostulate with you against your
resolution to be pure?—No, nobody ever came to me at all.
‘42,022. But those about you, did any of them say anything
of this kind: “Mr. Bagehot, you are quite wrong in putting
purity of principles forward. It will not do if the other side
bribes?”—I might have been told that I should be unsuccessful
in the stream of conversation; many people may have told me
that; that is how I gathered that if the other side was impure
and we were pure, I should be beaten.
‘42,023. Can you remember the names of any who told you
that?—No, I cannot, but I daresay I was told by as many as
twenty people, and we went upon that entire consideration.’
To leave my subject without giving some idea of Bagehot’s racy
conversation would be a sin. He inherited this gift, I believe, in great
measure from his mother, to whose stimulating teaching in early life
he probably owed also a great deal of his rapidity of thought. A lady
who knew him well, says that one seldom asked him a question without
his answer making you either think or laugh, or both think and laugh
together. And this is the exact truth. His habitual phraseology was
always vivid. He used to speak, for instance, of the minor people, the
youths or admirers who collect round a considerable man, as his ‘fringe.’
It was he who invented the phrase ‘padding,’ to denote the secondary
kind of article, not quite of the first merit, but with interest and
value of its own, with which a judicious editor will fill up perhaps
three-quarters of his review. If you asked him what he thought on a
subject on which he did not happen to have read or thought at all, he
would open his large eyes and say, ‘My mind is “to let” on that subject,
pray tell me what to think;’ though you soon found that this might be
easier attempted than done. He used to say banteringly to his mother, by
way of putting her off at a time when she was anxious for him to marry,
‘A man’s mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.’ He told
me once, at a time when the _Spectator_ had perhaps been somewhat more
eager or sanguine on political matters than he approved, that he always
got his wife to ‘break’ it to him on the Saturday morning, as he found it
too much for his nerves to encounter its views without preparation. Then
his familiar antitheses not unfrequently reminded me of Dickens’s best
touches in that line. He writes to a friend, ‘Tell —— that his policies
went down in the _Colombo_, but were fished up again. _They are dirty,
but valid._’ I remember asking him if he had enjoyed a particular dinner
which he had rather expected to enjoy, but he replied, ‘No, the sherry
was bad; tasted as if L—— had dropped his h’s into it.’ His practical
illustrations, too, were full of wit. In his address to the Bridgewater
constituency, on the occasion when he was defeated by eight votes, he
criticised most happily the sort of bribery which ultimately resulted in
the disfranchisement of the place.
‘I can make allowance,’ he said, ‘for the poor voter; he is
most likely ill-educated, certainly ill-off, and a little
money is a nice treat to him. What he does is wrong, but it
is intelligible. What I do not understand is the position
of the rich, respectable, virtuous members of a party which
countenances these things. They are like the man who stole
stinking fish; they commit a crime, and they get no benefit.’
But perhaps the best illustration I can give of his more sardonic humour
was his remark to a friend who had a church in the grounds near his
house:—‘Ah, you’ve got the church in the grounds! I like that. It’s
well the tenants shouldn’t be _quite_ sure that the landlord’s power
stops with this world.’ And his more humorous exaggerations were very
happy. I remember his saying of a man who was excessively fastidious in
rejecting under-done meat, that he once sent away a cinder ‘because it
was red;’ and he confided gravely to an early friend that when he was in
low spirits, it cheered him to go down to the bank, and dabble his hand
in a heap of sovereigns. But his talk had finer qualities than any of
these. One of his most intimate friends—both in early life, and later in
Lincoln’s Inn—Mr. T. Smith Osler, writes to me of it thus:—
‘As an instrument for arriving at truth, I never knew anything
like a talk with Bagehot. It had just the quality which the
farmers desiderated in the claret, of which they complained
that though it was very nice, it brought them “no forrader;”
for Bagehot’s conversation did get you forward, and at a most
amazing pace. Several ingredients went to this; the foremost
was his power of getting to the heart of the subject, taking
you miles beyond your starting point in a sentence, generally
by dint of sinking to a deeper stratum. The next was his
instantaneous appreciation of the bearing of everything you
yourself said, making talk with him, as Roscoe once remarked,
“like riding a horse with a perfect mouth.” But most unique of
all was his power of keeping up animation without combat. I
never knew a power of discussion, of co operative investigation
of truth, to approach to it. It was all stimulus, and yet no
contest.’
But I must have done; and, indeed, it is next to impossible to convey,
even faintly, the impression of Bagehot’s vivid and pungent conversation
to anyone who did not know him. It was full of youth, and yet had all
the wisdom of a mature judgment in it. The last time we met, only five
days before his death, I remarked on the vigour and youthfulness of his
look, and told him he looked less like a contemporary of my own than one
of a younger generation. In a pencil-note, the last I received from him,
written from bed on the next day but one, he said, ‘I think you must
have had the evil eye when you complimented me on my appearance. Ever
since, I have been sickening, and am now in bed with a severe attack on
the lungs.’ Indeed, well as he appeared to me, he had long had delicate
health, and heart disease was the immediate cause of death. In spite of
a heavy cold on his chest, he went down to his father’s for his Easter
visit the day after I last saw him, and he passed away painlessly in
sleep on the 24th March 1877, aged 51. It was at Herds Hill, the pretty
place west of the river Parret, that flows past Langport, which his
grandfather had made some fifty years before, that he breathed his
last. He had been carried thither as an infant to be present when the
foundation stone was laid of the home which he was never to inherit;
and now very few of his name survive. Bagehot’s family is believed to
be the only one remaining that has retained the old spelling of the
name, as it appears in Doomsday Book, the modern form being Bagot. The
Gloucestershire family of the same name, from whose stock they are
supposed to have sprung, died out in the beginning of this century.
Not very many perhaps, outside Bagehot’s own inner circle, will carry
about with them that hidden pain, that burden of emptiness, inseparable
from an image which has hitherto been one full of the suggestions of
life and power, when that life and power are no longer to be found; for
he was intimately known only to the few. But those who do will hardly
find again in this world a store of intellectual sympathy of so high a
stamp, so wide in its range and so full of original and fresh suggestion,
a judgment to lean on so real and so sincere, or a friend so frank and
constant, with so vivid and tenacious a memory for the happy associations
of a common past, and so generous in recognising the independent value of
divergent convictions in the less pliant present.
R. H. H.
_November 1, 1878._
LITERARY STUDIES.
[Illustration]
_THE FIRST EDINBURGH REVIEWERS._[17]
(1855.)
It is odd to hear that the Edinburgh Review was once thought an
incendiary publication. A young generation, which has always regarded the
appearance of that periodical as a grave constitutional event (and been
told that its composition is intrusted to Privy Councillors only), can
scarcely believe, that once grave gentlemen kicked it out of doors—that
the dignified classes murmured at ‘those young men’ starting such views,
abetting such tendencies, using _such_ expressions—that aged men said,
‘Very clever, but not at all sound.’ Venerable men too exaggerate. People
say the Review was planned in a garret, but this is incredible. Merely to
take such a work into a garret would be inconsistent with propriety; and
the tale that the original conception, the pure idea to which each number
is a quarterly aspiration, ever was in a garret is the evident fiction of
reminiscent age—striving and failing to remember.
Review writing is one of the features of modern literature. Many able
men really give themselves up to it. Comments on ancient writings are
scarcely so common as formerly; no great part of our literary talent is
devoted to the illustration of the ancient masters; but what seems at
first sight less dignified, annotation on modern writings was never so
frequent. Hazlitt started the question, whether it would not be as well
to review works which did not appear, in lieu of those which did—wishing,
as a reviewer, to escape the labour of perusing print, and, as a man, to
save his fellow-creatures from the slow torture of tedious extracts. But,
though approximations may frequently be noticed—though the neglect of
authors and independence of critics are on the increase—this conception,
in its grandeur, has never been carried out. We are surprised at first
sight, that writers should wish to comment on one another; it appears a
tedious mode of stating opinions, and a needless confusion of personal
facts with abstract arguments; and some, especially authors who have
been censured, say that the cause is laziness—that it is easier to write
a review than a book—and that reviewers are, as Coleridge declared, a
species of maggots, inferior to bookworms, living on the delicious brains
of real genius. Indeed it _would_ be very nice, but our world is so
imperfect. This idea is wholly false. Doubtless it is easier to write one
review than one book: but not, which is the real case, many reviews than
one book. A deeper cause must be looked for.
In truth, review-writing but exemplifies the casual character of modern
literature. Everything about it is temporary and fragmentary. Look at
a railway stall; you see books of every colour—blue, yellow, crimson,
‘ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted,’ on every subject, in every
style, of every opinion, with every conceivable difference, celestial
or sublunary, maleficent, beneficent—but all small. People take their
literature in morsels, as they take sandwiches on a journey. The volumes
at least, you can see clearly, are not intended to be everlasting. It
may be all very well for a pure essence like poetry to be immortal in a
perishable world; it has no feeling; but paper cannot endure it, paste
cannot bear it, string has no heart for it. The race has made up its mind
to be fugitive, as well as minute. What a change from the ancient volume!—
‘That weight of wood, with leathern coat o’erlaid,
Those ample clasps, of solid metal made;
The close-press’d leaves, unoped for many an age,
The dull red edging of the well-fill’d page;
On the broad back the stubborn ridges roll’d,
Where yet the title stands in tarnish’d gold.’
And the change in the appearance of books has been accompanied—has been
caused—by a similar change in readers. What a transition from the student
of former ages!—from a grave man, with grave cheeks and a considerate
eye, who spends his life in study, has no interest in the outward world,
hears nothing of its din, and cares nothing for its honours, who would
gladly learn and gladly teach, whose whole soul is taken up with a few
books of ‘Aristotle and his Philosophy,’—to the merchant in the railway,
with a head full of sums, an idea that tallow is ‘up,’ a conviction that
teas are ‘lively,’ and a mind reverting perpetually from the little
volume which he reads to these mundane topics, to the railway, to the
shares, to the buying and bargaining universe. We must not wonder that
the outside of books is so different, when the inner nature of those for
whom they are written is so changed.
It is indeed a peculiarity of our times, that we must instruct so many
persons. On politics, on religion, on all less important topics still
more, every one thinks himself competent to think,—in some casual manner
does think,—to the best of our means must be taught to think rightly.
Even if we had a profound and far-seeing statesman, his deep ideas and
long-reaching vision would be useless to us, unless we could impart a
confidence in them to the mass of influential persons, to the unelected
Commons, the unchosen Council, who assist at the deliberations of the
nation. In religion the appeal now is not to the technicalities of
scholars, or the fictions of recluse schoolmen, but to the deep feelings,
the sure sentiments, the painful strivings of all who think and hope.
And this appeal to the many necessarily brings with it a consequence.
We must speak to the many so that they will listen,—that they will like
to listen,—that they will understand. It is of no use addressing them
with the forms of science, or the rigour of accuracy, or the tedium of
exhaustive discussion. The multitude are impatient of system, desirous of
brevity, puzzled by formality. They agree with Sydney Smith: ‘Political
economy has become, in the hands of Malthus and Ricardo, a school of
metaphysics. All seem agreed what is to be done; the contention is, how
the subject is to be divided and defined. _Meddle with no such matters._’
We are not sneering at ‘the last of the sciences;’ we are concerned with
the essential doctrine, and not with the particular instance. Such is the
taste of mankind.
We may repeat ourselves.
There is, as yet, no Act of Parliament compelling a _bonâ fide_ traveller
to read. If you wish him to read, you must make reading pleasant. You
must give him short views, and clear sentences. It will not answer to
explain what all the things which you describe, are _not_. You must
begin by saying what they are. There is exactly the difference between
the books of this age, and those of a more laborious age, that we
feel between the lecture of a professor and the talk of the man of
the world—the former profound, systematic, suggesting all arguments,
analysing all difficulties, discussing all doubts,—very admirable, a
little tedious, slowly winding an elaborate way, the characteristic
effort of one who has hived wisdom during many studious years, agreeable
to such as he is, anything but agreeable to such as he is not: the
latter, the talk of the manifold talker, glancing lightly from topic to
topic, suggesting deep things in a jest, unfolding unanswerable arguments
in an absurd illustration, expounding nothing, completing nothing,
exhausting nothing, yet really suggesting the lessons of a wider
experience, embodying the results of a more finely tested philosophy,
passing with a more Shakespearian transition, connecting topics with a
more subtle link, refining on them with an acuter perception, and what
is more to the purpose, pleasing all that hear him, charming high and
low, in season and out of season, with a word of illustration for each
and a touch of humour intelligible to all,—fragmentary yet imparting
what he says, allusive yet explaining what he intends, disconnected
yet impressing what he maintains. This is the very model of our modern
writing. The man of the modern world is used to speak what the modern
world will hear; the writer of the modern world must write what that
world will indulgently and pleasantly peruse.
In this transition from ancient writing to modern, the review-like essay
and the essay-like review fill a large space. Their small bulk, their
slight pretension to systematic completeness, their avowal, it might be
said, of necessary incompleteness, the facility of changing the subject,
of selecting points to attack, of exposing only the best corner for
defence, are great temptations. Still greater is the advantage of ‘our
limits.’ A real reviewer always spends his first and best pages on the
parts of a subject on which he wishes to write, the easy comfortable
parts which he knows. The formidable difficulties which he acknowledges,
you foresee by a strange fatality that he will only reach two pages
before the end; to his great grief there is no opportunity for discussing
them. As a young gentleman, at the India House examination, wrote ‘Time
up’ on nine unfinished papers in succession, so you may occasionally read
a whole review, in every article of which the principal difficulty of
each successive question is about to be reached at the conclusion. Nor
can any one deny that this is the suitable skill, the judicious custom of
the craft.
Some may be inclined to mourn over the old days of systematic arguments
and regular discussion. A ‘field-day’ controversy is a fine thing.
These skirmishes have much danger and no glory. Yet there is one immense
advantage. The appeal now is to the mass of sensible persons. Professed
students are not generally suspected of common sense; and though they
often show acuteness in their peculiar pursuits, they have not the
various experience, the changing imagination, the feeling nature, the
realised detail which are necessary _data_ for a thousand questions.
Whatever we may think on this point, however, the transition has been
made. The Edinburgh Review was, at its beginning, a material step in
the change. Unquestionably, the _Spectator_ and _Tatler_, and such-like
writings, had opened a similar vein, but their size was too small.
They could only deal with small fragments, or the extreme essence of a
subject. They could not give a view of what was complicated, or analyse
what was involved. The modern man must be told what to think—shortly, no
doubt—but he _must_ be told it. The essay-like criticism of modern times
is about the length which he likes. The Edinburgh Review, which began the
system, may be said to be, in this country, the commencement on large
topics of suitable views for sensible persons.