LITERARY WORK (_CONTINUED_)
1886, 1887
"They will say that we are dull, of course," Bute wrote to his editor
in 1887, discussing the contents of a forthcoming number of the
_Scottish Review_. "But they say that anyhow, without reading us,
whatever we put in or leave out." Bute did not always feel sure that
his own contributions, written as they were with an immensity of care
and painstaking, were not open to this charge. "I feel rather low
about the 'Coronations,'"[1] he wrote a few weeks later. "It seems to
me dull, very long, and intensely technical.... It is true that the
Lord Lyon has returned my proof with a note calling the article 'most
valuable,' and saying he could scarcely suggest any improvement. So
far so good; but then he is a professional State Master of Ceremonies."
At other times Bute appeared rather to resent the charge of "heaviness"
not infrequently applied to his _Review_. "They call us
_ponderous_--it is their favourite adjective," he wrote in this mood a
little later. "It is easy to bandy epithets, but I should say that we
are positively _light_ in comparison with {138} some other quarterlies
I could name. I was drowsing for two hours last night over one of
them, which I can designate by no other word than _stodgy_."
Nevertheless it must be frankly admitted that Bute did not possess the
power of treating with any kind of light touch (or perhaps of inspiring
others to do the same) the various interesting and important subjects
which were the staple of the _Review_. The gift of humour he certainly
possessed, and in a high degree: he could see as well as any man the
incongruous and ridiculous side of the most serious subject: he liked a
good story, and could tell one himself, with a sort of solemn jocosity
which, combined with his singular felicity in the choice of language,
added vastly to the effect of the anecdote. Moreover, he could write
as well as talk wittily, as is evident from the caustic and sometimes
mordant humour which characterises many of his letters. But this
feature is almost or wholly absent from his published writings; and in
these he seems to have adopted the principle which Dr. Johnson
certainly practised as well as preached: "The dignity of literature is
little enhanced by what passes for humour and wit; and the true man of
letters will do well to reserve his jests for the ears of his private
friends, and to treat serious subjects, on the printed page, in a
serious manner."
Bute hardly seemed to realise that the following of the sage counsel
just quoted could be any bar to the popularity of the _Review_ with the
general reader; and he was at times almost querulous with what he
called the "unaccountable apathy" of the Scottish public in particular.
"I think," he wrote to a literary friend, "you ought to pitch strongly
into the Scottish people for their distaste for anything like serious
reading. I am told that of the books borrowed from {139} the Edinburgh
Public Library for home perusal, more than 75 per cent. are works of
fiction. One thing which I have particularly noticed about them is
crass ignorance of their own history, to a point which is really quite
astonishing."
In order to increase the circulation of the _Review_, and make it if
possible self-supporting ("a state of things which, for the sake of the
principle involved," wrote Bute, "I am extremely desirous to bring
about,") the desperate expedient was proposed of transferring the
_Review_ to London, following the precedents of the _Edinburgh_ and the
_North British_. But this was too much for Bute's _amor patriae_. He
wrote to the Oxford friend from whom the suggestion had emanated:
_October_ 1, 1887.
One might, of course, do better business by dropping it as a _Scottish_
review, and starting another English magazine in London under the same
name, and with a continuity of numeration. This, however, would be to
destroy in its very essence the attempt to keep going a Scottish
quarterly in Scotland. It must be owned that the apathy of the
Scottish public is quite enough to drive any one to such a course, and
it would be entirely their own fault if it were taken.
[Sidenote: 1888, Bute's historical method]
A typical example of Bute's method of treating subjects drawn from the
byways of history may be seen in his studies on the trial and execution
of Giordano Bruno,[2] whose memory a noisy party in Italy was at that
time (1888) endeavouring to exalt as that of an innocent victim and
martyr. The opinion of educated Catholics might have been thought
pretty well made up as to the justice of the {140} sentence on the
notorious Neapolitan philosopher and ex-Dominican, of whom not a Roman
Inquisitor, but a Protestant divine, had said that he was "a man of
great capacity, with infinite knowledge, but not a particle of
religion." Bute, however, approached the subject in his usual attitude
of complete intellectual detachment, with no trace of _parti pris_.
"There is much obscurity about the whole matter," he wrote from
Sorrento on March 21, 1888, "but I flatter myself that my paper will at
least be a triumph of impartiality, of absolutely colourless
neutrality." It is sufficient to record here that his conclusion,
after many months of patient sifting of evidence, much of it drawn from
contemporary sources hitherto unexplored, was much the same as that of
Bruno's accusers and judges in Venice and in Rome. He wrote as follows
to Dr. Metcalfe, before his articles appeared in print:
What I fail to understand is why they executed him at all. If the
Church Courts had kept him to themselves and imprisoned him for life,
he could not have done any one any harm, and might with advancing age
have repudiated and repented some of his blasphemous utterances (one
being that Christ was not God, but only a magician of extraordinary
cunning).[3] In the case of this obscure and repulsive vagabond, whose
chief literary work could not be printed to-day without the author
being prosecuted for obscenity, there was surely no need of a terrible
public example, such as might have been (and was) urged in the case of
the burning of Servetus.
{141}
[Sidenote: 1888, Garibaldi's Autobiography]
Equally characteristic of his zeal for what he calls "colourless
neutrality" in the presentment of historic facts are his observations
on a proposed article for the _Review_ on the autobiography of
Garibaldi, then recently published. As to this he writes (February,
1888):
Perhaps the Contessa M---- C---- could do it; and if the book is on the
Index (which is not unlikely),[4] she could easily get a dispensation
by stating her object in wishing to read it. I suppose she is not a
Garibaldian, by the way? that would never do. She should express as
little opinion of any sort as possible--I don't mean, of course, that
she should abstain from stating known facts--and should leave the man
to speak for himself by an analysis and a string of quotations, which
must be given from the Italian text, and severely literal.
The above example--many others could of course be cited--are sufficient
to indicate the spirit of rigid impartiality in which Bute treated, and
desired that others should treat, historical questions of every kind,
and his almost passionate endeavours to follow in all such researches
the old maxim, _Audi alteram partem_. It must be confessed,
however--indeed he himself practically owned--that were his
historiographical principles universally adopted, English literature,
if not the cause of historic truth, would be the poorer. "Most
history," he said in one of his addresses to a body of university
students, "is not history at all, but romance, sometimes fascinating
but seldom trustworthy, coloured, as it often is deeply, with the
prejudices and prepossessions of its {142} writers.
Names--facts--dates--there is true history; but when a man gets beyond
that, when he begins to dissect characters, to attribute motives, to
analyse principles of action, then in nine cases out of ten he ceases
to be a historian and becomes a romancer. Gibbon, with his enormous
erudition, could have presented to us all the details of Rome's decline
as they really were---he has given us instead a travesty of them
distorted by his own devilish hatred of Christianity. Macaulay, whose
whiggery may have been all very well on the hustings, disgusts us by
intruding it into every page of his so-called "History of England."
Froude vaunts that his history of the English Reformation is entirely
based on original documents; by which he really means that he has used
all those which have helped him in his self-imposed task of
whitewashing Henry VIII., and has suppressed all the rest.[5] I need
not give other instances."
Bute might have pointed to his own laborious work on Scottish
Chronology in illustration of his theory of how history should be
written--the immense folio volumes, specially constructed for the
purpose, in which day by day and year by year he inserted dates, with
the barest and briefest statement of facts bearing on the history of
Scotland and her early kings, as he encountered them in the course of
his omnivorous reading. He could hardly have seriously maintained the
paradox that history in this skeleton {143} form was the only true
history worthy of the name. But no historic student (and he disclaimed
for himself any higher title) ever aimed more anxiously than he did, in
every line that he wrote, to set forth the plain facts of history
absolutely uncoloured by any views or prepossessions of his own. It
was this marked characteristic, coupled (it is not necessary to say
contrasted) with his complete and unquestioning loyalty to the
teachings of his Church, which, especially to those who knew him, gave
a unique interest to everything that came from his pen. Genuine
erudition--a virile independence of thought and judgment--an engaging
personal diffidence and a complete absence of anything like obtrusion
of the writer's own opinions, combined with a gift of expression and a
command of language which often soars to real, if sober,
eloquence--these qualities may all be found in the essays which he
wrote during the years which were the most intellectually productive of
his life; and it is well that they have been rescued from the _pozzo
profondo_ of the pages of a provincial periodical of limited
circulation, and are accessible, in two handsome volumes,[6] to all who
care to read them.
[Sidenote: 1888, Tribute from Lord Rosebery]
It may be well at this point, and in this connection, to cite an
interesting tribute to Bute's literary abilities paid by one who had
been among the earliest friends of his dawning manhood, and whose own
distinction in the world of letters gives a particular value to his
judgment. Lord Rosebery said of him as follows:--[7]
{144}
The late Lord Bute was a remarkable character to the world at large,
whether they knew him well or did not. To some it may often have
seemed that he was out of place in the nineteenth century. His mind,
his thoughts, his studies were so entirely thrown back into a past more
or less remote; and I think, had he had more incentive to make known
the objects and subjects of his researches, he would have left no mean
name in the republic of letters. And even as it is he has left behind
him a rectorial address to the University of St. Andrews, which
contains, I think, one of the strangest, most pathetic, most striking
passages of eloquence with which I am acquainted in any modern
deliverance.
This is high praise; but to those who are familiar with the passages to
which Lord Rosebery refers, it will not seem exaggerated or misplaced.
They form the peroration to Bute's inaugural address delivered at St.
Andrews on the occasion of his election to the lord-rectorship of that
University; and they run as follows:--
On the 5th of March, in this year, I took a walk with Professor Knight
to Drumcarrow. It was a fine, sunny day. We stood among the remains
of the prehistoric fort, and looked over the bright view, the glorious
landscape enriched by so many memories, the city of St. Andrews
enthroned upon her sea-girt promontory, the German Ocean stretching to
the horizon, from where it chafes upon the cliffs which support her
walls. And we remarked how God and man, how nature and history, had
alike marked this place as an ideal home of learning and culture. And
then the view and the name of the Apostle together carried my thoughts
away to another land and a narrower and land-locked sea. I do not mean
that where Patrai, the scene of Andrew's death, looks from the shores
of Achaia towards the home of {145} Ulysses over waters rendered for
ever glorious by the victory of Lepanto. I do not mean the City of
Constantine, where the first Christian Emperor enshrined his body, and
where the union of ineffably debased luxury and ineffably debased
misery, which drains into the Sea of Marmora, excites a disgust which
almost chokes grief and humiliation. Neither do I mean those sun-baked
precipices which, by the shores of the Gulf of Salerno, beetle over the
grave where lies the body that was conformed in death to the likeness
of the death of the Lord. I mean the land of Andrew's birth--the hot,
brown hills, which, far below the general sea-level of the world, gird
in the Lake of Gennesareth--that strange landscape which also is not
unknown to me, the environing circle of arid steeps, at whose feet,
nevertheless, the occasional brakes of oleander raise above the line of
the waters their masses of pink blossom, and whence the eye can see the
snows of Hermon glistering against the sky far away;--and I pray that
some words which he heard uttered upon one of those hills may be
realised here--that the physical situation of this place may be but a
parable of its moral position--and that it may yet be said of the House
of the Apostle that "the rain descended, and the floods came, and the
winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was
founded upon a rock."[8]
In 1888 Mr. Gardner of Paisley, publisher of the _Review_, was honoured
with the appointment of publisher to the Queen. Bute, who was
interested in every detail concerning the periodical, wrote to the
editor with one of his quaint comments:
_September_ 30, 1888.
I think it would be just as well that Gardner should put his Royal
title at the foot of the title-page, as in his other publications, and
just in the same way. {146} I suppose H.M. will not consider that she
is thus made responsible for all the opinions to be found within. If
she does, it will be time for her to say so when it strikes her.
I have just attacked a great frequenter and pillar of the Athenaeum Club
for not having us taken in there; and I hope he will succeed in wiping
this reproach from the institution.
Bute's control of the _Scottish Review_ was maintained until the end of
his life. The seventy-second and final number appeared in October,
1900, the month in which he died. Occasional entries in his diaries
show that he had incurred very heavy expenses in connection with the
_Review_--perhaps, from first to last, almost as heavy as those
entailed on him by the establishment and support, twenty years before,
of a Conservative daily newspaper in the heart of Liberal Wales. As he
had not grudged that outlay in what he believed to be a good cause, so
he did not consider the money expended on this literary enterprise to
have been expended in vain. If the _Scottish Review_ under his control
had not proved precisely a commercial success--and perhaps he had never
really expected that it would--its conduct and management had at least
provided him with congenial work and occupation during a period
extending over several years. It afforded him a convenient vehicle for
the publication of his curious researches into some of the obscurer
corners of ecclesiastical and general history: it brought him into
contact, either personally or by correspondence, with many
distinguished scholars and men of letters whom he might otherwise have
had no opportunity of knowing: it led indirectly to the forming of at
least one intimate friendship which was the source of pleasure and
interest to him until the {147} end of his life; and it brought him
opportunities which he valued of playing the part of an unostentatious
Maecenas--in other words, of giving practical encouragement to literary
beginners in whom he discerned actual ability or promise for the
future, enabling them to make their first public appearance in a
periodical of repute, and thus assisting them to mount at least the
first slopes of the Parnassus to which they aspired.
[Sidenote: 1889, Death of Bishop Grant]
Reserved, undemonstrative, and cold as Bute was often deemed, there is
abundant evidence that his colleagues and collaborators on the
_Scottish Review_ appreciated highly the uniform courtesy,
consideration, and kindness which they received at his hands. His real
warmth of heart and loyal affection to his friends are well shown in
the touching letter which he wrote on hearing of the death of his old
and dear friend Bishop Colin Grant, who had not only contributed to the
_Review_, but had given him, for many years past, constant and very
highly valued assistance in his researches into the early history of
Scotland.
_September_ 28, 1889.
My own feelings are divided between grief for the loss of my old and
esteemed personal friend, and a sense of desolation, almost amounting
to despair, at the loss which Scottish historical science has
sustained. There must be among his papers masses of notes which ought
not to be lost to the world. I have written to his nephew to implore
him not to let a single scrap of paper be destroyed. As for himself,
if we can only put aside our grief at the loss to ourselves, and at the
apparent loss to the Church upon earth, we can only feel a curious joy
as we picture his admission, far beyond the sphere where time works,
into the blessed company of the just made perfect (especially those of
our own land, on whose {148} earthly lives he loved so much to
dwell[9]) and above all, into the very presence of their Divine Head,
the great Shepherd of the sheep, Whom to please he so humbly and
cheerfully devoted a lifetime in striving to serve His flock.
[Sidenote: Scottish Home Rule]
A short time before writing this tribute to his old friend and
fellow-worker, Bute had attended a meeting held at Dundee to advocate
the claims of Scotland to Home Rule--a claim which he regarded with a
great deal of interest and not a little sympathy, as is evident from
the article he wrote for the _Scottish Review_ (October, 1889) on
"Parliament in Scotland." He thus gives his impressions of the meeting:
The Home Rule meeting in Dundee seemed to me to be really a sort of
battle between Dr. Clark and the Edinburgh Executive on the one hand,
who gave me the impression of being well-informed, able, and educated
people, either Tories or very moderate Liberals, with whom I get on
perfectly; and on the other hand the great body of delegates, who
seemed to me to be extreme Radicals unconscious of their own ignorance.
Mrs. Maxwell Scott has read the proof of my forthcoming article, and is
exceedingly pleased with it. The Home Rule people all wanted to know
whether the _Scottish Review_ could not be turned into their monthly
organ! but I replied that such a change would be equivalent to
annihilation of what the _S.R._ was designed to be, has always been,
and is.
Bute had already accepted an engagement to preside this year (1889) at
the St. Andrew's Day dinner of the Scottish Corporation in London, but
{149} was extremely dubious as to what kind of reception he would have
from a company of whom many were doubtless quite out of sympathy with
the views on Scottish Home Rule set forth in this article. His letter
on this subject, expressing his obvious relief at the manner in which
things had turned out, makes amusing reading:
Chiswick House,
_December_ 1, 1889.
The St. Andrew's Day dinner came off last night. I had been extremely
nervous about it, so that I could really take up nothing else until it
was over. This was folly, and really almost sinful folly, because the
desire to be liked is only vanity at bottom, and vanity is a bastard
cousin to pride. But I knew also (and there I was on fair enough
ground) that, although politics were not to be mentioned, the thing was
in fact to be a political demonstration, and that it was not yours
truly, John M. of B., who was to be placed in the chair, but the author
of "Parliament in Scotland"; and the question was, how the Scottish
commercial colony in London would receive him. It had even been
publicly suggested in print that the charity should be boycotted
because I had been asked to take the chair, "although, no doubt," (the
writer charitably added,) "that must have been done before the article
appeared." Well, the festival duly came off, and I think I was never
more cheered in my life. They cheered for quite long periods every
time I had to come forward, from the time I entered the drawing-room
before the dinner. And I will not quote the language which was used to
me about the speech which I made.
The interest which Bute had always felt in St. Magnus of Orkney since
his visit, or pilgrimage, to the scene of the saint's martyrdom in his
under-graduate days,[10] was evinced by the new and careful {150}
investigations which he undertook in 1886, in view of an article on the
subject in his _Review_. His cautious, yet reverent, attitude towards
the supernatural is well shown in a passage of a letter to his
publisher, relating to the local tradition about a perennially green
spot of ground said to mark the site of Magnus's death in the isle of
Egilsay:
I own that, with such information as I have ever had, together with my
own recollections of the place, I am inclined to think that the
phenomenon is, if not strictly miraculous, in the strongest sense of
the word, a special intervention of Divine Providence, which may be
called a preternatural testimony of God's favour towards His martyred
servant.
Bute later entered into negotiations for the purchase of the site above
referred to, with a view to its preservation; but this was not carried
out. He also wrote at considerable length to his correspondents in
Orkney, throwing great doubts (as he had done nineteen years
previously) on the supposed bones (or "reliques," as he calls them) of
St. Magnus preserved at Kirkwall--chiefly on account of the degenerate
type of the skull. "It may be," he characteristically says, "that this
only indicates a triumph of grace over nature. But it seems to me to
be incompatible, I will not say with holiness, but with the
intellectual, high-minded, and beautiful character and tastes of the
Martyr." On these and other grounds he urges that the local
photographer of the skull must be strictly enjoined not to circulate
the photograph under false pretences.
{151}
[Sidenote: Relics of St. Magnus]
A letter which Bute addressed (in Latin) to the Cardinal Archbishop of
Prague as to reputed "reliques" of St. Magnus preserved in the
cathedral there elicited no response. "The reliques of St. Magnus
themselves," Bute wrote in some displeasure, "could not be more
voiceless than the Cardinal of Prague in regard to my (I hope)
courteously-worded request." Through Cardinal Manning, however,
information finally reached him that the relics at Prague (venerated
there for several centuries) included a shoulder-blade. This was
missing from the bones in Kirkwall Cathedral--so far satisfactory; but
they also included a shin-bone (_crus_), whereas the shin-bones
(_crura_) at Kirkwall were complete and intact.[11] Bute's final
conclusion (and the incident is recorded as showing the curious
interest with which he pursued such minute investigations) was that the
bones at Kirkwall were not St. Magnus's at all, but probably those of
Earl St. Rognwald, nephew to St. Magnus, another Norse saint and hero
venerated in the same locality. He thought it worth while to insert in
the _Review_ a letter from Orkney informing him that there was a
tradition in Egilsay that one would always find an open flower on the
site of the martyrdom, and that the writer had found there on December
10, after heavy snow and gales, several daisies in full bloom.[12]
{152}
The first two years of Bute's connection with the _Scottish Review_
were perhaps among the busiest of his life, not only because of the
assiduous care which, as we have seen, he devoted to the conduct and
control of that journal, but also by reason of the increasing duties
which devolved on him in connection with his extensive estates. To the
latter he made very considerable additions at this period, increasing
his Buteshire property in 1886 by the acquisition of the island of
Cumbrae from the trustees of the sixth Earl of Glasgow, and also
purchasing in the following year the important estate of Falkland in
Fife, to which was annexed an office of the greatest interest to him,
the hereditary keepership of the ancient palace of Falkland. In
Cardiff, also, there was a great increase of business connected with
the reorganisation of the vast docks. The new Roath Dock was opened in
1887 by his six-year-old heir, Lord Dumfries (his first appearance in
public), and on the same day his youthful daughter cut the first sod of
Roath Park, for which he had made a free gift of land valued at
L50,000. His generosity was further shown after the disastrous failure
of the Cardiff Savings Bank, when it was sought to make him liable as
honorary president of the institution. As soon as it was judicially
decided that there was no claim whatever against him, he voluntarily
contributed L3,000 towards making up the deficiency. In the previous
year he had manifested his liberality towards his Scottish tenants by
obtaining (in view {153} of the prevalent agricultural depression) an
independent valuation of his farms in Bute, and reducing the rents by a
third. It was not without reason that the local Liberal newspaper, in
many respects even vehemently hostile to him, described him as "a just
and generous landowner"; whilst in Cardiff this handsome tribute was
paid to him by one extremely well qualified to pronounce an opinion:
"As regarded his estates, he was, of course, a most excellent and
liberal landlord, as all who had the privilege of being his tenants
would certainly admit."
[Illustration: FALKLAND PALACE.]
[Sidenote: 1889, A cathedral foundation]
Much of Bute's correspondence at this period is taken up with a scheme
which he had greatly at heart, namely, the establishment of the full
liturgical service of the Church at Oban, where his diocesan (the
Bishop of Argyll and the Isles) had his see, and where he himself had
built a handsome church. He was concerned that the canonical office of
the Roman Breviary, for which he had so high a veneration, should not
be recited daily in a single cathedral church throughout Britain;[13]
and he incurred a great deal of trouble and expense in his efforts that
this reproach should be wiped out at least in one church in Scotland.
He defrayed the whole cost of organ and organist, choirmen and
chorister-boys, instituted and supported a convent-school for the
education of the last-named, and paid a chaplain for the exclusive work
of presiding in choir and singing the daily Mass. The question of
providing a chaplain {154} exercised him much, and he wrote to a friend
in Italy on this point:
_May_ 8, 1886.
I imagined that, the duties being light and the remuneration (I venture
to think) adequate, a chaplain could easily be found; but the
difficulties seem endless. Whether the cause be chronic ill-health,
constitutional indolence, or an entire want of interest in the Liturgy,
I know not; but so far no priest has been found in England or Scotland
able or willing to celebrate the daily sung Mass. Kindly set on foot
inquiries among the unattached clergy of Rome, popularly known as
_preti di piazza_--many of them, I believe, estimable priests,
unoccupied through no fault of their own--and see if one can be found
to supply our needs. Unexceptionable references would be, of course,
required.
This and other difficulties were in time overcome, and the daily choral
office was duly carried out for a period extending over several years,
and was much appreciated by the numerous Catholic visitors who
frequented Oban during the summer and autumn. Unfortunately it was not
found possible to continue the daily services for any long time after
the death of the founder.
Bute expressed, with his usual frankness, his sentiments on the subject
of the rather nondescript festivals commonly known as "church openings":
Chiswick House,
_April_ 17, 1886.
I am suffering much at present from the persistent wish of my Lord of
Argyll to have what he calls an "opening" of the tin temple[14] in
August--_i.e._ {155} during the tourist and shooting season. This
anomalous celebration is not designed in honour of the inauguration for
public worship, which was last Sunday; nor its ecclesiastical blessing,
which is arranged for an earlier date, nor the inception of the Divine
office--but something in the nature of the "opening" of the Westminster
Aquarium, a new Dissenting Chapel, municipal washhouses, or a fancy
fair, with (I presume) tickets, placards, and posters, and probably
excursion-trains. The bishop seems moved by a conviction that the
local Protestants are anticipating a junketing of this kind with even
more eagerness than the Catholics. But he is a gentleman; and I am
sure when he knows how I hate the whole thing he will give it up.
[Sidenote: 1886, Church building in Scotland]
Besides the pro-cathedral at Oban, Bute was interesting himself this
year (1886) in building a church at a mining town in Ayrshire, near
Loudoun Castle, the ancestral home of his mother's family. Discarding,
as usual, conventional ideas, he chose for his model the great church
of St. Sophia at Constantinople, of which the church at Galston was a
carefully-executed miniature copy. One of the first solemn services
held in it was a Requiem Mass celebrated for Lord Loudoun's sister,
Flora Duchess of Norfolk, who died on April 11, 1887. Lord and Lady
Bute attended her funeral at Arundel, and also that of Clara Lady
Howard of Glossop, Lady Bute's sister-in-law, whose death occurred a
few days later.
[1] "The Earliest Scottish Coronations": "The Coronation of Charles I.
at Holyrood"; "The Coronation of Charles II. at Scone." These appeared
in the _Review_, 1887-1888, and were reprinted, with an additional
article and an Appendix, in 1902, after Bute's death.
[2] "Giordano Bruno before the Venetian Inquisition" (July, 1888): "The
Ultimate Fate of Giordano Bruno" (October, 1888).
[3] In his first trial (at Venice) Bruno tried to defend himself on the
principle of "two-fold truth," maintaining that he had held and taught
the errors imputed to him "as a philosopher, and not as an honest
Christian."
[4] It does not appear on the official _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_
published at the Vatican Press.
[5] This may seem a severe judgment; but some contemporary French
critics of Mr. Froude had much harder things to say about his literary
honesty. "L'historien d' Henry VIII. et d'Elizabeth," wrote M. de
Wyzewa, "etait victime de ce q'un critique a appele 'la folie
d'inexactitude.' Il ne pouvait pas copier un document sans y
introduire des variantes qui souvent en alteraient le sens."--"Rev. des
Deux Mondes," tom. xv. (1903), p. 937.
[6] "Essays on Foreign Subjects" (1901), and "Essays on Home Subjects"
(1904).
[7] The occasion of this striking utterance was an annual meeting of
the Scottish History Society, held subsequent to Bute's death.
[8] Reprinted in "Essays on Home Subjects" (1904), pp. 263, 264.
[9] Bishop Grant was, among other things, a noted hagiographer, having
made profound studies of the lives and acts of the early Celtic saints
of Scotland.
[10] See _ante_, p. 50. The writing of the article on St. Magnus was
entrusted to Mrs. Maxwell Scott of Abbotsford, but illness prevented
her from completing it, and Bute himself, as he says, "saw it through."
It was published in January, 1887.
[11] Although the high authority of the Bollandists (_Acta Sanctorum_,
April, tom. II. p. 435) is on the side of the relics at Prague being
actually those of St. Magnus of Orkney, King and Martyr, it is
impossible not to remember that there was another St. Magnus (popularly
known as St. Mang), monk of St. Gall and Apostle of the Algau, who was
greatly venerated in Germany, and whose _cultus_ would seem more
antecedently probable at Prague than that of the holy Norse Earl.
[12] In March, 1919, thirty-three years after Bute's second
investigation of the supposed relics of St. Magnus, a discovery was
made fully justifying his grave doubts as to the identity of the bones
interred in the north pillar of the choir of Kirkwall Cathedral. A
casket was found in one of the _southern_ pillars of the choir,
containing remains (including a skull with a clean cut in the parietal
bone and a sword-cut through the jaw,) which there seems reason to
believe may be the actual relics of St. Magnus.
[13] At Belmont Abbey, until recently cathedral of the diocese of
Newport (in which Cardiff lay), the daily Divine office has been
chanted by monks without intermission for more than sixty years; but
their office is of course the Benedictine, not the Roman. The latter
has been recited daily, and continuously, in Westminster Cathedral
since its opening in 1902.
[14] The Oban pro-cathedral was a provisional structure of iron, but
its interior was handsomely and even richly fitted up at Bute's
expense. He usually gave the name of "tin temples" to the iron chapels
which he set up in various parts of the country.
{156}