LITERARY STUDIES
VOL. II.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
LITERARY STUDIES
BY THE LATE
WALTER BAGEHOT
M.A. AND FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
_WITH A PREFATORY MEMOIR_
EDITED BY
RICHARD HOLT HUTTON
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
_FOURTH EDITION_
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1891
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
ESSAY PAGE
I. EDWARD GIBBON (1856) 1
II. BISHOP BUTLER (1854) 54
III. STERNE AND THACKERAY (1864) 106
IV. THE WAVERLEY NOVELS (1858) 146
V. CHARLES DICKENS (1858) 184
VI. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1856) 221
VII. BÉRANGER (1857) 261
VIII. MR. CLOUGH’S POEMS (1862) 299
IX. HENRY CRABB ROBINSON (1869) 323
X. WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, AND BROWNING; OR, PURE,
ORNATE, AND GROTESQUE ART IN ENGLISH POETRY
(1864) 338
_APPENDIX._
I. THE IGNORANCE OF MAN (1862) 391
II. ON THE EMOTION OF CONVICTION (1871) 412
III. THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF TOLERATION (1874) 422
IV. THE PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION BILL (1874) 438
LITERARY STUDIES.
_EDWARD GIBBON._[1]
(1856.)
A wit said of Gibbon’s autobiography, that he did not know the difference
between himself and the Roman Empire. He has narrated his ‘progressions
from London to Buriton, and from Buriton to London,’ in the same
monotonous majestic periods that record the fall of states and empires.
The consequence is, that a fascinating book gives but a vague idea of its
subject. It may not be without its use to attempt a description of him in
plainer though less splendid English.
The diligence of their descendant accumulated many particulars of
the remote annals of the Gibbon family; but its real founder was the
grandfather of the historian, who lived in the times of the ‘South Sea.’
He was a capital man of business according to the custom of that age—a
dealer in many kinds of merchandise—like perhaps the ‘complete tradesman’
of Defoe, who was to understand the price and quality of _all_ articles
made within the kingdom. The preference, however, of Edward Gibbon the
grandfather was for the article ‘shares;’ his genius, like that of Mr.
Hudson, had a natural tendency towards a commerce in the metaphysical
and non-existent; and he was fortunate in the age on which his lot was
thrown. It afforded many opportunities of gratifying that taste. Much
has been written on panics and manias—much more than with the most
outstretched intellect we are able to follow or conceive; but one thing
is certain, that at particular times a great many stupid people have a
great deal of stupid money. Saving people have often only the faculty of
saving; they accumulate ably, and contemplate their accumulations with
approbation; but what to do with them they do not know. Aristotle, who
was not in trade, imagined that money is barren; and barren it is to
quiet ladies, rural clergymen, and country misers. Several economists
have plans for preventing improvident speculation; one would abolish
Peel’s act, and substitute one-pound notes; another would retain Peel’s
act, and make the calling for one-pound notes a capital crime: but our
scheme is, not to allow any man to have a hundred pounds who cannot
prove to the satisfaction of the Lord Chancellor that he knows what to
do with a hundred pounds. The want of this easy precaution allows the
accumulation of wealth in the hands of rectors, authors, grandmothers,
who have no knowledge of business, and no idea except that their money
now produces nothing, and ought and must be forced immediately to produce
something. ‘I wish,’ said one of this class, ‘for the largest immediate
income, and I am therefore naturally disposed to purchase an _advowson_.’
At intervals, from causes which are not to the present purpose, the money
of these people—the blind capital (as we call it) of the country—is
particularly large and craving; it seeks for some one to devour it, and
there is ‘plethora’—it finds some one, and there is ‘speculation’—it is
devoured, and there is ‘panic.’ The age of Mr. Gibbon was one of these.
The interest of money was very low, perhaps under three per cent. The
usual consequence followed; able men started wonderful undertakings;
the ablest of all, a company ‘for carrying on an undertaking of great
importance, but no one to know what it was.’ Mr. Gibbon was not idle.
According to the narrative of his grandson, he already filled a
considerable position, was worth sixty thousand pounds, and had great
influence both in Parliament and in the City. He applied himself to
the greatest bubble of all—one so great, that it is spoken of in many
books as the cause and parent of all contemporary bubbles—the South-Sea
Company—the design of which was to reduce the interest on the national
debt, which, oddly enough, it did reduce, and to trade exclusively to
the South Sea or Spanish America, where of course it hardly did trade.
Mr. Gibbon became a director, sold and bought, traded and prospered; and
was considered, perhaps with truth, to have obtained much money. The
bubble was essentially a fashionable one. Public intelligence and the
quickness of communication did not then as now at once spread pecuniary
information and misinformation to secluded districts; but fine ladies,
men of fashion—the London world—ever anxious to make as much of its
money as it can, and then wholly unwise (it is not now very wise) in
discovering how the most _was_ to be made of it—‘went in’ and speculated
largely. As usual, all was favourable so long as the shares were rising;
the price was at one time very high, and the agitation very general; it
was, in a word, the railway mania in the South Sea. After a time, the
shares ‘hesitated,’ declined, and fell; and there was an outcry against
everybody concerned in the matter, very like the outcry against the οἱ
περὶ Hudson in our own time. The results, however, were very different.
Whatever may be said, and, judging from the late experience, a good deal
is likely to be said, as to the advantages of civilisation and education,
it seems certain that they tend to diminish a simple-minded energy. The
Parliament of 1720 did not, like the Parliament of 1847, allow itself
to be bored and incommoded by legal minutiæ, nor did it forego the use
of plain words. A committee reported the discovery of ‘a train of the
deepest villainy and fraud _hell_ ever contrived to ruin a nation;’ the
directors of the company were arrested, and Mr. Gibbon among the rest; he
was compelled to give in a list of his effects: the general wish was that
a retrospective act should be immediately passed, which would impose on
him penalties something like, or even more severe than those now enforced
on Paul and Strahan. In the end, however, Mr. Gibbon escaped with a
parliamentary conversation upon his affairs. His estate amounted to
140,000_l._; and as this was a great sum, there was an obvious suspicion
that he was a great criminal. The scene must have been very curious.
‘Allowances of twenty pounds or one shilling were facetiously voted.
A vague report that a director had formerly been concerned in another
project by which some unknown persons had lost their money, was admitted
as a proof of his actual guilt. One man was ruined because he had dropped
a foolish speech that his horses should feed upon gold; another because
he was grown so proud, that one day, at the Treasury, he had refused a
civil answer to persons far above him.’ The vanity of his descendant
is evidently a little tried by the peculiar severity with which his
grandfather was treated. Out of his 140,000_l._ it was only proposed that
he should retain 15,000_l._; and on an amendment even this was reduced to
10,000_l._ Yet there is some ground for believing that the acute energy
and practised pecuniary power which had been successful in obtaining so
large a fortune, were likewise applied with science to the inferior task
of retaining some of it. The historian indeed says, ‘On these ruins,’ the
10,000_l._ aforesaid, ‘with skill and credit of which parliament had not
been able to deprive him, my grandfather erected the edifice of a new
fortune: the labours of sixteen years were amply rewarded; and I have
reason to believe that the second structure was not much inferior to the
first.’ But this only shows how far a family feeling may bias a sceptical
judgment. The credit of a man in Mr. Gibbon’s position could not be
very lucrative; and his skill must have been enormous to have obtained
so much at the end of his life, in such circumstances, in so few years.
Had he been an early Christian, the narrative of his descendant would
have contained an insidious hint, ‘that pecuniary property _may_ be so
secreted as to defy the awkward approaches of political investigation.’
That he died rich is certain, for two generations lived solely on the
property he bequeathed.
The son of this great speculator, the historian’s father, was a man
to spend a fortune quietly. He is not related to have indulged in any
particular expense, and nothing is more difficult to follow than the
pecuniary fortunes of deceased families; but one thing is certain, that
the property which descended to the historian—making every allowance
for all minor and subsidiary modes of diminution, such as daughters,
settlements, legacies, and so forth—was enormously less than 140,000_l._;
and therefore if those figures are correct, the second generation must
have made itself very happy out of the savings of the past generation,
and without caring for the poverty of the next. Nothing that is related
of the historian’s father indicates a strong judgment or an acute
discrimination; and there are some scarcely dubious signs of a rather
weak character.
Edward Gibbon, the great, was born on the 27th of April 1737. Of his
mother we hear scarcely anything; and what we do hear is not remarkably
favourable. It seems that she was a faint, inoffensive woman, of ordinary
capacity, who left a very slight trace of her influence on the character
of her son, did little and died early. The real mother, as he is careful
to explain, of his understanding and education was her sister, and his
aunt, _Mrs._ Catherine Porten, according to the speech of that age, a
maiden lady of much vigour and capacity, and for whom her pupil really
seems to have felt as much affection as was consistent with a rather easy
and cool nature. There is a panegyric on her in the _Memoirs_; and in
a long letter upon the occasion of her death, he deposes: ‘To her care
I am indebted in earliest infancy for the preservation of my life and
health.... To her instructions I owe the first rudiments of knowledge,
the first exercise of reason, and a taste for books, which is still the
pleasure and glory of my life; and though she taught me neither language
nor science, she was certainly the most useful preceptress I ever had.
As I grew up, an intercourse of thirty years endeared her to me as the
faithful friend and the agreeable companion. You have observed with
what freedom and confidence we lived,’ &c. &c. To a less sentimental
mind, which takes a more tranquil view of aunts and relatives, it is
satisfactory to find that somehow he could not write to her. ‘I wish,’
he continues, ‘I had as much to applaud and as little to reproach in my
conduct to Mrs. Porten since I left England; and when I reflect that my
letter would have soothed and comforted her decline, I feel’—what an
ardent nephew would naturally feel at so unprecedented an event. Leaving
his maturer years out of the question—a possible rhapsody of affectionate
eloquence—she seems to have been of the greatest use to him in infancy.
His health was very imperfect. We hear much of rheumatism, and lameness,
and weakness; and he was unable to join in work and play with ordinary
boys. He was moved from one school to another, never staying anywhere
very long, and owing what knowledge he obtained rather to a strong
retentive understanding than to any external stimulants or instruction.
At one place he gained an acquaintance with the Latin elements at the
price of ‘many tears and some blood.’ At last he was consigned to the
instruction of an elegant clergyman, the Rev. Philip Francis, who had
obtained notoriety by a metrical translation of Horace, the laxity of
which is even yet complained of by construing schoolboys, and who, with
a somewhat Horatian taste, went to London as often as he could, and
translated _invisa negotia_ as ‘boys to beat.’
In school-work, therefore, Gibbon had uncommon difficulties and unusual
deficiencies; but these were much more than counterbalanced by a habit
which often accompanies a sickly childhood, and is the commencement of
a studious life, the habit of desultory reading. The instructiveness of
this is sometimes not comprehended. S. T. Coleridge used to say that
he felt a great superiority over those who had not read—and fondly
read—fairly tales in their childhood; he thought they wanted a sense
which he possessed, the perception, or apperception—we do not know which
he used to say it was—of the unity and wholeness of the universe. As to
fairy tales, this is a hard saying; but as to desultory reading it is
certainly true. Some people have known a time in life when there was no
book they could not read. The fact of its being a book went immensely in
its favour. In early life there is an opinion that the obvious thing to
do with a horse is to ride it; with a cake, to eat it; with sixpence, to
spend it. A few boys carry this further, and think the natural thing to
do with a book is to read it. There is an argument from design in the
subject: if the book was not meant for that purpose, for what purpose
was it meant? Of course, of any understanding of the works so perused
there is no question or idea. There is a legend of Bentham, in his
earliest childhood, climbing to the height of a huge stool and sitting
there evening after evening with two candles engaged in the perusal of
Rapin’s history. It might as well have been any other book. The doctrine
of utility had not then dawned on its immortal teacher; _cui bono_ was an
idea unknown to him. He would have been ready to read about Egypt, about
Spain, about coals in Borneo, the teak-wood in India, the current in the
river Mississipi, on natural history or human history, on theology or
morals, on the state of the dark ages or the state of the light ages,—on
Augustulus or Lord Chatham,—on the first century or the seventeenth,—on
the moon, the millennium, or the whole duty of man. Just then, reading
is an end in itself. At that time of life you no more think of a future
consequence, of the remote, the very remote possibility of deriving
knowledge from the perusal of a book, than you expect so great a result
from spinning a peg-top. You spin the top, and you read the book; and
these scenes of life are exhausted. In such studies, of all prose perhaps
the best is history. One page is so like another; battle No. 1 is so
much on a par with battle No. 2. Truth may be, as they say, stranger
than fiction, abstractedly; but in actual books, novels are certainly
odder and more astounding than correct history. It will be said, what is
the use of this? Why not leave the reading of great books till a great
age? Why plague and perplex childhood with complex facts remote from its
experience and inapprehensible by its imagination? The reply is, that
though in all great and combined facts there is much which childhood
cannot thoroughly imagine, there is also in very many a great deal which
can only be truly apprehended for the first time at that age. Catch an
American of thirty;—tell him about the battle of Marathon; what will he
be able to comprehend of all that you mean by it: of all that halo which
early impression and years of remembrance have cast around it? He may add
up the killed and wounded, estimate the missing, and take the dimensions
of Greece and Athens; but he will not seem to care much. He may say,
‘Well, sir, perhaps it was a smart thing in that small territory; but it
is a long time ago, and in my country James K. Burnup’—did that which he
will at length explain to you. Or try an experiment on yourself. Read the
account of a Circassian victory, equal in numbers, in daring, in romance,
to the old battle. Will you be able to feel about it at all in the same
way? It is impossible. You cannot form a new set of associations; your
mind is involved in pressing facts, your memory choked by a thousand
details; the liveliness of fancy is gone with the childhood by which
it was enlivened. Schamyl will never seem as great as Leonidas, or
Miltiades; Cnokemof, or whoever the Russian is, cannot be so imposing
as Xerxes; the unpronounceable place cannot strike on your heart like
Marathon or Platæa. Moreover, there is the further advantage which
Coleridge shadowed forth in the remark we cited. Youth has a principle of
consolidation. We begin with the whole. Small sciences are the labours
of our manhood; but the round universe is the plaything of the boy. His
fresh mind shoots out vaguely and crudely into the infinite and eternal.
Nothing is hid from the depth of it; there are no boundaries to its vague
and wandering vision. Early science, it has been said, begins in utter
nonsense; it would be truer to say that it starts with boyish fancies.
How absurd seem the notions of the first Greeks! Who could believe now
that air or water was the principle, the pervading substance, the eternal
material of all things? Such affairs will never explain a thick rock.
And what a white original for a green and sky-blue world! Yet people
disputed in those ages not whether it was either of those substances,
but which of them it was. And doubtless there was a great deal, at least
in quantity, to be said on both sides. Boys are improved; but some in
our own day have asked, ‘Mamma, I say, what did God make the world of?’
and several, who did not venture on speech, have had an idea of some
one gray primitive thing, felt a difficulty as to how the red came, and
wondered that marble could _ever_ have been the same as moonshine. This
is in truth the picture of life. We begin with the infinite and eternal,
which we shall never apprehend; and these form a framework, a schedule,
a set of co-ordinates to which we refer all which we learn later. At
first, like the old Greek, ‘we look up to the whole sky, and are lost in
the one and the all;’ in the end we classify and enumerate, learn each
star, calculate distances, draw cramped diagrams on the unbounded sky,
write a paper on α Cygni and a treatise on ε Draconis, map special facts
upon the indefinite void, and engrave precise details on the infinite
and everlasting. So in history; somehow the whole comes in boyhood; the
details later and in manhood. The wonderful series going far back to the
times of old patriarchs with their flocks and herds, the keen-eyed Greek,
the stately Roman, the watching Jew, the uncouth Goth, the horrid Hun,
the settled picture of the unchanging East, the restless shifting of the
rapid West, the rise of the cold and classical civilisation, its fall,
the rough impetuous middle ages, the vague warm picture of ourselves and
home,—when did we learn these? Not yesterday nor to-day; but long ago, in
the first dawn of reason, in the original flow of fancy. What we learn
afterwards are but the accurate littlenesses of the great topic, the
dates and tedious facts. Those who begin late learn only these; but the
happy first feel the mystic associations and the progress of the whole.
There is no better illustration of all this than Gibbon. Few have begun
early with a more desultory reading, and fewer still have described
it so skilfully. ‘From the ancient I leaped to the modern world; many
crude lumps of Speed, Rapin, Mezeray, Davila, Machiavel, Father Paul,
Bower, &c., I devoured like so many novels; and I swallowed with the
same voracious appetite the descriptions of India and China, of Mexico
and Peru. My first introduction to the historic scenes which have since
engaged so many years of my life must be ascribed to an accident. In
the summer of 1751 I accompanied my father on a visit to Mr. Hoare’s,
in Wiltshire; but I was less delighted with the beauties of Stourhead
than with discovering in the library a common book, the _Continuation
of Echard’s Roman History_, which is indeed executed with more skill
and taste than the previous work. To me the reigns of the successors
of Constantine were absolutely new; and I was immersed in the passage
of the Goths over the Danube when the summons of the dinner-bell
reluctantly dragged me from my intellectual feast. This transient
glance served rather to irritate than to appease my curiosity; and as
soon as I returned to Bath I procured the second and third volumes of
Howel’s _History of the World_, which exhibit the Byzantine period on
a larger scale. Mahomet and his Saracens soon fixed my attention; and
some instinct of criticism directed me to the genuine sources. Simon
Ockley, an original in every sense, first opened my eyes; and I was led
from one book to another till I had ranged round the circle of Oriental
history. Before I was sixteen I had exhausted all that could be learned
in English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and Turks; and the same
ardour urged me to guess at the French of d’Herbelot, and to construe the
barbarous Latin of Pocock’s _Abulfaragius_.’ To this day the schoolboy
student of the Decline and Fall feels the traces of that schoolboy
reading. _Once_, he is conscious, the author like him felt, and solely
felt, the magnificent progress of the great story and the scenic aspect
of marvellous events.
A more sudden effect was at hand. However exalted may seem the praises
which we have given to loose and unplanned reading, we are not saying
that it is the sole ingredient of a good education. Besides this sort
of education, which some boys will voluntarily and naturally give
themselves, there needs, of course, another and more rigorous kind,
which must be impressed upon them from without. The terrible difficulty
of early life—the _use_ of pastors and masters—really is, that they
compel boys to a distinct mastery of that which they do not wish to
learn. There is nothing to be said for a preceptor who is not dry. Mr.
Carlyle describes with bitter satire the fate of one of his heroes who
was obliged to acquire whole systems of information in which he, the
hero, saw no use, and which he kept as far as might be in a vacant
corner of his mind. And this is the very point—dry language, tedious
mathematics, a thumbed grammar, a detested slate, form gradually an
interior separate intellect, exact in its information, rigid in its
requirements, disciplined in its exercises. The two grow together,
the early natural fancy touching the far extremities of the universe,
lightly playing with the scheme of all things; the precise, compacted
memory slowly accumulating special facts, exact habits, clear and painful
conceptions. At last, as it were in a moment, the cloud breaks up, the
division sweeps away; we find that in fact these exercises which puzzled
us, these languages which we hated, these details which we despised, are
the instruments of true thought, are the very keys and openings, the
exclusive access to the knowledge which we loved.
In this second education the childhood of Gibbon had been very defective.
He had never been placed under any rigid training. In his first boyhood
he disputed with his aunt, ‘that were I master of Greek and Latin, I must
interpret to myself in English the thoughts of the original, and that
such extemporary versions must be inferior to the elaborate translation
of professed scholars: a silly sophism,’ as he remarks, ‘which could not
easily be confuted by a person ignorant of any other language than her
own.’ Ill-health, a not very wise father, an ill-chosen succession of
schools and pedagogues, prevented his acquiring exact knowledge in the
regular subjects of study. His own description is the best—‘erudition
that might have puzzled a doctor, and ignorance of which a schoolboy
should have been ashamed.’ The amiable Mr. Francis, who was to have
repaired the deficiency, went to London, and forgot him. With an impulse
of discontent his father took a resolution, and sent him to Oxford at
sixteen.
It is probable that a worse place could not have been found. The
University of Oxford was at the nadir of her history and efficiency.
The public professorial training of the middle ages had died away, and
the intramural collegiate system of the present time had not begun. The
University had ceased to be a teaching body, and had not yet become an
examining body. ‘The professors,’ says Adam Smith, who had studied there,
‘have given up almost the pretence of lecturing.’ ‘The examination,’
said a great judge some years later, ‘was a farce in my time. I was
asked who founded University College; and I said, though the fact is now
doubted, that King Alfred founded it; and _that_ was the examination.’
The colleges, deprived of the superintendence and watchfulness of their
natural sovereign, fell, as Gibbon remarks, into ‘port and prejudice.’
The Fellows were a close corporation; they were chosen from every
conceivable motive—because they were respectable men, because they were
good fellows, because they were brothers of other Fellows, because their
fathers had patronage in the Church. Men so appointed could not be
expected to be very diligent in the instruction of youth; many colleges
did not even profess it; that of All Souls has continued down to our own
time to deny that it has anything to do with it. Undoubtedly a person
who came thither accurately and rigidly drilled in technical scholarship
found many means and a few motives to pursue it. Some tutorial system
probably existed at most colleges. Learning was not wholly useless in
the Church. The English gentleman has ever loved a nice and classical
scholarship. But these advantages were open only to persons who had
received a very strict training, and who were voluntarily disposed to
discipline themselves still more. To the mass of mankind the University
was a ‘graduating machine;’ the colleges, monopolist residences,—hotels
without bells.
Taking the place as it stood, the lot of Gibbon may be thought rather
fortunate. He was placed at Magdalen, whose fascinating walks, so
beautiful in the later autumn, still recall the name of Addison, the
example of the merits, as Gibbon is of the deficiencies, of Oxford. His
first tutor was, in his own opinion, ‘one of the best of the tribe.’ ‘Dr.
Waldegrave was a learned and pious man, of a mild disposition, strict
morals, and abstemious life, who seldom mingled in the politics or the
jollity of the college. But his knowledge of the world was confined to
the University; his learning was of the last, rather than of the present
age; his temper was indolent; his faculties, which were not of the first
rate, had been relaxed by the climate; and he was satisfied, like his
fellows, with the slight and superficial discharge of an important trust.
As soon as my tutor had sounded the insufficiency of his disciple in
school-learning, he proposed that we should read every morning, from
ten to eleven, the comedies of Terence. The sum of my improvement in
the University of Oxford is confined to three or four Latin plays; and
even the study of an elegant classic, which might have been illustrated
by a comparison of ancient and modern theatres, was reduced to a dry
and literal interpretation of the author’s text. During the first weeks
I constantly attended these lessons in my tutor’s room; but as they
appeared equally devoid of profit and pleasure, I was once tempted to
try the experiment of a formal apology. The apology was accepted with
a smile. I repeated the offence with less ceremony; the excuse was
admitted with the same indulgence: the slightest motive of laziness
or indisposition, the most trifling avocation at home or abroad, was
allowed as a worthy impediment; nor did my tutor appear conscious of
my absence or neglect. Had the hour of lecture been constantly filled,
a single hour was a small portion of my academic leisure. No plan of
study was recommended for my use; no exercises were prescribed for his
inspection; and, at the most precious season of youth, whole days and
weeks were suffered to elapse without labour or amusement, without advice
or account.’ The name of his second tutor is concealed in asterisks, and
the sensitive conscience of Dean Milman will not allow him to insert a
name ‘which _Gibbon_ thought proper to suppress.’ The account, however,
of the anonymous person is sufficiently graphic. ‘Dr. —— well remembered
that he had a salary to receive, and only forgot that he had a duty to
perform. Instead of guiding the studies and watching over the behaviour
of his disciple, I was never summoned to attend even the ceremony of
a lecture; and excepting one voluntary visit to his rooms, during the
eight months of his titular office the tutor and pupil lived in the
same college as strangers to each other.’ It added to the evils of this
neglect, that Gibbon was much younger than most of the students; and
that his temper, which was through life reserved, was then very shy.
His appearance, too, was odd; ‘a thin little figure, with a large head,
disputing and arguing with the greatest ability.’ Of course he was a joke
among undergraduates; he consulted his tutor as to studying Arabic, and
was seen buying _La Bibliothèque Orientale d’Herbelot_, and immediately
a legend was diffused that he had turned Mahomedan. The random cast was
not so far from the mark: cut off by peculiarities from the society of
young people; deprived of regular tuition and systematic employment;
tumbling about among crude masses of heterogeneous knowledge; alone with
the heated brain of youth,—he did what an experienced man would expect—he
framed a theory of all things. No doubt it seemed to him the most natural
thing in the world. Was he to be the butt of ungenial wine-parties, or
spend his lonely hours on shreds of languages? Was he not to know the
_truth_? There were the old problems, the everlasting difficulties, the
_mœnia mundi_, the Hercules’ pillars of the human imagination—‘fate,
free-will, fore-knowledge absolute.’ Surely these should come first; when
we had learned the great landmarks, understood the guiding-stars, we
might amuse ourselves with small points, and make a plaything of curious
information. What particular theory the mind frames when in this state
is a good deal matter of special accident. The _data_ for considering
these difficulties are not within its reach. Whether man be or be not
born to solve the ‘mystery of the knowable,’ he certainly is not born to
solve it at seventeen, with the first hot rush of the untrained mind. The
selection of Gibbon was remarkable: he became a Roman Catholic.
It seems now so natural that an Oxford man should take this step, that
one can hardly understand the astonishment it created. Lord Sheffield
tells us that the Privy Council interfered; and with good administrative
judgment examined a London bookseller—some Mr. Lewis—who had no concern
in it. In the manor-house of Buriton it would have probably created
less sensation if ‘dear Edward’ had announced his intention of becoming
a monkey. The English have ever believed that the Papist is a kind
of _creature_; and every sound mind would prefer a beloved child to
produce a tail, a hide of hair, and a taste for nuts, in comparison with
transubstantiation, wax-candles, and a belief in the glories of Mary.
What exact motives impelled Gibbon to this step cannot now be certainly
known; the autobiography casts a mist over them; but from what appears,
his conversion partly much resembled, and partly altogether differed
from, the Oxford conversions of our own time. We hear nothing of the
notes of a church, or the sin of the Reformation; and Gibbon had not an
opportunity of even rejecting Mr. Sewell’s theory that it is ‘a holy
obligation to acquiesce in the opinions of your grandmother.’ His
memoirs have a halo of great names—Bossuet, the _History of Protestant
Variations_, &c. &c.—and he speaks with becoming dignity of falling
by a noble hand. He mentioned also to Lord Sheffield, as having had a
preponderating influence over him, the works of Father Parsons, who
lived in Queen Elizabeth’s time. But in all probability these were
secondary persuasions, justifications after the event. No young man, or
scarcely any young man of seventeen, was ever converted by a systematic
treatise, especially if written in another age, wearing an obsolete look,
speaking a language which scarcely seems that of this world. There is an
unconscious reasoning: ‘The world has had this book before it so long,
and has withstood it. There must be something wrong; it seems all right
on the surface, but a flaw there must be.’ The mass of the volumes, too,
is unfavourable. ‘All the treatises in the world,’ says the young convert
in _Loss and Gain_, ‘are not equal to giving one a view in a moment.’
What the youthful mind requires is this short decisive argument, this
view in a moment, this flash as it were of the understanding, which
settles all, and diffuses a conclusive light at once and for ever over
the whole. It is so much the pleasanter if the young mind can strike this
view out for itself, from materials which are forced upon it from the
controversies of the day; if it can find a certain solution of pending
questions, and show itself wiser even than the wisest of its own, the
very last age. So far as appears, this was the fortune of Gibbon. ‘It was
not long,’ he says, ‘since Dr. Middleton’s _Free Inquiry_ had sounded an
alarm in the theological world; much ink and much gall had been spent in
defence of the primitive miracles; and the two dullest of their champions
were crowned with academic honours by the University of Oxford. The name
of Middleton was unpopular; and his proscription very naturally led me to
peruse his writings and those of his antagonists.’ It is not difficult
to discover in this work easy and striking arguments which might lead an
untaught mind to the communion of Rome. As to the peculiar belief of its
author, there has been much controversy, with which we have not here
the least concern; but the natural conclusion to which it would lead a
simple intellect is, that all miracles are equally certain or equally
uncertain. ‘It being agreed, then,’ says the acute controversialist,
‘that in the original promise of these miraculous gifts there is no
intimation of any particular period to which their continuance was
limited, the next question is, by what sort of evidence the precise time
of their duration is to be determined? But to this point one of the
writers just referred to excuses himself, as we have seen, from giving
any answer; and thinks it sufficient to declare in general that _the
earliest fathers unanimously affirm them to have continued down to their
times_. Yet he has not told us, as he ought to have done, to what age he
limits the character of _the earliest fathers_; whether to the second
or to the third century, or, with the generality of our writers, means
also to include the fourth. But to whatever age he may restrain it, the
difficulty at last will be to assign a reason why we must needs stop
there. In the meanwhile, by his appealing thus to the _earliest fathers_
only as unanimous on this article, a common reader would be apt to infer
that the later fathers are more cold or diffident, or divided upon it;
whereas the reverse of this is true, and the more we descend from those
earliest fathers the more strong and explicit we find their successors
in attesting the perpetual succession and daily exertion of the same
miraculous powers in their several ages; so that if the cause must be
determined by _the unanimous consent of fathers_, we shall find as much
reason to believe that those powers were continued even to the latest
ages as to any other, how early and primitive soever, after the days of
the apostles. But the same writer gives us two reasons why he does not
choose to say anything upon the subject of their duration; 1st, because
_there is not light enough in history to settle it_; 2ndly, because _the
thing itself is of no concern to us_. As to his first reason, I am at a
loss to conceive what further light a professed advocate of the primitive
ages and fathers can possibly require in this case. For as far as the
Church historians can illustrate or throw light upon anything, there
is not a single point in all history so constantly, explicitly, and
unanimously affirmed by them all, as the continual succession of these
powers through all ages, from the earliest father who first mentions
them down to the time of the Reformation. Which same succession is still
further deduced by persons of the most eminent character for their
probity, learning, and dignity in the Romish Church, to this very day.
So that the only doubt which can remain with us is, whether the Church
historians are to be trusted or not; for if any credit be due to them in
the present case, it must reach either to all or to none; because the
reason of believing them in any one age will be found to be of equal
force in all, as far as it depends on the characters of the persons
attesting, or the nature of the things attested.’ In _terms_ this and
the whole of Middleton’s argument is so shaped as to avoid including
in its scope the miracles of Scripture, which are mentioned throughout
with eulogiums and acquiescence, and so as to make you doubt whether the
author believed them or not. This is exactly one of the pretences which
the young strong mind delights to tear down. It would argue, ‘This writer
evidently _means_ that the apostolic miracles have just as much evidence
and no more than the popish or the patristic; and how strong’—for
Middleton is a master of telling statement—‘he shows that evidence to be!
I won’t give up the apostolic miracles, I cannot; yet I must believe what
has as much of historical testimony in its favour. It is no _reductio
ad absurdum_ that we must go over to the Church of Rome; it is the most
diffused of Christian creeds, the oldest of Christian churches.’ And so
the logic of the sceptic becomes, as often since, the most efficient
instrument of the all-believing and all-determining Church.
The consternation of Gibbon’s relatives seems to have been enormous.
They cast about what to do. From the experience of Oxford, they perhaps
thought that it would be useless to have recourse to the Anglican
clergy; this resource had failed. So they took him to Mr. Mallet, a
Deist, to see if he could do anything; but he did nothing. Their next
step was nearly as extraordinary. They placed him at Lausanne, in the
house of M. Pavilliard, a French Protestant minister. After the easy
income, complete independence, and unlimited credit of an English
undergraduate, he was thrown into a foreign country, deprived, as he
says, by ignorance of the language, both of ‘speech and hearing,’—in
the position of a schoolboy, with a small allowance of pocket-money,
and without the Epicurean comforts on which he already set some value.
He laments the ‘indispensable comfort of a servant,’ and the ‘sordid
and uncleanly table of Madame Pavilliard.’ In our own day the watchful
sagacity of Cardinal Wiseman would hardly allow a promising convert of
expectations and talents to remain unsolaced in so pitiful a situation;
we should hear soothing offers of flight or succour, some insinuation of
a popish domestic and interesting repasts. But a hundred years ago the
attention of the Holy See was very little directed to our English youth,
and Gibbon was left to endure his position.
It is curious that he made himself comfortable. Though destitute of
external comforts which he did not despise, he found what was the
greatest luxury to his disposition, steady study and regular tuition.
His tutor was, of course, to convert him if he could; but as they
had no language in common, there was the preliminary occupation of
teaching French. During five years both tutor and pupil steadily exerted
themselves to repair the defects of a neglected and ill-grounded
education. We hear of the perusal of Terence, Virgil, Horace, and
Tacitus. Cicero was translated into French, and translated back again
into Latin. In both languages the pupil’s progress was sound and good.
From letters of his which still exist, it is clear that he then acquired
the exact and steady knowledge of Latin of which he afterwards made so
much use. His circumstances compelled him to master French. If his own
letters are to be trusted, he would be an example of his own doctrine,
that no one is thoroughly master of more than one language at a time;
they read like the letters of a Frenchman trying and failing to write
English. But perhaps there was a desire to magnify his continental
progress, and towards the end of the time some wish to make his friends
fear he was forgetting his own language.
Meantime the work of conversion was not forgotten. In some letters which
are extant, M. Pavilliard celebrates the triumph of his logic. ‘_J’ai
renversé_,’ says the pastor, ‘_l’infaillibilité de l’Eglise; j’ai prouvé
que jamais Saint Pierre n’a été chef des apôtres; que quand il l’aurait
été, le pape n’est point son successeur; qu’il est douteux que Saint
Pierre ait jamais été à Rome; mais supposé qu’il y ait été, il n’a pas
été évêque de cette ville; que la transubstantiation est une invention
humaine, et peu ancienne dans l’Eglise_,’ &c., and so on through the
usual list of Protestant arguments. He magnifies a little Gibbon’s
strength of conviction, as it makes the success of his own logic seem
more splendid; but states two curious things: first, that Gibbon at
least _pretended_ to believe in the Pretender, and what is more amazing
still—all but incredible—that he fasted. Such was the youth of the
Epicurean historian!
It is probable, however, that the skill of the Swiss pastor was not
the really operating cause of the event. Perhaps experience shows that
the converts which Rome has made, with the threat of unbelief and the
weapons of the sceptic, have rarely been permanent or advantageous to
her. It is at best but a dangerous logic to drive men to the edge and
precipice of scepticism, in the hope that they will recoil in horror to
the very interior of credulity. Possibly men may show their courage—they
may vanquish the _argumentum ad terrorem_—they may not find scepticism
so terrible. This last was Gibbon’s case. A more insidious adversary
than the Swiss theology was at hand to sap his Roman Catholic belief.
Pavilliard had a fair French library—not ill stored in the recent
publications of that age—of which he allowed his pupil the continual
use. It was as impossible to open any of them and not come in contact
with infidelity, as to come to England and not to see a green field.
Scepticism is not so much a part of the French literature of that day
as its animating spirit—its essence, its vitality. You can no more
cut it out and separate it, than you can extract from Wordsworth his
conception of nature, or from Swift his common sense. And it is of the
subtlest kind. It has little in common with the rough disputation of the
English deist, or the perplexing learning of the German theologian, but
works with a tool more insinuating than either. It is, in truth, but
the spirit of the world, which does not argue, but assumes; which does
not so much elaborate as hints; which does not examine, but suggests.
With the traditions of the Church it contrasts traditions of its own;
its technicalities are _bon sens_, _l’usage du monde_, _le fanatisme_,
_l’enthousiasme_; to high hopes, noble sacrifices, awful lives, it
opposes quiet ease, skilful comfort, placid sense, polished indifference.
Old as transubstantiation may be, it is not older than Horace and
Lucian. Lord Byron, in the well-known lines, has coupled the names of
the two literary exiles on the Leman Lake. The page of Voltaire could
not but remind Gibbon that the scepticism from which he had revolted
was compatible with literary eminence and European fame—gave a piquancy
to ordinary writing—was the very expression of caustic caution and
gentlemanly calm.