splendour of achievement blinded him to moral iniquity. He had a
wealth of righteous indignation which upon occasion blazed out
fiercely. 'Are you aware,' he once asked, 'that Borromeo was a party
to a scheme of assassinations?' 'But,' said some one, 'must we not
make allowance for the morality of the time?' 'I make no allowance for
that sort of thing,' was the emphatic answer; and {lxxii} the contrast
with the measured and sedate tones of Acton's ordinary utterance made
the explosion all the more impressive.
"This righteous indignation carried with it a corresponding
appreciation of anything good. I remember well how he told me the
supplement to the old story of the Copenhagen signal--that Parker made
it with the expressed intention of relieving Nelson from
responsibility, but in the confident expectation that, if skill and
daring could do anything, Nelson would disobey. Acton could admire
Parker's magnanimity as well as Nelson's genius.
"It would be presumption in me to say anything about Acton's historical
attainments; but I may note one or two peculiarities which I noticed in
his attitude to the study. History, as he conceived it, included in
its scope all forms of human activity; so that scholars whom others
would describe as theologians or jurists were in his eyes great
departmental historians. This, I thought, was the explanation of his
miscellaneous reading; for he was always methodical, never desultory.
"But despite this width of view, he did not grudge the expenditure of
time and trouble upon details. On the contrary, he would not only
ransack archives, but also interrogate those who had witnessed, or been
concerned in, great events. Of course he minutely scrutinised and
scrupulously weighed the testimony thus obtained; but when once he was
satisfied of the accuracy of his information, he was prepared to use it
for the interpretation and explanation of documentary evidence.
"Acton could never have written anything which was not literature of a
high order--dignified, incisive, vigorous; and yet history was to him,
not literature, but political philosophy; not an interesting narrative,
but a scientific study of cause and effect. He had, {lxxiii} however,
no faith in political forecasts about anything more than the immediate
future.
"It is impossible not to regret that Acton has not made his mark in
literature as the writer of a great book, or in politics as a great
statesman; but he preferred to _know_, and the men who know as Acton
knew are few. The world is the richer whilst they are with us, and the
poorer when they go. Acton will not be forgotten at Cambridge."
A brilliant and penetrating judgment of Lord Acton's services to
Cambridge was paid in the _Cambridge Review_ a few months after his
death (October 16, 1902) by Professor Maitland, who had been associated
with him in preparing the "Cambridge History" as a Syndic of the Press.
Himself one of the most learned men in the University, Mr. Maitland was
amazed by the extent of Lord Acton's range. "If," he writes, with a
laudable wish to avoid extravagance, "we recall the giants of a past
time, their wondrous memories, their encyclopaedic knowledge, we must
remember also how much that Lord Acton knew was for them practically
unknowable." His reading was not for amusement. His daily consumption
of a German octavo meant mastery of the book, with copious notes in a
neat handwriting on slips of paper, which were always, like his books,
at the disposal of his pupils. He "toiled," as Professor Maitland
says, "in the archives, hunting the little fact that makes the
difference." He was "deeply convinced that the history of religion
lies near the heart of all history," while it was his fate to be
suspected by Catholics as a Liberal, and by Liberals as a Catholic.
"This man," I again quote the Professor, "who has been called a miser
was in truth a very spendthrift of his hard-earned treasure, and ready
to give away in half-an-hour the substance of an unwritten book." Some
writers, especially bad writers, do not shine in conversation, because
{lxxiv} they are keeping their best things for the public. Lord Acton
would pour out to a sympathetic listener the most recondite history,
or, on a different occasion, the spiciest gossip, if that were the
commodity in demand. So far as knowledge and power went, and if time
had served, Professor Maitland is convinced that Lord Acton could
himself have written all the twelve volumes of the "Cambridge History."
The "History" is his best memorial. Another memorial is the famous
Aldenham Library, bought by Mr. Carnegie, and presented by Mr. Morley
to the University of Cambridge.
The article which I have ventured to associate with the name of
Professor Maitland is signed "F.W.M.," a signature which the writer
would not have adopted if he had desired to preserve his anonymity.
The authorship of a letter signed "H.J.," and written from Cambridge,
which appeared almost simultaneously in the _Daily News_, is not more
difficult to identify. "H.J.'s" words are a memorable and eloquent
protest against the ignorant fancy that Lord Acton spent his life in
the mere accumulation of learning. The exact opposite, as he says, was
the truth. Lord Acton "was no mere Dryasdust: he was a watchful
observer of men and affairs. If he studied the detail of history, it
was in order that he might the better elicit its significance and its
teaching. He was slow to express an opinion; but in his judgments
there was never any indecision. In the advocacy of intellectual
freedom he was eager: in the denunciation of tyranny and persecution he
was at a white heat. He was a man who loved to prove all things, and
to hold fast that which is good." Every one who knew Lord Acton, or at
least every one who could appreciate him, must recognise the justice
and fidelity of this eloquent tribute. But it was at Cambridge that he
put forth to the utmost the whole power of his mind. It was at
Cambridge that he showed most clearly how his whole {lxxv} life had
been devoted to the cause of freedom and of truth. It was there that
he planned the "Cambridge History" in twelve volumes, of which two, the
first and the seventh, have already appeared. Unhappily they were
posthumous. Lord Acton did not live to see them, nor to write the
Introduction. At the age of sixty-seven he was suddenly struck down by
paralysis, and, after lingering for more than a year, died at Tegernsee
on the 19th of June 1902. He was "buried by the side of the daughter
whose deathbed he had comforted with the words, 'Be glad, my child, you
will soon be with Jesus Christ.'"[4] Such through life and in death
was his simple faith.
The lustre which Lord Acton's name reflected upon Cambridge was not
felt more deeply, or more sincerely, than the higher standard of
learning which he introduced into a learned professoriate. He was the
one man in England, if not in Europe, who could have brought with him
from the outside an equal knowledge of books and of the world.
Cambridge saw his weak side quickly enough. The keen-witted men who
enjoyed and appreciated his talk, or watched him listening with an
attention that nothing escaped, could understand why Doellinger
predicted that if he did not write a great book before he was forty he
would never write one at all. As a matter of fact he did not write a
book of any kind, small or great. He did not even, as he once thought
of doing, republish his Essays. His contemplated Life of Doellinger
dwindled into an article of forty pages on Doellinger's Historical Work
for the _English Historical Review_.
But the article, which appeared in October 1890, shows Lord Acton at
his best. His affectionate reverence for his great master gives a
colour and animation to his style, which it often lacked. This is by
far the most readable of all his essays, and by no means {lxxvi} the
least instructive. Doellinger was in some respects like himself.
"Everybody felt that he knew too much to write," and the best part of
his erudition was given to his pupils at Munich. In tracing the course
of Doellinger's studies, and of his mental development, Lord Acton wrote
the best, because the most characteristic, biography of the Old
Catholic leader. Besides the interest of the subject itself, Lord
Acton contrived to bring into this wonderful summary a number of
judgments on other things and persons as vivid as they are acute.
Freeman rather horrified him by preferring printed books to manuscripts
as material for history. But then he "mixed his colours with brains."
Lord Acton was inclined to think Stahl, the philosophical and
Conservative statesman of Prussia, "the greatest man born of a Jewish
mother since Titus." Doellinger, however, considered that this was
unjust to Disraeli, and most Englishmen will probably agree with him in
opinion.
Whether Lord Acton ought to have left the Church of Rome when Doellinger
was excommunicated, or when the Vatican decrees were pronounced, is a
question which it would not become a Protestant to ask, much less to
answer. He did not shrink from the risk of speaking out, and it was
not his fault that he escaped. No earthly reward or peril would have
induced him to say what he did not think, or to profess what he did not
believe. The truths which all Christians hold in common, and the moral
principles to which Sophocles ascribes an unknown antiquity, guided him
in history as in life. His emphatic statement that he had never felt
any doubt about any Roman doctrine was made some years before 1870, and
the secession of the Old Catholics, which failed for want of an
Episcopate. In 1878 Pio Nono died, and was succeeded by a more liberal
Pontiff. Manning lost his influence at Rome, Newman was made a
cardinal, and the Broad Churchmen {lxxvii} in the Roman communion were
tolerated, if not encouraged. Even Lord Acton's old enemy, Manning,
turned from theological controversy to movements of social
philanthropy, to Irish politics, in which he agreed with Acton, and to
good works among the poor. The strictest of Roman Catholics were not
sorry to think that the most learned Prelates of the Anglican Church
were less learned than a Catholic layman. The more a man knew, the
larger was his idea of Lord Acton's knowledge. But for the years
between 1895 and 1900 that knowledge would have been comparatively
wasted. It would have profited only a few readers here and there
beyond the circle of Lord Acton's friends. At Cambridge, the Professor
of History was in perpetual contact with fresh minds eager to know, and
to transmit what they acquired. He did not altogether understand the
Greek mind, for he told Mr. Gladstone that it was unscientific. But he
had this much in common with Socrates, the father of science, that he
required the clash of dialectic to bring out his full force. When
ignorant people laid down the law, Lord Acton smiled, and, it is to be
feared, enjoyed himself in an almost sinful degree. When scholars and
philosophers conversed with him, they found him often indeed more
inclined to listen than to talk, but always appreciative, suggestive,
and awakening. To genuine students he was a mine of information, and
would give what was asked tenfold. Nobody ever entrapped him into a
path which for good reasons he was disposed to avoid. Attempt to draw
him into controversy, and he became cautious, subtle, enigmatic. But
every one who came to him, as his Cambridge pupils came, for assistance
and instruction, went away not merely satisfied and enlightened, but
moved and touched by the profundity of his knowledge, the generosity of
his temper, and the humility of his soul.
[1] I owe the opportunity of reading and quoting from this lecture,
reported in the _Bridgnorth Journal_ of the 14th, to the kindness of
Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff.
[2] His wife had become insane on the failure of her mission to France.
[3] "Studies in Contemporary Biography," 398.
[4] _Edinburgh Review_, 404, page 534.
[Illustration:
Mary Gladstone
Herbert Gladstone Mr. Gladstone Mrs. Gladstone Dr. Dollinger Lord Acton
Group at Tegernsee, 1879.]
{1}
LETTERS OF LORD ACTON
[Sidenote: _Mentone Oct. 31, 1879_]
You were threatened with a long letter from me, about people at Paris,
but I could not finish it, ... and so I lost the only days on which
Paris information could be of any use. After a week of care, varied by
pleasant visits from Lacaita, F. Leveson, and H. Cowper, we started,
and rested at Milan and Genoa, and yet were nearly the first arrivals
here. We expect to have the Granvilles for neighbours at Cannes, as
well as Westminsters.
Let me first of all transcribe a passage from my unsent letter: "If you
see Madame Waddington you will find her a very pleasant specimen of
American womanhood. Her husband wants the qualities that charm and win
at first, and I suppose he will not hold his own long. He has no dash,
no _entrain_, no personal ascendency, like the men who succeed in
France; but there is not a deeper scholar, or a more sincere and
straightforward Christian in the country." I see from your letter that
the unfavourable part of my remarks came true more than the praise.
Something may be due to awkwardness connected with the Ferry[1] Bill.
The interview with Scherer consoles me. He is a man of the first order
as far as that can be without showy gifts. But he is guarded, cold,
unsympathising, and {2} the intellectual crisis by which he came to
repudiate the Christian faith was so conspicuous that he is embarrassed
with people who are notable for religious conviction.
I wanted to say so much about Mignet, who was celebrated before your
father went up to college; of St. Hilaire, the best Grecian and
earliest Republican in France; of Dufaure and Simon, the leaders of the
Left Centre, who hold the fate of the Ministry in their hands; of
Laboulaye, the political oracle of Waddington, who solves every problem
by American principles; of Vielcastel, the most sensible and
experienced of Conservatives, and the only surviving Doctrinaire; of
Broglie,[2] who has all but ruined the Republic, in order to expiate
his former ecclesiastical Liberalism; of Pasquier, who possesses the
good qualities in which Broglie is deficient; of Taine, who has almost
the solidity of Scherer, and more than his brilliancy. But it is all
too late now.
You describe the Professor[3] most justly. Serenity has grown on him
with years, although they were years of conflict and of the great grief
that men who do not live for themselves can feel for the cause they
have lived for. Strength, too, though in less degree, by reason of a
vice which besets another great man. From a sense of dignity and of
charity he refuses to see all the evil there is in men; and in order
that his judgments may be always charitable, generous, and leaning to
the safer side, he is not always exact in definitions or rigorous in
applying principles. He looks for the root of differences in
speculative systems, in defect of knowledge, in everything but moral
causes, and if you had remained with us longer you would {3} have found
out that this is a matter on which I am divided from him by a gulf
almost too wide for sympathy.
Boutney I never saw. But he is a sound and useful man, who makes it
his business to spread political knowledge among those classes that
govern France. A cousin of ours lectures, under his auspices, to
half-educated Parisians.
"Le Gendre de M. Poirier" at the Francais is one of the greatest treats
imaginable. Your stay at Paris must have been full of new impressions
and experiences, even in its levity.
And now, after a short interval of Victor Hugo at Keble, I fancy you
will start for the Midlothian campaign. You were very wrong to
suppress that second sheet of your letter, and I hope you will make up
for it by letting me know how things go on, and bearing in mind that
one learns nothing at Mentone, except the bare outside of public events.
[Sidenote: _Mentone March 15, 1880_]
There is so much to ask and say that I have not the courage to begin.
I am afraid you will forgive the length neither of my letter nor of my
silence, and will be as much bored by the silver of the one as by the
golden of the other. But when all the world has its rendezvous in
Harley Street, admit me, perdu in the crowd.
In this out-of-the-way region we have been kept up to the mark in home
politics by pleasant visits from Freddy Leveson--a robust
Gladstonian--Cowper Temple, who told me more than I knew about the
world of spirits; Goschen, who spent several days with us, and whose
footsteps are very visible on the road that leads away from the Liberal
party, through {4} Brookes's, to a moderado coalition; Reay, ... fresh
from Midlothian; Mallet,[4] doctrinaire, disputatious and desponding,
but abounding in criticism of the policy which he represents. Lord
Blachford passed, but I did not see him. Nothing carried me back to
England more than the two Italians[5] whom you overheard at Venice, who
were here when I was very ill, but who took me over the whole ground
traversed since 1842. Bonghi's essays[6] are appearing successively,
and they are meant as a lesson for Italians, and break up the career in
a way which loses the thread of continuity and the law of its progress
and the wealth of the unity therein. But he is exceedingly intelligent
and sympathetic, and I hope that he will recast his materials when he
puts them together in a volume. When he asked me: Why is Mr. Gladstone
so much attached to the Church and so much against establishments? Why
is he so generous towards R. Catholics and so hard on the Pope? Why is
not Ireland reconciled? Why is not England won?--you will believe that
I found my voice again. I don't think the book will ever suit our
public, but I should like it to appear in French.
* * * * *
A certain letter of mine acknowledging the gift of the Lancashire
Canvassing Speeches was written between the election and the summons to
Windsor, in November 1868.[7] If it leads you to look at the Bristol
electioneering speeches mentioned in it, you will be disappointed; for
they will seem to you poor in comparison. In reality, they are an
epoch in constitutional history. Burke there laid down, for ever, the
law of the {5} relations between members and constituencies, which is
the innermost barrier against the reign of democratic force. Charles
Sumner once said to me: "Mr. Burke legislated from those hustings."
When you met John Morley at Glasgow he had just written a very good
life of Burke. It is impossible not to be struck by the many points of
resemblance between Burke and your father--the only two men of that
stature in our political history--but I have no idea whether they would
have been friends or bitter enemies.
Madame de Stael is the author of that saying about liberty, whom I
commemorate in terms studiously excluding rivalry with George Eliot.
Do you remember a question as to the number of words in Shakespeare and
in Milton? There is all about it in Brother Mark's[8] "Life of
Milton," which is in the same series as Morley's "Burke."
And another, as to the title of the "Imitation"? I find that it is not
the title given by the author--so that Milman's very plausible remark
falls through.
Plenty of muffs have written in the _Edinbro'_, but I am not one of
them.
You see so many interesting and eminent men that you can spare a miss
sometimes. But I am sorry for that silent evening near Lowell. The
easy brightness of his mind surpasses all I remember in America. I sat
next to him at a dinner at Boston twenty-seven years ago, and spoke of
the burying, by Constantine, of the Palladium in a vault at
Constantinople. Longfellow would not believe my story. I quoted a
passage. "Yes," said Lowell, "but the passage we want is the passage
into the vault." Somebody questioned whether the statue of Cromwell
would stand {6} among the sovereigns at Westminster. "At least," said
he, "among the half-crowns."
I have never met him since. But if I had been fortunate enough to drop
in that evening at Ripon's, I rather think I should have liked to sit
next to him. You would have seen the difference between a live dog and
a dead lion.
Scherer ought to be much obliged to me for the conversation and for the
readers I procured him. He is, I think, one of the three best living
writers in France--deeper and more subtle than Taine, and infinitely
better versed in political questions than Renan. If you see that arch
person you will find his conversation, easy and tripping as it is, very
inferior to his writings. There are volumes of essays which I am sure
you would read with pleasure. And he has a special bone to pick with
the author of "A History of Liberty."[9]