Among the clergy of Bury was a curate, I think of St. Mary’s, who was
named Cookesley. His mother was a school-fellow of my mother at Exeter,
now about a hundred years ago! He became intimate with me, and was
often my guest. He was a son of Dr. Cookesley, D.D., and a brother of
a well-known man who was long an assistant-master at Eton, and was
as such spoken of with great favour by Beaconsfield in his novel of
“Coningsby.” Afterwards he had a church at Hammersmith, St. Peter’s, and
lived in that place, where I knew him, and attached much interest to his
acquaintance. He used to dine with me at Alton Lodge, Roehampton, which
was within a walk of his house. Cookesley was, above all things, a good
fellow, besides being a good scholar and a most amusing companion. He was
a sturdy Churchman, and much mixed up with the writers of “Essays and
Reviews”—Dr. Temple (now Bishop of London), Dr. Williams, and their set.
I introduce the name here on account of Cookesley having attacked
Donaldson’s work, by pamphlet, on the subject of “Jashar,” the name of a
Latin book of great pretensions and no authority.
Donaldson, previously mentioned by me, was in many things a good fellow
too, but owing to his overweening vanity, which had no repose, he was
incapable of the higher virtues. That vanity which stands in the way
of friendship, even of truth itself, was his to a degree that may be
pronounced abnormal. He wanted to be thought the greatest of Bentleys,
the cleverest of Christian Voltaires, the choicest of wits; but a man
who is now two-thirds a scholar and one-third a wit may, if very vain,
conceive himself to be a Dr. Parr.
I liked Donaldson much, not very much, and as character is of no use
after a man is dead, it no longer subserving his human interests, I wish
to do him justice, for better as well as for worse, since he was a man
to be biographized for the common good. For some years I associated with
him almost daily, walked and talked with him, dined with him in many
houses, in his as well as my own, knew his thoughts, his opinions, and
was conversant with whatever he was about.
His disposition was candid, genial, good-natured. He was a child in his
love of fun, and had laughter enough in him to respond to all the humour
ever uttered by word of mouth, from Rabelais to Molière. I was going to
say he had not a bad heart; I will go further, and say that I am sure he
had a good one for an occasion, but not one of a serious and responsible
order.
But these excellent qualities were marred in him, not unfrequently, by a
vanity which was incommensurable.
I would not undertake to pronounce him blamable in anything he did, said,
or wrote; I am a physiologist in judging of good deeds, a pathologist
in judging of bad. When I call up Donaldson’s head and face, and see
a large, wide, overhanging forehead, big enough to be hydrocephalic, a
forehead such as one meets with in cases of epilepsy and in cases of
genius alike, I pause before criticising its function; and such was
Donaldson’s forehead, while his mouth was the mouth of Punch. Its laugh,
almost always silent, seemed loud, and suppressed only to make it last
the longer. There was more going on always under that forehead of his
than in any half-dozen brains of the common type. Fortunate for him was
it that the mental workings are inaudible, or he would have been stunned
by his own thoughts; so busy were they at all times, and so noisy.
He was a work of Nature, a thinking and sensitive machine, which set
going must work on like the rapidest wheel moved by steam; so rapid
sometimes as to acquire invisibility as it revolved before your eyes.
The fly-wheel—that wonderful invention of machinery that carries the
largest wheel over the dead point—in him was vanity, and it never allowed
its machinery to pause; it was, therefore, quite impossible for it to ask
itself if it went wrong when it never stopped. All Donaldson knew about
right and wrong was that what he achieved was perfect—that, even if a
little wrong, the reason was not quite within reach of vulgar scrutiny.
Cookesley was the first to take unfavourable notice of his “Jashar;”
Perowne was the next. Neither wrote of it dispassionately, but this was
in no very unkind spirit. Their criticism was as they felt to be just.
The origin of “Jashar” was partly told by Donaldson in his reply, but he
was not over-candid in his details. From his account he was only going
to pursue a course that others had taken: Welcker, in collecting the
fragments of Æschylus; Meinche, in doing the same for the Comœdians; and
so on for Alcæus and the Lyric Poets, without a thought, he said, on
their part of also doing what he had done for Jashar—an omission at which
he expressed his great surprise.
Now, the surprise he here expresses is not a real transcript from his
memory; the labours of which he speaks he had been long acquainted with.
He had himself edited the works of Pindar, _with the fragments of his
lost compositions_; which circumstance would have included him among
those at whose shortcomings his astonishment was expressed. But I may say
he only imagined himself so astonished, on writing his _Præfatio_; for I
know perfectly well that one evening, when dining with Sir Thomas Cullum,
the worthy baronet showed him Knights’s volume, with plates, “On the
Worship of Priapus,” and that it so attracted his fancy that he borrowed
it and took it home. He showed it to me soon after—it might have been the
next day—and told me that he had caught from it an interpretation of a
certain text of Scripture, viz. Genesis iii. 8-15.
Out of this, and a certain plate, came “Jashar,” which, whether true
or false, scholarly or unscholarly, is a wonderful intellectual feat;
and if the subject is susceptible of treatment under new accretions of
knowledge, justice must be accorded it as a first and bold attempt. The
part relating to the worship of Priapus, which immediately follows the
Prolegomena, is a marvellous evolution of the verses cited.
The details would be in place if printed in an anatomical work; perhaps
next to that they are best buried in Latin.