WILLIAM CORY (Johnson) was born at Torrington in Devonshire, on January
9, 1823. He was the son of Charles William Johnson, a merchant, who
retired at the early age of thirty, with a modest competence, and
married his cousin, Theresa Furse, of Halsdon, near Torrington, to whom
he had long been attached. He lived a quiet, upright, peaceable life
at Torrington, content with little, and discharging simple, kindly,
neighbourly duties, alike removed from ambition and indolence. William
Cory had always a deep love of his old home, a strong sense of local
sanctities and tender associations. "I hope you will always feel," his
mother used to say, "wherever you live, that Torrington belongs to
you." He said himself, in later years, "I want to be a Devon man and a
Torrington man." His memory lingered over the vine-shaded verandah, the
jessamine that grew by the balustrade of the steps, the broad-leaved
myrtle that covered the wall of the little yard.
The boy was elected on the foundation at Eton in 1832, little guessing
that it was to be his home for forty years. He worked hard at school,
became a first-rate classical scholar, winning the Newcastle Scholarship
in 1841, and being elected Scholar of King's in 1842. He seems to have
been a quiet, retiring boy, with few intimate friends, respected for
his ability and his courtesy, living a self-contained, bookish life,
yet with a keen sense of school patriotism--though he had few pleasant
memories of his boyhood.
Honours came to him fast at Cambridge. He won the Chancellor's English
Medal with a poem on Plato in 1843, the Craven Scholarship in 1844. In
those days Kingsmen did not enter for the Tripos, but received a degree,
without examination, by ancient privilege. He succeeded to a Fellowship
in 1845, and in the same year was appointed to a Mastership at Eton by
Dr. Hawtrey. At Cambridge he seems to have read widely, to have thought
much, and to have been interested in social questions. Till that time
he had been an unreflecting Tory and a strong High Churchman, but he
now adopted more Liberal principles, and for the rest of his life was a
convinced Whig. The underlying principle of Whiggism, as he understood
it, was a firm faith in human reason. Thus, in a letter of 1875, he
represents the Whigs as saying to their adversaries, "You are in a
majority now: if I were an ultra-democrat or counter of noses, I
should submit to you as having a transcendental --sometimes called
divine--right; if I were a redcap, I should buy dynamite and blow you
up; if I were a Tory, I should go to church or to bed; as it is, I go to
work to turn your majority into a minority. I shall do it by reasoning
and by attractive virtue." He intended in his university days, and
for some time after, to take Anglican Orders, though he had also some
thought of going to the Bar; but he accepted a Mastership with much
relief, with the hope, as he wrote in an early letter, "that before my
time is out, I may rejoice in having turned out of my pupil-room perhaps
one brave soldier, or one wise historian, or one generous legislator, or
one patient missionary." The whole of his professional life, a period of
twenty-seven years, was to be spent at Eton.
No one who knew William Cory will think it an exaggeration to say that
his mind was probably one of the most vigorous and commanding minds
of the century. He had a mental equipment of the foremost order, great
intellectual curiosity, immense vigour and many-sidedness, combined with
a firm grasp of a subject, perfect clearness of thought, and absolute
lucidity of expression.
He never lost sight of principles among a crowd of details; and though
he had a strong bias in certain directions, he had a just and catholic
appreciation even of facts which told against his case. Yet his
knowledge was never dry or cold; it was full to the brim of deep
sentiment and natural feeling.
He had a wide knowledge of history, of politics, both home and foreign,
of political economy, of moral science. Indeed, he examined more than
once in the Moral Science Tripos at Cambridge.
He had a thorough acquaintance with and a deep love of literature; and
all this in spite of the fact that he lived a very laborious and wearing
life as a school-teacher, with impossibly large classes, and devoted
himself with whole-hearted enthusiasm to his profession. His knowledge
was, moreover, not mere erudition and patient accumulation. It was all
ready for use, and at his fingers' ends. Moreover, he combined with
this a quality, which is not generally found in combination with the
highly-developed faculties of the doctrinaire, namely an intense and
fervent emotion. He was a lover of political and social liberty,
a patriot to the marrow of his bones; he loved his country with a
passionate devotion, and worshipped the heroes of his native land,
statesmen, soldiers, sailors, poets, with an ardent adoration; the glory
and honour of England were the breath of his nostrils. Deeds of heroism,
examples of high courage and noble self-sacrifice, were the memories
that thrilled his heart. As a man of fifty he wept over Lanfrey's
account of Nelson's death; he felt our defeat at Majuba Hill like a keen
personal humiliation; his letter on the subject is as the words of one
mourning for his mother.
But his was not a mere poetical emotion, supplying him with
highly-coloured rhetoric, or sentimental panegyric. He had a technical
and minute acquaintance with the detailed movement of wars, the precise
ships and regiments engaged, the personalities and characters of
commanders and officers, the conduct of the rank and file.
Many delightful stories remain in the memories of his friends and
hearers to attest this. His pupil-room at Eton, in what was formerly
the old Christopher Inn, was close to the street, and the passage of the
Guards through Eton, to and from their Windsor quarters, is an incident
of constant occurrence. When the stately military music was heard far
off, in gusty splendour, in the little town, or the fifes and drums of
some detachment swept blithely past, he would throw down his pen and
go down the little staircase to the road, the boys crowding round
him. "Brats, the British army!" he would say, and stand, looking and
listening, his eyes filled with gathering tears, and his heart full of
proud memories, while the rhythmical beat of the footsteps went briskly
echoing by.
Again, he went down to Portsmouth to see a friend who was in command of
a man-of-war; he was rowed about among the hulks; the sailors in the gig
looked half contemptuously at the sturdy landsman, huddled in a cloak,
hunched up in the stem-sheets, peering about through his spectacles. But
contempt became first astonishment, and then bewildered admiration, when
they found that he knew the position of every ship, and the engagements
in which each had fought.
He was of course a man of strong preferences and prejudices; he thought
of statesmen and patriots, such as Pitt, Nelson, Castlereagh, Melbourne,
and Wellington, with an almost personal affection. The one title to his
vehement love was that a man should have served his country, striven to
enhance her greatness, extended her empire, and safeguarded her liberty.
It was the same with his feeling for authors. He loved Virgil as a
friend; he almost worshipped Charlotte Bronte. He spoke of Tennyson
as "the light and joy of my poor life." In 1868 he saw Sir W. Scott's
portrait in London, and wrote: "Sir Walter Scott, shrewd yet wistful,
boyish yet dry, looking as if he would ask and answer questions of the
fairies--him I saw through a mist of weeping. He is my lost childhood,
he is my first great friend. I long for him, and hate the death that
parts us."
In literature, the first claim on his regard was that a writer should
have looked on life with a high-hearted, generous gaze, should have
cared intensely for humanity, should have hoped, loved, suffered, not
in selfish isolation, but with eager affection. Thus he was not only a
philosophical historian, nor a mere technical critic; he was for ever
dominated by an intense personal fervour. He cared little for the manner
of saying a thing, so long as the heart spoke out frankly and freely;
he strove to discern the energy of the soul in all men; he could forgive
everything except meanness, cowardice, egotism and conceit; there was no
fault of a generous and impulsive nature that he could not condone.
Thus he was for many boys a deeply inspiring teacher; he had the art
of awakening enthusiasm, of investing all he touched with a mysterious
charm, the charm of wide and accurate knowledge illuminated by feeling
and emotion. He rebuked ignorance in a way which communicated the desire
to know. There are many men alive who trace the fruit and flower of
their intellectual life to his generous and free-handed sowing. But
in spite of the fact that the work of a teacher of boys was intensely
congenial to him, that he loved generous boyhood, and tender souls, and
awakening minds with all his heart, he was not wholly in the right place
as an instructor of youth. With all his sympathy for what was weak and
immature, he was yet impatient of dullness, of stupidity, of caution;
much that he said was too mature, too exalted for the cramped and
limited minds of boyhood. He was sensitive to the charm of eager,
high-spirited, and affectionate natures, but he had also the equable,
just, paternal interest in boys which is an essential quality in a wise
schoolmaster. Yet he was apt to make favourites; and though he demanded
of his chosen pupils and friends a high intellectual zeal, though he
was merciless to all sloppiness and lack of interest, yet he forfeited
a wider influence by his reputation for partiality, and by an obvious
susceptibility to grace of manner and unaffected courtesy. Boys who
did not understand him, and whom he did not care to try to understand,
thought him simply fanciful and eccentric. It is perhaps to be regretted
that unforeseen difficulties prevented his being elected Tutor of his
old College, and still more that in 1860 he was passed over in favour of
Kingsley, when the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, submitted his name
to the Queen for the Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge. Four
men were suggested, of whom Blakesley and Venables refused the post. Sir
Arthur Helps was set aside, and it would have been offered to Johnson,
if the Prince Consort had not suggested Kingsley. Yet Johnson would
hardly have been in his right place as a teacher of young men. He would
have been, on the one hand, brought into contact with more vigorous and
independent minds, capable of appreciating the force and width of
his teaching, and of comprehending the quality and beauty of his
enthusiasms. But, on the other hand, he was too impatient of any
difference of opinion, and, though he loved equal talk, he hated
argument. And after all, he did a great work at Eton; for nearly a
quarter of a century he sent out boys who cared eagerly and generously
for the things of the mind.
A second attempt was made, in 1869, to get him appointed to the history
professorship, but Seeley was considered to have a better claim. Writing
to a friend on the subject, Johnson said: "I am not learned. I don't
care about history in the common meaning of the word."
It is astonishing to see in his Diaries the immense trouble he took to
awaken interest among his pupils. He was for ever trying experiments;
he would read a dozen books to enable him to give a little scientific
lecture, for he was one of the first to appreciate the educational value
of science; he spent money on chemical apparatus, and tried to interest
the boys by simple demonstrations. His educational ideals can best
be seen in an essay full of poetical genius, on the education of the
reasoning faculties, which he contributed to the "Essays on a Liberal
Education," edited in 1867 by F. W. Farrar. Any one who wishes to
understand Johnson's point of view, should study this brilliant
and beautiful discourse. It is not only wise and liberal, but it is
intensely practical, besides containing a number of suggestive and
poetical thoughts.
He loved his Eton life more and more every year. As with Eumelus of
Corinth, "dear to his heart was the muse that has the simple lyre and
the sandals of freedom." He took refuge, as it became clear to him that
his wider ambitions could not be realised, that he would not set the
mark he might have set upon the age, in a "proud unworldliness," in
heightened and intensified emotion. He made many friendships. He taught,
as the years went on, as well or better than ever; he took great delight
in the society of a few pupils and younger colleagues; but a shadow fell
on him; he began to feel his strength unequal to the demands upon it;
and he made a sudden resolution to retire from his Eton work.
He had taken some years before, as a house for his holidays, Halsdon, a
country place near his native Torrington, which belonged to his brother,
Archdeacon Wellington Furse of Westminster, who had changed his name
from Johnson to Furse, on succeeding to the property of an uncle.
Here he retired, and strove to live an active and philosophical life,
fighting bravely with regret, and feeling with sensitive sorrow the
turning of the sweet page. He tried, too, to serve and help his simple
country neighbours, as indeed he had desired to do even at Eton, by
showing them many small, thoughtful, and unobtrusive kindnesses, just
as his father had done. But he lived much, like all poetical natures, in
tender retrospect; and the ending of the bright days brought with it
a heartache that even nature, which he worshipped like a poet, was
powerless to console. But he loved his woods and sloping fields, and the
clear river passing under its high banks through deep pools. It served
to remind him sadly of his beloved Thames, the green banks fringed with
comfrey and loosestrife, the drooping willows, the cool smell of
the weedy weir; of glad hours of light-hearted enjoyment with his
boy-companions, full of blithe gaiety and laughter.
After a few years, he went out to Madeira, where he married a wife
much younger than himself, Miss Rosa Caroline Guille, daughter of a
Devonshire clergyman; and at Madeira his only son was born, whom he
named Andrew, because it was a name never borne by a Pope, or, as he
sometimes said, "by a sneak." He devoted himself at this time to the
composition of two volumes of a "Guide to Modern English History." But
his want of practice in historical writing is here revealed, though it
must be borne in mind that it was originally drawn up for the use of a
Japanese student. The book is full of acute perceptions, fine judgments,
felicitous epigrams--but it is too allusive, too fantastic; neither has
it the balance and justice required for so serious and comprehensive a
task. At the same time the learning it displays is extraordinary. It was
written almost without books of reference, and out of the recollections
of a man of genius, who remembered all that he read, and considered
reading the newspaper to be one of the first duties of life.
Cory's other writings are few. Two little educational books are worth
mentioning: a book of Latin prose exercises, called _Nuces_, the
sentences of which are full of recondite allusions, curious humour, and
epigrammatic expression; and a slender volume for teaching Latin lyrics,
called _Lucretilis_, the exercises being literally translated from the
Latin originals which he first composed. _Lucretilis_ is not only, as
Munro said, the most Horatian verse ever written since Horace, but full
of deep and pathetic poetry. Such a poem as No. xxvii., recording the
abandoning of Hercules by the Argonauts, is intensely autobiographical.
He speaks, in a parable, of the life of Eton going on without him, and
of his faith in her great future:
"sed Argo
Vela facit tamen, aureumque
"Vellus petendum est. Tiphys ad hoc tenet
Clavum magister; stat Telamon vigil,
Stat Castor in prora, paratus
Ferre maris salientis ictus."
After some years in Madeira, he came back to England and settled in
Hampstead; his later days were clouded with anxieties and illness. But
he took great delight in the teaching of Greek to a class of girls, and
his attitude of noble resignation, tender dignity, and resolute interest
in the growing history of his race and nation is deeply impressive. He
died in 1892, on June II, of a heart-complaint to which he had long been
subject.
In person William Cory was short and sturdy; he was strong and vigorous;
he was like the leader whom Archilochus desired, "one who is compact of
frame, showing legs that bend outward, standing firm upon his feet, full
of courage." He had a vigorous, massive head, with aquiline nose,
and mobile lips. He was extraordinarily near-sighted, and used strong
glasses, holding his book close to his eyes. He was accustomed to bewail
his limited vision, as hiding from him much natural beauty, much human
drama; but he observed more closely than many men of greater clearness
of sight, making the most of his limited resources. He depended much
upon a hearing which was preternaturally acute and sensitive, and was
guided as much by the voice and manner, as by the aspect of those among
whom he lived. He had a brisk, peremptory mode of address, full
of humorous mannerisms of speech. He spoke and taught crisply and
decisively, and uttered fine and feeling thoughts with a telling
brevity. He had strong common sense, and much practical judgment.
He was intensely loyal both to institutions and friends, but never
spared trenchant and luminous criticisms, and had a keen eye for
weakness in any shape. He was formidable in a sense, though truly
lovable; he had neither time nor inclination to make enemies, and had a
generous perception of nobility of character, and of enthusiasms however
dissimilar to his own. He hankered often for the wider world; he would
have liked to have a hand in politics, and to have helped to make
history. He often desired to play a larger part; but the very stirrings
of regret only made him throw himself with intensified energy into the
work of his life. He lived habitually on a higher plane than others,
among the memories of great events, with a consciousness of high
impersonal forces, great issues, big affairs; and yet he held on with
both hands to life; he loved all that was tender and beautiful. He never
lost himself in ambitious dreams or abstract speculations. He was a
psychologist rather than a philosopher, and his interest and zest
in life, in the relationships of simple people, the intermingling of
personal emotions and happy comradeships, kept him from ever forming
cynical or merely spectatorial views of humanity. He would have been far
happier, indeed, if he could have practised a greater detachment; but,
as it was, he gathered in, like the old warrior, a hundred spears; like
Shelley he might have said--
"I fall upon the thorns of life; I bleed."
His is thus a unique personality, in its blending of intense mental
energy with almost passionate emotions. Few natures can stand the strain
of the excessive development of even a single faculty; and with William
Cory the qualities of both heart and head were over-developed. There
resulted a want of balance, of moral force; he was impetuous where he
should have been calm, impulsive where he should have been discreet.
But on the other hand he was possessed of an almost Spartan courage;
and through sorrow and suffering, through disappointment and failure,
he bore himself with a high and stately tenderness, without a touch of
acrimony or peevishness. He never questioned the love or justice of God;
he never raged against fate, or railed at circumstance. He gathered up
the fragments with a quiet hand; he never betrayed envy or jealousy; he
never deplored the fact that he had not realised his own possibilities;
he suffered silently, he endured patiently.
And thus he is a deeply pathetic figure, because his great gifts and
high qualities never had full scope. He might have been a great
jurist, a great lawyer, a great professor, a great writer, a great
administrator; and he ended as a man of erratic genius, as a teacher in
a restricted sphere, though sowing, generously and prodigally, rich and
fruitful seed. With great poetical force of conception, and a style
both resonant and suggestive, he left a single essay of high genius, a
fantastic historical work, a few books of school exercises. A privately
printed volume of Letters and Journals reveals the extraordinary quality
of his mind, its delicacy, its beauty, its wistfulness, its charm. There
remains but the little volume of verse which is here presented, which
stands apart from the poetical literature of the age. We see in these
poems a singular and original contribution to the poetry of the century.
The verse is in its general characteristics of the school of Tennyson,
with its equable progression, its honied epithets, its soft cadences,
its gentle melody. But the poems are deeply original, because they,
combine a peculiar classical quality, with a frank delight in the spirit
of generous boyhood. For all their wealth of idealised sentiment, they
never lose sight of the fuller life of the world that waits beyond the
threshold of youth, the wider issues, the glory of the battle, the hopes
of the patriot, the generous visions of manhood. They are full of the
romance of boyish friendships, the echoes of the river and the cricket
field, the ingenuous ambitions, the chivalry, the courage of youth and
health, the brilliant charm of the opening world. These things are but
the prelude to, the presage of, the energies of the larger stage; his
young heroes are to learn the lessons of patriotism, of manliness, of
activity, of generosity, that they may display them in a wider field.
Thus he wrote in "A Retrospect of School Life":--
"Much lost I; something stayed behind,
A snatch, maybe, of ancient song.
Some breathings of a deathless mind,
Some love of truth, some hate of wrong.
And to myself in games I said,
'What mean the books? can I win fame
I would be like the faithful dead,
A fearless man, and pure of blame.'"
Then, too, there are poems of a sombre yet tender philosophy, of an
Epicureanism that is seldom languid, of a Stoicism that is never hard.
In this world, where so much is dark, he seems to say, we must all clasp
hands and move forwards, shoulder to shoulder, never forgetting the
warm companionship in the presence of the blind chaotic forces that wave
their shadowy wings about us. We must love what is near and dear, we
must be courageous and tender-hearted in the difficult valley. The book
is full of the passionate sadness of one who feels alike the intensity
and the brevity of life, and who cannot conjecture why fair things must
fade as surely as they bloom.
The poems then reflect a kind of Platonic agnosticism; they offer no
solution of the formless mystery; but they seem rather to indicate the
hope that, in the multiplying of human relationship, in devotion to all
we hold dear, in the enkindling of the soul by all that is generous and
noble and unselfish, lies the best hope of the individual and of the
race. Uncheered by Christian hopefulness, and yet strong in their belief
in the ardours and passions of humanity, these poems may help us to
remember and love the best of life, its days of sunshine and youth, its
generous companionships, its sweet ties of loyalty and love, its brave
hopes and ardent impulses, which may be ours, if we are only loving and
generous and high-hearted, to the threshold of the dark, and perhaps
beyond.