second class. Not a discoverer, not an originator, not even clever in
the sense common with Frenchmen, not eloquent at all, not vivid or
pointed in phrase, sufficient in knowledge, but not abounding, sound,
but not supple, accustomed to heavy work in {38} the darkness, unused
to effect, to influence, or to applause, unsympathetic and a little
isolated, but high-minded, devoted to principle, willing, even
enthusiastic, to sacrifice himself, his comfort, his life, his
reputation, to public duty or scientific truth. He is not vain, so
much as didactic; there is a method about him that is a little severe,
a solidity that wants relief. His character has been shaped by long
devotion to a cause that was hopeless, by which there was nothing to
gain except the joy of being a pioneer of ideas assured of distant
triumph. So that he is disinterested, consistent, patient, tolerant,
convinced, and brave. Indeed, courage, contempt of death, is the one
thing I have heard him speak of with something like display. The
Republican party, to which he belonged even under Charles X., and of
which he is the patriarch, had a good deal of dirty work to wash off;
and I have observed that he was not communicative when, in an interest
which it were superfluous to mention, I have tried to learn the secret
history of Republicanism under the monarchy. There are few of them who
never touched pitch. But he and Littre are distinct from most others
by their hard work and their voluntary poverty.
This makes him peculiarly hateful to opponents. A legitimate Marquis
said to me: "C'est un honnete homme, qui nous coupera la tete de la
maniere la plus honnete du monde." People who admit that he is
unstained by the gross vices of his party, speak of him as an
enthusiast, and a dupe, and no doubt expect him to acquiesce, like
Pilate, in all manner of wrong that he will not initiate.
I do not feel that there is no truth at all in these imputations. I
have found that he thinks accurately, that he is even penetrating, but
not impressive. He {39} told me the speech he had prepared against the
Jesuits, which, I believe, he never delivered. The argument was: The
conscience of man is his most divine possession. Jesuits give up
conscience to authority, therefore they forfeit the rights of men,
which are the rights of conscience, and have no claim to toleration. I
won't undertake to refute this argument; but it is pre-eminently
unparliamentary, and smells of the oil he burns all day. St. Hilaire
does not believe in the Christian religion, but he has Descartes's
philosophic belief in God, and the elevated morality of the Stoics.
Not the least of his merits is that having spent his life on Aristotle,
he told me that he thought more highly of Plato; and in his
Introduction to the Ethics he shows the weakness of his hero's attack
on Platonism. In saying this he overcame a strong temptation.
Scientifically his great achievement is the transposition of the
several books of the Politics--which were in hopeless confusion before
him. All Germany accepts the arrangement he proposed, and as the work
is the ablest production of antiquity, this is no small matter. As a
moderate, unambitious, totally dispassionate Republican, he belongs to
the Thiers Centre. He thinks Jules Simon the most eminent public man
in France, so that he is scarcely to the Left of Freycinet. He
despises and detests Laboulaye, the oracle of the Centre Gauche. I
often heard, but am not sure, that St. Hilaire turned the scale, and
made Thiers adopt, and enforce, Republicanism.
Forgive me for writing so soon and so confusedly.
[Sidenote: _Tegernsee October 3, 1880_]
Don't think me as prolific as ----, but I must begin again, as I had to
send off my letter with nothing but an answer to your question in it.
Lord Granville's {40} visit must have been more busy than pleasant; and
their dinner topic is provoking because one always hears that the best
men were those one could not have known. Remembering Macaulay,
Circourt, and Remusat, I do not care to believe that Cousin or Radowitz
was far superior to them in talk. But then I, again, look back to the
people I knew with regret, and think my contemporaries less amusing.
If ever I see Hawarden again, I hope it will not be for a night and
half a day, but I do not know when that will be. Let us fix our
thoughts on Tegernsee, and pave the way to rest and distraction here
next summer.
Without claiming the discernment of Tennyson, I hold fast to what I
said. There may be people you dislike for one or two reasons. You
have no tenderness for Dizzy; and I am not sure you cared much for
either of our gondola companions. There are one or two unpardonable
crimes in your code, and one or two chasms that even Dante's mercy
cannot bridge. But you never show it, and ill-nature must show itself
in speech. I have no doubt at all that the relish with which you held
up the mirror of my vices the other day had more of sorrow than of
anger, and only a scrap of malice. It must have been Cheney,
especially if it was a reminiscence of Holmbury. Freddy Leveson has a
touching fidelity to monotonous friendships. This one was laid down, I
think, on Holland House foundations.
If I wrapped my poet in too thick a hide of mystery (observe the
joke--own cousin to the Bite of Ecuador), it was because I fancied you
knew that you have no business to be the P.M.'s daughter, and would
never have been, but that Lady Waldegrave, lured by the sweep of the
Thames at Nuneham, neglected, or failed, to hook that brilliant Young
Englander, Monckton {41} Milnes, poet and statesman. But I know
several men, some you never heard of, who, looking back along the road
where they took the wrong turning, say to themselves, or at least to
their friends: "Well, well; but for this or that I should be P.M. now!"
I have been prevented from finishing by interruptions, one of which was
the brief appearance of the Freddy Cavendishes, spoiled by their
uncomfortable haste to get away. I suppose what makes her so nice is,
partly her affection for her relations. There certainly was no
_arriere pensee_ in her way of speaking of your father.
You cannot too much cultivate his taste for Dickens. Beware of "Little
Dorrit," "Oliver Twist," and "Dombey." In "Chuzzlewit" the English
scenes are often amusing, but there is a story about Pecksniff that may
repel him.
* * * * *
Please do not destroy the ease and serenity and confidence of my
letters, which are chatted and whispered, more than written, by wanting
to show them--even to Morley, in whom I have great reliance. I should
write quite differently, as you rightly say, if I was not writing to
the most chosen of correspondents. To Mr. Gladstone I already wrote
what was due to my friendship with St. Hilaire, especially as I fancied
that Downing Street would be strongly prejudiced against him. Do not
turn yourself from an end into a means--one does not justify the
other....
[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 14, 1880_]
I have been afraid to write. The delicious and most spiritual gift[46]
was sent to me here, whither we came early, only to find ourselves in
sore trouble, for {42} a child had died of diphtheria in our villa just
before we arrived. We had to settle in half-furnished apartments,
where Mrs. Flower[47] found us, bringing a flavour of Hawarden. What
has stood in my way is this: Some time ago, recalling a foolish speech
of mine, a year old, and spoken under the spell of a great charm, you
asked me to repeat it on paper. I hesitated long, and whilst I
hesitated, the little volume came, and made it churlish to decline any
wish of yours. I resolved that the best sign of the sincerity of my
gratitude would be to do what you had asked, and to be much more
foolish than ever by putting on impertinent record the evanescent
conversation of Tegernsee. But I have been so fearful of giving you
more annoyance than pleasure, whether by the seeming of flattery or of
censure, that I have allowed myself to slip into a much more grievous
fault. Will you understand me and try to forgive me? I can never
thank you enough for all the friendship of which that beautiful volume
is the treasured symbol. There is so much of your thought in the
beauty of it, and so much in the choice of it--more than you could
guess. A dear friend of mine, now dead,[48] devoted himself to the
study of the Sonnets, as the real key to Shakespeare, being the form of
his own ideas, not what he gave to his characters. We discussed them
much together in long evenings at Aldenham, and he wrote a book about
them, which he followed up with a volume called "The School of
Shakespeare"; and the two together are the best introduction to him
that I know.... Swinburne himself has recognised their merit; so that
a lost part {43} of my life came back to me with your gift. All which
is to say that, whereas all that comes from you is very precious to me,
if anything could add to its price it was the happy chance that guided
your hand.
Beyond that I must thank you very heartily for the confidence you
showed me in sending me that early letter.[49] It fills a large blank
in my conception and understanding of his life, for it shows--for the
first time to me--how large a part of what we know and contemplate with
wonder is an original gift, and was born with him, and how little, on
the other hand, has been added by the training of life. There are
things which experience has restrained, and checked in their
exuberance; but there are almost all the germs of the power that rules
the movements of half a world. When I read that skit of the revered
philosopher,[50] it almost seemed to me as if I had sometimes doubted
his greatness, and I think you were very good-natured. He is one of
the few Englishmen of genius; one of the most perfect masters of our
language that ever wrote; and when one has said that, and said it as
forcibly as can be, one comes to a deplorable catalogue of evil
qualities with which I shall not darken my pages. It was very good of
you to send me that introduction.
I went to the Ghetto, and was amazed at the knowledge and conversation
of a lady who turned out to be Mrs. Mark Pattison.... She seemed to be
much in the secrets of the Chamberlain-Morley-Dilke faction, and
despondent about the _Pall Mall_. But I like Mrs. Flower exceedingly,
though I had only a glimpse of her. I thought her intelligent,
sensible, and good--things not to be lightly spoken of anybody--and
especially {44} not to you. As to Lady Blennerhassett, she is
kind-hearted, knows how to think straight, and is the cleverest woman I
ever met out of St. John's Wood.[51] If I ever said less than this in
her favour, it would be injustice to do so now. Sir Rowland
Blennerhassett fell at one time into bad hands--hands of Midhat and of
Newman.... I fancied he was half a jingo, half an Ultramontane; and
his wife seemed to back him, and held much aloof from us. They have
richly made up for it since, and there is no Irishman whom I should
more wish to see in conference with your father just now. He told me
so much that was curious and important and concrete, that I begged him
to put our conversation on paper, that I might use it in the proper
quarter. He has not chosen to do it, I fear from a motive of delicacy.
For we suppose that a set is being made against Forster; and he would
not like, by private letters, to contribute to it, as his statements
certainly would have done. But all these are words of wisdom: it is
time for foolishness. I remember the occasion. You wished that you
could disengage your mind from its surroundings, and learn the judgment
of posterity; and I said that, if you chose, you might hear it at once.
How I retrieved my audacity I cannot tell; and it is an awkward matter
to recall, unless, like the ghosts that looked so foolish in the
vestibule of the "Inferno," I avoid both good and evil.
The generation you consult will be more democratic and better
instructed than our own; for the progress of democracy, though not
constant, is certain, and the progress of knowledge is both constant
and certain. It will be more severe in literary judgments, and more
{45} generous in political. With this prospect before me I ought to
have answered that hereafter, when our descendants shall stand before
the slab that is not yet laid among the monuments of famous Englishmen,
they will say that Chatham knew how to inspire a nation with his
energy, but was poorly furnished with knowledge and ideas; that the
capacity of Fox was never proved in office, though he was the first of
debaters; that Pitt, the strongest of ministers, was among the weakest
of legislators; that no Foreign Secretary has equalled Canning, but
that he showed no other administrative ability; that Peel, who excelled
as an administrator, a debater, and a tactician, fell everywhere short
of genius; and that the highest merits of the five without their
drawbacks were united in Mr. Gladstone. Possibly they may remember
that his only rival in depth, and wealth, and force of mind was neither
admitted to the Cabinet nor buried in the Abbey. They will not say of
him, as of Burke, that his writing equalled his speaking, or surpassed
it like Macaulay's. For though his books manifest the range of his
powers, if they do not establish a distinct and substantive reputation,
they will breed regret that he suffered anything to divert him from
that career in which his supremacy was undisputed among the men of his
time. People who suspect that he sometimes disparaged himself by not
recognising the secret of his own superiority will incline to believe
that he fell into another error of wise and good men, who are not
ashamed to fail in the rigid estimate of characters and talents. This
will serve them to explain his lofty unfitness to deal with sordid
motives, and to control that undignified but necessary work, his
inability to sway certain kinds of men, and that strange property {46}
of his influence, which is greatest with multitudes, less in
society--and least at home. And it will help them to understand a
mystery that is becoming very prominent, that he formed no school, and
left no disciples who were to him what Windham, Grenville, Wellesley,
Canning, Castlereagh were to Pitt; that his colleagues followed him
because he had the nation at his back, by force more than by
persuasion, and chafed as he did by the side of Palmerston.
Some keys, I imagine, will be lost, and some finer lines will yield to
the effacing fingers: the impress left by early friendship with men who
died young, like Hallam, or from whom he was parted, like Hope Scott;
the ceremonious deference to authorities that reigned in college days
under a system heavily weighted with tradition; the microscopic
subtlety and care in the choice of words, in guarding against
misinterpretation and in correcting it, which belonged to the Oxford
training, which is a growth of no other school, which even in such
eminent men as Newman and Liddon is nearly a vice, and is a perpetual
stumbling-block and a snare for lesser men--these are points
appreciable by those who know him that must be obscure to those who
come after us. They will wonder how it was that an intellect
remarkable for originality and independence, matchless in vigour,
fertility, and clearness, continued so long shrouded in convictions
imbibed so early as to be akin to prejudices, and was outstripped in
the process of emancipation by inferior minds. The pride of democratic
consistency will aim its shafts at those lingering footsteps, as a
scientific age will resent the familiarity and sympathy with Italian
thought to the detriment of more perfect instruments of knowledge and
of power, and that inadequate estimate of the {47} French and German
genius which has been unfortunately reciprocal.
But all the things about which no New Zealander will feel as we do, do
not disturb your appeal to the serene and impartial judgment of
history. When our problems are solved and our struggles ended, when
distance has restored the proportions of things, and the sun has set
for all but the highest summits, his fame will increase even in things
where it seems impossible to add to it. Ask all the clever men you
know, who were the greatest British orators, and there are ten or
twelve names that will appear on every list. There is no such
acknowledged primacy among them as Mirabeau enjoys in France or Webster
in America. Macaulay told me that Brougham was the best speaker he had
heard; Lord Russell preferred Plunket; and Gaskell, Canning. I have
heard people who judged by efficacy assign the first place to Peel,
O'Connell, Palmerston, and to an evangelical lecturer, whom I dare say
nobody but Lord Harrowby remembers, of the name of Burnett. But that
illustrious chain of English eloquence that begins in the Walpolean
battles, ends with Mr. Gladstone. His rivals divide his gifts like the
generals of Alexander. One may equal him in beauty of composition,
another in the art of statement, and a third, perhaps, comes near him
in fluency and fire. But he alone possesses all the qualities of an
orator; and when men come to remember what his speeches accomplished,
how it was the same whether he prepared an oration or hurled a reply,
whether he addressed a British mob or the cream of Italian politicians,
and would still be the same if he spoke in Latin to Convocation, they
will admit no rival. "C'est la grandeur de Berryer avec la souplesse
de Thiers," was {48} the judgment of the ablest of the Ultramontanes on
his speech on Charities.
There are especially two qualities that will not be found in other men.
First, the vigorous and perpetual progress of his mind. Later ages
will know what in this critical autumn of a famous year is only
guessed, that even now, at 70, in his second ministry, after half a
century of public life, his thoughts are clearing, moving, changing, on
the two highest of all political questions.[52]
His other pre-eminent characteristic is the union of theory and policy.
Bonaparte must have possessed the same mastery of infinite detail; and
the best democrats, Jefferson, Sieyes, and Mill, were firm and faithful
in their grasp of speculative principle. But in democracy that
doctrinal fidelity is neither difficult nor very desirable of
attainment. Its disciples embrace a ready-made system that has been
thought out like the higher mathematics, beyond the need or the chance
of application. The sums have been worked, the answers are known.
There is no secret about their art. Their prescriptions are in the
books, tabulated and ready for use. We always know what is coming. We
know that the doctrine of equality leads by steps not only logical, but
almost mechanical, to sacrifice the principle of liberty to the
principle of quantity; that, being unable to abdicate responsibility
and power, it attacks genuine representation, and, as there is no limit
where there is no control, invades, sooner or later, both property and
religion. In a doctrine so simple, consistency is no merit. But in
Mr. Gladstone there is all the resource and policy of the heroes of
Carlyle's worship, and yet he moves scrupulously along the {49} lines
of the science of statesmanship. Those who deem that Burke was the
first political genius until now, must at this point admit his
inferiority. He loved to evade the arbitration of principle. He was
prolific of arguments that were admirable but not decisive. He dreaded
two-edged weapons and maxims that faced both ways. Through his
inconsistencies we can perceive that his mind stood in a brighter light
than his language; but he refused to employ in America reasons which
might be fitted to Ireland, lest he should become odious to the great
families and impossible with the King.[53] Half of his genius was
spent in masking the secret that hampered it. Goldsmith's cruel line
is literally true.[54]
Looking abroad, beyond the walls of Westminster, for objects worthy of
comparison, they will say that other men, such as Hamilton and Cavour,
accomplished work as great; that Turgot and Roon were unsurpassed in
administrative craft; that Clay and Thiers were as dexterous in
parliamentary management; that Berryer and Webster resembled him in
gifts of speech, Guizot and Radowitz in fulness of thought; but that in
the three elements of greatness combined, the man, the power, and the
result--character, genius, and success--none reached his level.
The decisive test of his greatness will be the gap he will leave.
Among those who come after him there will be none who understand that
the men who pay wages ought not to be the political masters of those
who earn them, (because laws should be adapted to those who have the
heaviest stake in the country, for {50} whom misgovernment means not
mortified pride or stinted luxury, but want and pain, and degradation
and risk to their own lives and to their children's souls,) and who yet
can understand and feel sympathy for institutions that incorporate
tradition and prolong the reign of the dead. Fill the blanks, deepen
the contrasts, shut your eyes to my handwriting, and, if you make
believe very much, you shall hear the roll of the ages.
[Sidenote: _Dec. 14, 1880_]
Don't let me be unjust to Lecky. Dr. Smith asked me to review his
"Eighteenth Century," but added that if I found myself inclining to
severity he would wish to recall the proposal, inasmuch as the
_Quarterly_ had just attacked Tyndall. For it happens that Smith[55]
and I sometimes dine at a self-satisfied place that calls itself The
Club. Good men belong to it, but stay away: Lowe, that he may not meet
----, whom he dislikes sober, and detests drunk; the P.M., because he
too much appreciates the sweetness of home; others, for other futile
reasons. The group that continues faithful and carries on the
tradition of Johnson and Garrick is consequently small, and it is a
delicate matter to meet in such close lists men one is editorially
holding up to ridicule and obloquy. Indeed, the presence of both
_Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_ on that narrow stage imparts a taste of
muttered thunder to most of our meetings. Tyndall and Lecky are
members, and Smith did not like to be on with a new quarrel before he
was off with the old. He had spoken unfavourably of an early and
unripe book of Lecky's, who was gratified when he heard of the message
I had received, and still more when Hayward reviewed him instead of me.
I {51} declined, because I was already in the clutches of a longer
task, and because I find that people quarrel with me for reviewing
them--not from dislike of the book. Hayward could find nothing in it
he did not know before. But I was more fortunate; I learned a great
deal, and should have said that it was solid, original, and just.
Perhaps not deep or strong or lively, or even suggestive, for that is a
refined quality, inconsistent with the habit of telling all one knows
and thinks, and dotting all the _i_'s. The book is lop-sided, having
grown out of a desire to demolish Froude's Irish volumes. And it was a
mistake to treat the central, political history as a thing generally
known, that could be taken for granted. No part of modern history has
been so searched and sifted as to be without urgent need of new and
deeper inquiry, and the touch of a fresh mind. Here is a new volume of
600 pages on Mary Stuart, by a man I never heard of, in which every
other page tells us something unknown before, and the times of Walpole,
Pelham, Pitt, being stirred by no surviving strife, have been much less
studied than the great dispute whether Protestant or Catholic should
reign in England. Neglecting the inexhaustible discoveries before him
in the Archives, Lecky has to give sentence when he gives too little
evidence, to describe characters more fully than careers, and to
obtrude his own very good sense where a true scholar and artist would
take care not to be seen.
There is another defect, due to the secular tone of Lecky's mind, but
common to most historians. The age he writes of was the last in which
permanent political doctrines were formed by ecclesiastical principles.
Men very easily shape their notions of what government ought to be by
their conception of divine right, {52} of that domain in which the
actual legislator is God. As to one class of minds Church interests
are the supreme law in politics, to others, Church forms are the
supreme example. Nobody is so fanatical as Nigel Penruddocke; but
through subtle channels the influence works, and it was not merely a
propelling, but a constructive force in politics from the end of the
Middle Ages until the middle of the eighteenth century, when it became
fixed in the theories of men like Atterbury, Toland, Hoadley, Wilson,
Warburton--whose innermost instincts might be better exposed.
As to the novel of the season,[56] it is so dull and so absurd that I
cannot get beyond the first volume. Except querulousness, it has
nearly all the bad qualities of old age; and if St. Barbe is meant for
Thackeray, it is contemptible even in caricature. My neighbour
Salisbury must feel that his time is soon coming.