The words between inverted commas in our text are from a pamphlet
entitled ‘A Statement regarding the Union, an Academical Debating
Society, which existed at Cambridge from February 13, 1815, to March
24, 1817, when it was _suppressed by the Vice-Chancellor_.’ The
‘statement’ is evidently official, and is thoroughly business-like and
temperate. The Vice-Chancellor was Dr Wood, Master of S. John’s
College; the officers of the society were: Mr Whewell, _President_; Mr
Thirlwall, _Secretary_; Mr H. J. Rose, _Treasurer_. The late Professor
Selwyn, in a speech at the opening of the new Union building, October
30, 1866, stated that on the entrance of the proctors the President
said, ‘Strangers will please to withdraw, and the House will take the
message into consideration.’
Footnote 33:
_Autobiography of John Stuart Mill_, p. 125. Mill is describing a
debate at ‘a society of Owenites called the Co-operation Society,’ in
1825. ‘It was a _lutte corps à corps_ between Owenites and political
economists, whom the Owenites regarded as their most inveterate
opponents; but it was a perfectly friendly dispute.... The speaker
with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly every word
he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of S. David’s,
then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for
eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of Austin and
Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had
uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever
heard, and I have never since heard anyone whom I placed above him.’
Footnote 34:
_Letters_, &c., p. 31.
Footnote 35:
An old friend of Bishop Thirlwall informs us that he retained his
preference for the ‘Paradiso’ in after years.
Footnote 36:
_Life and Letters of Frances Baroness Bunsen_; by Augustus J. C. Hare.
8vo. Lond. 1882: i. 138.
Footnote 37:
Letter to Bunsen, November 21, 1831, _Letters_, &c., p. 99.
Footnote 38:
_Memoirs of Baron Bunsen_, i. 339.
Footnote 39:
Marsh was professor from 1807 to 1839. The first volume of his
translation of Michaelis had appeared in 1793.
Footnote 40:
_Letters_, &c., p. 55.
Footnote 41:
_Edinburgh Review_, April, 1876, p. 291.
Footnote 42:
_A Critical Essay on the Gospel of S. Luke._ By Dr Frederick
Schleiermacher. With an introduction by the Translator, containing an
account of the controversy respecting the origin of the first three
Gospels since Bishop Marsh’s dissertation. 8vo. London: 1825.
Footnote 43:
F. D. Maurice writes, 25 February, 1848: ‘The Bishop of S. David’s
very injudiciously translated, about twenty years ago,
Schleiermacher’s book on S. Luke—the one of all, perhaps, which he
ever wrote the most likely to offend religious people in England, and
so mislead them as to his real character and objects.’ _Life of F. D.
Maurice_, i. 454.
Footnote 44:
Between 1827 and 1832 he held the college offices of Junior Bursar,
Junior Dean, and Head Lecturer. In 1828, 1829, 1832, and 1834 he was
one of the examiners for the Classical Tripos.
Footnote 45:
See Dean Stanley’s Memoir of Archdeacon Hare, prefixed to the third
edition of _The Victory of Faith_. 1874.
Footnote 46:
_A Vindication of Niebuhr’s ‘History of Rome’ from the Charges of the
‘Quarterly Review.’_ By Julius Charles Hare, M.A. Cambridge, 1829. The
passage commented on will be found in the _Quarterly Review_ for
January 1829 (vol. xxxix. p. 8). The first edition of Niebuhr’s own
work had been highly praised in an article in the same _Review_ for
June 1825 (vol. xxxii. p. 67).
Footnote 47:
On the Life of Dr Whewell, printed above. It was originally called
‘Half a Century of Cambridge Life,’ and appeared in the _Church
Quarterly Review_, April 1882.
Footnote 48:
The _Caput Senatus_ consisted of five persons, viz. a Doctor of
Divinity, a Doctor of Laws, a Doctor of Physic, a non-regent Master,
and a regent Master. These persons held office for a year. They were
elected by the votes of the Heads of Colleges, the Doctors in all
faculties, and the Scrutators. Each member had the right to veto any
proposal of which he disapproved. The _Caput Senatus_ was established
by the Statutes of Elizabeth, 1570, Cap. xli, and abolished by the
University Act, 1856.
Footnote 49:
The first petition was presented to the House of Lords on March 21,
1834; the protest is dated April 3; and the counter-petition was
presented on April 21 in the same year.
Footnote 50:
_A Letter_ etc., p. 20.
Footnote 51:
_A Letter_ etc., pp. 21, 22.
Footnote 52:
When the ‘Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Undergraduates’
tabulated the weekly attendance of the Fellows at Chapel in the Lent
Term of 1838, and finally published a list, like the class list at the
end of an examination, Whewell was placed in the middle of the second
class, having obtained only 34 marks. The Deans, being obliged, in
virtue of their office, to attend twice daily, were disqualified from
obtaining the prize—a Bible—which the Society gave to Mr Perry,
afterwards Bishop of Melbourne, who had obtained 66 marks.
Footnote 53:
It has been said that the Master was advised to take the course he did
by Mr Hugh James Rose, who was in the University at the time, and on
Whitsunday, May 18, had preached a sermon at Great S. Mary’s on the
‘Duty of Maintaining the Truth,’ from S. Matt. x. 27: ‘What ye hear in
the ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops.’ Thirlwall’s letter,
however, was not published before May 21, so that, unless the nature
of it had been known beforehand, it is clear that anything which Mr
Rose had said in his sermon could not have referred to it. That
Thirlwall believed that there was some connexion between the sermon,
or at any rate the preacher, and his dismissal, is evident from the
fact that after showing the Master’s letter to one of the junior
Fellows, who expressed indignant surprise that such a course could
have been taken, he remarked: ‘Ah! let this be a warning to you to
preach truth, if need be, upon the house-tops, but never under any
circumstances to preach error.’ Thirlwall was a regular attendant at
Great S. Mary’s, and no doubt heard the sermon in question.
Footnote 54:
The letter, dated 27 May, 1834, is printed by Mrs Stair Douglas, _Life
of Dr Whewell_, p. 163.
Footnote 55:
The letter, dated 23 September 1834, is printed in _Letters of Bishop
Thirlwall_, p. 124; and by Mrs Stair Douglas, _Life of Dr Whewell_, p.
168. Dr Wordsworth’s action was noticed with disapproval beyond the
limits of Trinity College, for Professor Babington records in his
Diary:
_Nov. 17 [1834]\._ Attended a meeting at Mr Bowstead’s rooms at
Corpus, to vote an address to Mr Connop Thirlwall expressive of our
sorrow at his being prevented from acting as tutor, and of our
disapprobation of the discussion of things not forming part of the
duties of tuition being made a cause for depriving a tutor of his
office.
_Nov. 29._ A meeting was called for 28th to take into consideration
the address to Thirlwall. Laing, Henslow, and I supposed that it was
this day, and went, and found that the meeting was over and the
address, much to our sorrow burnt. (_Memorials, etc. of Charles
Cardale Babington_, 8vo. Camb. 1897, p. 33). Professor Mayor (_Ibid._
265) conjectures, with much probability, that the address was
destroyed at Thirlwall’s own suggestion. It is curious that his
friends should have deferred their action for so many months.
Footnote 56:
_Life of Dr Whewell_, by Mrs Stair Douglas, p. 211.
Footnote 57:
_Letters to a Friend_, p. 191.
Footnote 58:
The preface to the first edition of vol. i. is dated ‘Trinity College,
June 12, 1835.’ He was instituted to Kirby Underdale, 13 February,
1835 (_Letters_, p. 136), but he did not take up his residence there
till July following (_Ibid._ p. 137). The dates of the subsequent
volumes are ii. iii., 1836; iv., 1837; v., 1838; vi., 1839; vii.,
1840; viii., 1844.
Footnote 59:
_Letters_, &c. p. 138.
Footnote 60:
Preface to the second edition, dated ‘London, May 1845.’
Footnote 61:
_Letters_, &c. p. 194. The letter is dated April 9, 1846.
Footnote 62:
_The Personal Life of George Grote._ By Mrs Grote, p. 173.
Footnote 63:
_Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne._ By W. M. Torrens, M.P. Vol. ii. p.
332. Lord Houghton in the _Fortnightly Review_, February 1878.
Footnote 64:
_Letters to a Friend_, p. 278.
Footnote 65:
_Letters_, &c. p. 161.
Footnote 66:
_Letters_, &c. p. 292.
Footnote 67:
_Charges_, vol. ii. pp. 90-100.
Footnote 68:
In his charge for 1851 (_Charges_, vol. i. p. 150) he announced his
intention to devote the surplus of his income to the augmentation of
small livings, and in 1866 he pointed out that the fund had up to that
time yielded £24,000 (_Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 98).
Footnote 69:
He particularly disliked gossip. At Kirby Underdale the old sexton
used to relate how Mr Thirlwall said, ‘I never ’ears no tales’; and
the following story shows that he maintained the same wise discretion
after he became a bishop. One of his archdeacons thought it right to
tell him that a certain clergyman in the diocese, who was a clever
mimic, was fond of entertaining his friends with imitations of the
Bishop. Thirlwall listened, and then inquired, ‘Does he do me well?’
‘I am sure I cannot say, my Lord,’ replied the informer; ‘I was never
present myself at one of these disgraceful exhibitions.’ ‘Ah! I should
like to know, because he does _you_ admirably,’ replied the Bishop. It
is needless to say that no more stories were carried to his ears.
Footnote 70:
_An Earnestly Respectful Letter_, 8vo. 1860, pp. 20-23. See also _The
Life and Letters of Rowland Williams, D.D._, London, 1874, chap. xv.,
where his determination to make the Bishop declare himself, under the
belief that he really agreed with him, is expressly stated.
Footnote 71:
_A Letter to the Rev. Rowland Williams_, 8vo. 1860, p. 19.
Footnote 72:
Dean Stanley’s preface to the _Letters to a Friend_, p. xi.
Footnote 73:
_Letters to a Friend_, p. 54.
Footnote 74:
Review of ‘The letters of Bishop Thirlwall,’ _The Times_, 23 November,
1881.
Footnote 75:
_The Edinburgh Review_, for April, 1876, p. 292.
Footnote 76:
These words are inscribed upon Bishop Thirlwall’s grave.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES,
LORD HOUGHTON[77].
It is much to be regretted that Lord Houghton did not write his own
biography. Those who know his delightful _Monographs, Social and
Personal_, can form some idea of how he would have treated it. From his
early years he lived in society—not merely the society to which his
birth naturally opened the door, but a varied society of his own
creating. He had an insatiable curiosity. It is hardly too much to say
that in his long life he was present at every ceremony of importance,
from the Eglinton Tournament to the Œcumenical Council; he knew
everybody who was worth knowing, both at home and abroad—not merely as
chance acquaintances, but as friends with whom he maintained a
correspondence; he was both a politician and a man of letters, a friend
of the unwashed and the associate of princes. What a book might have
been written by such a man on such a subject! But, alas! though he often
spoke of writing his own life, he died before he had leisure even to
begin it; and, instead, we have to content ourselves with the volumes
before us. They are good—unquestionably good; they abound with amusing
stories and brilliant witticisms; but we confess that we laid them down
with a sense of disappointment which it is hard to define. Perhaps it
was beyond the writer’s ability to draw so complex a character—a man of
many moods, a creature of contradictions, a master of what _not_ to do
and _not_ to say, as a lady of fashion told him to his face; perhaps he
was overweighted by a wish to bring into prominence those solid
qualities in his hero which society often failed to discover, while
judging only ‘the man of fashion, whose unconventional originality had
so far impressed itself upon the popular mind that there was hardly any
eccentricity too audacious to be attributed to him by those who knew him
only by repute[78].’ We are not so presumptuous as to suppose that we
can paint a portrait of Lord Houghton that will satisfy those who were
his intimate friends; but we hope to present to our readers at least a
faithful sketch of one for whom we had a most sincere admiration and
respect.
Richard Monckton Milnes was born in London, June 19, 1809. His father,
Robert Pemberton Milnes, then a young man of twenty-five, and M.P. for
the family borough of Pontefract, had just flashed into sudden celebrity
in the House of Commons by a brilliant speech in favour of Mr Canning,
which saved the Portland Administration, and would have made Mr Milnes’s
political fortune, had he been so minded. But when Mr Perceval offered
him a seat in the Cabinet, either as Chancellor of the Exchequer or as
Secretary of War, he exclaimed, ‘Oh, no: I will not accept either; with
my temperament, I should be dead in a year.’ That he had entered
Parliament with high hopes, and confidence in his own powers to win
distinction there, is plain from the well-known story (which his son
evidently believed) that he laid a bet of 100_l._ that he would be
Chancellor of the Exchequer in five years. But, when the time came, he
declined to ‘take occasion by the hand,’ and sat down under the oaks of
Fryston to spend the rest of his life, just half a century, in the
placid uniformity of a country gentleman’s existence. His abandonment of
public life, and his refusal to return to it in any form, even when,
late in life, Lord Palmerston offered him a peerage, were unsolved
riddles to his contemporaries. Those who read these volumes will have
but little difficulty in finding the answer to it. He was endowed with a
proud independence of judgment which could never bind itself to any
political party, and a critical fastidiousness which made him hesitate
over every question presented to him. These two qualities of mind were
conspicuous in his son, and barred to some extent his advancement, as
they had barred his father’s. It must not, however, be imagined that the
elder Milnes was an indolent man. Far from it. He was a daring rider to
hounds, a scientific agriculturist, an active magistrate, a stimulator
of the waning Toryism of Yorkshire by speeches which showed what the
House of Commons had lost when he left it, and ardently curious about
men of note and events of interest—another characteristic which
descended to his son. Occasionally, too, he yielded to a love of
excitement which Yorkshire could not gratify, and revisited London, to
tempt the fickle goddess who presides over high play—a taste which cost
him dear, for it compelled him to pass several years of his life in
comparative obscurity abroad, while the rents in his fortune, due to his
own and his brother’s extravagance, were being slowly repaired. We have
been told, by one who knew him late in life, that he was a singularly
loveable person—the delight of children and young people—full of jokes,
and fun, and _persiflage_. ‘You could never be sure whether he spoke in
jest or in earnest,’ said our informant. Here again one of the most
obvious characteristics of his son makes its appearance.
The boyhood of Richard Milnes may be passed over in a sentence. A
serious illness when he was ten years old put an end to his father’s
intention of sending him to Harrow, and he was educated at home, or near
it, till he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1827. He
was entered as a fellow-commoner—a position well suited to the training
he had received, for it gave him the society of men older than himself,
while he was looking out for congenial friends among men of his own age.
His college tutor was Mr Whewell, and it was doubtless at his suggestion
that he went to read classics with Thirlwall, then one of the resident
Fellows. On one of his later visits to Cambridge Lord Houghton told an
interesting story of their relations as pupil and instructor. After a
few days’ trial Thirlwall said to him: ‘You will never be a scholar. It
is no use our reading classics together. Have you ever read the Bible?’
‘Yes, I have read it, but not critically,’ was the reply. ‘Very well,’
said Thirlwall, ‘ then let us begin with Genesis.’ And so the rest of
the term was spent in the study of the Old Testament. Mr Reid is, no
doubt, right in saying that, for ‘the making of his mind,’ Milnes was
more deeply indebted to Thirlwall than to any other man. But Thirlwall
was not merely the Gamaliel at whose feet Milnes was willing to sit; he
became the chosen friend of his heart. Lord Houghton was once asked to
name the most remarkable man whom he had known in his long experience.
Without a moment’s hesitation he replied ‘Thirlwall’; and the numerous
letters which Mr Reid has printed show that the friendship was equally
strong on both sides.
The most picturesque of Roman historians said of one of his heroes that
he was _felix opportunitate mortis_; it might be said of Milnes, with
regard to Cambridge, that he was _felix opportunitate vitæ_. It would be
difficult, if not impossible, to find a period in which so many men who
afterwards made their mark in the world have been gathered together
there; and, with a happy facility for discovering and attracting to
himself whatever was eminent and worth knowing, it was not long before
he became intimate with the best of them. Nearly forty years afterwards,
in 1866, on the occasion of the opening of the new rooms of the Union
Society, he commemorated these friends of his early years in a speech of
singular beauty and sincerity:
‘There was Tennyson, the Laureate, whose goodly bay-tree decorates our
language and our land; Arthur, the younger Hallam, the subject of _In
Memoriam_, the poet and his friend passing, linked hand in hand,
together down the slopes of fame. There was Trench, the present
Archbishop of Dublin, and Alford, Dean of Canterbury, both profound
Scriptural philologists who have not disdained the secular muse. There
was Spedding, who has, by a philosophical affinity, devoted the whole of
his valuable life to the rehabilitation of the character of Lord Bacon;
and there was Merivale, who—I hope by some attraction of repulsion—has
devoted so much learning to the vindication of the Cæsars. There were
Kemble and Kinglake, the historian of our earliest civilization and of
our latest war—Kemble as interesting an individual as ever was portrayed
by the dramatic genius of his own race; Kinglake, as bold a man-at-arms
in literature as ever confronted public opinion. There was Venables,
whose admirable writings, unfortunately anonymous, we are reading every
day, without knowing to whom to attribute them; and there was Blakesley,
the “Hertfordshire Incumbent” of the _Times_. There were sons of
families which seemed to have an hereditary right to, a sort of habit
of, academic distinction, like the Heaths and the Lushingtons. But I
must check this throng of advancing memories, and I will pass from this
point with the mention of two names which you would not let me omit—one
of them, that of your Professor of Greek, whom it is the honour of Her
Majesty’s late Government to have made Master of Trinity; and the other,
that of your latest Professor, Mr F. D. Maurice, in whom you will all
soon recognize the true enthusiasm of humanity’ (vol. ii. p. 161).
Mr Reid tells us that Tennyson sought Milnes’s acquaintance because ‘he
looks the best-tempered fellow I ever saw.’ Hallam proclaimed him to be
‘a kindhearted fellow, as well as a very clever one, but vain and
paradoxical.’ Milnes himself put Hallam at the head of those whom he
knew. ‘He is the only man of my standing,’ he wrote, ‘before whom I bow
in conscious inferiority in everything.’
It was hardly to be expected that Milnes, with his taste for the general
in literature rather than the particular, would achieve distinction in
the Cambridge of 1830. We have seen how Thirlwall disposed of his
classical aspirations, and in mathematics he fared no better. He read
hard, and hoped for distinction in the college examination. But he had
overtaxed his energies; his health gave way, and he was forced to give
up work altogether for some days. Happily, the benefit a man derives
from his three years at a university need not be measured by his
honours, and we may be sure that the experience of men and books that
Milnes gained there was of greater service to him than a high place in
any Tripos would have been. He roamed in all directions over the fields
of knowledge; phrenology, anatomy, geology, political economy,
metaphysics, by turns engaged his attention; he dabbled in periodical
literature; he acted Beatrice in _Much Ado about Nothing_, and Mrs
Malaprop in _The Rivals_; he made an excursion in a balloon with the
celebrated aeronaut, Mr Green; he wrote two prize-poems, _Timbuctoo_ and
_Byzantium_, but only to be beaten by Tennyson and Kinglake; he obtained
a second prize for an English declamation, and a first prize for an
English essay, _On the Homeric Poems_; he became a member of the club
known as ‘The Apostles,’ in which he maintained a kindly interest to the
end of his life; and last, but by no means least, he was a constant
speaker at the Union.
It is impossible, at a distance of just sixty years, to form an exact
estimate of the success of Milnes in those debates. But that it was
something more than ordinary, is, we think, certain; for otherwise he
would not have ventured to present himself at the Oxford Union in
December 1829, in the character of a self-selected missionary, who hoped
to carry light and leading into the dark places of the sister
University. As this expedition has been twice described by Milnes
himself, first in a letter to his mother soon after his return to
Cambridge, and secondly in a speech at the opening of the new building
of the Cambridge Union Society in 1866; and also, more or less fully, by
four of his contemporaries, Sir Francis Doyle, Mr Gladstone, Cardinal
Manning, and Dean Blakesley, it is clear that it was regarded by himself
and his friends, both at the time and afterwards, as something uncommon
and remarkable, and we feel sure that we shall be excused if we try to
give a connected narrative of what really took place.
Doyle had ‘brought forward a motion at the Oxford Union that Shelley was
a greater poet than Byron[79].’ According to Blakesley, ‘the respective
moral tendency of the writings of Shelley and Byron[80]’ was the subject
under debate. Doyle states that he acted ‘under Cambridge influences’;
and that his motion was ‘an echo of Cambridge thought and feeling,’
words which probably refer to the then recent reprint of Shelley’s
_Adonais_ at Cambridge. The debate, he proceeds, ‘was attended by three
distinguished members of the Cambridge Union, Arthur Hallam, Richard
Milnes, and Sunderland’; or, to use the words of what may be called his
second account, taken from a lecture on Wordsworth delivered forty-three
years afterwards, ‘friends of mine at Cambridge took the matter up and
appeared suddenly on the scene of action.’ That this was the true state
of the case, and that there was little or no premeditation about the
excursion, is made still clearer by Milnes’ first account. After
mentioning that he had been to Oxford, he proceeds:
‘I wanted much to see the place and the men, and had no objection to
speak in their society; so, as they had a good subject for debate (the
comparative merits of Shelley and Byron), and Sunderland and Hallam were
both willing to go—and the Master, when he heard what was our purpose,
very kindly gave us an _Exeat_—we drove manfully through the snow,
arriving in time to speak that evening....
‘Sunderland spoke first after Doyle, who opened, then Hallam, then some
Oxonians, and I succeeded. The contrast from our long, noisy, shuffling,
scraping, talking, vulgar, ridiculous-looking kind of assembly, to a
neat little square room, with eighty or ninety young gentlemen, sprucely
dressed, sitting on chairs or lounging about the fire-place, was enough
to unnerve a more confident person than myself. Even the brazen
Sunderland was somewhat awed, and became tautological, and spoke what we
should call an inferior speech, but which dazzled his hearers. Hallam,
as being among old friends, was bold, and spoke well. I was certainly
nervous, but, I think, pleased my audience better than I pleased
myself[81].’