things, especially the respectability of the people, and the
imperfection of the agitation, to make the address well worth
presenting. Having gone so far, to hold back altogether would have
been to confess that the attempt was a mere failure, which nobody can
say it was. To hold it back past the time specified in the circulars
and originally designed, for the chance of obtaining more signatures,
would have been useless: people would have only said that though we
boasted of the shortness of the time in which the signatures were
collected, yet in fact we waited as long as there was any chance of
gathering any more. And in point of fact they had begun to come in
very slowly by Monday morning. At best, it could not have been
improved into an effectual canvass, and as it is, it shows very well.
Let any one put the two lists side by side, and then say, if the
weight of opinion in Cambridge inclines one way, which way is it? I
was doubtful of the expediency of stirring it at first, but I am now
very glad that it has been done. I wish the _Herald_ had printed the
names. But it was an unlucky day, there being a great debate in both
Houses.
"Hare declined presenting; upon which H. Lushington, Venables,
Micklethwaite, and myself (who had, in fact, been the chief actors),
distributed ourselves into two cabs: and drove slap up to the
Chancellor of Exchequer's. Harry Lushington was the chief speaker, and
did it very well and gracefully. Goulburn was, of course, gracious,
but I should hardly have inferred that he was glad. However, he said
he was; glad that this had been done, and glad that no more had been
done; and (upon the whole) easy about the matter. The fever (he said)
appeared to be gradually subsiding, and indeed the opposition was less
formidable than might be supposed. 'From what the gentleman said who
presented the address on the other side, he gathered that it was for
the most part a _conscientious_ opposition, not arising from any
political animosity.' Certainly _Punch_ cannot be said to beat
Nature."
Nothing, however, diverted him from his great object. FitzGerald writes to
Frederick Tennyson:
Spedding, you know, does not change: he is now the same that he was
fourteen years old when I first knew him at school, more than twenty
years ago; wise, calm, bald, combining the best qualities of Youth and
Age.
But his calmness was not proof against the enthusiasm created by the
advent of Jenny Lind in 1847. Again FitzGerald writes:
All the world has been, as I suppose you have read, crazy about Jenny
Lind.... Spedding's cool blood was moved to hire stalls several times
at an advanced rate.... I have never yet heard the famous Jenny Lind,
whom all the world raves about. Spedding is especially mad about her,
I understand: and, after that, is it not best for weaker vessels to
keep out of her way? Night after night is that bald head seen in one
particular position in the Opera house, in a stall; the miserable man
has forgot Bacon and philosophy, and goes after strange women.
His health, however, had been giving some cause for anxiety at this time
to his old friend, who writes to Carlyle:
Thank you for your account of Spedding: I had written however to
himself, and from himself ascertained that he was out of the worst.
But Spedding's life is a very ticklish one.
Hitherto Spedding had been working in his own way at Bacon's life and
letters without any idea of contributing to a complete edition of his
works, but rather with the object of defending him against what he
believed to be the injustice done him by Macaulay in his famous _Essay_.
But in 1847 Mr. Leslie Ellis had been preparing an edition of Bacon's
philosophical works which was offered for publication to Messrs. Longman,
and Spedding acted as intermediary.
"Better, I think," he writes to Thompson, "to be with the publishers
than against them so long as one keeps the reins. Therefore I have
written to Longman, reporting Ellis's proposition, and recommending
them to treat immediately with him upon those terms; for that if they
get the philosophical works alone so edited, their edition will
command the market, even if they do nothing but reprint the rest as
they are. Whereas, if any other publisher should engage Ellis's
services for that portion, their trade edition would be worthless for
ever. All which I believe to be true, and I hope will be conclusive.
When that point is fixed there will be time enough to consider what
else may be done. If they refuse the opportunity, I think I shall
decline further connexion with the enterprise. My own project, as I
never counted upon anything but expense from it, will not be much
affected either way."
The result, as is well known, was a complete edition of Bacon's works, in
which Mr. Leslie Ellis undertook the philosophical, Mr. Douglas Heath the
legal and professional, and Spedding the literary and miscellaneous, to
which he afterwards added the life and letters. In the meantime he wrote,
but never published, for his own satisfaction and that he might gather the
opinions of his friends, _Evenings with a Reviewer_, the reviewer being
Macaulay and the review his Essay on Bacon. In sending a copy to Dr.
Whewell he says:
It may seem absurd in a man to print a book, and yet to wish not only
to keep it private, but also to prevent it from _circulating_
privately. But after considering the matter carefully, with reference
to what I may call the interest of the subject--I mean to the chance
of making a successful and durable impression upon the popular
opinion--I am satisfied that it would not be judicious to present the
question to the public _first_ in this form. It would probably provoke
controversy. The result of the controversy would depend upon
reviewers. Reviewers, until they have heard the evidence as well as
the argument, are not in a condition to judge; yet unless the evidence
be made easily accessible and bound up with the argument, they cannot
be expected either to seek it out or to suspend their opinions, but
will simply proceed to judgment _without_ hearing it. In such a case,
considering the strength of popular prepossessions and the tendency of
the first blow at them to raise a dust of popular objections, the
verdict would in the first instance go against me; and though I might
appeal with a better chance to the second thoughts and the next
generation, yet the appeal would be conducted at great disadvantage,
because I should then stand in the position of an advocate with a
personal interest in the cause. As it is, I hope in my division of
Bacon's works to set forth _all_ the evidence clearly and impartially,
so that everybody who has the book will have the means of judging for
himself, and if I can get that credit for justice and impartiality
which I mean to deserve, I do not much doubt the issue. But the first
reception of the work, upon which in these times so much depends, will
itself depend very much upon my coming before the public with a clear
and unsuspected character: and this, if I should previously acquire
the reputation (justly or not) of an advocate engaged to make good his
own cause, I could not expect.
FitzGerald, writing to Donne at the end of 1848, says of _Evenings with a
Reviewer_:
I saw many of my friends in London, Carlyle and Tennyson among them;
but most and best of all, Spedding. I have stolen his noble book away
from him; noble, in spite (I believe, but am not sure) of some
_adikology_ in the second volume: some special pleadings for his idol:
amica Veritas, sed magis, etc.
And Donne in reply:
I, too, have Spedding's "glorious book," which I prefer to any modern
reading. Reading one of his "Evenings" is next to spending an evening
with the author.
Thompson, whose health had completely broken down in 1849, was undergoing
the water-cure at Great Malvern, and early in 1850 Spedding writes to him:
They tell me that a letter will find you at Great Malvern. Indeed, I
had reason to think so before, for I had heard of you twice since you
went thither; once from Spring Rice and once from Blakesley.... I
have been stationary here since August, seeing nobody and hearing
nothing, so you must not expect any news.... You want to know,
perhaps, what I am about myself. I am at this moment sitting in an
easy-chair with the ink on a table beside me, and the papers on a
blotting-board on my knee. On the little table beside me is first a
leaden jar, bought long since to keep tobacco in, now holding
snipe-shot. Next to it a pocket Virgil lying on its belly. On my left
a ledge made for a lamp, on which are three different translations of
Bacon's _Sapientia Veterum_, and some loose pieces of paper destined
in due time to be enriched with a fourth translation, of which I need
say no more. Next to my little table stands a large round table, now
quite uninhabitable by reason of the litter of books that has taken
possession of it, as, for instance, another Virgil with English
translation and notes, open, upon its back; a Dryden's translation
shut, and standing upright on its edge. A letter-clip holding a packet
in brown-paper cover, inscribed "De sapientia veterum: translation." A
volume of Bacon standing shut on its edge. A Cruden's _Concordance_;
and near it, lying on its side and shut, Alford's Greek Testament (an
excellent book of immense industry, and very neat execution; good in
all ways so far as I have looked, and so far as I can judge of what I
see in such a matter; it seems as if one might find in it everything
one can want to know about the four gospels, that an editor can tell
one). Another volume of Bacon open, on its back; beneath it a folio
Aristotle (!) also open, and beneath that again a huge old folio
Demosthenes and Æschines (but this was brought down from the garret
two days ago, and has not yet been put away). Many other things of the
same kind; which, however, I cannot describe particularly without
getting up, which I do not feel disposed to do. But I must not forget
a striped box which belongs to my portmanteau, but serves here as a
receptacle for loose papers, and stands on the table. Another table in
the corner sustaining two vols. of Facciolati evidently out for use,
reposing on a huge Hogarth which lies there because no bookcase is big
enough to hold it, and itself reposes upon all the Naval Victories,
flanked by a ball of string, an unopened packet of Bernard Barton's
remains, a Speed's _History of England_, a ream of scribbling paper,
and an Ainsworth. Under my chair lies my own dog Tip, who once went
with you and me to the top of Ullock. Opposite stands a long narrow
box containing bows, and hung about with quivers, belts, and other
archery equipments. The chimney-piece is littered with disabled
arrows. It is now half-past 3 P.M., I have a slight headache, due (I
really believe) to a sour orange. The lake was yesterday frozen over
with ice as smooth and transparent as glass. I had no skates, and
to-day it is going either to thaw or to snow. I intended to buy a pair
of skates last midsummer, but forgot. I have a great mind to go and
buy a pair now. I leave you to gather the condition of my mind from
the condition of my room. I am in truth doing very little. These
family establishments are not favourable for work. I do not know how
it is; the day seems as long, and one seems to have it all to oneself,
but there are no _hours_ in it. What becomes of half of them I cannot
guess. Time leaks in a gentleman's house.
My father has had a bad cold this winter, which hung about him longer
than usual, and made him both look and feel ill. But he has thrown it
quite off and seems now to be as well [as] usual, which is very well.
His sight grows worse as of course it must do; but as fast as it
leaves him he learns to make less do, so that he does not appear to be
much distressed by the gradual privation. His old bitch is dead, and
his old mare retires upon a pension, a paddock, a horse-pond, and a
house, all to herself, with a daily feed of corn. He is now very well
mounted on a fast walking pony, borrowed from a neighbour, and has a
boy to walk with him and two puppies. He looks after his farming
affairs as usual, and does not at all believe that land can be ruined
by plenty. In truth we hear little in these latitudes of the
agricultural distress of which we see so much in the newspapers.
I have not heard from Ellis since he left England, and I do not know
exactly where he is. He talked of staying some time at Avignon. But I
am so doubtful whether a letter would find him there that I do not
care to write upon the chance. Our publishers seem to be quite easy in
mind, and made no enquiries as to the rate of progress. If Ellis can
be ready within two years, I shall have to stir myself in order to be
ready with my contribution. But I expect a good year's respite. I have
finished the _Henry VII._, however, which is my principal labour; and
I like very well what I have done.
But all his plans were disarranged by Mr. Ellis's illness. In the latter
part of 1849, while travelling on the Riviera, Ellis had a severe attack
of rheumatic fever, from which he never recovered, and which entirely
disabled him for the work he had undertaken and in which he had made some
progress. Spedding, therefore, had to take his place and edit as best he
could Bacon's Philosophical Works. He has explained very fully in the
Preface to them the method he adopted, and the careful manner in which he
kept Mr. Ellis's work distinct. "Early in 1853," he says, "I took the work
in hand." In the meanwhile he was to be found at his rooms in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, and there FitzGerald visited him in April 1850.
"Spedding is my sheet-anchor," he says, "the truly wise and fine
fellow: I am going to his rooms this very evening, and there I believe
Thackeray, Venables, etc. are to be. I hope not a large assembly, for
I get shyer and shyer even of those I know."
"I was in London only for ten days this spring," FitzGerald writes to
Frederick Tennyson, "and those ten days not in the thick of the
season.... The most pleasurable remembrance I had of my stay in town
was the last day I spent there; having a long ramble in the streets
with Spedding, looking at books and pictures; then a walk with him and
Carlyle across the Park to Chelsea, where we dropped that Latter-Day
Prophet at his house; then, getting upon a steamer, smoked down to
Westminster; dined at a chop-house by the Bridge, and then went to
Astley's; old Spedding being quite as wise about the horsemanship as
about Bacon and Shakespeare. We parted at midnight in Covent Garden,
and this whole pleasant day has left a taste on my palate like one of
Plato's lighter, easier, and more picturesque dialogues."
In August he went into Suffolk to stay with FitzGerald and the Cowells at
their home in Bramford, near Ipswich. FitzGerald again writes to Frederick
Tennyson:
I have not seen any one you know since I last wrote; nor heard from
any one: except dear old Spedding, who really came down and spent two
days with us, me and that Scholar and his Wife in their Village, in
their delightful little house, in their pleasant fields by the River
side. Old Spedding was delicious there; always leaving a mark, I say,
in all places one has been at with him, a sort of Platonic perfume.
For has he not all the beauty of the Platonic Socrates, with some
personal beauty to boot? He explained to us one day about the laws of
reflection in water; and I said then one never could look at the
willow whose branches furnished the text without thinking of him. How
beastly this reads! As if he gave us a lecture! But you know the man,
how quietly it all came out; only because I petulantly denied his
plain assertion. For I really often cross him only to draw him out;
and vain as I may be, he is one of those that I am well content to
make shine at my own expense.
In August 1851 he writes again to Frederick Tennyson:
Almost the only man I hear from is dear old Spedding, who has lost his
Father, and is now, I suppose, a rich man. This makes no apparent
change in his way of life; he has only hired an additional Attic in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, so as to be able to bed a friend upon occasion.
I may have to fill it ere long.
And a few months later:
Spedding is immutably wise, good, and delightful; not as immutably
well in Body, I think, though he does not complain.
The great work went slowly on, but nothing as yet was published. Spedding
had just taken over Ellis's portion and was devoting himself to this. We
get a glimpse of him again in FitzGerald's letters:
I saw old Spedding in London; only doubly calm after the death of a
Niece he dearly loved, and whose death-bed at Hastings he had just
been waiting upon.
It was 1857 before the first three volumes appeared, followed by three
others in 1858, and by the final volume in 1859. Ellis did not live to see
the completion of the work, for he died in May of that year.
FitzGerald, writing in 1857 to Cowell, who was now in Calcutta, from
Portland Terrace, where he lived during his early married life, says:
Spedding has been once here in near three months. His _Bacon_ keeps
coming out: his part, the Letters, etc., of Bacon, is not come yet; so
it remains to be seen what he will do then, but I can't help thinking
he has let the Pot boil too long.
It was 1861, however, before the first volume of the _Life and Letters_
appeared, and Spedding found that he had already been forestalled by
Hepworth Dixon in _The Story of Lord Bacon's Life_. In a note to the
earliest letter printed, probably the earliest specimen remaining of
Bacon's handwriting, he says, with quiet contempt:
The copies of some of these letters lately published by Mr. Hepworth
Dixon ... differ, I observe, very much from mine; most of them in the
words and sense, more or less, and some in the name of the person
writing, or the person written to, or both. But as mine are more
intelligible, and were made with care and at leisure, and when my eyes
were better than they are now, I do not suspect any material error in
them, and have not thought it worth while to apply for leave to
compare them again with the originals.
"I am very glad," FitzGerald writes to Thompson, "to hear old Spedding
is really getting _his_ share of Bacon into Print: I doubt if it will
be half as good as the "Evenings," where Spedding was in the _Passion_
which is wanted to fill his Sail for any longer Voyage."
Some three years later, he says:
Spedding's _Bacon_ seems to hang fire; they say he is disheartened at
the little Interest, and less Conviction, that his two first volumes
carried; Thompson told me they had convinced _him_ the other way; and
that _Ellis_ had long given up Bacon's Defence before he died.
And so it continued to the end. When the sixth volume appeared in 1872
FitzGerald wrote:
And here is Spedding's vol. vi. which leaves me much where it found me
about Bacon: but though I scarce care for him, I can read old
Spedding's pleading for him for ever; that is old Spedding's simple
statement of the case, as he sees it. The Ralegh business is quite
delightful, better than Old Kensington.
Carlyle alone of all the critics was unstinted, though rather patronizing,
in his praise. Writing to FitzGerald, he says:
Like yourself I have gone through _Spedding_, seven long long volumes,
not skipping except when I had got the sense with me, and generally
reading all of Bacon's own that was there: I confess to you I found it
a most creditable and even surprising Book, offering the most perfect
and complete image both of Bacon and of Spedding, and distinguished as
the hugest and faithfullest bit of literary navvy-work I have ever met
with in this generation. Bacon is washed down to the natural skin; and
truly he is not, nor ever was, unlovely to me; a man of no culpability
to speak of; of an opulent and even magnificent intellect, but all in
the magnificent prose vein. Nothing or almost nothing of the "melodies
eternal" to be traced in him. There is a grim strength in Spedding,
quietly, very quietly invincible, which I did not quite know of till
this Book; and in all ways I could congratulate this indefatigably
patient, placidly invincible and victorious Spedding.
But for the last eight years he had given up his rooms in Lincoln's Inn
Fields and gone to live with his nieces at 80 Westbourne Terrace, where he
remained till his death. Thompson, in succession to Dr. Whewell, had been
appointed Master of Trinity, and in writing to congratulate him Spedding
says:
I was not unprepared for your news, having just returned from
Kitlands, where the Pollocks were, and the rumour was under discussion
and generally thought to be well-founded, and the thing if true very
much rejoiced over. I have great pleasure in adding my own
congratulations, as well to yourself as to Trinity. It was all that
was wanted to make one of the last acts of Lord Russell a complete
success. I should be very glad to think that I had as much to do with
it as you suppose: but I was only one of many, and not by any means
the most influential, and as the thing is done, no matter how it was
brought about.
I am myself preparing for a shift of position, though the adventure is
of a milder kind. My nephew (J. J. S.) is going to be married within a
month or so: and it has been settled that he is to live at Greta Bank,
and that the rest of the party now living there are to take a house in
London: where I am invited to join them, with due securities for
liberties and privileges. Though the exertion incident to dislodgment
from quarters overgrown with so many superfetations of confusion and
disorder, is formidable to contemplate, the proposed arrangement is so
obviously convenient and desirable, that I am going to encounter it.
And though the place is not yet settled, it seems probable that before
the end of the year I shall be transferred or transferring myself and
my goods to the western part of London, and preparing to remodel my
manners and customs (in some respects) according to the usages of
civilized society. Though I shall live among women, they will be women
of my own house, and therefore not worshippers, which is a great
advantage, and though there may be some danger for an obedient uncle
in being where he can always be caught, I hope to be able to preserve
as much independence as is good for a man.
I have four proof sheets to settle, and have just been interrupted by
an engraver with a proof [of] the D. of Buccleugh's miniature of
Bacon, which will be the best portrait that has yet been done of him
in black and white.
This was the miniature which was reproduced at the beginning of the third
volume of the _Life and Letters_, and which Spedding regarded as the
original of Van Somer's portrait.
The following letter to Tennyson, written in 1870, is necessary to the
full understanding of Tennyson's reply (see _Memoir by his Son_)[107]:
MY DEAR ALFRED--I do not know where you are, and I want to know for
three reasons: 1st, that I may thank you for your book; 2nd, that I
may send you mine; 3rd, that I may let you know, if you do not know it
already, that there has been a box here these many weeks, which is
meant for you and comes from FitzGerald.
A copy of your new volume[108] came early from the publisher, yet not
so early but that it found me already half way through. I was happy to
observe that neither years nor domestic happiness have had any
demoralizing effect upon you as yet. Your touch is as delicate and
vigorous and your invention as rich as ever: and I am still in hope
that your greatest poem of all has not yet been written. Some years
ago, when you were in want of a subject, I recommended Job. The
argument of Job, to be treated as you treat the legends of Arthur, as
freely and with as much light of modern thought as you find fit. As we
know it now, it is only half intelligible, and must be full of
blunders and passages misunderstood. Probably also the peculiar
character of the oriental style would at any rate stand in the way and
prevent it from producing its proper effect upon the modern and
western mind. Yet we can see through all the confusion what a great
argument it is, and I think it was never more wanted than now. If you
would take it in hand, and tell it in verse in your own way, without
any scruples about improving on Scripture, I believe it would be the
greatest poem in the language. The controversy is as much alive to-day
in London as it could ever have been in the place where and the time
when it was composed, of which, as the author, I am altogether
ignorant. And the voice out of the whirlwind may speak without fear of
anachronisms.