England and Germany for fifty years and more. He had studied at Jena in
the ‘great time,’ when Goethe, and Schiller, and Wieland were all at
their zenith; he had lived with Charles Lamb and his set, and Rogers
and his set, besides an infinite lot of little London people; he had
taught Madame de Staël German philosophy in Germany, and helped her in
business afterwards in England; he was the real friend of Wordsworth,
and had known Coleridge and Southey almost from their ‘coming out’ to
their death. And he was not a mere literary man. He had been a _Times_
correspondent in the days of Napoleon’s early German battles, now more
than ‘seventy years since;’ he had been off Corunna in Sir John Moore’s
time; and last, but almost first it should have been, he was an English
barrister, who had for years a considerable business, and who was full of
picturesque stories about old judges. Such a varied life and experience
belong to very few men, and his social nature—at once accessible and
assailant—was just the one to take advantage of it. He seemed to be
lucky all through: in childhood he remembered when John Gilpin came out;
then he had seen—he could not hear—John Wesley preach; then he had heard
Erskine, and criticised him intelligently, in some of the finest of the
well-known ‘State trials;’ and so on during all his vigorous period.
I do not know that it would be possible to give a better idea of Mr.
Robinson’s best conversations than by quoting almost at random from the
earlier part of these memoirs:—
‘At the Spring assizes of 1791, when I had nearly attained my
sixteenth year, I had the delight of hearing Erskine. It was
a high enjoyment, and I was able to profit by it. The subject
of the trial was the validity of a will—Braham _v._ Rivett.
Erskine came down specially retained for the plaintiff, and
Mingay for the defendant. The trial lasted two days. The title
of the heir being admitted, the proof of the will was gone into
at once. I have a recollection of many of the circumstances
after more than fifty-four years; but of nothing do I retain so
perfect a recollection as of the figure and voice of Erskine.
There was a charm in his voice, a fascination in his eye; and
so completely had he won my affection, that I am sure had
the verdict been given against him I should have burst out
crying. Of the facts and of the evidence, I do not pretend to
recollect anything beyond my impressions and sensations. My
pocket-book records that Erskine was engaged two and a half
hours in opening the case, and Mingay two hours and twenty
minutes in his speech in defence. E.’s reply occupied three
hours. The testatrix was an old lady in a state of imbecility.
The evil spirit of the case was an attorney. Mingay was loud
and violent, and gave Erskine an opportunity of turning into
ridicule his imagery and illustrations. For instance, M. having
compared R. to the Devil going into the Garden of Eden, E. drew
a closer parallel than M. intended. Satan’s first sight of Eve
was related in Milton’s words—
‘“Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love;”
and then a picture of idiotcy from Swift was contrasted.
But the sentence that weighed on my spirits was a pathetic
exclamation—“If, gentlemen, you should by your verdict
annihilate an instrument so solemnly framed, _I should retire
a troubled man from this court_.” And as he uttered the word
_court_, he beat his breast and I had a difficulty in not
crying out. When in bed the following night I awoke several
times in a state of excitement approaching fever—the words
“_troubled man from this court_” rang in my ears.
‘A new trial was granted, and ultimately the will was set
aside. I have said I profited by Erskine. I remarked his great
artifice, if I may call it so; and in a small way I afterwards
practised it. It lay in his frequent repetitions. He had one or
two leading arguments and main facts on which he was constantly
dwelling. But then he had marvellous skill in varying his
phraseology, so that no one was sensible of tautology in the
expressions. Like the doubling of a hare, he was perpetually
coming to his old place. Other great advocates I have remarked
were ambitious of a great variety of arguments.
‘About the same time that I thus first heard the most perfect
of forensic orators, I was also present at an exhibition
equally admirable, and which had a powerful effect upon
my mind. It was, I believe, in October 1790, and not long
before his death, that I heard John Wesley in the great round
meeting-house at Colchester. He stood in a wide pulpit, and on
each side of him stood a minister, and the two held him up,
having their hands under his armpits. His feeble voice was
barely audible. But his reverend countenance, especially his
long white locks, formed a picture never to be forgotten. There
was a vast crowd of lovers and admirers. It was for the most
part pantomime, but the pantomime went to the heart. Of the
kind I never saw anything comparable to it in after life.’
And again:—
‘It was at the Summer Circuit that Rolfe made his first
appearance. He had been at the preceding Sessions. I have
a pleasure in recollecting that I at once foresaw that he
would become a distinguished man. In my Diary I wrote, “Our
new junior, Mr. Rolfe, made his appearance. His manners are
genteel; his conversation easy and sensible. He is a very
acceptable companion, but I fear a dangerous rival.” And my
brother asking me who the new man was, I said, “I will venture
to predict that you will live to see that young man attain a
higher rank than any one you ever saw upon the circuit.” It
is true he is not higher than Leblanc, who was also a puisne
judge, but Leblanc was never Solicitor-General; nor, probably,
is Rolfe yet at the end of his career. One day, when some
one remarked, “Christianity is part and parcel of the law of
the land,” Rolfe said to me, “Were you ever employed to draw
an indictment against a man for not loving his neighbour as
himself?”
‘Rolfe is, by universal repute, if not the very best, at least
one of the best judges on the Bench. He is one of the few with
whom I have kept up an acquaintance.’[17]
Of course, these stories came over and over again. It is the excellence
of a reminiscent to have a few good stories, and his misfortune that
people will remember what he says. In Mr. Robinson’s case an unskilled
person could often see the anecdote somewhere impending, and there was
often much interest in trying whether you could ward it off or not. There
was one great misfortune which had happened to his guests, though he used
to tell it as one of the best things that had ever happened to himself.
He had picked up a certain bust of Wieland by Schadow, which it appears
had been lost, and in the finding of which Goethe, even Goethe, rejoiced.
After a very long interval I still shudder to think how often I have
heard that story; it was one which no skill or care could long avert, for
the thing stood opposite our host’s chair, and the sight of it was sure
to recall him. Among the ungrateful students to whom he was so kind, the
first question always asked of anyone who had breakfasted at his house
was, ‘Did you undergo the _bust_?’
A reader of these memoirs would naturally and justly think that the
great interest of Mr. Robinson’s conversation was the strength of the
past memory; but quite as amusing or more so was the present weakness.
He never could remember names, and was very ingenious in his devices to
elude the defect. There is a story in these Memoirs:—
‘I was engaged to dine with Mr. Wansey at Walthamstow. When I
arrived there I was in the greatest distress, through having
forgotten his name. And it was not till after half an hour’s
worry that I recollected he was a Unitarian, which would answer
as well; for I instantly proceeded to Mr. Cogan’s. Having
been shown into a room, young Mr. Cogan came—“Your commands,
sir?”—“Mr. Cogan, I have taken the liberty to call on you in
order to know where I am to dine to-day.” He smiled. I went on:
“The truth is, I have accepted an invitation to dine with a
gentleman, a recent acquaintance, whose name I have forgotten;
but I am sure you can tell me, for he is a Unitarian, and the
Unitarians are very few here.”’
And at his breakfasts it was always the same; he was always in difficulty
as to some person’s name or other, and he had regular descriptions which
recurred, like Homeric epithets, and which he expected you to apply
to the individual. Thus poor Clough always appeared—‘That admirable
and accomplished man. You know whom I mean. The one who never says
anything.’ And of another living poet he used to say: ‘Probably the most
able, and certainly the most consequential, of all the young persons I
know. You know which it is. The one with whom I could never _presume_
to be intimate. The one whose father I knew so many years.’ And another
particular friend of my own always occurred as—‘That great friend of
yours that has been in Germany—that most accomplished and interesting
person—that most able and excellent young man. Sometimes I like him,
and sometimes I _hate_ him. You,’ turning to me, ‘know whom I mean, you
villain!’ And certainly I did know; for I had heard the same adjectives,
and been referred to in the same manner very many times.
Of course, a main part of Mr. Robinson’s conversation was on literary
subjects; but of this, except when it related to persons whom he had
known, or sonnets to ‘the conception of which he was privy,’ I do not
think it would be just to speak very highly. He spoke sensibly and
clearly—he could not on any subject speak otherwise; but the critical
faculty is as special and as peculiar almost as the poetical; and Mr.
Robinson in serious moments was quite aware of it, and he used to deny
that he had the former faculty more than the latter. He used to read
much of Wordsworth to me; but I doubt—though many of his friends will
think I am a great heretic—I doubt if he read the best poems; and even
those he did read (and he read very well) rather suffered from coming in
the middle of a meal, and at a time when you wanted to laugh, and not
to meditate. Wordsworth was a solitary man, and it is only in solitude
that his best poems, or indeed any of his characteristic poems, can be
truly felt or really apprehended. There are some at which I never look,
even now, without thinking of the wonderful and dreary faces which Clough
used to make while Mr. Robinson was reading them. To Clough certain of
Wordsworth’s poems were part of his inner being, and he suffered at
hearing them obtruded at meal times, just as a High Churchman would
suffer at hearing the collects of the Church. Indeed, these poems were
among the collects of Clough’s Church.
Still less do I believe that there is any special value in the
expositions of German philosophy in these volumes, or that there was any
in those which Mr. Robinson used to give on such matters in conversation.
They are clear, no doubt, and accurate; but they are not the expositions
of a born metaphysician. He speaks in these Memoirs of his having a
difficulty in concentrating his ‘attention on works of speculation.’
And such books as Kant can only be really mastered, can perhaps only be
usefully studied, by those who have an unusual facility in concentrating
their mind on impalpable abstractions, and an uncommon inclination to do
so. Mr. Robinson had neither; and I think the critical philosophy had
really very little effect on him, and had, during the busy years which
had elapsed since he studied it, very nearly run off him. There was
something very curious in the sudden way that anything mystical would
stop in him. At the end of a Sunday breakfast, after inflicting on you
much which was transcendental in Wordsworth or Goethe, he would say,
as we left him, with an air of relish, ‘Now I am going to run down to
Essex Street to hear Madge. I shall not be in time for the prayers; but
I do not so much care about that; what I do like is the sermon; it is
so clear.’ Mr. Madge was a Unitarian of the old school, with as little
mystical and transcendental in his nature as any one who ever lived.
There was a living piquancy in the friend of Goethe—the man who _would_
explain to you his writings—being also the admirer of ‘Madge;’ it was
like a proser, lengthily eulogising Kant to you, and then saying, ‘Ah!
but I do love Condillac; he is so clear.’
But, on the other hand, I used to hold—I was reading law at the time, and
so had some interest in the matter—that Mr. Robinson much underrated his
legal knowledge, and his practical power as a lawyer. What he used to
say was, ‘I never knew any law, sir, but I knew the practice.... I left
the bar because I feared my incompetence might be discovered. I was a
tolerable junior; but I was rising to be a leader, which I was unfit to
be; and so I retired, not to disgrace myself by some fearful mistake.’
In these Memoirs he says that he retired when he had made the sum of
money which he thought enough for a bachelor with few wants and not a
single expensive taste. The simplicity of his tastes is certain; very few
Englishmen indeed could live with so little show or pretence. But the
idea of his gross incompetence is absurd. No one who was incompetent ever
said so. There are, I am sure, plenty of substantial and well-satisfied
men at the English bar who do not know nearly as much law as Mr. Robinson
knew, and who have not a tithe of his sagacity, but who believe in
themselves and in whom their clients believe. On the other hand, Mr.
Robinson had many great qualifications for success at the bar. He was a
really good speaker: when over seventy I have heard him make a speech
that good speakers in their full vigour would be glad to make. He had
a good deal of the actor in his nature, which is thought, and I fancy
justly thought, to be necessary to the success of all great advocates,
and perhaps of all great orators. He was well acquainted with the petty
technicalities which intellectual men in middle life in general cannot
learn, for he had passed some years in an attorney’s office. Above
all, he was a very thinking man, and had an ‘idea of business’—that
inscrutable something which at once and altogether distinguishes the man
who is safe in the affairs of life from those who are unsafe. I do not
suppose he knew much black-letter law; but there are plenty of judges on
the bench who, unless they are much belied, also know very little—perhaps
none. And a man who can intelligently read Kant, like Mr. Robinson, need
not fear the book-work of English law. A very little serious study would
have taught him law enough to lead the Norfolk circuit. He really had
a sound, moderate, money-making business, and only a little pains was
wanted to give him more.
The real reason why he did not take the trouble, I fancy, was that,
being a bachelor, he was a kind of amateur in life, and did not really
care. He could not spend what he had on himself, and used to give away
largely, though in private. And even more, as with most men who have not
thoroughly worked when young, daily, regular industry was exceedingly
trying to him. No man could be less idle; far from it, he was always
doing something; but then he was doing what he chose. Sir Walter Scott,
one of the best workers of his time, used always to say that ‘he had no
temptation to be idle, but the greatest temptation, when one thing was
wanted of him, to go and do something else.’ Perhaps the only persons
who, not being forced by mere necessity, really conquer this temptation,
are those who were early broken to the yoke, and are fixed to the furrow
by habit. Mr. Robinson loitered in Germany, so he was not one of these.
I am not regretting this. It would be a base idolatry of practical life,
to require every man to succeed in it as far as he could, and to devote
to it all his mind. The world certainly does not need it; it pays well,
and it will never lack good servants. There will always be enough of
sound, strong men to be working barristers and judges, let who will
object to become so. But I own I think a man ought to be able to be a
‘Philistine’ if he chooses; there is a sickly incompleteness about people
too fine for the world, and too nice to work their way in it. And when a
man like Mr. Robinson had a real sagacity for affairs, it is for those
who respect his memory to see that his reputation does not suffer from
his modesty, and that his habitual self-depreciations—which, indeed,
extended to his powers of writing as well as to those of acting—are not
taken to be exactly true.
In fact, Mr. Robinson was usefully occupied in University College
business and University Hall business, and other such things. But there
is no special need to write on them in connection with his name; and it
would need a good deal of writing to make them intelligible to those
who do not know them now. And the greater part of his life was spent in
society where his influence was always manly and vigorous. I do not mean
that he was universally popular; it would be defacing his likeness to say
so. ‘I am a man,’ he once told me, ‘to whom a great number of persons
entertain the very strongest objection.’ Indeed he had some subjects
on which he could hardly bear opposition. Twice he nearly quarrelled
with me: once for writing in favour of Louis Napoleon, which, as he had
caught in Germany a thorough antipathy to the first Napoleon, seemed to
him quite wicked; and next for my urging that Hazlitt was a much greater
writer than Charles Lamb—a harmless opinion which I still hold, but which
Mr. Robinson met with this outburst: ‘You, sir, you prefer the works of
that scoundrel, that odious, that malignant writer, to the exquisite
essays of that angelic creature!’ I protested that there was no evidence
that angels could write particularly well; but it was in vain, and it
was some time before he forgave me. Some persons who casually encountered
peculiarities like these, did not always understand them. In his last
years, too, augmenting infirmities almost disqualified Mr. Robinson for
general society, and quite disabled him from showing his old abilities
in it. Indeed, I think that these Memoirs will give almost a new idea of
his power to many young men who had only seen him casually, and at times
of feebleness. After ninety it is not easy to make new friends. And, in
any case, this book will always have a great charm for those who knew Mr.
Robinson well when they were themselves young, because it will keep alive
for them the image of his buoyant sagacity, and his wise and careless
kindness.
_WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, AND BROWNING; OR, PURE, ORNATE, AND GROTESQUE ART
IN ENGLISH POETRY.[18]_
(1864.)
We couple these two books together, not because of their likeness, for
they are as dissimilar as books can be; nor on account of the eminence
of their authors, for in general two great authors are too much for one
essay; but because they are the best possible illustration of something
we have to say upon poetical art—because they may give to it life and
freshness. The accident of contemporaneous publication has here brought
together two books very characteristic of modern art, and we want to show
how they are characteristic.
Neither English poetry nor English criticism have ever recovered the
_eruption_ which they both made at the beginning of this century into
the fashionable world. The poems of Lord Byron were received with an
avidity that resembles our present avidity for sensation novels, and were
read by a class which at present reads little but such novels. Old men
who remember those days may be heard to say, ‘We hear nothing of poetry
now-a-days; it seems quite down.’ And ‘down’ it certainly is, if for
poetry it be a descent to be no longer the favourite excitement of the
more frivolous part of the ‘upper’ world. That stimulating poetry is now
little read. A stray schoolboy may still be detected in a wild admiration
for the _Giaour_ or the _Corsair_ (and it is suitable to his age,
and he should not be reproached for it), but the _real_ posterity—the
quiet students of a past literature—never read them or think of them. A
line or two linger on the memory; a few telling strokes of occasional
and felicitous energy are quoted, but this is all. As wholes, these
exaggerated stories were worthless; they taught nothing, and therefore
they are forgotten. If now-a-days a dismal poet were, like Byron, to
lament the fact of his birth, and to hint that he was too good for the
world, the _Saturday Reviewers_ would say that ‘they doubted if he _was_
too good; that a sulky poet was a questionable addition to a tolerable
world; that he need not have been born, as far as they were concerned.’
Doubtless, there is much in Byron besides his dismal exaggeration, but
it was that exaggeration which made ‘the sensation’ which gave him a
wild moment of dangerous fame. As so often happens, the cause of his
momentary fashion is the cause also of his lasting oblivion. Moore’s
former reputation was less excessive, yet it has not been more permanent.
The prettiness of a few songs preserves the memory of his name, but as
a poet to _read_ he is forgotten. There is nothing to read in him; no
exquisite thought, no sublime feeling, no consummate description of true
character. Almost the sole result of the poetry of that time is the harm
which it has done. It degraded for a time the whole character of the
art. It said by practice, by a most efficient and successful practice,
that it was the aim, the _duty_ of poets, to catch the attention of the
passing, the fashionable, the busy world. If a poem ‘fell dead,’ it was
nothing; it was composed to please the ‘London’ of the year, and if that
London did not like it, why, it had failed. It fixed upon the minds
of a whole generation, it engraved in popular memory and tradition, a
vague conviction that poetry is but one of the many _amusements_ for the
enjoying classes, for the lighter hours of all classes. The mere notion,
the bare idea, that poetry is a deep thing, a teaching thing, the most
surely and wisely elevating of human things, is even now to the coarse
public mind nearly unknown.
As was the fate of poetry, so inevitably was that of criticism. The
science that expounds which poetry is good and which is bad, is dependent
for its popular reputation on the popular estimate of poetry itself. The
critics of that day had _a_ day, which is more than can be said for some
since; they professed to tell the fashionable world in what books it
would find new pleasure, and therefore they were read by the fashionable
world. Byron counted the critic and poet equal. The _Edinburgh Review_
penetrated among the young, and into places of female resort where it
does not go now. As people ask, ‘Have you read _Henry Dunbar_? and what
do you think of it?’ so they then asked, ‘Have you read the _Giaour_?
and what do you think of it?’ Lord Jeffrey, a shrewd judge of the world,
employed himself in telling it what to think; not so much what it ought
to think, as what at bottom it did think, and so by dexterous sympathy
with current society he gained contemporary fame and power. Such fame
no critic must hope for now. His articles will not penetrate where the
poems themselves do not penetrate. When poetry was noisy, criticism was
loud; now poetry is a still small voice, and criticism must be smaller
and stiller. As the function of such criticism was limited, so was its
subject. For the great and (as time now proves) the _permanent_ part of
the poetry of his time—for Shelley and for Wordsworth—Lord Jeffrey had
but one word. He said[19] ‘It won’t do.’ And it will not do to amuse a
drawing-room.
The doctrine that poetry is a light amusement for idle hours, a metrical
species of sensational novel, did not indeed become popular without
gainsayers. Thirty years ago, Mr. Carlyle most rudely contradicted it.
But perhaps this is about all that he has done. He has denied, but he has
not disproved. He has contradicted the floating paganism, but he has not
founded the deep religion. All about and around us a _faith_ in poetry
struggles to be extricated, but it is not extricated. Some day, at the
touch of the true word, the whole confusion will by magic cease; the
broken and shapeless notions will cohere and crystallize into a bright
and true theory. But this cannot be yet.