1. in_ernet_dli_2015_173007_2015_173007_The-Cambridge-History-Of-English-Literature-Vol-xiv

THE

CAMBRIDGE

HISTORY

OF

ENGLISH

LITERATURE

VOLUME

XIV

THE

NINETEENTH

CENTURY

III

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

C. F. CLAY, MANAGER

London: FETTER LANE, E.C.

Glasgow: 50 PRINCES STREET

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Copyrighted in the United States of America by

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS,

2, 4 AND 6, WEST 45TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY

THE

CAMBRIDGE

HISTORY

OF

ENGLISH

LITERATURE

EDITED

BY

Sir

A.

W.

WARD,

Litt.D.,

F.B.A.,

Master

of

Peterhouse

AND

A.

R.

WALLER,

M.A.,

Peterhouse

VOLUME

XIV

THE

NINETEENTH

CENTURY

III

Cambridge:

the

University

Press

1916

PREFATORY NOTE

IN sending forth the successive volumes of the work now

brought to a close, we have, at various times, briefly

expressed our thanks to those who, in different ways, have

generously helped us. We wish, in these our last words, to offer

a cordial expression of thanks to our fellow-workers at the

University Press who, for some years past, have cooperated with

us in our endeavour to avoid error—so far as it can be avoided

in an undertaking like ours—to the compositors and readers, as

well as to those charged with the general management of the

various printing departments, of whom the Chief has recently

been taken from us.

Their help has been ungrudging and of great value, and we

should like to place our sense of it on record.

A. W. W.

A. R. W.

April 1916

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PHILOSOPHERS

By W. R. Sorley, Litt.D., F.B.A., Fellow of King's College,

Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy

The economics of Ricardo. James Mill. Analysis of the Phenomena

of the Human Mind. Thomas Brown. Sir William Hamilton.

Mansel. John Stuart Mill. System of Logic. Utilitarianism.

On Liberty. Political Economy. Jevons. George Grote.

Alexander Bain. George Croom Robertson. The influence of

Comte. Rational and Religious Philosophers. John Grote.

Frederick Denison Maurice. Newman's Grammar of Assent.

William George Ward. Martineau. Herbert Spencer and the

Philosophy of Evolution. Darwin. George Henry Lewes. Huxley.

William Kingdon Clifford. Leslie Stephen. Maimon's Anrient

Law. Bagehot. Henry Sidgwick. The Methods of Ethics.

Shadworth Hodgson. Idealists. Ferrier's Institutes of Meta-

physic. Stirling's Secret of Hegel. Thomas Hill Green.

Prolegomena to Ethics. William Wallace. John Caird. Edward

Caird. Francis Herbert Bradley. Alexander Campbell Fraser.

Robert Adamson

CHAPTER II

HISTORIANS, BIOGRAPHERS AND POLITICAL ORATORS

By Sir A. W. Ward, Litt.D., F.B.A., Master of Peterhouse

Sharon Turner. Lingard. Henry Hallam. Sir James Mackintosh.

Macaulay. Lays of Ancient Rome. Essays. History of England.

Sir Archibald Alison. Sir Francis Palgrave. John Mitchell

Kemble. Freeman. The History of the Norman Conquest.

Stubbs. The Constitutional History of England. John Richard

Green. A Short History of the English People. Sir Henry

Maine. J. E. Thorold Rogers. Frederic Seebohm. Frederic

William Maitland. Mary Bateson. J.S. Brewer. James Gairdner.

Froude. History of England. Samuel Rawson Gardiner.

Coxe. Earl Stanhope. Goldwin Smith. Sir J. R. Seeley.

viii

Contents

Harriet Martineau. W. N. Molesworth. Kinglake's Invasion of

the Crimea. P. F. Tytler. John Hill Burton. Andrew Lang.

J. P. Prendergast. Sir J. T. Gilbert. C. L. Falkiner. James

Mill's History of India. Sir A. C. Lyall. J. A. Doyle. E. J. Payne.

Creighton. History of the Papacy. W. E. Collins. J. H. Overton.

W. R. Stephens. T. G. Law. T. McCrie. Buckle's History of

Civilization. Lecky. History of the Rise and Influence

of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. The History of

European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. A History of

England in the Eighteenth Century. Biographers and Memoir-

Writers. Lockhart. Scott. Moore. Southey. Boscoe. Mark

Pattison. Sir James Stephen. Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland.

Mrs M. A. Everett Green. Sir Theodore Martin. Masson's Life

of Milton. John Forster. The Greville Memoirs. The Croker

Papers. The Creevey Papers. N. W. Senior. Lord Acton.

Political Orators and Writers of Pamphlets. William Wilber-

force. Windham. Whitbread. Erskine. Tierney. Canning.

Brougham. Orators of the Reform Bill period. Palmerston.

Plunket. Daniel O'Connell. Richard Lalor Sheil. Sir Robert

Peel. Edward Stanley, fourteenth earl of Derby. Benjamin

Disraeli. Richard Cobden. John Bright. Gladstone . . . 50

CHAPTER III

CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE

John Ruskin and Others

By Hugh Walker, LL.D., Professor of English at

St David's College, Lampeter

Abraham Hayward. John Doran. George Brimley. E. S. Dallas.

The Gay Science. James Hannay. Richard Holt Hutton.

Bagchot. Sir Leslie Stephen. Borrow. Traill. Dowden. Henley.

Ruskin. Modern Painters. Haydon. Mrs Jameson. J. Addington

Symonds. Walter Pater. Oscar Wilde. Hugh Miller. W. and

R. Chambers. John Brown. Rab and his Friends. Alexander

Smith. A. K. H. B. John Skelton. R. L. Stevenson. W. B. Drysdale.

Sir Arthur Helps. W. B. Greg. Andrew Lang. Louisa

Oliphant. Lafcadio Hearn. Richard Jeffries . . . . 188

CHAPTER IV

THE GROWTH OF JOURNALISM

By J. S. R. Phillips, Editor of The Yorkshire Post, Leeds

Eighteenth Century Newspapers. Literary and Art Criticism.

The Drama. Politics. The War Correspondent. Freeman of

team in the Victorian era. Jackson. The Times. The Walter

Dynasts. The Statesman and The Morning Post. James Perry and

Contents

ix

The Morning Chronicle. The Standard. The Morning Advertiser. The Daily News. The Daily Telegraph. The Halfpenny morning press. The Penny evening papers. Weekly illustrated papers. The Hour. The Press. The Examiner. The Spectator. The Saturday Review. The Scots Observer. The Guardian. The Athenaeum. Illustrated papers. The Observer. The Pilot. The Tribune. The ‘Provincial’ Press. The Manchester Guardian

167

CHAPTER V

UNIVERSITY JOURNALISM

By Vernon Horace Rendall, sometime Scholar of Trinity College

Calverley. A. C. Hilton. The Cambridge Review. The Granta. The Oxford Magazine. The Iris. Scottish and Irish University Journals

205

CHAPTER VI

CARICATURE AND THE LITERATURE OF SPORT

Punch

By Harold Child, sometime Scholar of Brasenose College, Oxford

Hogarth. Gillray. Boydell. Ackermann. Bunbury. Rowlandson. Combe. Dr Syntax. Gilpin. The Microcosm of London. Pierce Egan. Life in London. The English Spy. John Thomas Smith. James Catnach. The Newgate Calendar. The Literature of Pugilism and Hunting. ‘Nimrod.’ Surtees. Bewick. Punch

212

CHAPTER VII

THE LITERATURE OF TRAVEL, 1700—1900

By F. A. Kirkpatrick, M.A., Trinity College

William Dampier. Woodes Rogers. Anson. Cook. James Bruce. Clarke. Barrow. Waterton. Darwin. Wallace. Bishop Ford. Borrow. Warburton. Eothen. Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant. Sir Richard Burton. W. G. Palgrave. A. H. Layard. Speke. Wilwood Beade. Mary Kingsley. Peaks, passes and glaciers. Dilke’s Greater Britain

240

x

Contents

CHAPTER VIII

THE LITERATURE OF SCIENCE

A. Physics and Mathematics

By W. W. Rouse Ball, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College

Cambridge mathematicians. The British Association. Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences. Michael Faraday. De Morgan. Sir William Rowan Hamilton. J. J. Sylvester. John Couch Adams. Cayley. H. J. S. Smith. Sir George Darwin. George Green. Sir George Stokes. Lord Kelvin. James Clerk Maxwell

257

B. Chemistry

By M. M. Pattison Muir, M.A., Fellow of Gonville and Caius College

The study of material changes. Four main lines of advance in chemistry since the later years of the eighteenth century. Priestley and Cavendish. Black. The Atomic Theory. Dalton. Williamson. Frankland. Sir Humphry Davy. Electricity and Chemical Affinity. Thomas Graham. Faraday

271

C. Biology

By A. E. Shipley, Sc.D., F.R.S., Master of Christ’s College

The Royal Society. Nehemiah Grew. Ray and Willughby. Robert Hooke. Stephen Hales. Museums. Botanic Gardens. Learned Societies. Scientific Journals. Exploration. Sir Joseph Banks. Robert Brown. J. S. Henslow. Lindley. Berkeley. James Hutton. John Playfair. William Smith. Adam Sedgwick. Scrope. de la Beche. Lyell. Sorby. Murchison. Buckland. Richard Owen. Edward Forbes. The voyage of ‘The Challenger.’ Central America. Darwin. Wallace. The Origin of Species. Sir Joseph Hooker. Huxley

291

CHAPTER IX

ANGLO-IRISH LITERATURE

By Alfred Perceval Graves, M.A.

Gaelic and Classical Literature. Gaelic Poetry. Translations. Irish influence on English Literature. Geoffrey Keating. James Ussher. The Sheridan. Le Fanu. National Folk-ballads and other writings. Maginn. Lever. Lover. Crofton Croker. Carleton. Patrick Kennedy. Mahony. The Banim. Thomas Osborne Davis. M’Gee. Sir Samuel Ferguson. Griffin. Women writers. Synge

309

Contents

xi

CHAPTER X

ANGLO-INDIAN LITERATURE

By Edward Farley Oaten, M.A., LL.B., Indian Educational

Service, Professor of History at the Presidency College,

Calcutta

Early historians. William Browne Hockley. Philip Meadows Taylor.

The mutiny. The later historians. Sir Edwin Arnold. Sir Alfred

Lyall. Bankim Chandra Chatterji. Toru1ata Dutt . . . 331

CHAPTER XI

ENGLISH-CANADIAN LITERATURE

By Pelham Edgar, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., Professor of English

Literature in Victoria College, University of Toronto

Haliburton. Isabella Valancy Crawford. Archibald Lampman.

William Henry Drummond. Lesser Poets. Historians. Novelists 348

CHAPTER XII

THE LITERATURE OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

By Harold Child

Charles Harpur. Henry Clarence Kendall. Adam Lindsay Gordon.

James Brunton Stephens. Henry Kingsley and William Howitt.

Marcus Clarke. 'Rolf Boldrewood.' Historians . . . 361

CHAPTER XIII

SOUTH AFRICAN POETRY

By Sir T. Herbert Warren, K.C.V.O., President of

Magdalen College, Oxford

Thomas Pringle. Afar in the Desert. The Bechuana Boy.

Anthologies . . . 378

xii

Contents

CHAPTER XIV

EDUCATION

By J. W. Adamson, Fellow of King's College, London, and Professor of Education in the University of London

The industrial revolution. French and German education. The universities. Nonconformist academies. Public schools. Education of girls. Elementary education. Chesterfield's Letters. The Edgeworths. Wordsworth. Priestley. Study of English. Thomas Sheridan. The Scottish School of Rhetoric. Education and the state. Mrs Trimmer. Bell and Lancaster. Robert Owen. Brougham and The Edinburgh Review. Mechanics' institutes. Adult education. English and Scottish universities. The university of London. Tutors versus professors. Public School reform. William Ellis. Ruskin. The state assumes responsibility for elementary education. The revised code. Spencer. Royal Commissions. Arnold and secondary education. John Stuart Mill. Essays on a liberal education. Edward Thring. The Education Act of 1870. Alexander Bain. The education of women. Universities and research. The new universities. The legislation of 1902

881

CHAPTER XV

CHANGES IN THE LANGUAGE SINCE SHAKESPEARE'S TIME

By W. Murison, M.A., Aberdeen

The world-wide expansion of the English language. Changes in pronunciation, spelling and grammar. Vocabulary. Methods of word-making. Influx of foreign words. Plain and ornate style

484

The End . . . . . . . . . 484

Bibliographies . . . . . . . . 467

Table of Principal Dates . . . . . . 614

Index of Names . . . . . . . . 618

CHAPTER I

PHILOSOPHERS

I. INTRODUCTION

English philosophy may be said to have touched low-water mark in or about the fourth decade of the nineteenth century.

The general public had ceased to be occupied with matters of speculative thought, and the universities did little or nothing to keep an interest in them alive.

Writing in 1835, John Stuart Mill complained that philosophy was falling more and more into disrepute and that great events had ceased to inspire great ideas.

'In the intellectual pursuits which form great minds,' he said, 'this country was formerly pre-eminent.

England once stood at the head of European philosophy.

Where stands she now?… Out of the narrow bounds of mathematical and physical science, not a vestige of a reading and thinking public engaged in the investigation of truth as truth, in the prosecution of thought for the sake of thought.

Among few except sectarian religionists—and what they are we all know—is there any interest in the great problem of man's nature and life: among still fewer is there any curiosity respecting the nature and principles of human society, the history or the philosophy of civilisation; nor any belief that, from such inquiries, a single important practical consequence can follow1.'

About the same time, or a few years earlier, similar views concerning the low estate of English philosophy had been expressed by Sir William Hamilton and by Thomas Carlyle2; and a foreign observer—Hegel—had spoken with scorn of the usage of the word 'philosophy' in the English language.

The writers who made this complaint were foremost in bringing about a change.

Without any approach to philosophical method, Carlyle forced upon public attention ideas concerning the ultimate meaning and value of life, and, in his own way, had an influence upon the thought of his time which may be compared with that of Coleridge in the generation

1 Dissertations and Discussions, vol. i, pp. 96, 97.

2 Cf. Manson, Recent British Philosophy, 3rd edn. pp. 2–4.

B. L. XIV. CH. I.

1

2

Philosophers

[CH.

immediately preceding. Hamilton and Mill were the leaders of

a marked revival of interest in speculative topics, which rein-

stated philosophy in its due place in the national culture ; and

this revival took two different directions connected with their

diverse views and training.

Philosophy, however, had not merely to overcome the public

indifference referred to by John Stuart Mill; it had also to

contend against itself, or, at least, against its dominant form.

The Benthamite creed, which was in the ascendant, was not

favourable to speculative enquiry. 'The great problem of man's

nature and life' was regarded as solved in a sense which made

metaphysics and theology alike impossible; ethical principles

were held to be finally settled by Bentham, so that nothing

remained but their application to different situations; even

political and social theory, the field of the chief triumphs of the

utilitarians, was divorced from history and from every ethical

idea save that of utility; psychology, however, remained in need

of more adequate treatment than Bentham could give it, and

James Mill supplied the school with a theory of mind which was

in harmony with their other views.

II. JAMES MILL AND OTHERS

The economic doctrines which are characteristic of the utilitarian

school were elaborated by a writer who cannot be regarded as a

member of it and who, indeed, was not interested in philosophy

or even in the larger questions of social theory. This was David

Ricardo, the son of a Dutch Jew who had settled in London and

become a member of the Stock Exchange. Thrown on his own re-

sources, Ricardo soon made a fortune as a stockbroker, retired

from business at an early age and devoted his leisure to economics.

It was not until he had already made his mark as a writer on the

currency that he became acquainted with James Mill, by whose

encouragement, as well as by that of other friends, he was induced,

in 1817, to publish his chief work, Principles of Political Economy

and Taxation. Ricardo received his impetus towards economic

study from Adam Smith. He did not share the latter's breadth of

social outlook or his psychological insight; but he had a masterly

power of abstract reasoning which enabled him to present

economic doctrines in the form of a deductive science. He was

concerned not so much with the 'nature and causes' as with the

distribution of wealth. This distribution has to be made between

the classes concerned in the production of wealth, namely, the landowner, the capitalist, and the labourer ; and Ricardo seeks to show the conditions which determine the share of each. Here, his theory of rent is fundamental. He did not claim originality for this theory, which goes by his name, but attributed it to Malthus's Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent and Edward West's Essay on the Application of Capital to Land, both of which appeared in 1815; while his editor, J. R. McCulloch, discovered the same doctrine in a work by James Anderson, entitled Enquiry into the Nature of Corn-Laws and published in 1777. But Ricardo made the doctrine his own. Rent, he argued, does not enter into the cost of production ; it varies on different farms according to the fertility of the soil and the advantages of their situation.

But the price of the produce is the same for all and is fixed by the conditions of production on the least favourable land which has to be cultivated to meet the demand ; and this land pays no rent. Rent, therefore, is the price which the landowner is able to charge for the special advantages of his land ; it is the difference between its return to a given amount of capital and labour and the similar return of the least advantageous land which has to be cultivated. Consequently, it rises as the margin of cultivation spreads to less fertile soils. Obviously, this doctrine leads to a strong argument in favour of the free importation of foreign goods, especially corn. It also breaks with the economic optimism of Adam Smith, who thought that the interest of the country gentlemen harmonised with that of the mass of the people, for it shows that the rent of the landowner rises as the increasing need of the people compels them to have resort to inferior land for the production of their food.

The value of an article is determined, according to Ricardo, by the amount of labour required to produce it under the least favourable conditions ; and this value has to be shared between wages and profits (interest on capital and earnings of business management not being distinguished in his analysis). Wages depend on the price of necessaries (that is, chiefly, of food) ; the law of population (which he takes over from Malthus) prevents any further rise. On the other hand, profits depend on high or low wages. Thus, in the progress of society, the 'natural tendency' of profits is to fall, until 'almost the whole produce of the country, after paying the labourers, will be the property of the owners of land and the receivers of those rent and taxes'

1–2

4

Philosophers

[CH.

There is, therefore, an opposition of interests within the body

economic ; and this opposition is held to be the result of natural

and inevitable law—‘happily checked,’ however, at repeated

intervals, by improvements and discoveries. For their effect

Ricardo made allowance. But he took no account of other

than economic motives in human conduct; he may be said to

have invented the fiction of the ‘economic man,’ though he did

not use the phrase. And he regarded the economic structure

of society as rigid, though his doctrines often read like satires

upon it, and they became, in the hands both of contemporary

and of later socialist writers, a powerful argument for fundamental

social changes.

Ricardo’s method was to proceed from a few very general

propositions about society and human nature, and to draw out

their consequences deductively. That his premises were one-sided

generalisations, and that his conclusions at best had only hypo-

thetical validity, he did not recognise. This method was also

characteristic of the Benthamite reasoning in political theory

generally. Thus it was that, in economics, James Mill professed

himself Ricardo’s disciple. Mill’s Political Economy (1821) re-

duces Ricardo’s doctrines to text-book form, and states them with

the concise and confident lucidity which distinguished the author.

For Mill, however, unlike Ricardo, economics was only one

amongst a large number of topics, social and philosophical, which

were open to the same general method of treatment, and which

appealed to his interest. Mill was closely associated with Bentham

—at any rate, from 1808 onwards—and it is difficult to find any

originality in the fundamental doctrines of his creed. At the

same time, he had certain points of superiority. Much inferior

to Bentham in jurisprudence and all that concerned the details

of law, he had, perhaps, a clearer view of political theory and

certainly a wider knowledge of historical conditions. He was,

of course, a whole-hearted adherent of the greatest happiness

principle, and added nothing to its statement; but he was better

equipped for its defence on philosophical grounds and he could

supplement Bentham’s deficiencies as a psychologist. But the

necessity of making an income by literary work and, afterwards,

the demands of official employment, as well as, always, the

engrossing interests of public affairs, left him little leisure for

philosophy.

1 See the bibliography by Foxwell, H. S. in appendix ii (pp. 191–267) of the English

translation of A. Menger’s Right to the Whole Produce of Labour (1899).

I]

James Mill

5

Mill's systematic work in political theory is contained in certain articles, especially an article on government, contributed to the supplement of The Encyclopaedia Britannica, edited by Macvey Napier (1820). In these articles, the author proceeds, methodically, to determine the best form of political order by deductive reasoning; and his method was the object of severe criticism by Macaulay in an article contributed to The Edinburgh Review in 1829, but not republished in his collected Essays. This article contained also an attack on the utilitarians generally; and Mill's rejoinder, so far as he made any, is to be found in A Fragment on Mackintosh (1835).

This consists of 'strictures on some passages' of A Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy which Sir James Mackintosh had contributed to the seventh edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Like Mill, Mackintosh was keenly interested in philosophy, although his career gave him little time for its pursuit. In this, his only contribution to the subject, he reviewed the work of the English moralists with appreciation and insight. It contained criticisms of the utilitarians and of their intellectual predecessors which aroused Mill's hostility, and its occasional lack of precision of thought laid it open to attack. Mill's 'strictures' are limited to a few points only, and expose the weaknesses of his antagonist's positions in a manner which would have been more effective if it had been less violent—although his friends had induced him to moderate its tone before making it public.

Mill's chief philosophical work was, however, his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829). In this he laid the foundation in psychology for the utilitarian superstructure. It is a compact statement of a theory of mind elaborated on the same method as that by which any department of nature might be studied. Mental phenomena are reduced to their simplest elements, and the association of these into groups and successions is investigated, all association being reduced by him to one law—that of contiguity. In general, Mill follows Hume and Hartley—but Hartley much more than Hume. He disregards, however, the physiological side of Hartley's theory, so that his own doctrines are purely psychological. To the psychological school of a later date, whose leading representatives were John Stuart Mill and Alexander Bain, his chief positive contribution was the doctrine of inseparable association; in addition, he marked out afresh the lines to be followed by a theory which attempts to explain the facts of consciousness from the 'association' of ultimate

6 Philosophers [CH.

elements called ‘sensations’—assumed as themselves not in need

of explanation.

A position intermediate between the associationism of Mill

and the traditional doctrines of the Scottish school was taken

by Thomas Brown, professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh

from 1810 till his death in 1820. By the time he was twenty

years of age Brown had published Observations on the Zoonomia

of Erasmus Darwin (1798), which was recognised as a mature

criticism of that work. Seven years afterwards, in 1805, an

ecclesiastico-academical controversy drew from him a small volume

entitled Observations on the Nature and Tendency of the Doctrine

of Mr Hume concerning the Relation of Cause and Effect, of

which a second enlarged edition was published in 1806 and a

third edition, further enlarged and modified in arrangement and

title, in 1817. In this book, he maintained the view that causation

means simply uniform antecedence, ‘to whatever objects, material

or spiritual, the words may be applied’; but he held, also, that

there was an intuitive or instinctive belief that, ‘when the previous

circumstances in any case are exactly the same, the resulting

circumstances also will be the same.’

Brown’s work on causation certainly showed him to be possessed

of an intellect of penetrating philosophical quality; and it may be

noted that, in his preface to the second edition of it, he already laid

down two principles which distinguished his subsequent writing.

One was that the ‘philosophy of mind’ is to be considered as a

science of analysis; the other was the implicit rejection of the

doctrine of mental faculties as it had figured in previous academic

philosophies. Functions such as memory or comparison, he says,

are merely names for the resemblances among classes of mental

facts. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1820),

published after his death, these principles were applied to the details

of perception and cognition. He made the important distinction

between the muscular sense and touch proper, resolved knowledge

of extension into a succession of muscular sensations, and knowledge

of the external world into a number of constituent sensations, but

held, nevertheless, to the real existence of the physical object on the

ground that it was implied in the intuitive belief in causality. In

these doctrines, and in his analysis of ‘relative suggestion,’ he made

contributions to psychology which were largely original, although

he was considerably indebted to De Tracy and other predecessors.

The eloquence of his style, as well as the subtlety of his analyses,

made his lectures famous during his lifetime and, in their printed

form, for many years after his death. They were written hastily,

each lecture to meet the demand of the following day, and they

are too ornate in style for scientific purposes. The shortness

of the author's life, and his own unfortunate preference for his

poetical works over his philosophical, prevented a thorough

revision of what he had written or a consistent and adequate

development of his views.

III. Sir William Hamilton and others

Hamilton's reputation has not withstood the test of time; but,

in his own day and for a number of years afterwards, his was one

of the two names which stood for the revival of philosophical

thought in Great Britain. His pre-eminence was not altogether

undisputed, however. Even from his younger contemporaries who

did most for Scotish metaphysics, different opinions regarding his

merit may be gathered. Ferrier regarded him, morally and intel-

lectually, as 'amongst the greatest of the great1': whereas Hutchison

Stirling found in him 'a certain vein of disingenuousness that,

cruelly unjust to individuals, has probably caused the retardation

of general British philosophy by, perhaps, a generation2.' The truth

lies somewhere between these extreme views, and it is important

to arrive at a correct estimate of Hamilton's work in order to

understand the course of British philosophy.

Sir William Hamilton was born in 1788, in the old college of

Glasgow, where his father was a professor. He was educated there

and at Oxford, was called to the Scottish bar and, in 1836,

appointed to the chair of logic and metaphysics at Edinburgh.

In 1844 he had a stroke of paralysis, and, although he was able to

continue the work of his professorship until his death in 1856, he

never recovered his physical strength. His published work began

with a number of articles in The Edinburgh Review, republished

in 1852 as Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education

and University Reform. The most important of these were three

articles on 'the Philosophy of the Unconditioned,' 'the Philosophy

of Perception' and 'Logic,' which appeared between 1829 and

1833. He afterwards devoted himself to the preparation of an

edition of Reid's Works, which he illustrated with elaborate

appended 'Notes,' chiefly historical in character. This work was

1 Ferrier, J. F., Scottish Philosophy: the old and the new (1856), pp. 26, 16.

2 Stirling, J. H., Sir W. Hamilton: being the Philosophy of Perception (1865), p. vii.

8

Philosophers

[CH.

published in 1846; but the ‘Notes’ were never completed and are

of the nature of material rather than of literature. After his

death, his Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic were published in

four volumes (1858–60).

Hamilton’s positive contributions to philosophy are connected

with the topics of the three articles already named. Indeed, except

as regards logic, these articles contain almost all that is essential

and original in his work. But other points have to be taken into

account in estimating his influence upon philosophical thought.

Since the time of Descartes, continental thought had had little

effect upon English philosophy. Leibniz and even Spinoza were

hardly more than names. Helvétius had influenced Bentham, and

De Tracy Thomas Brown; but Helvétius and De Tracy themselves

worked on lines laid down in England—the lines of Locke. The

doctrines of Locke, Berkeley and Hume, together with the ideas

of the deistical movement, had entered into the European tradition;

but the reaction which they produced, and which began with Kant,

was for long ignored in England. One or two enthusiasts tried to

make Kant known, but their efforts were without result; an article

on Kant by Thomas Brown in the second number of The Edin-

burgh Review (1803) only showed the poverty of the land.

Coleridge, indeed, was a much more important medium; he

brought into English literature ideas which had been derived from

Kant and his successors, and he was recognised by John Stuart

Mill as representing a type of thought, antagonistic to the dominant

Benthamism, which had to be reckoned with. But the teaching

of Coleridge was prophetic rather than scientific, and the philo-

sophical student had to be approached in his own language and by

a master who had the command of traditional learning as well as

fresh doctrines to teach. It was here that Hamilton’s cosmopolitan

learning broke in upon British philosophy and lifted it out of the

narrow grooves into which both the Scottish academic teachers

and the English Benthamites had fallen. Hamilton’s learning struck

most of his contemporaries as almost superhuman; it was certainly

vast, and, as certainly, without precedent at the time. It made

possible a new orientation in philosophy. The special problems to

which discussion had become restricted were seen as part of a

larger field of enquiry which extended over the whole of western

thought from ancient Greece to modern Germany. Hamilton,

however, had the defects of his qualities. He never obtained easy

mastery of his own learning; he would summon a ‘cloud of

witnesses’ when a single good argument would have been more to

I] Hamilton's Logical Theory

9

the purpose; and his selection of 'authorities' was often ill-judged:

they were numbered instead of weighed; and he would spend time

over third-rate schoolmen or equally third-rate modern Germans

which would have been better spent if devoted to a sympathetic

understanding of Kant and Hegel. Nevertheless, Hamilton's work

in this respect is important. He overcame the provincialism of

English thought and he brought it into connection with the

greatest of the new German philosophers. It may have been an

imperfect Kant that he revealed; Fichte, Schelling and Hegel

were brought forward as objects of criticisms only. But the

traditional circle of English thought was broken, and new ideas

were brought within it.

Hamilton came forward as a reconciler of Scottish and German

thought-of Reid with Kant. It was only an imperfect synthesis

that he worked out, but the enterprise was notable. His logical

work, indeed, stands to some extent apart. He followed Kant in

his strictly formal treatment, and he devoted a large amount of

time, and no little ingenuity, to the elaboration of a modification of

the formal doctrine of the traditional logic. This modified doctrine

made a great stir for many years, and was even hailed as the

greatest logical discovery since the time of Aristotle1. It is known

as 'the Quantification of the Predicate.' Hamilton's own exposi-

tions of it are incomplete and are contained in appendixes to his

Discussions and to his Lectures. The clearest accounts of his

views have to be sought in An Essay on the New Analytic of

Logical Forms (1840), by his pupil, Thomas Spencer Baynes, and

in An Outline of the Laws of Thought (the first edition of which

was published in 1842), by William Thomson, afterwards arch-

bishop of York. But the gist of the matter can be put very

shortly. According to the traditional view, in a judgment or

proposition, an assertion is made about something; that is to say,

the subject is said to possess or not to possess the quality signified

by the predicate. When made not about an individual thing, but

about a group or class, then the assertion may be meant to apply

to every member of the class or only to some of them; it is, there-

fore, necessary to indicate this, or to express the quantity of the

subject. The predicate is not similarly quantified. But a quality

is always potentially a class-the class of things which possess that

quality. The most elementary of logical operations implies that

it can be treated as such and assigned a quantity as the subject

of a new proposition. Hamilton's 'new analytic' depends upon

1 Baynes, T. S., Essay on the New Analytic (1860), p. 90.

IO

Philosophers

[CH.

the contention that the quantity thus implied should be always

explicitly stated, and consists in following out the changes in

formal procedure which seem to him to result from this being

done. But Hamilton was not thorough enough in the elaboration

of his theory. He did not see that it implied a change from the

'predication view' to the 'class view' of the proposition and that

this would lead to a very different classification of propositions

from his, and, in general, to a much more radical revision of logical

forms than he contemplated. Two contemporary mathematicians

—Augustus de Morgan and George Boole—went further than he

did; and the latter's treatise entitled The Laws of Thought (1854)

laid the foundations of the modern logical calculus.

Hamilton's article on 'the Philosophy of Perception' is both a

defence of Reid and, at the same time, a relentless attack upon

Thomas Brown. It is also an attempt to formulate and justify the

doctrine of 'natural realism' or 'natural dualism' in a form less

ambiguous than that in which it had been stated by Reid. 'In

the simplest act of perception,' says Hamilton, 'I am conscious

of myself as the perceiving subject and of an external reality as

the object perceived.' As regards the latter factor what we

have is said to be 'an immediate knowledge of the external

reality.' This clear view almost disappears, however, in the

process of discussion and elaboration which it underwent in

Hamilton's later thought. In the course of his psychological

analysis, he distinguished sharply and properly between the sub-

jective and the objective factors in the act of cognising external

reality ; the former he called sensation proper and the latter

perception proper ; and he even formulated a 'law' of their inverse

ratio. He elaborated, also, the old distinction of primary and

secondary qualities of matter, to which, more suo, he added an

intermediate class of secundo-primary qualities. As a result of

these distinctions the doctrine of 'immediate knowledge of the

external reality' is transformed. The object of perception proper,

it is said, is either a primary quality or a certain phase of a

secundo-primary. But we do not perceive the primary qualities

of things external to our organism. These are not immediately

known but only inferred; the primary qualities which we do

perceive 'are perceived as in our organism.' That is to say, when

we perceive a table, we do not perceive the shape or size of the

table; knowledge of these is got by inference; the shape and size

which we perceive are in our own bodies. The existence of an

extra-organic world is apprehended through consciousness of

1] The Philosophy of the Conditioned I I

resistance to our muscular energy, which Hamilton calls a 'quasi-primary phasis of the secundopr contention is given by sight ; and yet it would be hard to show that the 'testimony of consciousness,' to which Hamilton constantly and confidently appeals, makes any such distinction between things seen and things touched.

The value of Hamilton's 'philosophy of the conditioned,' as he called it, is not easy to estimate, chiefly owing to the difficulty of stating the exact sense in which he held his favourite doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge. His most striking production is the first article he published--that on 'the Philosophy of the Unconditioned.' It is a review not directly of Schelling or Hegel, but of the eclectic system of his French contemporary, Victor Cousin. The unconditioned, in his use of the term, is a genus of which the infinite (or unconditionally unlimited) and the absolute (or unconditionally limited) are the species ; and his contention is that it is not an object of thought at all, but 'merely a common name for what transcends the laws of thought.' His argument follows lines similar to those used by Kant in exhibiting the antinomies of rational cosmology, though it is applied to the conclusions of post-Kantian speculation. According to him, there cannot be any knowledge of that which is without conditions, whether it is called infinite or absolute ; knowledge lies between two contradictory inconceivables, one of which must be true though neither can be conceived ; all true philosophy is a philosophy of the conditioned. 'To think,' he says, 'is to condition.' This statement, however, involves two positions which he does not take care to keep distinct. It implies that we cannot know the infinite or whole, which in its nature must be without any conditions ; and it may also be taken as implying that our knowledge of the finite parts is not a knowledge of them as they truly exist, but only as they are modified by our way of knowing. This latter position, though very definitely stated by Hamilton, is not clearly carried out. He follows Kant by laying chief stress on space and time as the forms under which we know objects ; but he departs from Kant in holding that these forms are also modes of things as actually existing. It would therefore appear that the fact of their being (as Hamilton calls them) a priori 'forms of 'thought' does not interfere with the objective truth of our spatio-temporal knowledge ; it is a knowledge, under the forms of space and time, of things which really

1 Bald's Works, ed. Hamilton, Note D*, pp. 881, seq.

12 Philosophers [CH.

exist in space and time. Hamilton's doctrine of immediate per-

ception necessitates some such view. He saw, moreover, that some

kind of reconciliation was required; but a parenthetical paragraph

in his article on 'the Philosophy of Perception' exhausts what he

has to say on this important problem. 'To obviate misappre-

hension,' he asserts that all that we know is 'those phases of being

which stand in analogy to our faculties of knowledge.' This vague

phrase may mean little more than that we cannot know what we

are incapable of knowing. Because the nature of a thing is 'in

analogy to our faculties' may be the reason why we are able to

know it; it cannot show that we do not know it as it is or in its

actual nature. But Hamilton's mind seemed to work in two

distinct compartments belonging respectively to the philosophy of

perception and to the philosophy of the conditioned. The two

lines of thought seldom met, and when they did meet the result

was sometimes curious. Rerumque ignarus, imagine gaudet is the

taunt he flings at Brown and the representationists; but when he

poses as the philosopher of the conditioned, he takes the same tag

as his own motto—rerumque ignarus, imagine gaulet.

As regards our supposed knowledge of the absolute or of the

infinite, that, he holds, is merely a negative conception. On this

topic he can hardly be said to have set forth anything substantially

new, though his arguments were novel and striking to the English

reader of the day. Nor, even here, on this fundamental point,

can his view be said to be free from ambiguity. His doctrine

seems to lead logically to a form of positivism; he will not even

allow that the moral consciousness or 'practical reason' has the

significance assigned to it by Kant; but yet he asserts emphatically

that what cannot be known can be and ought to be believed.

What then is belief? By classifying it as a form or 'faculty' of

cognition, Hamilton strikes at the root of his doctrine that thought

excludes the notion of the absolute or infinite. When on the

war-path against the unconditioned, the 'imbecility' of human

knowledge is asserted to the fullest extent; when religious belief

is in question, the 'unknown God' is represented as somehow the

object of consciousness; and sometimes it would even appear as if

his view were simply that knowledge of the highest object which

consciousness can apprehend, cannot, like our knowledge of par-

ticular things, imply a reference to some higher concept.

The theological results of the philosophy of the conditioned

were worked out thoroughly and with effective logic by Henry

Longueville Mansel, an Oxford professor who was dean of St Paul's for the three years preceding his death in 1871. Mansel was a scholar of less miscellaneous learning than Hamilton, and his thinking was less original; but his thought was not obscured by his learning. In the notes and appendixes to his edition of Aldrich's Artis Logicæ Rudimenta (1849), and in his Prolegomena Logica (1851), he defined and defended a formal view of the science similar to Hamilton's. His Metaphysics (1860), originally contributed to The Encyclopædia Britannica, is the best connected exposition of the philosophy that may be called Hamiltonian; and, in his Philosophy of the Conditioned (1866), the doctrine was defended against the criticisms of Mill. He was also the author entitled Phrontisterion (republished in Letters, Lectures and Reviews, 1873), in which academic reformers and German philosophers are satirised. But his wider fame came from his Bampton lectures, The Limits of Religious Thought (1858). This work is a Christian apologetic founded on the doctrine of agnosticism (to use the modern term) which he shared with Hamilton. Since knowledge of God, in His absolute existence, is self-contradictory, since 'absolute morality' is equally beyond human knowledge and since our moral conceptions can only be 'relative and phenomenal,' he seeks to disallow any criticisms of theological doctrine which are based upon human conceptions of good and evil. The indignation with which this doctrine was repudiated by John Stuart Mill formed one of the most striking, but not one of the most important, features of his criticism of the philosophy of Hamilton.

IV. John Stuart Mill and Others

John Stuart Mill is, on the whole, the most interesting and characteristic figure in English philosophy in the nineteenth century. He was successively the hope and the leader, sometimes, also, the despair, of the school of thought which was regarded as representative of English traditions. He was born in London on 20 May 1806, and was the eldest son of James Mill. He was educated entirely by his father and was deliberately shielded from association with other boys of his age. From his earliest years he was subjected to a rigid system of intellectual discipline. As a result of this system, knowledge of what are considered the higher branches of education was acquired by him in childhood, and he

14

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started on his career, according to his own account, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over his contemporaries. This is probably an overstatement of a very remarkable intellectual precocity ; and John Mill recognised, in later life, that his father's system had the fault of appealing to the intellect only and that the culture of his practical and emotional life had been neglected, while his physical health was probably undermined by the strenuous labour exacted from him. James Mill's method seems to have been designed to make his son's mind a first-rate thinking machine, so that the boy might become a prophet of the utilitarian gospel. In this he succeeded. But the interest—one may almost say, the tragedy—of the son's life arose from the fact that he possessed a much finer and subtler nature than his father's—a mind which could not be entirely satisfied by the hereditary creed. He remained more or less orthodox, according to the standards of his school ; but he welcomed light from other quarters, and there were times when Grote and others feared that he might become a castaway. 'A new mystic' was Carlyle's judgment upon some of his early articles. Mill never became a mystic ; but he kept an open mind, and he saw elements of truth in ideas in which the stricter utilitarians could see nothing at all.

He had no doubts at the outset of his career. On reading Bentham (this was when he was fifteen or sixteen) the feeling rushed upon him 'that all previous moralists were superseded.' The principle of utility, he says, understood and applied as it was by Bentham,

gave unity to my conception of things. I now had opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy ; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion ; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a life.

Soon afterwards he formed a small 'Utilitarian Society,' and, for some few years, he was one of 'a little knot of young men' who adopted his father's philosophical and political views 'with youthful fanaticism.' A position under his father in the India office had secured him against the misfortune of having to depend on literary work for his livelihood; and he found that office-work left him ample leisure for the pursuit of his wider interests.

He was already coming to be looked upon as a leader of thought when, in his twenty-first year, the mental crisis occurred which is described in his Autobiography. This crisis was a result of the severe strain, physical and mental, to which he had been subjected from his earliest years. He was 'in a dull state of

I]

Mill's Early Writings

15

nerves'; the objects in life for which he had been trained and for

which he had worked lost their charm; he had 'no delight in

virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything

else'; a constant habit of analysis had dried up the fountains of

feeling within him. After many months of despair, he found,

accidentally, that the capacity for emotion was not dead, and 'the

cloud gradually drew off.' But the experience he had undergone

modified his theory of life and his character. Happiness was still

to be the end of life, but it should not be taken as its direct end;

'ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The

only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to

it, as the purpose of life.' Further, he ceased to attach almost

exclusive importance to the ordering of outward circumstances,

and, 'for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime

necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the

individual.' In this state of mind, he found, in the poems of

Wordsworth—'the poet of unpoetical natures,' as he calls him—

that very culture of the feelings which he was seeking. From him

he learned 'what would be the perennial sources of happiness,

when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed.'

Mill's widened intellectual sympathies were shown by his

reviews of Tennyson's poems and of Carlyle's French Revolution

in 1835 and 1837. The articles on Bentham and on Coleridge,

published in 1838 and 1840 respectively, disclose his modified

philosophical outlook and the exact measure of his new mental

independence. From the position now occupied he did not

seriously depart throughout the strenuous literary work of his

mature years. The influence of the new spirit, which he identified

with the thinking of Coleridge, did not noticeably develop further;

if anything, perhaps, his later writings adhered more nearly to the

traditional views than might have been anticipated from some

indications in his early articles.

These two articles provide the key for understanding Mill's

own thought. He looks upon Bentham as a great constructive

genius who had first brought light and system into regions for-

merly chaotic. No finer or juster appreciation of Bentham's work

has ever been written. Mill agrees with Bentham's fundamental

principle and approves his method. Bentham made morals and poli-

tics scientific; but his knowledge of life was limited. 'It is wholly

empirical and the empiricism of one who has had little experience.'

The deeper things of life did not touch him; all the subtler work-

ings of mind and its environment were hidden from his view. It

16 Philosophers [CH.

is significant that Mill assumes that, for light on these deeper and

subtler aspects of life, we must go not to other writers of the

empirical tradition but to thinkers of an entirely different school.

He disagrees with the latter fundamentally in the systematic

presentation of their views—whether these be defended by the

easy appeal to intuition or by the more elaborate methods of

Schelling or Hegel. What we really get from them are half-lights—

glimpses, often fitful and always imperfect, into aspects of truth

not seen at all by their opponents. Coleridge represented this

type of thought. He had not Bentham's great constructive

faculties; but he had insight in regions where Bentham's vision

failed, and he appreciated, what Bentham almost entirely over-

looked, the significance of historical tradition.

The ideas which Mill derived from the writings of Coleridge, or

from his association with younger men who had been influenced

by Coleridge, did not bring about any fundamental change in his

philosophical standpoint, but they widened his horizon. And in

nearly all his books we can trace their effect. He seems conscious

that the analysis which satisfied other followers of Bentham is

imperfect, and that difficulties remain which they are unable to

solve and cannot even see.

Mill's System of Logic was published in 1843, and ran through

many editions, some of which—especially the third (1850) and the

eighth (1872)—were thoroughly revised and supplemented by the

incorporation of new, mainly controversial, matter. It is probably

the greatest of his books. In spite of Hobbes's treatise, and of

the suggestive discussions in the third book of Locke's Essay, the

greater English philosophers almost seem to have conspired to

neglect the theory of logic. It had kept its place as an academic

study, but on traditional lines; Aristotle was supposed to have

said the last word on it, and that last word to be enshrined in

scholastic manuals. English thought, however, was beginning to

emerge from this stage. Richard Whately had written a text-

book, Elements of Logic (1826), which, by its practical method and

modern illustrations, gave a considerable impetus to the study,

and Hamilton's more comprehensive researches had begun. From

them Mill did not learn much or anything. What he set himself

to work out was a theory of evidence in harmony with the first

principles of the empirical philosophy; and this was an almost

untouched problem. He may have obtained help from Locke; he

acknowledges the value for his thinking of Dugald Stewart's

analysis of the process of reasoning; he was still more indebted to

I] Mill's System of Logic 17

his discussions with a society of friends. Thus he worked out his

theory of terms, propositions and the syllogism; and then the book

was laid aside for five years. When he returned to it, and pro-

ceeded to analyse the inductive process, he found rich material

to hand not only in Sir John Herschel's Discourse on the Study of

Natural Philosophy (1830), but, also, in William Whewell's History

of the Inductive Sciences (1837). After his theory of induction

was substantially complete, he became acquainted with, and derived

stimulus and assistance from, the first two volumes of Comte's

Cours de philosophie positive (1830). These were the chief in-

fluences upon his work, and their enumeration serves to bring out

the originality of his performance. His work marks an epoch

in logical enquiry, not for English philosophy only but in modern

thought.

The reputation of Mill's Logic was largely due to his analysis

of inductive proof. He provided the empirical sciences with a set

of formulae and criteria which might serve the same purpose for

them as the time-worn formulae of the syllogism had served for

arguments that proceeded from general principles. In this part

of his work he derived important material from Whewell, much as

he differed from him in general point of view, and he found his

own methods implicitly recognised in Herschel's Discourse. The

importance and originality of Mill's contribution, however, cannot

be denied. His analysis is much more precise and complete than

any that had been carried out by his immediate predecessors. He

seeks to trace the steps by which we pass from statements about

particular facts to general truths, and also to justify the transition:

though he is more convincing in his psychological account of the

process than in his logical justification of its validity. When he is

brought face to face with the fundamental problem of knowledge,

as Hume had been before him, he does not show Hume's clearness

of thought.

Mill's work is not merely a logic in the limited sense of that

term which had become customary in England. It is a theory of

knowledge such as Locke and Hume attempted. The whole is

rendered more precise by its definite reference to the question of

proof or evidence; but the problem is Hume's problem over again.

The ultimate elements of knowledge are subjective entities—

'feelings or states of consciousness'—but knowledge has objective

validity. The elements are distinct, though the laws of association

bind them into groups and may even fuse them into inseparable

wholes—but knowledge unites and distinguishes in an order which

E. L. XIV. CH. I. 2

18 Philosophers [CH.

is not that of laws of association. The theory of knowledge, accordingly, has to explain how our thinking, especially in the transition from assertion to assertion which we call 'proof,' has validity for objective reality, and, in doing so, it has to give a tenable account of the universal principles postulated in these transitions. In Mill's case, as in Hume's, this has to be done on the assumption that the immediate object in experience is something itself mental, and that there are no à priori principles determining the connections of objects. In his doctrine of terms and propositions, Mill emphasises the objective reference in knowledge, although he cannot be said to meet, or even fully to recognise, the difficulty of reconciling this view with his psycho-logical analysis. He faces much more directly the problem of proof is always from particulars to particulars. The general proposition which stands as major premiss in a syllogism is only a shorthand record of a number of particular observations, which facilitates and tests the transition to the conclusion. All the general principles involved in thinking, even the mathematical axioms, are interpreted as arrived at in this way from experience: so that the assertion of their universal validity stands in need of justification.

In induction the essential inference is to new particulars, not to the general statement or law. And here he faces the crucial point for his theory. Induction, as he expounds it, is based upon the causal principle. Mill followed Hume in his analysis of cause. Now the sting of Hume's doctrine lay in its subjectivity—the reduction of the causal relation to a mental habit. Mill did not succeed in extracting the sting; he could only ignore it. Through-out, the relation of cause and effect is treated by him as something objective: not, indeed, as implying anything in the nature of power, but as signifying a certain constancy (which he, unwarrant-ably, describes as invariable) in the succession of phenomena. He never hesitates to speak of it as an objective characteristic of events, but without ever enquiring into its objective grounds. According to Mill, it is only when we are able to discover a causal connection among phenomena that strict inductive inference is possible either to a general law or to new empirical particulars. But the law of universal causation, on his view, is itself an inference from a number of particular cases. Thus it is established by inductive inference and yet, at the same time, all inductive inference depends upon it. Mill seeks to resolve the contradiction

I] Mind and the External World 19

by maintaining that this general truth, that is to say, the law

of causation, is indeed itself arrived at by induction, but by

a weaker form of induction, called per enumerationem simplicem,

in which the causal law is not itself assumed. Such a bare

catalogue of facts, not penetrating to the principle of their

connection, would not, in ordinary cases, justify an inference that

can be relied on. But Mill thinks that the variety of experience

that supports it in this case, its constant verification by new

experience and the probability that, had there been any exception

to it, that exception would have come to light, justify our confidence

in it as the ground of all the laws of nature. He does not

recognise that these grounds for belief—whatever their value

may be—all assume the postulate of uniformity which he is

endeavouring to justify.

A later and more comprehensive discussion of his philosophical

views, especially in a psychological regard, is given in his Exami-

nation of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and of the principal

philosophical questions discussed in his writings. This work was

published in 1865; and, as his habit was, the author amplified it

greatly in subsequent editions by replies to his critics. In this

case the criticisms were exceptionally numerous. The book focussed

the whole controversial energy of the period belonging to the two

opposed schools, the intuitional and the empirical; and, in spite of

its controversial character, it became the leading text-book of that

psychological philosophy which had been adumbrated by Hume.

It is a work which shows Mill's powers at their most mature stage.

He criticises with severity the theory which he sets out to examine;

but he is alive to the awkward places in his own position. Among

the numerous doctrines on which he left the impress of his work-

manship, none excited more attention at the time of the book's

publication, or are of greater permanent importance, than his

doctrines of the external world and of the self. There is nothing

fundamentally original about his views on these topics; but

his discussion of both illustrates his ability to see further into the

facts than his predecessors, and his candour in recording what he

sees, along, however, with a certain disinclination to pursue an

enquiry which might land him definitely on the other side of

the traditional lines. Mill's doctrine is essentially Humean, though,

as regards the external world, he prefers to call it Berkeleyan; and

here he is the inventor of a phrase: matter is 'permanent possi-

bility of sensation.' The phrase is striking and useful; but a

possibility of sensation is not sensation, and the permanence which

2—2

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he attributes to the possibility of sensation implies an objective order: so that the reduction of matter to sensation is implicitly relinquished when it appears to be affirmed in words. Mind, in somewhat similar fashion, is reduced to a succession of feelings or states of consciousness. But the fact of memory proves a stumbling-block in his way; he cannot explain how a succession of feelings should be conscious of itself as a succession; and he implicitly admits the need of a principle of unity. Thus, he almost relinquishes his own theory and only avoids doing so explicitly by falling back on the assertion that here we are in presence of the final inexplicability in which ultimate questions always merge.

In spite of the prominence of the ethical interest in his mind and in spite, also, of numerous ethical discussions in his other writings, Mill's sole contribution to the fundamental problem of ethical theory was his small volume Utilitarianism, which first appeared in Fraser's Magazine in 1861 and was reprinted in book-form in 1863. Perhaps, he regarded the fundamental positions of Benthamism as too secure to need much elaboration. What he offers is a finely conceived and finely written defence of utilitarian ethics, into which his own modifications of Bentham's doctrine of life are worked. He holds that the sanctions of this doctrine are not weaker than those of any other doctrine, and that, in its own nature, it is neither a selfish nor a sensual theory. It is not selfish, because it regards the pleasures of all men as of equal moment; it is not sensual, because it recognises the superior value of intellectual, artistic and social pleasures as compared with those of the senses. But Mill fails in trying to establish a logical connection between the universal reference of the ethical doctrine and the egoistic analysis of individual action to which his psychology committed him. And he is so determined to emphasise the superiority of the pleasures commonly called 'higher,' that he maintains that, merely as pleasures, they are superior in kind to the pleasures of the senses, irrespective of any excess of the latter in respect of quantity. In so doing he strikes at the root of hedonism, for he makes the ultimate criterion of value reside not in pleasure itself but in that characteristic—whatever it may turn out to be—which makes one kind of pleasure superior to another.

Mill's social and political writings, in addition to occasional articles, consist of the short treatise Considerations on Representative Government (1860), Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859), the essays On Liberty (1859) and On the Subjection of Women (1869), Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political

I] Political and Economic Theory 21

Economy (1831, 1844) and Principles of Political Economy (1848). The method appropriate to these topics had been already discussed in the chapters on 'the Logic of the Moral Sciences' included in his Logic. He sought a via media between the purely empirical method and the deductive method. The latter, as employed by his father, was modelled on the reasonings of geometry, which is not a science of causation. The method of politics, if it is to be deductive, must belong to a different type, and will (he holds) be the same as that used in mathematical physics. Dynamics is a deductive science because the law of the composition of forces holds; similarly, politics is a deductive science because the causes with which it deals follow this law: the effects of these causes, when conjoined, are the same as the sum of the effects which the same causes produce when acting separately. Like his predecessors, Mill postulated certain forces as determining human conduct: especially, self-interest and mental association. From their working he deduced political and social consequences. He did not diverge from the principles agreed upon by those with whom he was associated. Perhaps, he did not add very much to them. But he saw their limitations more clearly than others did: the hypothetical nature of economic theory, and the danger that democratic government might prove antagonistic to the causes of individual freedom and of the common welfare. To guard against these dangers he proposed certain modifications of the representative system. But his contemporaries, and even his successors of the same way of thinking in general, for long looked upon the dangers as imaginary, and his proposals for their removal were ignored. The essay On Liberty—the most popular of all his works—is an eloquent defence of the thesis 'that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection,' but, as an argument, it meets everywhere with the difficulty of determining the precise point at which the distinction between self-regarding and social (even directly social) activity is to be drawn. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, accepting Mill's utilitarian criterion, raked his positions with a fire of brilliant and incisive, if unsympathetic, criticism in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873).

Mill's Political Economy has been variously regarded as an improved Adam Smith and as a popularised Ricardo. Perhaps the latter description is nearer the mark. Its essential doctrines differ little, if at all, from those of Ricardo; the theory of the 'wages fund,' for example, is formulated quite in the spirit of

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[CH.

Ricardo, though this theory was afterwards relinquished or modified by Mill in consequence of the criticisms of William Thomas Thornton. But the work has a breadth of treatment which sometimes reminds one of Adam Smith: the hypothetical nature of economic theory was not overlooked, and the 'applications to social philosophy' were kept in view. In spite of his adherence to the maxim of laissez faire, Mill recognised the possibility of modifying the system of distribution, and, with regard to that system, he displayed a leaning to the socialist ideal, which grew stronger as his life advanced. His methodical and thorough treatment of economics made his work a text-book for more than a generation, and largely determined the scope of most of the treatises of his own and the succeeding period, even of those written by independent thinkers.

Mill died at Avignon in 1873. After his death, were published his Autobiography (1873) and Three Essays on Religion: Nature the Utility of Religion and Theism (1874). These essays were written between 1850 and 1870 and include the author's latest thoughts on ultimate questions. He had been educated in the belief that speculation on ultimate questions is futile; in his works he had always maintained the attitude afterwards called agnosticism, for which he was willing to adopt Comte's term positivism; he accepted, also, in general, Comte's doctrine on this point, though always dissociating himself from the latter's political and social theories. But, even while, in his book Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865), accepting the view that the essential nature and ultimate causes of things are inscrutable, he holds that this 'positive mode of thought is not necessarily a denial of the supernatural,' but only throws it back beyond the limits of science. His posthumous essays show a further development. In that on nature (the earliest of the series), he dwells upon the imperfections of the cosmic order as showing that it cannot have been the creation of a being of infinite goodness and power; in the last essay of the volume, he approaches a tentative and limited form of theism—the doctrine of a finite God.

For more than a generation Mill's influence was dominant in all departments of philosophical and political thought; he had the initiative, and set the problems for his opponents as well as for his adherents; and his works became university text-books. This holds of politics, economics, ethics, psychology and logic. A striking reaction against his influence is shown in the work of

William Stanley Jevons, professor at Manchester and afterwards in London, whose economic and logical writings are distinguished by important original ideas. In his Theory of Political Economy (1871), he introduced the conception of final (or marginal) utility, which, subsequently, has been greatly developed in the analytic and mathematical treatment of the subject. In logic, also, he laid the foundations for a mathematical treatment in his Pure Logic (1864) and Substitution of Similars (1869); and, in his Principles of Science (1874), he fully elaborated his theory of scientific inference, a theory which diverged widely from the theory of induction expounded by Mill. As time went on, Jevons became more and more critical of the foundations of Mill's empirical philosophy, which he attacked unsparingly in discussions contributed to Mind.

George Grote, the historian of Greece, an older contemporary and early associate of Mill, deserves mention here not only for his works on the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, but, also, for some independent contributions to ethics, published together under the title Fragments on Ethical Subjects (1876). He had little sympathy with Mill's approximations to types of thought opposed to the traditional utilitarianism. In this respect he agreed with Alexander Bain, professor at Aberdeen, a writer of far greater importance in a philosophical regard. Bain was younger than Mill and long outlived him; he assisted him in some of his works, especially the Logic; he wrote numerous works himself; but his pre-eminence was in psychology, to which his chief contributions were two elaborate books, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859). The psychology of James Mill and of J. S. Mill was, in the main, derived from Hartley; but it was Hartley as expurgated by Priestley, Hartley with the physiology left out1. Bain reinstated the physiological factor, not in Hartley's rather speculative manner, but by introducing facts of nerve and muscle whenever they could serve to elucidate mental process. That came to be, as a rule, whenever the mental process itself was obscure or difficult. The result is sometimes confusing, because it mixes two different orders of scientific conceptions. But Bain's work is wonderfully complete as a treatment of the principle of the association of ideas; and, perhaps, he has said the last word that can be said in favour of this principle as the ultimate explanation of mind. His range of vision may have been narrow, but he had a keen eye for everything within that range. He was persistent in his search for facts and shrewd in

1 Cf. ante, p. 5.

24

Philosophers

[CH.

examining them; and he had no illusions—except the great

illusion that mind is a bundle of sensations tied together by laws

of association. It is interesting to note how this clear-sighted and

unimaginative writer made observations which suggest doctrines,

different from his own, which have gained prominence later. His

observations on spontaneous movement and his teaching as to fixed

ideas strike at the roots of the analysis of volition to which he

adhered, and might lead naturally to a view of mind as essentially

active and no mere grouping of sensations or feelings. He offered,

also, a new analysis of belief (though he subsequently withdrew it)

which resolved it into a preparedness to act; and, here, the latent

'activism' in his thinking might have led, if developed, to

something of the nature of pragmatism.

George Croom Robertson, professor in University college,

London, was in general sympathy with Mill's school of thought,

tempered, however, by wide knowledge and appreciation of other

developments, including those of recent philosophy. Circumstances

prevented his producing much literary work beyond a few articles

and an admirable monograph on Hobbes (1886). He is remembered

not only for these, and for his lectures, some of which have been

published (1896), but, also, for his skilful and successful work as

editor of Mind during the first sixteen years of its existence.

Mind was the first English journal devoted to psychology and

philosophy, and its origin in 1876 is a landmark in the history of

British philosophy.

In Mill's day and afterwards there was an active, though not

very widespread, propaganda of the positive philosophy of Comte.

The study of Comte's system was greatly facilitated by the admirable

condensed translation of his Positive Philosophy issued by Harriet

Martineau in 1853. The chief teachers of positivist doctrine in

England were a group of writers who had been contemporaries at

Oxford; but a serious disagreement arose amongst them regarding

the prominence to be given to the inculcation of Comte's 'religion

of humanity.' Their activity was shown in lectures and addresses

and in many translations of Comte's works. The Catechism of

positive religion was translated by Richard Congreve in 1858;

Comte's General View of Positivism by John Henry Bridges in

1865; and System of Positive Polity by Bridges and Frederick

Harrison in 1875. Their independent writings were inspired by

the positivist spirit, even when they did not add much to its

defence on philosophical grounds. In The Unity of Comte's Life

and Doctrine (1866), Bridges replied to the criticisms of J. S. Mill.

He published, also, Five Discourses on Positive Religion in 1882 ;

and his Essays and Addresses (1907) were collected and edited

after his death.

V. Rational and Religious Philosophers

Although Mill's fame overshadowed the other philosophers of

his day, there were a number of contemporary writers who were

not merely his followers or critics, but independent thinkers.

Of note among these was John Grote, younger brother of the

historian, who held the chair of moral philosophy at Cambridge

from 1855 to 1866. Grote himself issued only one volume on

philosophy—Exploratio Philosophica, Part I (1865). After his

death three volumes were compiled from his manuscripts: An

Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy in 1870, A Treatise on

the Moral Ideals in 1876 and the second part of Exploratio in

1900. They are all ‘rough notes’—as the author himself describes

the first on its title-page. They have no place in literature.

Grote thought and wrote simply to get at the truth of things and without

any view of impressing the public. A ‘belief in thought’ upheld

him: ‘a feeling that things were worth thinking about, that

thought was worth effort.’ He did not seek reputation as a

philosophical writer, and he has not gained it. His direct

influence has been restricted to a limited number of other

thinkers, through whom it has passed to wider circles without any

definite trace of its origin. His books are largely filled with

criticism of contemporary writers. But none of the criticism is

merely destructive; it aims always at elucidating the core of

truth in other men’s opinions, with a view to a comprehensive

synthesis. Often it leads to bringing out important doctrines

which, if not altogether new, are set in a new light. An instance

of this is his whole doctrine of ‘the scale of sensation or know-

ledge,’ and, in particular, the elaboration and application of the

distinction of two kinds of knowledge or, rather, the twofold

process of knowledge, which he formulated as the distinction

between acquaintance with a thing and knowing about it. He

sought to assign its due value to phenomenalism or positivism, at

the same time as he contended for the more complete view—

‘rationary’ or idealist—which recognised in positivism ‘an ab-

straction from the complete view of knowledge.’ Similarly, in

moral philosophy, there was a science of ‘virtue,’ or ‘aretaics,

26

Philosophers

[CH.

existing side by side with 'eudaemonics,' or the science of happiness. Fundamentally, his theory is a doctrine of thought: 'the

fact that we know is prior to, and logically more comprehensive than, the fact that what we know is.' To be known, things must

be knowable, or fitted for knowledge. 'Knowledge is the sympathy of intelligence with intelligence, through the medium of

qualified or particular existence.'

Religious philosophy in England was stimulated and advanced

by the work of three men all born in the year 1805. These were

Maurice, Newman and Martineau. Frederick Denison Maurice1

had already an ecclesiastical career behind him when, in 1866, he

succeeded Grote as professor at Cambridge. Of his numerous

works only a few deal with philosophy; the most important of

these, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, originally appeared

in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana in 1847 and is a historical

sketch which is chiefly devoted to ancient thought. Maurice's

influence was due to his personality more than to his books; and

he was a social reformer and religious teacher rather than a philosopher. But his work, both in social reform and in religion, derived

stimulus and direction from philosophical ideas. John Henry

Newman2 was still less of a philosopher, though his Grammar of

Assent propounds a theory of the nature and grounds of belief.

More significant, however, is the appearance in Newman's work of

the idea of development, which was beginning to transform all

departments of thought; for the quasi-mechanical view with which

he started of a fixed norm of belief existing in the past, he

substituted the view of the church as an organism whose life

and doctrine were in process of growth. The only philosopher

among those who joined the Roman church about the same time

as Newman was William George Ward, who, in various articles,

carried on a controversy with Mill concerning free-will and

necessary truth. These and other articles were collected after

his death and published as Essays on the Philosophy of Theism

(1884).

Of much greater importance than these, in a philosophical

regard, was James Martineau. His philosophy, also, was essentially religious philosophy; individual freedom and the being and

presence of God were his fundamental certainties, and these he

defended in many writings during his long life. His earlier works

were mainly religious rather than philosophical, though, in a series

1 See, ante, vol. xii, chap. xxii.

2 Ibid. chap. xx.

I] Herbert Spencer 27

of essays, he showed his power as a critic of materialism and naturalism, and gave an outline of the ethical views which he afterwards worked out in detail. He was eighty years old, or upwards, when his chief books appeared—Types of Ethical Theory (1885), A Study of Religion (1888), and The Seat of Authority in Religion (1890). The first of these is the most notable, and works out the original view of the moral criterion which had been previously indicated by him. It suffers from faulty arrangement, from the undue prominence given to the psychological factor in moral judgment and from the incompleteness of the psychological analysis. As a whole it does not impress the reader. But, taken in detail, it is seen to be full of penetrating criticism, and to be inspired by insight into the spiritual meaning of life. Traces of age are to be found only in its defective order and, perhaps, in its diffuseness; its style shows no marks of weariness : it is brilliant, pellucid, eloquent, rhetorical sometimes and coloured by emotion, but never falls below the dignity of his theme. Martineau did not make any important advance in speculative construction; he was not in sympathy with the idealist metaphysic that had risen to the ascendant in England even before his books were published; the ideas which he elucidated and defended were those which had been distinctive of spiritual thought for many centuries. In his criticisms, on the other hand, he did not restrict himself to the older forms of materialist and sensationalist doctrine; he was prompt to recognise the difference made by more recent scientific views, and he showed no lack of power or effectiveness in dealing with the claims of the philosophy of evolution.

VI. HERBERT SPENCER AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION

The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 marks a turning-point in the history of thought. It had a revolutionary effect upon the view of the world held by educated men similar to that which had been produced, more slowly, three centuries before, by the work of Copernicus; on philosophical ideas its influence may, perhaps, be better compared with that of the theory of mechanics chiefly due to Galileo. The latter contributed to philosophy the conception of nature as a mechanical system; Darwin contributed the conception of evolution and, owing largely to his influence, biological ideas gained greater prominence than mathematical in philosophical construction.

28

Philosophers

[CH.

The acknowledged leader of the new movement in philosophy was Herbert Spencer. He was born at Derby on 27 April 1820, and his early training was as an engineer. This profession he relinquished at the age of twenty-five. He had previously, in 1842, contributed a series of letters on 'the Proper Sphere of Government' to The Nonconformist, and, from 1848 to 1853 he acted as sub-editor of The Economist. In these years he wrote his book Social Statics (1850) and began the publication of longer essays in reviews, among which mention should be made of the essays 'The Development Hypothesis' (1852), 'The Genesis of Science' (1854) and 'Progress : its law and cause' (1857). He also published Principles of Psychology, in one volume, in 1855. His essays show, even by their titles, that he was working towards a theory of evolution before he had any knowledge of Darwin's researches, the results of which were still unpublished. Then, in 1860, he issued his 'Programme of a System of Synthetic Philosophy,' on which he had been at work for some time, and to the elaboration of which he devoted his life. It is impossible to speak too highly of the single-minded purpose with which he carried out this task, in spite of inherent and extraneous difficulties. He continued to work, without haste and without rest, publishing First Principles in 1862, Principles of Biology (two volumes) in 1864–7, Principles of Psychology (two volumes) in 1870–2, Principles of Sociology (three volumes) in 1876–96 and Principles of Ethics (two volumes) in 1879–92. Besides these he designed a series of charts of Descriptive Sociology, which were compiled by his assistants, until the work had to be suspended from lack of funds ; and he also produced smaller works on Education (1861), The Classification of the Sciences (1864), The Study of Sociology (1872), The Man versus The State (1884) and Factors of Organic Evolution (1887). Thus, his perseverance enabled him to complete his scheme : except, indeed, that he omitted the detailed treatment of inorganic evolution, and thus gained the incidental advantage of avoiding the awkward problem of the origin of life. And he produced a considerable amount of subsidiary writing, including an Autobiography (published in 1904, the year after his death), which contains a minute and elaborate account of his life, character and work.

Spencer's idea of philosophy is a system of completely coordinated knowledge—the sciences consisting of knowledge partially coordinated. In this sense his system is synthetic. It

I] The Unknowable 29

is a scheme in which everything is to find its place, and is to be seen as a resultant of a single principle. His elaboration of this scheme approaches completeness, and, in this respect, his system stands by itself : no other English thinker since Bacon and Hobbes had even attempted anything so vast. The system itself fitted in admirably, also, with the scientific conceptions of the early Darwinians, and thus obtained wide currency in all English-speaking countries and, to a less extent, on the continent of Europe. Darwin hailed him as 'our great philosopher,' for he made evolution a universal solvent and not merely a means for explaining the different forms of plants and animals. At the same time, the support which it received from modern science seemed to give Spencer's philosophy a more secure position than that of those speculative systems of which the English mind tended to be suspicious.

The view of philosophy as science further coordinated brings Spencer's doctrine into line with positivism. He did not, however, entirely ignore the question of the nature of ultimate reality. Perhaps, he was not much interested in questions of the kind, and he had certainly small acquaintance with previous speculation regarding them. But he had great skill in adapting current doctrines to his uses; and he found what he needed in the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge set forth by Hamilton and Mansel. On this he based his doctrine of the limits of knowledge. But he found, as others have found, that it was necessary to recognise something which lay beyond the sphere of exact knowledge. Hamilton had called this the sphere of belief; Spencer says that we have an indefinite consciousness of what he nevertheless calls the unknowable. The nature of this indefinite consciousness is not explained by him ; yet, its object is not treated by him, as one would expect it to be, as a mere blank ; it is said to be 'growing clearer' ; the unknowable is constantly referred to as a power, and it is even asserted that it makes for the happiness of mankind. These inconsistencies soften his paradox that religion and science can be reconciled by assigning to the latter the region of the knowable and restricting the former to the unknowable. On his view, all that we know consists of manifestations of the inscrutable power behind phenomena; and these manifestations depend ultimately upon a single first principle—the persistence of force. Spencer's interpretation of this principle is somewhat flexible and has been attacked by mathematicians and physicists as loose and unscientiflc. Nevertheless,

30 Philosophers [CH.

Spencer holds that from it every other scientific principle must be deduced—even the law of evolution itself. He has provided a 'formula,' or, rather, definition, of evolution. He defines it as

an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.

All phenomena of whatever kind are subject to this law. It is throughout conceived as a law of progress, which will issue in a highest state establishing 'the extremest multiformity and most complete moving equilibrium.' But this stage, also, cannot be permanent ; and Spencer contemplates the history of the universe as a succession of cycles—'alternate eras of evolution and dis-solution.'

Spencer displayed much ingenuity in fitting organic, mental and social facts into this mechanical framework. His early training as an engineer seems to have influenced his ideas. He built a system as he might have built a bridge. It was a problem of strains and of the adaptation of material. Regarded thus, the whole problem was mechanical and had to be solved in terms of matter and motion. His purpose was, as he says, 'to interpret the phenomena of life, mind, and society in terms of matter, motion, and force.' Hence, life, mind and society are treated as stages of increasing complexity in phenomena of the same kind, and—so far as this treatment is adhered to—the characteristic functions of each stage are left unexplained. But the method of treatment is supplemented by another in which the facts are dealt with more directly. This is seen especially in psychology, where the 'subjective aspect' is recognised with only a suggestion of an attempt to deduce it from the objective aspect. Spencer was a keen observer and fertile in his reflections on what he observed. His power of coordinating facts may, perhaps, be seen at its best in his Psychology and Sociology. His generalisations may be often unsound; but, if we compare these works with earlier and then with later treatises on the same subjects, it is not possible to deny the great stimulus to thought which hey gave.

Spencer himself set the greatest store upon his work on ethics. 'o it, he said, all his other work led up ; and this induced him to issue the first part of it—called The Data of Ethics—out of due rder and before his Sociology was completed. The first part is undoabtedly the most instructive section of the book as ultimately

finished. The facts of morality are regarded as belonging to the

same order of evolution as the facts dealt with in previous

volumes, being only more special and complicated ; full con-

sideration is given to their biological, sociological and psycho-

logical aspects ; the respective rights of egoism and of altruism

are defended; and the ethics of evolution is distinguished from

the utilitarian ethics not by having some other ultimate end than

happiness but by its different method and working criterion.

Where the author fails is in giving any adequate proof for his assump-

tion that evolution tends to greatest happiness-an assumption

upon which his ethical theory depends. And, like all the ex-

ponents of the ethics of evolution who have followed him, he

does not distinguish clearly between the historical process

explained by the law of evolution and the ground of its authority

for conduct-if such authority be claimed for it. He finds the

standard for right conduct in what he calls 'absolute ethics,'

by which he means a description of the conduct of fully-evolved

man in fully-evolved surroundings. In this state, there will be

complete adaptation between the individual and his environment;

so that, even if action is still possible, no choice of better or worse

will remain. The system of absolute ethics is worked out in the

succeeding parts of the work, but with very meagre success.

Indeed, at the end, the author is fain to admit that evolution had

not helped him to the extent he had anticipated.

In his ethical, and still more in his political, writings we see

the supreme value set by Spencer on the individual, and the

very restricted functions which he allowed to the state or other

organised community of individuals. The point is not, perhaps,

easy to reconcile with the doctrine of evolution as otherwise

expounded by him. But there were two things which seem to

have been more fundamental in his thought than evolution itself.

One of these has been already referred to as the group of ideas

which may be described as mechanism, and which is exhibited

both in the basis and in the plan of his whole structure. The

other is his strong bias towards individualism. If the former may

plausibly be connected with his training as an engineer, the

origin of the latter may, with still greater probability, be traced

to the doctrines current in that circle of liberalism in which he

was nurtured. He wrote political essays and a political treatise

(Social Statics) before his mind seems to have been attracted

by the conception of evolution; and, although, in some points,

he afterwards modified the teaching of that treatise, the essential

32

Philosophers

[CH.

ideas and its spirit characterise his latest writings on political

theory. It showed ingenuity rather than insight on his part to

bring them within the grasp of the evolution doctrine ; but, in

spite of many criticisms, he held steadfastly to his doctrine of

what has been called ‘administrative nihilism.’

No other writer rivalled Spencer’s attempt at a reconstruc-

tion of the whole range of human thought. But many of his

contemporaries preceded or followed him in applying the new

doctrine of evolution to the problems of life, mind and society.

Some of these were men of science, who felt that an instrument

had been put into their hands for extending its frontiers ; others

were primarily interested in moral and political questions, or in

philosophy generally, and evolution seemed to provide them with

a key to old difficulties and a new view of the unity of reality.

Darwin himself, though he never posed as a philosopher, was

aware of the revolutionary effect which his researches had upon

men’s views of the universe as a whole; what was more im-

portant, he made a number of shrewd and suggestive observations

on morals and on psychology in his Descent of Man and, also,

in his later volume The Expression of the Emotions. But his

contributions were only incidental to his biological work. Others,

writing under the intellectual influence which he originated, were

concerned more directly with problems of philosophy.

Among these writers the first place may be given to George

Henry Lewes, although, in his earlier works, he was influenced

by Comte, not by Darwin. Lewes was a man of marvellous

literary versatility as essayist, novelist, biographer and expositor

of popular science. This versatility also marks his work in

philosophy. At first Comte’s influence was supreme. His philo-

sophical publications began with The Biographical History of

Philosophy (1845–6), a slight and inaccurate attempt to cover

a vast field, and apparently designed to show that the field

was not worth the tillage ; later editions of this work, however,

not only greatly increased its extent and removed many blemishes

but showed the author’s ability to appreciate other points of

view than that from which he had started. After an interval,

he produced books entitled Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences

(1853) and Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science (1864).

But, for a long time, Lewes had been at work on investigations

of a more constructive and original kind, partly philosophical and

partly scientific, the results of which were not fully published at

I] George Henry Lewes 33

the time of his death in 1878. These results were contained in

Problems of Life and Mind, the first two volumes of which,

entitled The Foundations of a Creed, appeared in 1874–5, and

the fifth and final volume in 1879. In this work the author has

advanced far from his early Comtism, and it shows, in many

respects, a much more adequate comprehension of philosophical

problems than can be found in Spencer, whose knowledge of

the history of thought was limited and sketchy, and whose

criticisms of other philosophers were nearly always external—in

the worst sense of the word. But Lewes had fitted himself for

writing, not only by original researches in physiology and related

branches of science, but, also, by a considerable and sympathetic

study of modern philosophy. He is thus able to appeal to other

readers than those who have limited their intellectual enquiries

to a predetermined range. He rejected as ‘metempirical’ what lay

beyond possible experience; but he would not, like Spencer, affect

to derive comfort from the unknowable. There was room for

metaphysics, he thought, as the science of the highest generalities,

or the codification of the most abstract laws of cause, and he

sought to transform it by reducing it to the method of science.

In working out this aim, he relied on and illustrated the dis-

tinction between immediate experience or ‘feeling’ and the

symbols or conceptual constructions used for its codification.

He also criticised the current mechanical interpretation of organic

processes, holding that sensibility was inherent in nervous sub-

stance. And he was one of the first to emphasise the importance

of the social factor in the development of mind and to exhibit

its working. He defended the conception of the ‘general mind,’

not as expressing a separate entity, but as a symbol ; and, for him,

the individual mind, also, was a symbol. The problems with which

he dealt were partly general—enquiries into knowledge, truth

and certitude—partly psychophysical and psychological. His

Problems shows the prolonged and eager reflection of an active

mind. In it the multifarious writings of many years were reduced

and expanded. But it may be doubted whether the reduction

was carried far enough. There is a good deal of repetition, but

hardly a central argument ; the separate discussions are often

important and suggestive; but the fundamental position re-

garding subject and object does not seem to be adequately

defended or even made perfectly clear. Lewes had more philo-

sophical insight than Spencer, but he had not the latter’s

architectonic genius.

E. L. XIV. CH. I. 3

34

Philosophers

Thomas Henry Huxley, the distinguished zoologist and advocate of Darwinism, made many incursions into philosophy, and always with effect. From his youth he had studied its problems un-systematically ; he had a way of going straight to the point in any discussion ; and, judged by a literary standard, he was a great master of expository and argumentative prose. Apart from his special work in science, he had an important influence upon English thought through his numerous addresses and essays on topics of science, philosophy, religion and politics. Among the most important of his papers relevant here are those entitled 'The Physical Basis of Life' (1868), and 'On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata' (1874), along with a monograph on Hume (1879) and the Romanes lecture Ethics and Evolution (1893). Huxley is credited with the invention of the term 'agnosticism' to describe his philosophical position : it expresses his attitude towards certain traditional questions without giving any clear delimitation of the frontiers of the knowable. He regards consciousness as a collateral effect of certain physical causes, and only an effect—never, also, a cause. But, on the other hand, he holds that matter is only a symbol, and that all physical phenomena can be analysed into states of consciousness. This leaves mental facts in the peculiar position of being collateral effects of something that, after all, is only a symbol for a mental fact ; and the contradiction, or apparent contradiction, is left without remark. His contributions to ethics are still more remarkable. In a paper entitled 'Science and Morals' (1888), he concluded that the safety of morality lay 'in a real and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends social dis-organisation on the track of immorality.' His Romanes lecture

reveals a different tone. In it, the moral order is contrasted with the cosmic order; evolution shows constant struggle; instead of looking to it for moral guidance, he 'repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence.' He saw that the facts of historical process did not constitute validity for moral conduct; and his plain language compelled others to see it also. But he exaggerated the opposition between them and did not leave room for the influence of moral ideas as a factor in the historical process.

Another man of science, William Kingdon Clifford, professor of mathematics in London, dealt in occasional essays with some central points in the theory of knowledge, ethics and religion. In these essays he aimed at an interpretation of life in the light of the new science. There was insight as well as courage in all he wrote, and it was conveyed in a brilliant style. But his work was

I] Influence of Evolutionary Thought 35

cut short by his early death in 1879, and his contributions to

philosophy remain suggestions only.

It was natural that men of science with a philosophical turn of

mind should be among the first to work out the more general

consequences of the theory of evolution. But the wide range

which the theory might cover was fairly obvious, and was seen by

others who approached philosophy from the point of view of studies

other than the natural sciences. Foremost among these was

Leslie Stephen, a man of letters keenly interested in the moral

sciences. The portion of his writings which bear upon philosophy

is small only in relation to his total literary output. His History

of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876) places the

philosophers and moralists in their due position in the whole

literary activity of the period, and is penetrating and usually just

in its estimate of their work. A further stage of the same history

—The English Utilitarians (1900)—was completed towards the

end of his life. His own independent contribution is given in The

Science of Ethics (1882). After Spencer's Data, this is the first

book which worked out an ethical view determined by the theory

of evolution. As such it is significant. The author had sat at the

feet of John Stuart Mill; he had eagerly welcomed Darwin as an

ally of the empirical and utilitarian creed; but he came to see that

more extensive changes were necessary. Spencer's compromise

between hedonism and evolutionism failed to satisfy him, and he

found the ethical bearing of evolution better expressed by the

conception of social vitality than by that of pleasure. The great

merit of the work consists in its presentation of the social content

of morality in the individual mind as well as in the community;

but it does not sufficiently recognise the distinction between the

historical process traced by the evolution theory and the ethical

validity which evolution is assumed to possess.

The transformation of the biological sciences by the theory of

evolution was connected with a wider movement, which consisted

in the greatly extended use of the historical method in explaining

the nature of things. This applies chiefly to the social sciences.

It is to be remembered that both Darwin and Wallace owed the

suggestion of their hypothesis of natural selection to a work on

social theory. The underlying doctrine was, simply, that facts were

to be understood by tracing their origins and historical connections.

How far this historical understanding could take the enquirer

36

Philosophers

[CH.

became the point at issue between what may be called the evolu-

tion philosophy and its critics : it may be expressed in the question

whether or not origin determines validity. It was only gradually,

however, that the point of controversy became clear ; and, mean-

while, the application of the historical method vastly aided the

understanding of the social order. In this reference, the treatise

entitled Ancient Law (1861) by Sir Henry Maine marks an epoch in

the study of law and institutions, and it had a much wider influence

upon thought generally by furthering the use of the method which

it employed. An early example of the application of the same

method in economics may be found in the series of essays by Thomas

Edward Cliffe Leslie, republished as Essays in Political Economy

(1888) ; and the historical side of economics has subsequently

been exhaustively worked.

Walter Bagehot's Physics and Politics (1869) is still more closely

connected with the doctrine of evolution. It is described on the title-

page as 'thoughts on the application of the principles of natural

selection and inheritance to political society.' Luminous and sug-

gestive though these studies are, it cannot be said that the influence

of the theory of evolution expresses the leading characteristic of

Bagehot's mind, especially as shown in his other political and

economic works—The English Constitution (1867), Lombard

Street (1873), and Economic Studies (1880). It was his insight

into the actual forces, especially the human forces, at work that

chiefly distinguished his treatment. Whereas even Mill looked

upon economic and political processes as due to the composition

of a few simple forces such as desire of wealth and aversion

from labour, Bagehot knew the actual men who were doing the

work, and he recognised the complexity of their motives and the

degree in which they were influenced by habit, tradition and

imitation. In this way he gave a great impulse to realistic study,

as contrasted with the abstract method of the older economics and

politics.

VII. Henry Sidgwick and Shadworth Hodgson

These writers had not much in common beyond the two points

which have led to their being placed together here. They both

saw that evolution was not an 'open sesame' to the secrets of

philosophy, and neither owed allegiance to the idealist movement

which rose to prominence in their time. They were probably

I] Henry Sidgwick 37

the ablest and most influential writers who made independent advances on lines more closely connected with the older English tradition.

Sidgwick taught philosophy for many years at Cambridge, and held the chair of moral philosophy there from 1883 until 1900, the year of his death.

His reputation as a philosophical writer was made by his first book, The Methods of Ethics (1874).

He afterwards published treatises on a similar scale on political economy and on politics ; and, after his death, various occasional articles were issued in collected form, and a considerable series of books was compiled from his manuscripts, dealing with general philosophy, with contemporary ethical systems and with political constitutions.

Within certain limits, Sidgwick may be regarded as a follower of John Stuart Mill, at least in ethics, politics and economics.

In these subjects he took Mill's views as the basis of his own criticisms and reflections, and he accepted the utilitarian criterion.

At the same time, he gave much more weight than Mill had done to the intellectualist tradition in philosophy.

He saw that the empirical philosophy was based on conceptions which it was unable to justify by its customary method of tracing their origin in experience.

This did not lead, however, to any agreement with Kant's analysis of knowledge.

He was an adverse and somewhat unsympathetic critic of the Kantian theory.

He inclined, rather, to a return to the 'natural realism' of Thomas Reid, on the question of the knowledge of external reality ; and his ethical doctrine includes a synthesis of the views of Clarke and Butler with those of Mill.

His first book remains his most striking contribution to philosophy and the most accurate index of his philosophical attitude.

In spite of his utilitarian sympathies, its starting-point and most fundamental ideas show the influence of a different type of thought.

He starts with the fundamental notion of 'ought' or duty, and argues that enquiries into its origin in our consciousness do not affect its validity.

The knowledge that there is something right or rational to be done depends, in the last resort, upon an intuition or immediate view of what is right or reasonable.

All the old arguments of the utilitarians are swept away; the analysis of conduct into pursuit of pleasure is shown not only to be itself incorrect, but to be irreconcilable with the acceptance of general happiness as the ethical end.

His own utilitarianism is based upon a new synthesis of intuitionism and empiricism.

Here enters his central doctrine of the 'axioms of the practical reason'

These do not prescribe

38

Philosophers

[CH.

any concrete end as good—that has to be determined in another way ; but they are formal principles eternally valid whatever the nature of goodness may prove to be. To these formal principles are given the names prudence, benevolence and justice ; but they include much less than is usually covered by these terms and may, perhaps, be adequately summed up in the statement that neither the time at which, nor the person by whom, a good is enjoyed affects the degree of its goodness. From the distinction and yet equal validity of the axioms of prudence and benevolence, Sidgwick’s ethical theory terminates in a doctrine of ‘the dualism of the practical reason.’ It would appear, however, that this dualism really arises from the ambiguity of the term prudence, which may mean either ‘regard for one’s own good on the whole’ or (what is not the same thing) the principle that ‘hereafter as such is neither less nor more valuable than now.’ Only the latter has a claim to be regarded as an absolute ethical principle ; and it is not inconsistent with the axiom of benevolence. The other side of his utilitarianism—the reduction of goodness to terms of pleasure—is carried out by analysing conscious life into its elements and showing that each in its turn (except pleasure), when taken alone, cannot be regarded as ultimate good. This analytic method is characteristic of Sidgwick’s thinking, as it was of that of most of his predecessors—intuitionist as well as empirical. It rests on the assumption that the nature of a thing can be completely ascertained by examination of the separate elements into which it can be distinguished by reflection—an assumption which was definitely discarded by the contemporary school of idealists, and on which the evolutionist writers also do not seem to have relied.

As was natural, therefore, Sidgwick did not produce a system of philosophy. He made many suggestions towards construction, but, in the main, his work was critical. He was severely critical of the attempts at speculative construction made in his day, and he carried on some controversies in which his subtlety and wit had full play : neither Spencer nor Green was his match in dialectics. It was not, however, of systems and theories only that he was a great critic. His powers are seen at their highest when he analysed and described the moral opinions of ordinary men, not as they are reflectively set down in philosophical books, but as they are expressed in life, compact of reason and tradition, fused by emotion and desire. The third book of his Methods of Ethics consists, in large part, of an examination of the morality of

I] Shadworth Hodgson 39

commonsense. It is an elucidation and sifting of the ideas under which men act, often without clear consciousness of them; and it shows the sympathetic apprehension of a mind which shares the thoughts it describes and can yet see them in perspective and sum up their significance. Both the excellence of the matter and the distinction of the style should give at least this portion of his work a permanent place in literature.

Shadworth Hodgson’s life was an example of rare devotion to philosophy. He had no profession and filled no public office, but spent his time in systematic reflection and writing ; and his long life gave him the opportunity of reviewing, confirming and improving upon his first thoughts. There were two periods in his activity. In the former of these he published three books: Time and Space in 1865, The Theory of Practice in 1870 and The Philosophy of Reflection in 1878. Shortly thereafter he was instrumental in founding ‘the Aristotelian Society for the systematic study of philosophy,’ and he remained its president for fourteen years. This led to contact with other minds who looked at the same subjects from different points of view. He read many papers to the society, which were published in pamphlet form and in its Proceedings, and he built up his own system afresh in the light of familiar criticism. It took final form in The Metaphysic of Experience, a work of four volumes published in 1898.

As an analysis of experience, Hodgson’s philosophy falls into line with a characteristic English tradition. It agrees with this tradition, also, in taking the simple feeling as the ultimate datum of experience. But, even here, and wherever there is experience, there is a distinction to be drawn—not the traditional distinction between subject and object, but that between consciousness and its object. Always, there are two aspects in any bit of experience—that of the object itself and that of the awareness of it or the subjective aspect ; and these two are connected by the relation of knowledge. The sciences are concerned with the objective aspect only; philosophy has to deal with the subjective aspect, or the conscious process which is fundamental and common to all the variety of objects. Beyond this conscious reference there is nothing. ‘The mirage of absolute existence, wholly apart from knowledge, is a common-sense prejudice.’ Consciousness is commensurate with being; all existence has a subjective aspect. But this doctrine, he holds, is misinterpreted when mind and body are supposed to interact or when mental and bodily facts are regarded

40 Philosophers [CH.

as parallel aspects of the same substance. In psychology, Hodgson

may be called a materialist, unfit as that name would be to

describe his philosophical attitude. Ideas do not determine one

another, nor does desire cause volition; the only real condition

known to us is matter. And yet matter itself is a composite exist-

ence; it can be analysed into empirical percepts; and, therefore,

it is itself conditioned by something which is not material: the

very term existence implies relativity to some sort of consciousness

or other. This is the conclusion of the general analysis of ex-

perience. Of the unseen world which lies beyond the material

part of the world we cannot, he contends, have any speculative

knowledge. But the ethical judgment and our own moral nature

bring us into practical relation with that unseen world and thus

permit a positive, although not a speculative, knowledge of it. In

this way, in the final issue of his philosophy as well as in its

fundamental positions, Hodgson regards himself as correcting and

completing the work of Kant.

VIII. IDEALISTS

The latter half of the nineteenth century was marked by the

work of a number of writers who were influenced by the specu-

lations which, in Germany, had turned the results of Kant's

criticism into a direction which he had not anticipated. This

influence, which they shared, and their constant controversy with

current empirical philosophy united these writers into what may be

termed a school; and this school is sometimes described as neo-

Kantian, more commonly as Hegelian or neo-Hegelian. But its

members describe it simply as idealism, though it is an idealism of

a form new in English thought. Before them, Kant's speculative

successors had not obtained currency in England, unless, perhaps,

in a slight measure, through some of the utterances of Coleridge;

and the powerful influence of Hamilton's criticism had been

almost sufficient to put a ban on what he called 'the philosophy of

the unconditioned.'

The first important work of the new movement was The Insti-

tutes of Metaphysic (1854) by James Frederick Ferrier, professor

at St Andrews. Before this date he had written a number

of philosophical articles, and in particular a series of papers

entitled 'The Philosophy of Consciousness,' which showed the

trend of his thinking. After his death these were collected

and published together along with a series of lectures as

I] The English Idealists 41

Lectures on Greek Philosophy and other philosophical remains (1866). As a historian of philosophy, Ferrier did not pretend to exceptional research ; but he had a remarkable power of entering into the mind of earlier thinkers and of giving a living presentation of their views. The history of philosophy was, for him, no mere record of discarded systems, but ‘philosophy itself taking its time.’ He was a sympathetic student, also, of the German philosophers banned by his friend Hamilton. It is difficult to trace any direct influence of Hegel upon his own doctrine, and, indeed, he said that he could not understand Hegel. But, both his earlier and his later writings have an affinity with Fichte—especially in their central doctrine: the stress laid on self-consciousness, and its distinction from the ‘mental states’ with which the psychologist is concerned. This doctrine connects him with Berkeley, also. He was one of the first to appreciate the true nature of Berkeley’s thought, as not a mere transition-stage between Locke and Hume, but as a discovery of the spiritual nature of reality. The philosophy which he worked out in The Institutes of Metaphysic is, however, strikingly original. He claimed that it was ‘Scottish to the core.’ But it is very different from the traditional Scottish philosophy. It disclaims all connexion with psychology. He even formulates a false and psychological theorem as the counterpart of each true and metaphysical theorem. And this reiterated opposition, it must be confessed, grows a little wearisome and can be excused only by the backward state of psychology, and its confusion with philosophy, at the time when the book was written. Further, the Scottish philosophy relied on intuition or immediate apprehension of reality ; Ferrier’s method is that of rational deduction from a first principle. Philosophy is ‘reasoned truth,’ he says ; but ‘it is more proper that philosophy should be reasoned, than that it should be true.’ Unfortunately, he takes Spinoza’s method as his model, though he does not follow the model in all details. There is no array of definitions, axioms and postulates, but only propositions, each deduced from the preceding. Thus, a heavy weight is thrown on the first proposition of the series. This is the primary law or condition of all knowledge, and is stated in the words, ‘Along with whatever any intelligence knows it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognisance of itself.’ What follows is little more than the elaboration of this statement. Ferrier has not only an epistemology, or theory of knowledge, but also an agnoiology, or theory of ignorance, the main doctrine of which is that we can

42

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[CH.

only be ignorant of what can possibly be known. Hence, in his ontology, or theory of being, he reaches the conclusion that absolute existence is 'a supreme and infinite and everlasting mind in synthesis with all things.' Ferrier's writings had, and continue to have, a considerable reputation, yet a reputation hardly commensurate with their philosophical insight and perfect style. Perhaps the formalism of his method counteracted the lucidity of the thought. Soon after his death (1864) English philosophy came under the influence of the more comprehensive genius of Hegel.

The first English work directly due to the influence of Hegel was 'The Secret of Hegel (1865) by James Hutchison Stirling. Educated as a physician, he first heard of Hegel in accidental conversation. Hegel was described as the reconciler of philosophy and religion, and Stirling, fascinated by the thought, soon afterwards threw up his practice, settled for some years on the continent—in Germany and in France—and devoted himself with ardour to philosophical study, especially to the mastery of Hegel's system. He returned to publish the results of his work; and, although he wrote many books afterwards—especially an important Text-book to Kant (1881)—The Secret of Hegel remains his greatest work. It consists of translation, commentary, introduction and original discourse ; and it shows the process by which the author approached and grappled with his subject. Sometimes it is as difficult as its original ; more frequently, it illuminates Hegel both by a persistent effort of thought and by occasional flashes of insight. Its style is characteristic. Altogether lacking in the placid flow of the academic commentator, and suggesting the influence of Carlyle, it is irregular, but forceful and imaginative, a fit medium for the thinking which it expressed. What Stirling meant by the 'secret' of Hegel was presumably the relation of Hegel's philosophy to that of Kant. In Hegel's construction he found a method and point of view which justified the fundamental ideas of religion, and, at the same time, made clear the one-sidedness of the conceptions of the 'age of enlightenment,' at the end of which Kant stood, still hampered by its negations and abstractions. And Stirling's favourite and most lively criticisms were directed against the apostles of the enlightenment and their followers of the nineteenth century.

Stirling was first in the field, and, although cut off from any academic position, he continued to exercise a strong intellectual influence. Independently of him, and soon after he began to publish, the influence of Hegel was shown by a number of other

I] Thomas Hill Green 43

writers, most of whom were connected with Oxford or Glasgow.

Like Stirling, they brought out the ideas in Kant which pointed to

Hegel's view ; but, on the other hand, most of them paid little

attention to, or altogether disregarded, the details of the Hegelian

method. Of these writers one of the earliest and, in some respects,

the most important, was Thomas Hill Green, professor of moral

philosophy at Oxford. His work was constructive in aim and, to

a large extent, in achievement ; and it was inspired by a belief in

the importance of right-thinking for life. The latter characteristic

Green shared with most of the writers who sympathised with his

philosophical views, and it accounted for much of the enthusiasm

with which these views were received. His constructive work, how-

ever, was preceded by a very thorough criticism. He saw that it

was necessary, first of all, to expose the assumptions and inconsis-

tencies underlying the systems of Mill and Spencer, and that these

systems were really based upon the philosophy of Hume. Green's

dissection of the latter appeared, in 1874, in the form of two

elaborate 'introductions' to a new edition of Hume's Treatise.

This work, as he confesses, was 'an irksome labour.' He deals at

length with Locke and Hume, more shortly with Berkeley and

some of the moralists ; and he follows these writers from point to

point of their argument with unwearying, though sometimes weari-

some, persistence. But he was an unsympathetic critic. Locke

and Hume were rather careless of the niceties of terminology, and

some of the contradictions which he finds are, perhaps, only verbal

and might have been avoided by a change of expression. Enough

remain, however, amply to justify his accusation that their thought

was full of incoherences ; and, if these had been brought into

clearer relief, and distinguished from merely verbal inconsisten-

cies, the effectiveness of his criticism might have been increased.

But he did succeed in showing 'that the philosophy based on the

abstraction of feeling, in regard to morals, no less than to nature,

was with Hume played out.' He appealed to 'Englishmen under

five-and-twenty' to close their Mill and Spencer and open their

Kant and Hegel ; and this appeal marks an epoch in English

thought in the nineteenth century.

In the years following the 'introductions' to Hume, Green pub-

lished some occasional articles on philosophical topics. He, also,

exerted a great influence by his academic lectures—the more im-

portant of which are printed in his collected Works (three volumes,

1885—8). His greatest book, Prolegomena to Ethics, appeared in

1883, the year after his death. This book does not profess to be a

44

Philosophers

[CH.

system either of metaphysics or of ethics ; but it supplies the

groundwork for such a system. It is a vindication of the spiritual

nature of the world and of man. Neither nature nor man can be

constructed out of the sensations or feelings which formed the

data of the empirical philosophers. Our knowledge 'presupposes'

that there is a connected world to be known. The relations in-

volved, and inexplicable on empirical methods, can be understood

only as implying the action of mind. 'The action of one self-con-

ditioning and self-determining mind' is, therefore, a postulate of

all knowledge, and our knowledge is a 'reproduction' of this

activity in or as the mind of man. In the same way, our moral

activity is a reproduction in us of the one eternal mind. Under

all the limitations of organic life and of the time-process generally,

the mind of man carries with it the characteristic, inexplicable on

the theory of naturalism, of 'being an object to itself.' This

position is not to be established by deductive or inductive methods;

in this sense it cannot be proved. But it is a point of view from

which—and from which alone—we can understand both the world

and ourselves and see how it is that 'we are and do what we

consciously are and do.' In the later books of his Prolegomena

this doctrine is applied to the interpretation of the history of the

moral life and of moral ideas ; and this portion of his work shows

his powers as a writer at their best. In other writings the same

conception is applied to social and religious questions. It is

conspicuous in his Lectures on the Principles of Political

Obligation, where he maintains that will, not force, is the basis

of the state, and gives a fresh reading to the doctrine of the

'general will'

In his metaphysics, Green does not follow the method of Hegel's

dialectic ; and in his reading of history there is no trace of the

Hegelian theory that development in time follows the same stages

as logical development. The gradual steps by which the realisa-

tion of reason or of self is brought about in the time-process are

not investigated. Only, it is assumed that the process is purposive,

that history is the 'reproduction' of the eternal mind. How it

comes about that error and moral evil affect the process is not

explained, and the metaphor of 'reproduction,' as well as the

whole relation of the time-process to eternal reality, is left

somewhat vague.

Of the numerous writers who represent a type of thought

similar to Green's in origin and outlook only a few can be men-

tioned here. In 1874, the year in which Green's 'introductions' to

I] Edward Caird 45

Hume were published, there appeared, also, The Logic of Hegel, translated from the latter's Encyclopaedia by William Wallace, who afterwards succeeded to Green's chair of moral philosophy at Oxford. A second edition of this work, in which the introductory matter was considerably extended, was issued in 1892 ; and this was followed, in 1894, by Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, and, in 1898 (after the author's death), by Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics. Wallace devoted himself more directly than his associates to the elucidation of Hegel's thought; but it may be doubted whether he himself adhered any more closely than they did to the details of the dialectic. The prolegomena and introductory essays, by which his translations were prefaced, are not merely explanatory of difficulties. They have often the character of original interpretations ; they approach the subject from different points of view and show a rare power of selecting essential factors. Wallace had wide intellectual sympathies and found matter of agreement with philosophers of different schools; but all, in his hands, led towards a central idealism. His work consisted in pointing out the various avenues of approach to the temple of idealism, rather than in unveiling its mysteries.

In An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (1880), John Caird, principal of the university of Glasgow, produced a work, original in manner, but essentially Hegelian in doctrine. A similar character marked all the work of his younger brother, Edward Caird, professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow, and afterwards master of Balliol college, Oxford. The influence of Edward Caird rivalled that of his friend Green, and their teaching was in fundamental agreement. Caird, however, had a facility of literary expression such as Green did not possess; he was, also, more inclined to attack questions by the method of tracing the historical development of thought. His first important work was A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant (1877), which was superseded by The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (two volumes, 1889). This work is a triumph of philosophical exposition and criticism. Based upon a mastery of the whole range of Kantian scholarship, it brings into relief the leading ideas by which Kant himself was guided, and, through criticism of his arguments, gives an interpretation of it as tending, when consistently worked out, towards a system of speculative idealism. A brilliant and sympathetic exposition is contained in his monograph on Hegel (1883). His Gifford lectures, The Evolution of Religion (1893), deal less than his other works with the criticism of philosophers; they are

46

Philosophers

[CH.

a study of the nature of religion, especially as exhibited in the

development of the Christian faith.

The writings of Francis Herbert Bradley are so important for

the understanding of English idealism in the nineteenth century

that it seems necessary to make some reference here to the work

of a writer still living. His achievement has been differently

viewed : sometimes as being the finest exposition of idealism,

sometimes as marking its dissolution. His first philosophical

work, Ethical Studies, appeared in 1876, about the same date

as the first books of Green and Caird. It is full of brilliant

criticism of conventional ethical ideas. The manner was different;

but the doctrine seemed to agree with that which was beginning

to be taught in the lecture-rooms. Here, also, 'self-realisation,'

that is, the realisation of the 'true self,' was the watchword.

His Principles of Logic, published in 1883, broke new ground

and showed, also, a development of the dialectical manner. The

inadequacy of the 'particular,' the implication of the 'universal'

in all knowledge, were familiar enough, but the defects of empirical

logic had never been exposed with such depth of insight, such

subtlety of reasoning, such severity of phrase. The work was a

triumph for the idealist theory of knowledge. It is noteworthy

that these two books have never been reprinted in England,

presumably because the author became more or less dissatisfied

with their teaching. There is, at least, a difference of emphasis

in the teaching of his next and greatest work, Appearance and

Reality (1893), which has been allowed to pass through several

editions.

This remarkable book has probably exerted more influence

upon philosophical thinking in English-speaking countries than

any other treatise of the last thirty years. But no summary can

convey a clear idea of its teaching. The conceptions of popular

thought and of metaphysics alike are in it subjected to detailed,

relentless criticism. Even the distinction, within the book, between

the chapters devoted to 'appearance' and those described as

'reality' seems artificial, for everything is found to be riddled

with contradictions. And these contradictions all belong to our

thought because it is relational. Green had held that experience

requires relations, and had argued thence to the need for a relating

mind as the principle of reality. Bradley, too, insists that 'for

thought what is not relative is nothing' but he draws the very

different conclusion that 'our experience, where relational, is

not true.' Of this doctrine all the brilliant disquisitions that

I] Alexander Campbell Fraser 47

follow are applications, with the exception of the author's own assertions about the absolute, which, being relational, must be affected by the same vice of contradiction. If his argument about relations is valid, the idealism of Green and Caird falls to the ground. His method is more akin to Hegel's than theirs was; but he also ignores the Hegelian triad; he does not attempt any consecutive evolution of the categories; even his doctrine of 'degrees of reality' is more Spinozistic than Hegelian. As a whole, the book is a great original achievement—a highly abstract dialectical exercise, in which the validity of every argument depends upon the fundamental position that relations necessarily involve contradiction. A later book, Essays on Truth and Reality (1914), deals in great part with controversies which belong to the twentieth century; without deserting the positions of the earlier work, it is less purely negative in its tendency and more devoted to the discovery of elements of truth than to the exposure of contradictions.

IX. Other Writers

In the latter part of the nineteenth century there were other philosophical tendencies at work then those already mentioned. There were idealist writers whose idealism was of a different type, resembling Berkeley's rather than Hegel's, and who are sometimes called personal idealists; there was a movement of reaction from the type of idealism last described in the direction of philosophical realism or naturalism; and there were the first indications of the new movements of thought which have characterised the early years of the twentieth century.

Among the writers classed as personal idealists may be counted Alexander Campbell Fraser. His philosophical career, as student, professor and thinker, began before the Victorian era and lasted into the present reign. He was a pupil of Hamilton at Edinburgh, was for ten years professor of philosophy in New college there and succeeded to the university chair on Hamilton's death in 1856. His first book, Essays in Philosophy, was published in 1856, his last, a small monograph entitled Berkeley and Spiritual Realism, in 1908. Apart from minor works, among which special mention should be made of his monographs on Locke (1890) and Berkeley (1881), he is best known as the editor of the standard

48 Philosophers [CH.

editions of Berkeley's Works (1871) and of Locke's Essay (1894),

and as the author of Gifford lectures The Philosophy of Theism

(1896). He also wrote an interesting and valuable account of his

life and views entitled Biographia Philosophica (1904).

For a great many years, Fraser, Caird and Bain powerfully

affected philosophical thought in Scotland through their university

teaching. Owing to the position of philosophy in the academic

curriculum, their influence upon the wider intellectual life of the

country was almost equally great, though less easy to trace with any

exactness. From Bain, his pupils learned precision in thinking and

an interest in psychology as a science, together with, perhaps, a

somewhat limited comprehension of metaphysical problems. Caird

gave an insight into the history of thought and provided a point of

view from which the world and man's life might be understood; many

of his pupils have shown in their writings that they had learned

his great language and were able to develop and apply his ideas.

Fraser did not teach a system or found a school; he awakened and

stimulated thought, without controlling its direction; he called

forth in his hearers a sense of the mysteries of existence, and he

encouraged in many the spirit of reflection. He had no system;

but his thought was essentially constructive, though the construc-

tion was based on an almost Humean scepticism. On one point,

however, he never yielded to sceptical analysis—the reality of the

self as conscious activity. He found the same thought in Berkeley,

and he may almost be said to have rediscovered Berkeley for

modern readers. Of the world beyond self he could find no theory

which could be satisfactorily established by strict reasoning. But

he saw (as Hume saw in his first work) that science has its

assumptions as well as theology. In particular, he looked upon

the postulate of uniformity as an act of moral faith in the

rationality of the universe, and it was as a ‘venture of faith’ that

he interpreted the universe as grounded in the reason and good-

ness of God.

The reaction from idealism is most strikingly illustrated in the

writings of Robert Adamson. The most learned of his contemporary

philosophers, his earlier works are written from the standpoint of a

neo-Hegelian idealism. These works are a small volume On the

Philosophy of Kant (1879), a monograph on Fichte (1881), and an

article on logic (1882), long afterwards (1911) republished in book

form. The fundamental opposition of philosophical doctrines he

regarded as 'the opposition between Hegelianism on the one hand

I] Robert Adamson 49

and scientific naturalism or realism on the other'; and he rejected the latter doctrine because its explanation of thought as the product of antecedent conditions was incompetent to explain thought as self-consciousness. The problem which he set himself was to re-think from the former point of view the new material concerning nature, mind and history provided by modern science. He came gradually to the opinion that this could not be done—that idealism was inadequate. His posthumously published lectures The Development of Modern Philosophy (1903) show that he was engaged in working out a reconstruction from the point of view which he had at first held incompetent—that of realism. But his suggestions do not point to a theory of mechanism or materialism. Although mind has come into being, it is as essential as nature: both are partial manifestations of reality. But he had not an opportunity fully to work out his constructive theory or to examine its adequacy and coherence.

The new tendencies which distinguish more recent philosophy illustrate also the increasing reaction of the literature of the United States of America upon English thought. The theory known as pragmatism is definitely of trans-Atlantic origin, and forms of what is called the new realism seem to have been started independently in the United States and in this country. The latter theory is, largely, a revival of older views : both the natural realism of Reid and the scholastic doctrine of the reality of universals appear to have contributed to its formation. Pragmatism is a more original doctrine; but its seeds also lie in the past: it has been connected with the prevailingly practical tone of much English thought; and more definite anticipations of its leading idea might be found in some of the latter English writers of the nineteenth century.

E. L. XIV. CH. I

CHAPTER II

HISTORIANS, BIOGRAPHERS AND POLITICAL

ORATORS

A. Writers on Medieval and Modern History1

In a comparison of English historical literature in the nineteenth with that in the eighteenth century, nothing is more striking than the advance and the expansion of the study of the national past. As was remarked in an earlier volume2, Hume's was the first history of England by a native historian worthy to be classed as literature ; and, after him, the subject fell largely into the hands of professed political or ecclesiastical partisans. Robertson's History of Scotland is not wholly exempt from such a charge ; Smollett's continuation of Hume is certainly open to it ; and no other work in the field of national history can be said to have been produced in the course of the century which has survived it except as material for subsequent use. A reason for the unproductiveness, on this head, of the closing years of the eighteenth century, and the early years of its successor, might, of course, be sought in the great national struggle against the French revolution and the conquering power to which it gave birth. This struggle finds its counterpart in the endeavours of the romanticists to break up the literary and artistic solidarity of classicism, and to trace the diversity of actual life in the specific features presenting themselves in national, provincial or local institutions, forms of government, social ways and manners. Scott, more than any other writer in verse or prose, by his incomparable historical novels, taught English historians to reproduce in their works the atmosphere of the times and the colouring of the localities which they desired to recall. The lesson was reinforced by two different currents of studies and interests. The first was a result of the

1 For writers on ancient history and early ecclesiastical history, see ante, vol. xi, chap. xiv.

2 See, ante, vol. x, p. 280.

CH. II] New Currents—Sharon Turner 5 I

diligent enquiry into the origines of our national institutions

and their effect upon our national life which formed part of the

new movement of the new century—in other words, of the

beginnings of historical criticism1. In the study and literary

treatment of the national history, this research concentrated itself

in the labours of what has been called the Germanist school, whose

adherents strove to show

‘the extent to which modern constitutional ideas were connected with

medieval facts, and the share that the German element has had in the

development of institutions and classes,’ and ‘succeeded in establishing the

characteristically Germanic general aspect of English history, a result

which does not exclude Roman influence, but has to be reckoned with in all

attempts to establish definitely its bearing and strength2.’

The second current, again, was one which affected England in

common with all other western nations, but which acted upon her

life and literature in a way peculiar to herself. In the period

roughly circumscribed by the revolutionary years 1830 and 1848—3,

social questions, concerned with the economic conditions of the

people at large, assumed an unprecedented prominence ; and

these led to a study, very little followed before, of the economic

influences under which nations arise and have their being. Other

sciences were called upon to contribute towards an understanding

of the foundations of popular life, the materials out of which it is

formed and the reasons which determine its progress or decay.

Historical research, animated by a living interest in the present,

rather than by a romantic yearning for a revival of the past, thus

came to demand, and find, new fields for its labours.

The first name to be mentioned among writers of English history

from the close of the eighteenth century onwards is, unmistak-

ably, that of Sharon Turner. Born and educated in London3,

he was, as a boy, attracted to the study of northern literature

through a version, in Percy’s Five Pieces of Runic Poetry,

of that Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok which is held to have

first suggested the study in England of Norse antiquity4. He

1 Cf., ante, vol. xii, chap. xiv.

2 See P. Vinogradoff’s illuminating introduction to Villainage in England : Essays

on English and Medieval History (Oxford, 1892).

3 He was a pupil at James Davis’s academy in Pentonville, and his literary career

illustrates the value of the attempts made in these academies to supply instruction

in modern subjects. Cf. the syllabus of courses in history and geography by Priestley

at Warrington (where he worked from 1761 to 1787) appended to Parker, Irene, Dissenting

Academies in England (Cambridge, 1914); and see, generally, ante, vol. x,

pp. 381—3.

4 See, for some account of the literary influence of the Death Song upon Sir William

Temple and others, ante, vol. x, pp. 221—4.

4—2

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early abandoned the active pursuit of the legal profession, and,

in 1795, settled for many years in the neighbourhood of the

British Museum, long the constant resort of his strenuous leisure.

Here, the Old English MSS in the Cottonian library became his

chief study, and it was on his researches in these and similar

sources that was founded his History of England from the

earliest period to the Norman Conquest, produced from 1799 to

1805, after sixteen years of preparatory labours. It was well

received by Palgrave and other authorities, but was also subjected

to unfavourable criticism, which, in one instance, called forth a

vindication from the author1. On the whole, the success of the

work was such as to encourage him to produce, in steady sequence,

a continuation from the Norman conquest to 1500, and a further

continuation, covering the reign of Henry VII, with a ‘political

history of the commencement of the English Reformation,’ which

he afterwards carried on to the death of Elizabeth. The latter

portions of the work, published in 1829, under the collective title

The History of England, failed to command a popularity

equalling that of their predecessors. The reformation period, in

particular, had, as we shall see, been recently treated by Lingard,

some of whose ecclesiastical views, indeed, Sharon Turner was

desirous of controverting. But his volumes dealing with Old

English times, though they share his general characteristics of

great amplitude and sententiousness of expression, have the dis-

tinctive note of original research both wide in range and assiduous;

nor can he be refused the credit of having pointed the way in

which Kemble and Thorpe followed, and thus made it possible for

Palgrave and Freeman to construct their great works. It was in

Sharon Turner that the interest was first awakened which led to

the appointment (in 1800) of the first Record commission, whose

composition, unfortunately, rendered its efforts of but little effect,

till, mainly through the efforts of (Sir) Harris Nicolas, it was

superseded (in 1836) by the new commission, of which Palgrave was

the soul. Sharon Turner himself cannot rank as a great historian;

and it might, perhaps, be questioned whether his proper place is

among historians at all. His early volumes are marred by a

cumbersome method, a tedious style and an antiquated philology; yet,

a survey of their contents suffices to show the breadth of their

author’s design and the indefatigable industry expended upon its

execution. His place in literature he owes, not to service or

circumstance, but to his courage and energy in research, which

1 See bibliography.

II] John Lingard 53

enabled him, first among English writers, to make his countrymen aware of the elements of future national greatness revealed in the life of our immigrant forefathers.

Some time before the new movement in English historical studies, which had derived a strong impulse from what had, of recent years, been done in France and Germany1, can be said to have been fairly at work, two writers had produced historical works of national significance. John Lingard’s History of England, indeed, had been in preparation for about thirteen years, before, in 1819, the first three volumes of the work appeared, bringing it to the end of the reign of Henry VII, a point very near the critical part of the narrative, if its avowed more special purpose be considered. Lingard’s earliest book, The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, had been published so early as 1806. Here is observable, together with a determination to base statements of historical facts upon original authorities, the desire, which became the mainspring of his History and, it is not too much to say, the object of his life, to convince his countrymen of their misconceptions as to the Roman catholic faith and its influence upon the action of its adherents. He was himself born and bred as a catholic (although his father was a protestant by descent), and owed practically the whole of his training to Douay, where, it is stated, no instruction was given in history. On the dispersion of the college at Douay, Lingard spent some time in the centre of English catholic affairs. He became acquainted with Charles Butler, author of The Book of the Roman Catholic Church and long active in promoting the abolition of penal laws against catholics. These efforts, as implying long participation in church affairs, were vehemently opposed by John Milner, afterwards titular bishop of Castabala and a ruthless adversary of Lingard and the moderate catholic party. Lingard was all but deterred from carrying out his design of writing a history of England, which he had cherished during the latter part of a collegiate life of nearly thirty years. Declining the presidency of Ushaw college, where he had held the arduous post of vice-president—as he afterwards refused a mitre—he, in 1811, took up the humble

1 In France, where the spirit that pervaded the labours of Mabillon and his fellow-Benedictines had never been wholly extinguished, the École des Chartres, which marked the beginning of a systematic training in the study of mediæval documents, dates from 1820, though it had to pass through a period of uncertainty, and even of temporary extinction, before its revival nine years later. In Germany, the publication of Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, the first modern collection of mediæval sources edited with all the appliances of modern critical scholarship, began in 1826.

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duties of the mission at Hornby near Lancaster ; and here he remained, almost continuously, during the rest of his life, which ended there, forty years later, in his eighty-first year. The remote northern presbytery became a sort of literary centre, in which he was periodically visited by Brougham and other leaders of the northern circuit, and whence he exercised an influence over the conduct of catholic affairs, which neither Milner's intrigues nor the frank differences of opinion between Wiseman and himself could extinguish. This influence was due to his History of England, which appeared in the critical period of catholic affairs preceding the Emancipation act and, at Rome, was held to have largely contributed to the change in public feeling which had made that act possible. Whether or not pope Leo XII, as Lingard believed, not long before the completion of his History, intended to acknowledge his services by raising him, sooner or later, to the cardinalate, such a recognition of endeavours equally free from blind partisanship and from adulation would have done honour to the church which he loved and served.

Lingard's first three volumes at once achieved what, in the circumstances, must be reckoned a remarkable success. It is not too much to say that this was mainly due to the use made by the writer of his study of original MSS, both at home and in Rome, and to the straightforward and lucid style of his narrative. Few historians have written so little ad captandum as Lingard, whether in this or in later, and more contentious, portions of his work ; if there is in him little warmth of sympathy, neither is there any vituperative vehemence. No historian has ever better trained himself in the art of avoiding the giving of offence ; and none was less likely to be 'run away with' by ardent admiration for those fascinating historical characters in which fanaticism is often intermingled with devotion to a great and noble cause. On the other hand, there never was a more vigilant recorder of facts than Lingard, or one whom criticism was less successful in convicting of unfounded statements ; it was not his way to take anything in his predecessors for granted, and he wished his work to fulfil the purpose of a complete refutation of Hume, without the appearance of such a purpose1.

1 This is brought out in John Allen's review in The Edinburgh Review (April 1825, vol. xlii), where Lingard is blamed for 'his anathema against the philosophy of history, which he is pleased to term the philosophy of romances,' but which is either a solecism to cant or the result of his dislike of Hume. Allen's second review of Lingard (June 1826) dealt specially with the St Bartholomew, a problem which may almost be described as still under treatment ; and it was in reply to this that Lingard issued his Vindication

II] Lingard's History of England 55

In the subsequent volumes of his History, Lingard's skill and judgment were put to the severest of tests, and it is not unjust to him to say that the history of the reformation, or that of a particularly complicated section of it, was never written with more discretion than it was by him. On the one hand, he refused to shut his eyes, like some other judges of conservative tendencies, to certain aspects of the conflict—the dark side of monasticism, for instance. On the other, he declined to launch forth into discussions of the general consequences of the English reformation, and allowed the course of events—of which, in his account of the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, he was able to add many new elucidations—to tell its own story. Even in relating the critical struggle between Elizabeth and her Scottish rival, he hardly becomes a partisan; while his narrative of the reign of James I plainly marks the end of Roman catholicism as an organic part of the national life. The later volumes of the History followed in fairly regular succession, the last (vol. viii) appearing in 1830, with a notable account of the antecedents of the revolution of 1688, including the character of James II. Lingard moved more easily as his work progressed, as well as in the careful revisions to which he subjected it1 and in which he freely entered into an examination of views opposed to his own, Macaulay's among them. While his protestant assailants found no palpable holes in his armour, he maintained his own position in the catholic world, consistently holding aloof from ultramontane views and shaping his course as seemed right to him. Yet, his conviction that he had signally contributed to the change in educated public opinion in England as to his church and her history, though the intention implied is compatible with perfect veracity of statement as well as perspicacity of judgment, cannot be said to imply that search after truth for its own sake which is the highest motive of the historian. Lingard's tone is not apologetic, but his purpose avowedly is; and, while his work retains its place among histories of England based on scholarly research, conceived in a spirit of fairness and composed with lucidity and skill, it lacks alike the intensity of spirit which animates a great national history and the breadth of sympathy which is inseparable from intellectual

(1828). Southey's criticisms of the reformation volumes in The Quarterly Review (December 1825, vol. xxxiii) were expanded in his popular Book of the Church, which led to a literary controversy between its author and Charles Butler. On the catholic side, the irreconcilable Milner was provoked by the account of the earlier part of the reformation, and in vain attempted to procure the condemnation of the book at Rome.

1 The last edition revised by himself bears the date 1844-1.

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independence. Lingard's book, it should be added, is a political

history only, and sheds no light on either the literary or the social

progress of the nation.

It was only at a relatively advanced stage of Lingard's career

as a historian—in 1835—that he made acquaintance with the

historical work of his contemporary Henry Hallam, a typically

national figure among eminent English writers of history1. Eton

and Oxford, although they had helped to form the man and give

him free access to what was best in the social, political and

intellectual life of his generation, had done little else to equip him

for the career which he preferred to bar or parliament. Inasmuch

as he enjoyed, throughout life, ample leisure and easy conditions of

existence, he could take his time about both reading and writing;

but he used these opportunities with a conscientious thoroughness

such as no class-room training or examination-room system could

have surpassed in effectiveness. The ‘classic Hallam,’ as Byron

chose to call the Edinburgh reviewer whose sole avowed pre-

tensions to fame had, so far, consisted in his contributions to Musae

Etonenses (1795), spent more than a decade in preparing his first

book, which, on its appearance (in 1818), revealed itself at once as

what every production of Hallam's maturity became as a matter

of course—a ‘standard’ work of historical literature and learning2.

In A View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, he

undertook to subject to a philosophical survey the course of

European history, as a whole, during the ten centuries from the

great popular migrations to the formation of the chief states of

modern Europe, and, at the same time, to consider the special

growth of each particular state. In this truly comprehensive

essay, Hallam showed himself both too restrained and too sure-

footed to lapse into mere generalities, although the work cannot,

of course, rank with Guizot's rather later Histoire de la Civilisa-

tion en France, which, though unfinished, also overshadowed the

same writer's earlier and more concise Histoire générale de la Civi-

lisation en Europe. The chapter on England in The Middle Ages

1 It is curious, in view of the high reputation of Hallam's name with successive

generations of historical students, that the only biographical account of him worth

notice should be Mignet's, in Biographies Historiques (Paris, 1864). This is remarked by

Sir Leslie Stephen in his article on Hallam in vol. xxiv D. of N. B. (1890), where

a few additional facts, likewise due to family information, are supplied.

2 Hallam's way of asserting his sureness as to facts was overpowering in conver-

sation; and Thomas Campbell described him as, though devoid of gall and

bitterness, yet ‘a perfect boa-constrictor.’ (Campbell's Life and Letters, ed. Beattie,

W., vol. iii, p. 315.)

II] Henry Hallam 57

unmistakably announces the future historian of the English constitution, with his consciousness of the value, for an insight into the political and social development of a nation, of an enquiry into the continuous growth of its laws. For the rest, the limits of Hallam's gifts as a historian are manifest in the earliest of his works; but, together with them, there becomes apparent the unflinching severity of his moral judgment, the most distinctive note of, what Mignet calls him, 'the magistrate of history.'

In 1827 was published the best known of Hallam's works—best known, because of the clearness and solidity that still keep it a text-book of the subject which it treats, and which, to the large majority of students of English history, is the sum and substance of all that compels their interest in the national past. We may regret, especially in view of the great internal changes undergone by this country in the epoch of Hallam's later manhood, that he should have fixed the death of George II as the terminus ad quem of his Constitutional History of England; and we may wish, since he would thus have widened the point of view of a long succession of English learners of history, that he had drawn the line of the book's terminus a quo at the beginning of the middle ages instead of at their close; albeit, in this respect, his own Middle Ages, in some measure, and the later works of Stubbs and others most effectively supplemented his labours, and gave true unity to the whole subject. Hallam's own political opinions, however, would hardly have carried him as a historian through the periods of revolution in France and democratic reform at home; he distinctly dissociated himself from the Reform bill movement of 1830–2, and showed a distrust of the multitude which even Sir Archibald Alison's could hardly have surpassed; while his heart was with the constitutional progress which, after the violent interruption of the Civil war and the ensuing interregnum, was consummated in the revolution of 1688, and crowned by the passing of the Act of settlement. In other words, Hallam was a whig of the 'finality' school; what he approved and admired in our laws and institutions was their power of endurance, after they had resulted from centuries of conflict with the pretensions of the prerogative, which came over with foreign conquest, while the principles of the nation's laws were rooted in its own past. This conflict forms, as it were, the heart or nucleus of his story; nor does it lose anything of its sternness or of its inner consistency in his hands. His style is without fascination, charm or richness; but it is raised, above a mere business tone by the

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sense manifest beneath it of great issues worthy of arduous struggles; so that it never wearies, just as the great interests of life which it befits a man to cherish—the cause of the commonweal and of personal freedom—never grow stale. Of these things, Hallam’s work is, as it were, the representative; what lies beyond, it ignores. Hallam’s Constitutional History was, at a later date (1861—3), adequately continued by Sir Thomas Erskine May, who had made a name for himself by his standard work, The Rules, Orders and Proceedings of the House of Commons (1854). His Constitutional History is distinguished both by the admirable perspicuity of its arrangement and by the decisive clearness of its tone. Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution (1867) will be briefly noticed elsewhere1.

When, in his last great book, Hallam once more passed out of the domain of politics into that of literature, and undertook, with impartial eye and undeflected judgment, to furnish an Introduction to the Literature of Europe during the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1837—9), it was as if he desired to bequeath to the world of letters the knowledge he had garnered during a long life. He had remained a stranger to few fields of literary study and become familiar with most of the homes of European civilisation, since its new birth in the land which he had probably loved next to his own, and which, in his later years, had been specially endeared to him by its varied associations with the two sons whose names will always be remembered with that of their father. The work, which, to this day, few literary students would be willing to spare, illustrates, more than any other of his productions, the equity as well as the acumen of his critical conclusions; but the form it takes is too compressed for it to satisfy more exacting demands. Without being reticent where candour is called for, or shallow where great depths have to be sounded, it offers a model of an introductory survey that needs to be filled up with the comments and illustrations of the best kind of cicerone-ship; and, though necessarily it must fall more and more to satisfy in parts, it will, as a whole, long challenge supersession.

At one time, it might have seemed as if, in the charmed circle of the whigs, one of its most honoured members, who, early in his career (1791), had, not without credit, crossed swords with Burke, were, after he had entered into the second and less eccentric phase of his political opinions, destined to take a leading place among English historians. But Sir James Mackintosh, who, like Macaulay,

1 See, post, pp. 142—3.

II] Mackintosh. Macaulay 59

was tempted from home by public employment in India, was with-

out the intellectual energy of his junior, and less indifferent than

he to the attractions of clubs and society. Moreover, like many

lesser men, he could never quite settle down to one particular line

of study and production, and the claim of philosophy seemed, on

the whole, the strongest upon his mind. On his homeward voyage

from Bombay, in 1811—12, he had begun an introduction to a

history of England from the revolution of 1688 to that of 1789;

but he speedily entered parliament, and, for some time, held a

professorship of law and general politics at Haileybury. Towards

the end of his life (1830), he published a much-read Dissertation

on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, chiefly during the 17th

and 18th Centuries1. Thus, little leisure was left, or sought, for

the History of England expected from Mackintosh's pen; and,

besides a volume bearing that title, contributed by him to

Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, he only produced an unfinished

History of the Revolution in England in 1688, which was un-

satisfactorily edited by William Wallace, with a continuation, to

say the least, ill-suited to either the book or its subject. This

performance is chiefly known by Macaulay's essay upon it—not

itself one of his choicest efforts—and by the scandal which ensued.

Mackintosh, notwithstanding the honour and glory which he

enjoyed among a large circle of his contemporaries, can, as a

historian, hardly be regarded as more than a precursor of

Macaulay, to whom we accordingly turn.

Thomas Babington (lord) Macaulay's youthful Edinburgh

essay on Hallam's Constitutional History, with all its enthusiasm,

indicates very clearly the qualities which distinguish him from the

author of that work, whose whole spirit, he says, is 'that of the

bench, not that of the bar.' For himself, he was, among modern

historians, the greatest of advocates; as his early essay History2

shows, he had drunk too deeply of the spirit of the ancient

masters and had too closely studied their manner of narrative

1 It was this essay, first produced as a supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica,

which gave rise to James Mill's bitter Fragment on Mackintosh (really an apology

for Bentham). The reply to Macaulay's attack upon Mill's essay on Government

(1829) was written by John Stuart Mill; Macaulay's retort, The Westminster Reviewer's

Defence of Mill, followed in the same year.

2 It was published in The Edinburgh Review for May 1828, as a notice of

Henry Neale's The Romance of History: England, and reprinted in vol. i of his

Miscellaneous Writings, posthumously published in 1860. This essay asserts that

'in an ideal history of England Henry VIII could be painted with the skill of a

Tacitus'; and 'the skirmishes of the Civil War would be told, as Thucydides could

have told them, with pænefectious conciseness.'

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and characterisation not to be desirous of reproducing, with their picturesqueness and point, the intensity of feeling which inspired their art, and to take pride in his partisanship as he gloried in his patriotism.

Born in 1800, Macaulay almost grew into manhood with the great events of the second decade of the century, and first took thought of his History at the time of one of its greatest political struggles. Sir George Trevelyan's biography of his venerated kinsman, besides bringing home to every reader the truthfulness of its portraiture of a man who justified the opinion formed, in his boyhood, by Hannah More as to the transparent purity and sincerity of his nature, shows that his services to his country and the empire were far from being absorbed in those which, with voice and pen, he rendered to his party; and that, in heart and soul, he was, from first to last, the man of letters whose fame grew into an enduring national possession. The path of distinction opened early for him in literary as well as in political work; to a forensic career, he was not drawn, notwithstanding his oratorical gifts, his marvellous power of memory and what has been well described as his extraordinary sense of the concrete. He was the most indefatigable of workers, both from motives highly honourable to him (he was an excellent son to his father, Zachary Macaulay, a chief pillar of the anti-slavery movement, and, through life, a devoted brother) and from natural disposition, and he could say for himself that 'when I sit down to work I work harder and faster than any person that I ever knew.' In the earlier half of his life, he found himself obliged to earn money to supplement the income from his Trinity fellowship and, subsequently, from his commissionership in bankruptcy; and when, in 1830, he began his History of England, he did not think it possible to give himself up to preparation for what might prove an unremunerative task. Thus, though, as it proved, nearly thirty years were yet before him, he abstained from entering at once upon a work which he might still have carried out on a scale such as that which he originally contemplated when fixing the death of George III as ulterior limit; and he became a regular contributor to periodical literature, Knight's Quarterly Magazine and The Edinburgh Review in particular. An article proposed by him to the latter journal, after a visit to France at the time of the revolution of 1830, having been rejected through the intervention of Brougham (never Macaulay's friend), he planned a history of France from the restoration to the accession of Louis-Philippe, but did not carry it

II] Macaulay's Essays 61

to quite one hundred printed pages-in which condition it was afterwards discovered. When, in 1834, he accepted a seat on the India council, and, during his residence in India (where he never became domesticated) to 1838, devoted to literature such leisure as he could command, The Edinburgh Review, again, gathered its ripe fruits. On his return home, now in possession of a sufficient income, a parliamentary career once more offered itself to him; and, though he had already begun his History of England, he, in 1839, accepted office under lord Melbourne. In 1841, the whig ministry fell, and the opportunity of the History seemed to have once more arrived; but he turned aside, for the moment, to compose his Lays of Ancient Rome (1842)1. The volume evinced his approval of Niebuhr's celebrated theory as to the chief source of the history of regal Rome; yet, notwithstanding the applause obtained for it by its martial impetus and swing, the artificiality inseparable from such tours de force is beyond disguise. It will probably long be loved by the young, and by all for whom graphic force and an easy command of ballad metres constitute poetry. In more experienced readers, it fails, as Mignet observes, to produce the illusion of reality. Macaulay's essays were not republished till 1845. The collection then approved by him contained all his contributions to periodical literature which he decided to preserve in this form, but not all that are of interest from a literary or biographical point of view; and to the essays contained in it has to be added the notable series of articles contributed by him to The Encyclopaedia Britannica (on Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson and the younger Pitt). His speeches (published, in self-defence, as corrected by himself, in 1854) are touched upon below; the code of Indian criminal procedure, the completion of which was chiefly his work (1837), falls outside our range.

His literary fame rests on his Essays and his History. The essays, taken as a whole, mark an epoch both in the literature of the essay, and in historical literature. As a rule, they consist of reviews, not of the book of which the title is prefixed to the essay, but of the subject with which the book is concerned, treated from whatever point of view may commend itself to the author. Thus, they are so many detached pieces of political or literary history, or of that combination of both in which Macaulay delighted and excelled, generally taking a narrative form and preferentially enclosed in a biographical framework. The qualities to which they owe their chief attractiveness may, without pedantry, be

1 See, ante, vol. xiii, chap. vi.

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described as appertaining to the art, rather than to the science,

of history. The style and general manner of treatment rise or fall

in accordance with the subject and with the mood of the author,

and that to which he desires to dispose the reader—‘historical

articles,’ he says himself, ‘may rise to the highest altitude or sink

to the levity and colloquial ease of Horace Walpole. This is my

theory.’ That he did not carry it out to the full, was due to the

limitations of his own literary genius. Character-drawing was his

forte: he had learnt this from the great masters in verse and prose

of his favourite later seventeenth, and earlier eighteenth, centuries,

and, at times, seemed almost to better the instruction. As to style,

he was capable of gorgeous pomp of speech, of dazzling splendour

of rhetorical ornament; to sublimity, he could not rise. His wit

was trenchant and, at times, irresistible, and his satiric power was

never at a loss; but his humour sometimes lacked delicacy and his

sarcasm the more refined shades of irony. His essays have much

to charm and even to fascinate; but to the psychological criticism

of the later French masters they are strangers.

It would, of course, be a great error to regard Macaulay’s

essays as uniformly open to such criticisms as the above; there

are, necessarily, great differences between the earlier and the later

in a collection extending over something like a score of years.

The earliest of the Edinburgh articles—that on Milton—at once

attracted attention to the new writer. Yet, though the passionate

tone both of admiration and of invective in Macaulay’s essay is

that of youth, the gorgeous rhetoric and the audacious substitution

of paradox for philosophical conclusion are not peculiar to this

stage of his productivity. In one of the very last—though not

quite the last—of these essays, that on Addison, Macaulay is

manifestly master of a mellowness of tone and calm dignity

signally appropriate to a subject to which his whole heart went

forth. Yet, the same inexhaustible flow of illustration is here,

again, accompanied by the same indiscriminate profusion of pre-

determined praise and blame—nothing, in literary, or in other,

respects, can be too good for Addison, and nothing too bad for Pope.

In an extremely acute, though not hyper-sympathetic estimate

of Macaulay’s literary qualities, J. Cotter Morison divides the

whole body of his essays and other smaller pieces into subject-

groups; and, if we accept this distribution, there will hardly be

any doubt as to which of these groups bears away the palm. Of

the essays on English history, several may rank among his very

finest work; and the essayist is on sure ground, and at his best, in

II] Macaulay's Essays and History 63

the two essays on Chatham, separated, in their dates of production, by ten years, but forming, together, a biographical whole worthy of its great national theme. There is, however, one other section of the group which calls for even more special attention. These are the two essays on Warren Hastings and on Clive, to both of which historical criticism must take exception in particular points, but in which the genius of the historian for marshalling facts often remote and obscure, and for presenting the whole array with magnificent effect, achieves an almost unprecedented triumph. In the essays on foreign history, Macaulay was less successful; that on Frederick the great had little value before Carlyle, and less afterwards; while the subject of Ranke's Popes made too great demands upon Macaulay's powers as a philosophical historian. Finally, while, of the 'controversial' essays, the author himself judiciously thought fit to exclude more than one from republication, the critical, especially if the delightful late essay on Temple and one or two others of a mixed kind are included, form the most numerous series in the collection. Macaulay's power of recalling not only the great figures of literature, but, also, the surroundings and very atmosphere of their lives, will keep such articles as that on Boswell's Johnson favourites, though the censure of Croker may be fully discounted and the belief have become general that Boswell was no fool. In the article on Bacon, on the other hand, the essayist was at his worst, and, in the main argument of the philosophical portion of the essay, stands self-condemned. The whole indictment was, at first anonymously, refuted by James Spedding, in Evenings with a Reviewer, or Macaulay and Bacon (1848), and, in a more comprehensive sense, by the whole of that distinguished critic's Life and Letters of Bacon (1861—74), one of the ablest as well as one of the most elaborate of English biographical monuments. In Macaulay's contributions to The Encyclopaedia Britannica, written towards the close of his life, the historical element is dominant; but they show unabated literary power.

When, in 1848, the first two volumes of The History of England, to which Macaulay's ever-growing public had looked forward for many years, at last appeared, and were received with unbounded applause, it was already a less extensive plan to which the great achievement would clearly have to be restricted. His hopes of carrying on the work, in the first instance, to the beginning of the régime of Sir Robert Walpole—a period of over thirty years—and, thence, peradventure, a century, or even further, beyond, gradually became dreams; and, in the end, he

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would have been happy could he have brought down the history consecutively to the death of his hero, William III, instead of the narratives of that event and of the preceding death of James II and official life had claimed him, and it had not been till 1847 that he had found himself wholly free. In 1849, he declined the professorship of modern history at Cambridge, and, though he returned to parliament in 1852, the broken state of his health determined him, in 1856, to withdraw altogether from public life. In the previous year, vols. III and IV of his History had been published and received with great, though no longer unmixed, favour. He had not quite finished his fifth volume before his death, at the end of 1859.

Macaulay's History remains a great book, and one of the landmarks of English historical literature, albeit, strictly speaking, but a fragment, and neither without shortcomings nor free from faults. His innate conviction that historical writing is a great art, whose object it is to produce an effect serviceable to virtue and truth by the best use of the materials at its disposal, led him to devote an almost equal measure of assiduous attention to the collection of those materials and to the treatment of them. Research, prosecuted indefatigably, through many years, in the byways quite as diligently as in the highways, among pamphlets and broadsheets, backstairs reports and the rumours of the streets, enabled him to paint pictures of English life and society--more especially the famous general survey which closed the preliminary portion of his History--full of colour and variety, to a degree wholly without precedent. Research of the same kind among historians and memoir-writers of an age in which observation of character, a chief heritage of the drama, had been carried to a completeness never reached before supplied the touches and the turns by which he was able to distribute light and shade over his biographical passages and personal portraits, and to impart to his entire narrative a generous and rich colouring like that of the choicest tapestry. At the same time, it cannot be denied that, while, in this never-ending process of research, like a great advocate gifted with the faculty of sweeping everything into his net except what he has no desire to find there, he never lost sight of facts that would be of use and of value to him, he, on occasion, omitted to bring in facts adverse to his conclusions. Hence; he sometimes fell into grievous errors which he was not always at pains to correct when they were pointed out, and which have thus remained as flaws on the surface

II] Macaulay's History of England 65

of the marble1. And, even when there is no question of error,

the grandeur of his theme, sometimes, carries him away into

a treatment of its main personages, if not of its most important

transactions, resistlessly influenced by his sympathies and anti-

pathies. Hence, William of Orange, the hero of the epic, and his

unfortunate adversary, James II, are drawn with much the same

imaginative partiality.

But, besides Macaulay's inexhaustible store of materials, and

the apposite use which his prodigious power of memory enabled

him, at all times, to make of them in prompt profusion, other

causes contributed to the overwhelming popularity of his History.

One of these was his power of construction—the arrangement

of the narrative and the ordering of its parts and stages.

Where else, in our own literature, at all events, shall we find

a similar mastery over what may be called the architecture of

a great historical work, in which learning, imagination and moral

purposes have alike been factors? The art of telling a story—

here, the story of a crisis in the destinies of a great nation—

depends on this, as well as on the details of composition. In

the latter respect, Macaulay's pre-eminence is unchallenged ; and

generation upon generation will continue to admire the luxuriance

of a diction capable of changing suddenly into brief pithy

sentences, that follow one another like the march of mailed

warriors, and the vis vivida of a style which enchains the atten-

tion of young and old, and wearies only because of an element

of iteration in its music. The great whig, protestant and

patriotically English History, with its grand epical movement,

its brilliant colouring and its irresistible spirit of perfect harmony

between the writer and his task, is, thus, one of the literary

masterpieces of the Victorian age.

1 The more important criticisms of Macaulay's facts and deductions are enumerated

by Sir Leslie Stephen in his article on Macaulay in D. of N. B. vol. xxxv (1893).

(See bibliography.) The most comprehensive of these are to be found in John Paget's

New 'Examen' (1861), supplemented by two additional papers of minor moment.

Paget justly observes that Macaulay's habit of citing a number of authorities, frequently

without specifying dates or pages, is most trying to the reader who wishes to verify.

This way of dealing with evidence is conspicuously misleading in his accounts of

Marlborough and of Penn, each of which, as a whole, may be set down as a gross

misrepresentation, even if particular objections, such as the confusion of George Penn

with William Penn, may be held not to be absolutely proved. In Macaulay's treatment

of the problem of responsibility for the massacre of Glencoe, his partisanship is too

palpable to allow of the reader being deluded even by the doubtful use made of

Galloway's Redetons. The prejudice shown against Claverhouse is more excusable,

and the correctness of the picture of the Highlands, although certainly one-sided,

is, at least, debatable.

E. L. XIV. CH. II.

5

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The career of Sir Archibald Alison as a historical writer resembles lord Macaulay's in the rapid (though, in Alison's case, not sudden) rise to abnormal popularity, but differs from it in other respects, and, above all, in the gradual dwindling of his reputation into that of the writer of a useful summary, whose opinions on most subjects may safely be assumed even without consulting him. Alison, herein, again, like Macaulay, was a successful essay-writer as well as historian ; in quantity, at least, his contributions to Blackwood's Magazine can hardly have been rivalled. In 1829, he planned a history of the first French revolution, partly under the influence of Cléry and Huc's account of the last days of Louis XVI, and still more under that of impressions and ideas which had occupied him since his visit—the first of many—to Paris in 1814. After his History of Scottish Criminal Law had appeared in 1832–3, in the latter year the first two volumes of his History of Europe from 1793 to 1815 followed. He was not daunted by the silence of the great reviews, or by the indifference of most other criticism ; and the remaining eight volumes of the work came out at regular intervals—the last being completed by him (with some solemnity) in time for publication on Waterloo day, 1842. Later editions followed, both at home and in the United States ; and the work was translated into French, German and Arabic. Its success was unbroken, and, in 1852, he began a Continuation of the History from 1815 to that year, which he finished in 1859. In spite of the wide popularity of the original work, the Continuation met with a cold reception from historical critics and was again strangely ignored where it might have been expected to be congenially welcomed. The researches on which it rested were, necessarily, less extensive than those which had been made by Alison for his earlier volumes : the archives of Europe had scarcely begun to reveal the secret history of these later years. Although, as a whole, the work cannot fairly be said to have fallen flat, its political and social pessimism came to be taken as a matter of course ; and the whole of The History of Europe is now falling into oblivion. Not the least interesting, though the most prolix, of its author's lesser productions is his (posthumously published) Autobiography (to 1862). His life (he long held the sheriffship of Lanarkshire) had been as honourable as it was successful, and singularly attractive in its domestic relations, and he was a good judge of both men and manners.

We saw above how the study of our national history in its foundations, or, in other words, of medieval English history in

II] Sir Francis Palgrave 67

its documents, including, in these, the institutions and the language

of the people, had begun with Sharon Turner, but that he proved

unable to present the results of his labours adequately in an

organic historical narrative. Sir Francis Palgrave, who, besides

first strongly impressing upon Englishmen the value of this study,

by his own example pointed the way to a free original use of the

national records by historians of imaginative and constructive

power, was a writer to whom the attribute of genius can hardly

be denied. Of Jewish extraction (he changed his patronymic

Cohen in middle life), he had, while carrying on the work of a

solicitor, long been interested in literary and antiquarian studies,

and, besides occasionally contributing to the great quarterly

reviews, had, in 1818, edited an Anglo-Norman political chanson.

In 1822, he came forward with a plan for the publication of the

records, which met with the approval of the Record commission ;

and, from 1827 (in which year he was called to the bar, where he

was chiefly occupied with pedigree cases) to 1837, he edited for it

a series of volumes. In 1831, he brought out a History of the

Anglo-Saxons (the first volume of a History of England) in 'The

Family Library,' and, in the following year, The Rise and Progress

of the English Commonwealh, covering the same period, of which it

furnishes a fascinating as well as lucid review. The book, deservedly,

had a great success ; nor was anything else so good of the kind

produced before John Richard Green. In 1834, he published

An Essay on the Original Authority of the King's Council.

In 1837, he proceeded still further in the line of popular treat-

ment in Truth and Fictions of the Middle Ages: the Merchant

and the Friar. In the next year, he was appointed deputy-

keeper of the reconstituted and reorganised Record office. The

duties of this post, held by him during the remainder of his long

life, he discharged with great zeal and energy, issuing a series

of twenty-two annual reports. Of his chief work, The History

of Normandy and of England, the earlier volumes did not appear

till 1851 and 1857 respectively, and the last two not till after

his death, which occurred in 1861. He had thus, without either

haste or pause, laboured so as to earn for himself a meed of

recognition from the historian who was to take up his work in

the same field, though from very different points of view.

Freeman pronounced1 Palgrave the first English writer of great

original powers who had devoted himself to the early history

1 In a review of The History of Normandy and of England in the London Guardian

of July 1851, cited in Stephen's Life and Letters of E. A. Freeman, vol. i, p. 118.

5—2

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of his own country, and judged his faults to spring from the

exuberance of a mind of great natural gifts.

Palgrave's treatment of early English history was not only the

earliest on a scale commensurate with the importance of the

subject; but it, also, was the first attempt, on such a scale, to

deduce ruling conclusions from a study of the development of

legal principles based on those which controlled the life and

conditions of the Roman empire. The monarchical power

founded on these conceptions was, as he held, what domi-

nated the growth of the Germanic kingdoms—so that ‘Clovis’

and Offa were representations of imperial ideas; but, in England,

it was the free judicial institutions of the Germanic communities

which, in their turn, interfered to prevent these traditions from

leading to absolutism, and called forth the beginnings of our

constitutional life. Palgrave regarded the series of conquests,

usually supposed to have successively changed the essential con-

ditions as well as the forms of our national life, as anything

but subversive in their effects; and, even with regard to the

English conquest, was confirmed in this view by his paradoxical

belief that, for the most part, the Britons were Germanic, not

Celtic, in origin—Belgic Kymrys, whose neighbours and kin are to

be found on the continent as Saxons and Frisians1. This tenet

illustrates the occasional audacity of Palgrave's speculations;

and the general notion of the dominating influence of the Roman

imperial idea reached its height in him, before it was overthrown

by the endeavours of the Germanist school2, which was in the

ascendant before the close of his historical labours. But the

inspiriting and stimulating effect of those labours has, of late,

been undervalued rather than overrated; and an enduring

memorial of their value has long been a desideratum, which is

now in process of being supplied.

The date of John Mitchell Kemble's most important contribu-

tion to historical literature was earlier than that of Palgrave's

by a year or two; and, in the purpose to which he diverted

his researches, he connects himself with the Germanist school

rather than with what may be called Palgrave's imperialist

tendency. Kemble—though he appears to have known nothing

of Waitz—is essentially Germanistic in the groundwork of his

teaching; and, in the preface to his best known work, The

1 Cf. Vinogradoff, P., op. cit. pp. 11 ff.

2 For a full statement of the origin and development of this school or group,

see ibid. pp. 36 ff.

II] John Mitchell Kemble. Freeman 69

Saxons in England (1849), written at a time when the foundations of existing European politics seemed giving way on all sides, declared his opinion that to her institutions and principles of government, bequeathed to her by Teutonic ancestors, England, in a great measure, owed her pre-eminence among nations, her stability and her security. No doubt, this work and, even more so, the Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici by which it was preceded, and the less important collection of later state papers, which followed it, were the productions of an antiquary rather than of a historian ; The Saxons in England offers a series of dissertations on materials, unwelded into an organic whole. The writer has little interest in the traditions of the conquest as handed down by the Chronicle and Bede ; what concerns him is the gradual evolution of institutions, mainly of Teutonic origin, although these began to spread among us while Britain was still under Roman dominion, and the population was even more largely Celtic than its lower orders continued to remain. In Kemble's view, the social changes that accompanied the gradual establishment of these institutions were due to the conditions and new forms of landed proprietorship. Kemble, though he had no legal training, like that of certain other English historians of this age, by his study of the charters came to understand that the English system of land laws has an importance for English history not less than the Roman had for that of Rome ; and this insight he owed, in the first instance, as he owed his perception of the Germanic origin of that system, to his Old English lore. Rarely has so great and direct a service been rendered to historical science by philosophical scholarship1.

The ruling principles of English historians of the Germanist group found their clearest and most vigorous exponent in Edward Augustus Freeman, the central figure of the Oxford historical school of the Victorian age—unless that title be disputed on behalf of Stubbs, to whom Freeman's loyal friendship would have gladly yielded precedence. In a sense, Freeman's method supplemented Kemble's rather than followed it ; for, in technical phrase, it was the written monuments rather than the sources—the records rather than the remains—on which Freeman based the conclusions repeated with unwearying persistence in his numerous books great and small, and in countless essays and reviews. He would not hear of Palgrave's paradox as to the kinship between the Romanised Celts and the English invaders, and attributed to

1 As to Benjamin Thorpe, see, ante, vol. xii, p. 244.

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these a conquest which, with the exception of certain parts of the

country, meant extirpation. On the other hand, the Norman

conquest, of which he became the historian, seemed to him to have

brought about no fresh change of an analogous kind, and to have

fundamentally affected neither the nature and character of the

population, nor the course of the national history. In the consecu-

tive doings of the nation in war and in peace, in its enterprises

and exploits as well as in its legislation and system of government

in both church and state, its Germanic nature and character manifest

themselves. Obviously, however, the historian, whose own interest

is restricted to these relations, and who makes no pretence of

entering into the social life of the people in any of its aspects

save, in a more or less restricted measure, those of language,

literature and architecture, omits a strong link in his argument.

Injustice would be done to the force with which Freeman

explains and illustrates his general position, were it not added

that he calls in the powerful aid of the comparative method, for

which he was exceptionally qualified by his acquaintance with

much of the medieval history of non-Germanic lands, as well as

by his familiarity, noted in an earlier volume of this work1, with

the history, and the constitutional history in particular, of Greece

and Rome. His training as a historical student may, in some

respects, have been self-training only, and his advocacy of the

principle of the unity of history may have suffered from his lack

of intimacy (on which he was wont to insist) with periods which

'were not his own' or to which 'he had not come down'. Yet,

through him, comparative history first became a living thing

to English students, and the unity which he proclaimed with

missionary zeal was gradually accepted as a reality, in spite of

the time-honoured nomenclature of the schools2.

Freeman's literary activity seems extraordinary even to those

who had some personal cognisance of part of it. His historical

studies, at first, took a largely archaeological turn, and his early

literary efforts consisted, in the main, of contributions to The

Ecclesiologist and The Ecclesiologist, varied by Poems, legendary

and historical, published in conjunction with G. W. Cox. He

was, however, preparing for historical efforts in a wider field;

by a fortunate chance, a university prize competition, on the

1 See, ante, vol. xii, chap. xv.

2 It was as he listened to Arnold's Oxford lectures1 in 1841 and 1842, that the idea

of the unity of history first dawned upon the future successor of the historian of

Rome in his modern history chair.

II] Freemans Earlier Writings 71

effects of the Roman conquest (1845—6), led him to read the works

of Thierry, Lingard and Palgrave ; and he carried on the study of

the subject after he had had 'the good luck not to get the prize.'

He was, also, early intent upon the acquisition of a pure and

simple style, of which, as a historian, he was certainly master.

There was never much grace, and still less play of humour, about

what he wrote ; but his manner of writing, which he seems, in a

measure, to have modelled on Macaulay, was almost always forcible

and, in general, dignified ; and, at times, he could rise to a certain

grandeur free from dogmatic admixture.

Although long interested in the question of the study of

history at Oxford, and author of a series of lectures published

under the title History and Conquests of the Saracens and of an

earlier History of Architecture, besides having become, from

about the year 1860 onwards, one of the pillars of The Saturday

Review, it was not till a little later that he reached the full

height of his powers as a historian. His reviews and other articles

in weeklies (The Saturday and The Guardian in particular), as

well as in monthlies and quarterlies, are, to a large extent, and

where their intent was not essentially controversial, chips from

the block at which he was working—of the same material and

texture, homogeneous with his chief books in life and thought,

and little differentiated from them in style. His pen was, in fact,

as much his own in his journalistic as in his other productions—

in other words, his periodical articles, though, for the most part,

unsigned, invariably presented his own opinions1. His literary

activity, especially from 1859 onwards, was simply astounding2.

In 1863, before he had completed the preparations for his

Norman Conquest, he brought out the first and, as it proved, the

only volume of a work which, had it been carried out on the lines

he had laid down for himself, might have become, in his younger

friend lord Bryce's words, 'a very great book,' and which, as it

is, has been, by some, more highly prized than any other of his

writings. The History of Federal Government, which Freeman

had designed as a comparative history of federalism in ancient

Greece, in the medieval foundation of the Swiss confederation, in

1 He broke off his long connection with The Saturday Review when he came to

differ from the general views of that journal on near-Eastern politics. His Hellenic

sympathies had confirmed him in opinions at whloh he had arrived after much

reflection, and, from the time when he published (in The Edinburgh for April 1857)

his article entitled The Greek People and the Greek Kingdom, they never wavered

through good or evil report.

2 See his son-in-law's, dean Stephens's, excellent Life and Letters for details.

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the intermediate growth of the united provinces of the Netherlands and of the Hansa and in the modern creation of the United States of America, was, however, not carried beyond the earliest of these stages1. He soon came back to his first love, if, with his power of duplicating his tasks, he had ever swerved from it. The appearance, in 1865, of his Old English History for Children—children of twenty-four, it was, with some point, remarked—showed in what direction he was again concentrating his labours and the travels which accompanied them ; and, in 1807, the first volume of The History of the Norman Conquest was actually published2. The last volume (the fifth) did not appear till 1876.

Freeman's Norman Conquest accomplished what Palgrave had planned, but only partially carried out. Into the later work, mistakes may have found their way, even into salient passages of the narrative, and into the account of the tragic catastrophe of Senlac itself ; and its general effect may suffer from a certain lengthiness of which few historians writing on such a scale have been able altogether to free themselves—least of all Freeman, who had accustomed himself to the privilege of having his say out. But any such objections are cast into the shade by the merits of the work. It is admirably arranged on a converging plan, which, in the second volume, brings the reader to the reign of Edward the Confessor, so far as the banishment and death of earl Godwine, the real hero of the tale; while the affairs of Normandy are brought up to William's first visit to England, and thence, to Edward's death and the coronation of Harold, the second hero of the story. Volume III relates the conquest proper with epic breadth, and volume IV the reign of William In England. Finally, in volume V, the history of the Norman kings is summarized to the death of Stephen and the coronation of Henry II, and chapters follow on the political results of the Norman conquest, and its effects on language, literature and architecture. The narrative, which closes with a summary of the Angevin reigns, is enriched by a series of excursions on particular points and episodes, on geographical sites and local remains. Lucid in arrangement, the work nowhere fails to manifest the

1 Of. ante, vol. xii, pp. 815—816.

2 In 1869, Freeman began his Historical Geography; but it was not published till eleven years later. The idea of the work was excellent, and had not hitherto been elaborated in an English form. As to the execution, of parts of the work, at all events, opinions differ. Perhaps, his general historical knowledge was not of the minute sort required for working out the details of the plan.

spirit in which it was composed—that of a lofty patriotism inseparable from an ardent love of freedom. His Swiss studies reflected themselves in several passages of The Norman Conquest; and he became ‘more and more convinced of the absolute identity of all the old Teutonic constitutions.’ Thus, he was fortified in his contention that the Norman conquest left the free national life of England, in its essentials, unchanged.

In 1882, Freeman published The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry I, thus carrying out the design which he had in his mind when summarising these passages of English history in the last volume of his Norman Conquest. Here, again, the narrative involved a twofold task; its main interest, however, lay in ecclesiastical affairs, a field with which he took pleasure in occupying himself, but which had also engaged the attention of other eminent historians. These volumes ended his labours on the Norman conquest of England; but, although he never composed his contemplated life of Henry I, he did not abandon the subject of the Norman conquests in Europe. ‘Palermo in Sicily, and of his history of that island, which he was also to leave half-told, we have already spoken1. In 1884, Freeman at last found himself in the chair of modern history at Oxford; but this acknowledgment of his eminence as a historian came too late —at least too late for him to fit his teaching into the system of historical instruction then flourishing in his university. This was a mortification to him; for no man of letters or learning ever bestowed more attention on the academical, as well as on the political, ecclesiastical and county administrative, life around him. Still, his actual work as a historian remained, to the last, the determining interest of his life; and, in the midst of the prosecution of it, death overtook him on the Spanish coast, at Alicante, in March 1892.

In the death of Freeman, English historical literature suffered a most severe loss. He had many great qualities—with, perhaps, the defects of some of them; but these failings were most palpable in controversy, in the conduct of which he lacked a due sense of proportion, and was apt to become tiresome, and, at times, unjust. As to his general historical manner, he has been frequently charged with pedantry; but there is some element of misapprehension in the cavil. For, though his habit of reiteration (deliberately adopted) added to the positiveness of his manner, and thus imparted even

1 Ante, vol. xii, chap. xv, p. 818.

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to passages of his Histories too strongly dogmatic a flavour, he was always perfectly clear and to the point, and declared that 'history has no technical terms'—adding that he had sometimes wished it had, 'to frighten away fools.' He was apt to be lengthy, and lord Bryce once told him that he had caught too much of the manner of the cxixth Psalm; but he was not diffuse by nature. It was the cause—the cause of truth—which led him to spare no man or interest or opinion, and, least of all, to spare himself.

The close association of the names of Freeman and Stubbs, and, with theirs, of that of a third but younger Oxford historian, John Richard Green, was, at one time, a frequent theme of academical jest; but, indeed, nothing would have been stranger than that a bond of intimate intellectual sympathy should have failed to unite men who, in the same age, devoted themselves to the study and exposition of the national history, if not always from the same point of view, at all events on a common basis of historical principles and with the same purpose of proving the continuity of the national life. And, certainly, the recognition in English historical literature of that continuity was signally advanced by their fellowship.

William Stubbs, successively bishop of Chester and of Oxford, was Freeman's junior by two years only, but made his mark as a historical writer nearly a decade later than his friend. For some years, however, before the publication of his chief contribution to English constitutional history, Stubbs, who, from 1850, lived a life of tranquillity in his Essex rectory Navestock, enjoyed a high reputation with those interested in the progress of the Rolls Series. To this collection, begun in 1857, he contributed, in 1858, Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum, an endeavour to exhibit the course of episcopal succession in England. By inclination and habit, he was an antiquary, who came to interest himself more especially in chronology and genealogy; but he edited perhaps the most important of the publications undertaken for the series, the Itinerarium and the Epistolae Cantuarienses of the reign of Richard I, besides many others, including the Gesta Regis Henrici of Benedict of Peterborough (1867) and Memorials of St Dunstan (1874), for which he wrote luminous prefaces, displaying both independence of judgment and high literary quality. In 1866, having previously held the librarianship at Lambeth, Stubbs was appointed by the earl of Derby to the modern history chair at Oxford; and having, as he said, been for seventeen years a country parson, he now became for eighteen years an Oxford professor. In

II] William Stubbs 75

neither capacity did he allow himself any respite in his historical labours, steadily pursuing those lines of study to which he was attracted by the highest motives, never concealed by him. His principal achievement in the department of ecclesiastical history was The Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents of Great Britain and Ireland, edited by him in conjunction with A. W. Haddan (1871—8); in the same connection may be mentioned, though they were of later date, his five Appendices to the Report of the Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, drawn up in 1883 after attendance on seventy-five meetings of the commission.

In 1870, Stubbs first came before a wider public, and earned the gratitude of students of English constitutional history by arranging and editing Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional History (to the reign of Edward I). The introductory notes to this volume, together with the opening sketch of the evolution on which the collection was intended to throw light, are models of succinct and luminous exposition. This book, which is not likely to fall out of use, was followed, in 1874—8, by The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, which has long been regarded as the accepted guide to a study signally advanced by it. The subject of the work, the evolution of English institutions from Old English times to the beginning of the Tudor monarchy, where Hallam had begun his investigations, is treated after a full and comprehensive fashion, military history, and what may be called foreign politics, being excluded. Inevitably, conceptions of English constitutional history which still commended themselves to Stubbs have been changed or have vanished in the course of the period during which his work has, on the whole, held its ground; the mark theory, the stand-by of the older Germanistic school, has been so greatly modified as to have been, in a large measure, abandoned, and, according to its actual meaning, Magna Carta is no longer held by trained historians to secure the right of trial by jury to every Englishman. Many points and passages of English constitutional history, too, which have been cleared up by more recent enquiry—the whole relations of the forest to English life, and the true story of the rising of 1381—have recently been shown to have been insufficiently treated by Stubbs1. But, just as Stubbs’s work is comprehensive in its range and purpose, rather than specially

1 See Petit-Dutaillis, C., Studies and Notes supplementary to Stubbs’s Constitutional History, parts I and II (originally published as notes to the French translation of the work); English translation by Rhodes, W. E., Manchester, 1908—14.

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concerned with particular or novel points, so its value is dependent

on the solidity and effectiveness with which the main historical

position is worked out—the sober and moderate position that

the English constitution is the result of administrative conception in the

age of the Normans of local self-government found in the age of the

Saxons 1.

Thus, it is a work which admits of being improved without being

discarded, and which it would be folly, because of its inevitable

deficiencies, to cast aside as out of date.

John Richard Green, though of a younger generation than

either Freeman or Stubbs, was not only, in his labours, closely

associated with both, but, to Freeman, he stood in a relation of

intimacy which made the younger man the chosen companion,

philosopher and friend of the older, while he was regarded with

an almost equally affectionate, if, perhaps, more critical, interest

by Stubbs, who, from the first, gave much attention to the design

of A Short History of the English People. On the morrow of the

actual publication of this book, Green (really very wideawake

already) awoke to find himself famous; and Stubbs pronounced

that he ‘knew no one who had the same grasp of the subject and

the same command of details combined.’ Himself the most

accurate of writers, he was not in the least perturbed by the

onslaughts made on Green’s incidental lapses. The previous

literary career of the author of A Short History had been that

of a periodical writer of extraordinary freshness and ability. In

none of his contributions to The Saturday Review (which

extended from 1867 to 1872, with one or two later articles) was he

so successful as in the half-descriptive, half-historical ‘middles,’

which species Freeman, more or less, had originated, but which,

in Green’s hands, was brought to a mastery not reached by

anyone but himself: these were afterwards republished under

the title Studies from England and Italy (1876). In addition,

he wrote a number of ‘social’ middles, which flowed spontaneously

from his facile pen, and were, in part, reminiscences of clerical life

in its humorous, as well as in its serious, aspects. He had quitted

Oxford ‘with the full intention of becoming the historian of the

church of England,’ and it was through a lecture on Dunstan that

he first arrested Freeman’s attention. His design was, character-

istically, changed into that of the history of the development of

Christian civilisation in England, and, before very long, into first

1 Cf. Vinogradott, op. cit. pp. 23—24.

II] J. R. Green's Short History 77

thoughts of a short history with a still more comprehensive scope.

Soon after the first forming of this plan, he was made aware of the

seeds in him of an all but incurable disease.

Still only gradually, he made up his mind to devote the span

of life which might be his to the writing of history ; and it was

to English history that he felt he had a clear calling. Other

schemes and occupations were laid or left aside ; he resigned his

London incumbency ; and, while spending successive winter seasons

in Italy, gave himself up altogether to his task. In 1874, A Short

History of the English People appeared, and met with a success

unprecedented since the days of Macaulay. The extraordinary

popularity of this book is not due altogether to Green's narrative

and descriptive power—which always addresses itself to the

relations of the scene to the human actors in it—and to the

wonderful brightness of the work. It is, also, due to his recog-

nition of all the elements in the national life which contributed

to the progress of the national history, and, especially, of the

intimate connection between the political, economical and social

and the literary and artistic life of the people. And, above all,

it is due to the sympathetic pulse which beats in every page, and

which is more than anywhere else noticeable where he gives

expression to his immense and indignant interest, almost recalling

that of the psalmist, in the poor.

The treatment of the several sections of Green's Short History

shows inequalities, and the narrative is not free from blemishes

of taste as well as errors of fact, to which the author was prepared

to plead guilty ; for, notwithstanding the buoyancy of his spirits

and the vivacity of his conversation, the genuine modesty of Green

revealed itself to all who knew him otherwise than superficially.

The book was not really well-suited for the purposes of a school-

book, to which it was largely applied ; but, though the student

of English history who remains a stranger to the work is not to

be congratulated, it has satisfied higher ends than those of mere

imparting of knowledge. That it assisted greatly in spreading

and sustaining a living interest in our national past, and in making

it intelligible as an organic whole of which the working cannot

be doubted; and rarely has a single-minded ambition been

more swiftly or more amply fulfilled.

Aided by the devotion of his wife, Green lived to produce two

distinct elaborations of parts of the theme of his Short History,

entitled respectively The Making, and The Conquest, of England.

It was in these by-ways of his studies that he was specially able

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to apply his power of tracing and delineating the geographical aspects of national historical growth, with which no other historian had dealt so fully and so ably before him. He died, in his forty-sixth year, at Mentone, after a heroic struggle against the disease to which he succumbed.

Of later English historical scholars who have taken a conspicuous part in examining the foundations of medieval political and social life, without confining themselves to this field of research and exposition, our mention must be of the briefest. The writings of Sir Henry Maine belong to legal and political, rather than to historical, literature, and his great reputation as a philosophical jurist, due, in the first instance, to his work entitled Ancient Law and strengthened by his legislative services as legal member of the council of India, rose to its height when, after his return home, he successively held two important professorial chairs—of jurisprudence and of international law. His lectures entitled Village Communities in the East and West (1871) developed, with a breadth and luminousness peculiar to the author and on a comparative basis largely supplied by his knowledge of India in especial, the conclusions of Maurer and Nasse. A second course, entitled The Early History of Institutions (1875), applied the same method to a still more extensive field of research. His lectures on international law, which entered into the question of arbitration as a preventive of war, Maine, unfortunately, did not live to see through the press. His method was a remarkably attractive one; but he lacked the time, and, perhaps, the inclination, for the closer investigation required for a historical treatment of certain of his subjects.

To economic history proper is to be assigned the best known voluminous work of James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England from 1259 to 1793 (1866—1902); but he was also well seen in general political history, and was a friend and follower of Cobden. His Protests of the Lords (1875) is an interesting, as well as a valuable, piece of work. The social history and life of the English peasantry, in his own East Anglia, was the subject of a study by Augustus Jessopp, which, under the name Arcady for better for worse (1887), attracted wide attention; he was an ecclesiastical historian of learning and breadth of view, and lived a long and unselfish scholar's life.

The subject of English village communities was specially studied by Frederic Seebohm, who died in 1912. So far back as 1867, he

II] Frederic William Maitland 79

had first become known to students of English history by an attractive volume entitled The Oxford Reformers of 1498—Colet, Erasmus and More—which renders full justice to Colet's share in the renascence movement on the basis of the letters of his whole-hearted friend and admirer Erasmus. But the researches which, at a later date, he carried on during his long residence in Hertfordshire, and of which the first published result was his well-known book The English Village Community (1882), had reference to problems of early land-tenure and of the social system evolved from it which largely occupied the minds of medievalists in our own and other countries, and which represent a reaction from the theory of the Germanic origin of the village community to that of its primary indebtedness to Roman influence. Seebohm's investigations were not confined to English, but afterwards extended, in particular, to Welsh, conditions of life.

In Frederic William Maitland, who, after a brilliant, but all too short, career as teacher of English law and writer on English legal history, was taken away when at the height of his intellectual powers, his contemporaries, as of one accord, had come to recognise a foremost authority on the studies with which he had identified himself. Rarely has a more modest self-estimate (he judged himself, for instance, incapable of narrative history) coexisted with more fascinating mental and personal qualities, more penetrating insight into theory, a rarer art of illustrating it by the use of practical example and a quicker and pleasanter wit. His power of epigram was considerable, and imparts a delightful spontaneous sparkle to his writings on subjects in the treatment of which few readers expect diversion to be blended with instruction1. He had inherited from his father, Samuel Roffey Maitland, a vivid interest in English history and a thorough independence of judgment2. After giving himself up at Cambridge to philosophical reading, he had, during eight years, acquired a full experience of the practice of the law, but preferred its historical side, and further equipped himself for the work of his life by an assiduous study of continental legal history. Savigny's influence was,

1 See, for some illustrations, Smith, A. L., Frederic William Maitland (1908).

2 S. R. Maitland, who during part of his life was librarian at Lambeth, in an early work on the Albigenses and Waldenses (1882), treated the pretensions of Joseph Milner's Church History with much contempt, and, in later publications, attacked both him and Foxe, the author of The Book of Martyrs. The elder Maitland's numerous contributions to The British Magazine, of which he became editor, gave much offence to the evangelical party; but they have gained high praise both by their learning and by their force of style. See bibliography.

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necessarily, very strong upon him, and he began a translation of the

great Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter which he never

completed. As the purpose of his labours gradually shaped itself

in his mind, and he resolved upon accomplishing for the history

of English, what Savigny had achieved for that of Roman, law,

he perceived the necessity of associated effort, if this end was to

be reached. He thus became the founder, and, afterwards, the

director, of the Selden society, to whose publications he con-

tributed nearly half of those issued in his lifetime. The history

of common law had never been taken in hand after Bracton and

Blackstone ; and the very language of the law of the later middle

ages had been left without dictionary or grammar1.

Maitland did not claim to be a palaeographer ; but he taught

himself by teaching others, and came to be esteemed an expert on

MSS and in the criticism of texts2. In his own first important

production, Bracton's Notebook (1887), he claimed for a British

Museum MS the character of a collection of materials for the

famous treatise De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae. By such

researches as these, many of which were published by the Selden

society, and the whole range of which his paper entitled The

Materials for English Legal History3 showed him to have under

his ken, he prepared himself for the publication, in conjunction with

his friend Sir Frederick Pollock, of their History of the English

Law before the Time of Edward I (1895). This book, which at

once took rank as the standard authority on its subject, deals

chiefly with the latter part of the twelfth, and with the thirteenth,

centuries—’a luminous age throwing light on both past and

future.’ But Maitland's attention was by no means absorbed by

this period of the laws and institutions of England. His essays

entitled Domesday Book and Beyond belong to a relatively late

date in his career (1897), and touch on debatable ground. In his

Selden volume Bracton and Azo (1895), he had discussed the

relations between English law and the corpus juris to which,

indirectly if not directly, the English judge had been held to be

deeply indebted. The general subject of these relations possessed

the greatest interest for him, and connected itself with the special

question of English canon law, which he discussed in six essays

entitled Roman Canon Law in the Church of England. Much

1 See Maitland's chapter (xx) in vol. I of the present work, 'The Anglo-French Law

Language.'

2 See his introduction to the edition of The Mirror of Justices by his friend

Whittaker, W. J. (Selden society's publications, vol. v).

3 I, II, in The Political Science Quarterly (New York, 1889).

II] Maitland. Mary Bateson 81

controversy followed, and Maitland briefly reverted to the subject

in the course of a very judicious contribution to The Cambridge

Modern History1 entitled ‘The Anglican Settlement and the

Scottish Reformation.’ His Rede lecture (1901) entitled English

Law and the Renaissance, with its humorous half-outlook on

the future, will not easily be forgotten.

His reputation as a teacher had long been established; so

far back as 1887, he had delivered a course of lectures entitled

The Constitutional History of England, which extends over five

periods from the death of Edward I to the present day, and,

though analytical in form, combines, with a clear statement of

principles, an abundance of illustration, while showing a wonderful

alertness and ability of, as it were, entering into the minds of his

hearers. The course was not published till 1908, and furnishes the

fittest memorial of Maitland’s capacity as a lecturer. The Oxford

Ford Lectures (1898) dealt with the growth and definition of the

idea of a corporation, an abstraction admitting of being rendered

impressive by means of concrete illustrations, such as always had

a peculiar fascination for him. In his last years, in the face of

obstacles such as few scholars have braced themselves to resist

and overcome, Maitland continued to read and write, even in his

distant winter home. He proved his literary skill in a charming

life of Leslie Stephen; but, most of his time was, when possible,

given to The Year Books of Edward II (1307–10)—a series

begun late by him but carried through three successive volumes

These monuments take the student back straight into the middle

ages, whose life they conjure up out of the dust of the law-

courts. Maitland’s introduction to the first volume could only

have been written by one who had acquired a complete intimacy

with his material.

With Maitland’s work that of Mary Bateson is closely con-

nected, although it was to Creighton that she owed the impulse

to historical research. As a medievalist, she more especially

occupied herself with monastic and municipal history; her earliest

writings, including an article entitled The Origin and Early

History of Double Monasteries, belonged to the former field of

study; and she edited Records of the Borough of Leicester, The

Charters of the Borough of Cambridge (with Maitland, 1901) and

two volumes entitled Borough Customs in the publications of the

Selden society. Her papers entitled The Laws of Breteuil showed

her original power of dealing with the sources of municipal

1 Vol. ii, chap. xv (1908).

E. L. XIV. CH. II. 6

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institutions, and she had thoroughly trained herself in medieval

bibliography. Whatever subject she treated, she wrote on it with

simplicity, directness and independence of judgment—qualities

which were part of her nature.

Among historical scholars of mark whose original work was

largely based on their labours at the Record office, John Sherren

Brewer and James Gairdner should be mentioned together. The

former, after having, in his earlier days, been subject to the in-

fluence of the Oxford movement, was much associated with

F. D. Maurice, whom he succeeded in his chair at King's college,

London. He made his mark as a writer in connection with the

earlier instalments of a work on which he remained engaged

during the whole of the latter part of his life—the calendaring,

for the Rolls series, of the state papers of Henry VIII, in a

succession of volumes to which he furnished introductions,

published posthumously as a separate work, The Reign of

Henry VIII to the death of Wolsey, under the editorship of

Gairdner. Brewer enjoyed a widespread reputation as a high-

minded and trustworthy historian, and as an accomplished and

many-sided man of letters. He did not profess to be writing a

history of the reign of Henry VIII; but his few introductions,

together, amount to what is much more than a digest of the

transactions of the period—a survey of it by a writer of extensive

reading and remarkably clear judgment. His editions of works

of authors among whom are both Roger and Francis Bacon,

and his ever-welcome contributions to The Quarterly Review,

posthumously collected under the title English Studies, suffi-

ciently exhibit the intellectual versatility of the least dry-as-dust

of archivists.

James Gairdner, who was a public servant at the Record office

for more than half a century, used to say that what he knew he

had taught himself; and no scholar has ever passed through a

more conscientious training. He carried on Brewer's Calendar of

Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII to its com-

pletion in twenty-one volumes, further edited the documents of

the preceding two reigns, together with chronicles and other

monuments, and, in 1872—5, produced a standard edition of

The Paston Letters. But he, also, made many original contri-

butions to the study of English history, which were published in

divers collective works, and reprinted in his own and James

Spedding's Studies in English History (1881); and, in addition

to a remarkably fair and by no means paradoxical, Life of

II] James Gairdner. Froude 83

Richard III, produced a short and equally original biographical estimate of Henry VII. The remainder of his writings are concerned with ecclesiastical history. Long studies in this field of research had matured in him conclusions as to the English reformation and its precursors, differing, in many respects, from current protestant opinion, but always resting on a careful and well-considered treatment of authorities. The editor of the nearly finished (fourth) volume left behind him by Gairdner of his Lollardy and the Reformation considers that, in writing the section of The History of the English Church, of which Gairdner's later work was an unfinished enlargement, he (though already at an advanced age) believed himself to be fulfilling a duty1; and he, certainly, had the cause of truth at heart. His sympathies, at the same time, were strongly on the side of authority, as is evident from his earlier essays on the Lollards, as well as from that entitled The Divine Right of Kings2.

Before we pass on to the treatment of later periods of English history, we pause at the name of James Anthony Froude. He holds a position so peculiar to himself in our historical literature that it is difficult to assign to his name its appropriate position in an enumeration of our principal nineteenth century writers on history. His true place would be near that of Carlyle; whom, during the greater part of his literary life, he consciously followed as his master, whose way of looking at history he made his own, and the biography of whom was among the noteworthiest of his books. He had begun to write with quite other models before his eyes; but, although he very early disengaged himself from the controlling influence of Newman, it impressed itself, if upon nothing else in him, upon his style as a writer. His contribution to Lives of the English Saints—a life of St Neot, erstwhile prince Athelstan of Kent—undertaken at Newman's request, is chiefly remarkable for the effect on the writer of the requisite investigation of his subject; but it, also, shows his interest in history, and English history especially, as a desirable universality study, of which he thinks the statute-book might (perhaps in an abridged form) usefully be made a foundation. Then came the intellectual

1 See W. Hunt's preface to vol. iv of Lollardy and the Reformation (1904), p. ix.

2 Reprinted in vol. I of the Studies mentioned above, which contains, together with Spedding's review of the conduct of James I in connection with the Overbury affair, a contribution by Gairdner to the history of Lollardy, The Historical Element in Shakespeare's Falstaff. Students of the first two Lancaster reigns owes a great debt to the labours of James Hamilton Wylie, whose History of the Reign of Henry V was, in substance, completed before his death.

6—2

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experiences which put an end to his connection with academical,

and with clerical, work1, and in the midst of which he found

a friend in Kingsley (to whose sister-in-law, the Argemone of

Yeast, he gave his hand). In 1849, he was introduced to Carlyle ;

and, soon afterwards, he settled down to a literary life at Plas

Gwynant in Wales and Bideford in Devon. Here, he began, and

carried on during many years, his History of England from the

Fall of Wolsey, which, first intended to reach to the death of

Elizabeth, actually closed with the dissipation of the Spanish

Armada.

The earliest sample of the spirit and style in which Froude

addressed himself to his task had been a recapitulation,

published in The Westminster Review (1852) under the title

England's Forgotten Worthies, of certain original narratives

of a daring and adventurous sort. That the seed thus sown

did not fall on barren ground is shown by the fact that the

paper inspired in Kingsley the idea of Westward Ho! and

supplied Tennyson with the theme of The Revenge. That this

stirring article breathed the antipathies as well as the sym-

pathies that were to mark the forthcoming History, suggests

itself from the terse description of king James I as 'the base son

of a bad mother.' But, though Froude's reputation already

stood high in a chosen circle of friends, and, though Carlyle

watched the progress of the History with genuine interest—he

may, indeed, be said to have been largely responsible for its

central idea, the insufficiency of any but extraordinary men (such

as Henry VIII, in the first instance) for the management and

direction of extraordinary times—the success of the book must

have taken its author by surprise. He was too intent upon his

own aims and, also, in the right sense, too much of a man of the

world, to pay much attention to either praise or blame ; but, that

a historical work of such amplitude should command the interest of

a wide public, while Macaulay's History was still in progress, and

that a book which could not but offend many, and startle more,

should sustain this interest throughout its voluminous course,

was, certainly, a very uncommon literary experience. Beyond a

doubt, the primary cause accounting for this result must be sought

in the style and method of the writer. Froude's style combined

fullness of matter with charm of manner; for his study of original

1 The Nemesis of Faith (1849) (intended by Froude as a 'tragedy') was widely

accepted as having a didactic purpose and containing the confession of his own

faith. Cf., ante, vol. xii., p. 282.

II] Froude's History of England 85

documents both at home and abroad (notably at Simancas) was most assiduous. His form of narrative was Herodotean rather than Thucydidean; but the British reading public, especially since its literary appetite has been fed largely on fiction, likes breadth of exposition, and Froude's long paraphrases of original documents commended themselves to readers in search of the real. His method was, intentionally, the reverse of scientific ; 'there seems, indeed,' he wrote1, 'something incongruous in the very connexion of such words as Science and History.' His own style, beyond a doubt, is all but irresistible to those who enjoy the union of facility of form with wealth of colouring; and in variety of invective he is unsurpassed, at least among writers whose good taste is only exceptionally overpowered by sentiment2.

This is not the place in which to revive the memory of the attacks which, during its progress, were made upon Froude's History, certainly one of the best-abused books of any age of literature. Besides long and severe charges of partisan misstatement, brought by representative historical writers against his treatment of the monasteries question and of other important topics, he was, from the first, exposed to a running fire of hostile criticism on the part of The Saturday Review; and, from 1864 onwards, these censures grew into a systematic assault, which even the friends of E. A. Freeman, who was mainly responsible for it, would have gladly seen brought to a speedier end. These attacks, which, excessive and, occasionally, even erroneous though they were, proved fatal to Froude's reputation as a historian, had their origin, partly in differences of ecclesiastical opinion, but, mainly, in faults that were, or had become, engrained in his historical writing-looseness of statement, incorrectness of quotation and constant bias of opinion and sentiment. The true charge to be brought against him lies, not in his neglect of authorities, but in the perversity, conscious or unconscious, of his use of them. And this, again, was due, not so much to a preconceived partisanship, as to a conviction that the truth lay, away from popular notions, in the conclusions at which he had independently, and, sometimes, paradoxically, arrived. The uprightness of Henry VIII and the wickedness of those who stood in his way, or in that of the movement which Henry fitted into his policy, had to be proved coûte que coûte; and proved, in this sense, it was, to Froude's

1 See 'The Scientific Method Applied to History,' in Short Studies, vol. II.

2 The list of authorities to whom Mary queen of Scots is, in turn, compared in Froude's History, is that of a small menagerie.

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own—and to Kingsley's—satisfaction. Of queen Elizabeth, in

his later volumes, he declined to make a heroine; and, if they

have a central figure, it is Burghley's, unless it be Burghley's

archfoe, 'far away' beyond the seas and mountains.

Froude's later works on historical subjects did not add to his

reputation as a historian; but nothing that he wrote could fail

to attract attention, and little to provoke controversy. The

English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (1872—4) grew out

of lectures delivered in America concerning a people whom, in a

way, Froude liked, but on whose national life he looked with scorn-

ful bitterness. No other of his books met with more convincing

rejoinders, among which Lecky's1 is the most notable. His later

Spanish studies on the topics of one of the earliest, and of one

of the latest, episodes in his History, upheld the conclusions

there reached. To the brief period of his Oxford professorship

(in which, in 1892, he succeeded Freeman) belong The Life

and Letters of Erasmus, English Seamen in the Sixteenth

Century and The Council of Trent (1894—6). The first-named

of these, although good reading, both where it is Erasmus and

where it is Froude, did not escape the usual fate of his writings.

Froude, whose productivity had never ceased either during or

after his editorship of Fraser's Magazine (1860—74)—most of his

best occasional contributions to which are included in his delightful

Short Studies (1867)—was, for many years, one of the most con-

spicuous figures in the English world of letters. In 1874, he

definitely entered into that of politics. After his return to England,

he continued to take an active interest in affairs, both Irish and

colonial, and visited, in turn, the Australian colonies and the West

Indies, describing both expeditions in books which caused almost

as much ferment as anything previously written by him. But the

chief literary productions of his later years were those bearing

on his great friend and master, Carlyle2. The second of these,

his History of the first Forty Years of Carlyle's Life, together

with its predecessor, the History of Carlyle's Life in London,

remains, for better and for worse, one of the most interesting of

English biographies.

Proceeding from Froude to his Oxford successor, we pass not

only from the study of the Tudor to that of the Stewart age.

In the whole field of modern history—as well as in that of modern

English history in particular—no higher praise is due to any writer

1 In vol. ii of his History of England in the Eighteenth Century.

2 See, ante, vol. xiii, chap. i.

II] Samuel Rawson Gardiner 87

of the century than should be accorded to Samuel Rawson Gardiner, if the supreme criterions be absolute devotion, not only in the letter but in the spirit, to historical truth, and if this be held to show itself in a fairness of judgment that takes into account, with the circumstances and conditions in which men of the past, great or ordinary, lived and acted, those in which they thought and felt. Gardiner was not, and, if his method of composition be taken into account, hardly could be, a brilliant writer; as with his lecturing, so his written narrative seemed to spin itself continuously out of a full store of maturely considered facts and necessary comments, reaching, without strain, the end of chapter or volume, as of lecture or course.

When he resolved to write the history of the great English revolution of the seventeenth century, he was not bound to the service of any political or religious party, or under any personal obligation beyond that of making his living. In 1856 and 1858, respectively, he became, as he continued through life, unless his necessary lecturing and teaching interfered, a regular reader at the British Museum and the Record office; and, from that time forward, the principal purpose of his strenuous labours was the writing of his History. But he knew that an account of the revolution must be based on an examination of its causes; and, thus, he began with preparing his History of England from the Accession of James I to the Disgrace of Chief Justice Coke, which appeared in 1863. In the previous year, he had brought out, for the Camden society, a documentary volume entitled Parliamentary Debates in 1610. Henceforth, his great work advanced by regular instalments of two volumes, till it had arrived at the threshold of the Civil war, when a completed section was republished, in ten volumes, as The History of England from 1603 to 1640. Its second part, the history of the revolution proper, made its appearance in two successive subsections, of which the second carried the history of the commonwealth and protectorate to the year 1656, an additional chapter dealing with the parliamentary elections of that year being published posthumously. Thus, by a hard fate, he was unable to finish his great task. But, up to the point actually reached, it had been accomplished, without faltering or failure, in accordance with the original plan and with the mastery over material which, throughout, had marked his work.

Gardiner's History of England, though pursuing a chronological method, is in no sense annalistic in either conception or

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treatment. As Firth, who continued the work, says, Gardiner ‘did

not confine himself to relating facts, but traced the growth of the

religious and constitutional ideas which underlay’ the greatest

political conflict ever known to these islands. Firth is equally

justified in dwelling on the completeness with which his prede-

cessor treated the different parts of his theme, neglecting neither

the military and naval, nor the economic and social, sides of the

national development. Gardiner made no pretence of tracing

literary or artistic growth, though his remarks on Milton and

those on Massinger show that it was not only the political element

in their writings which called forth his interest.

Throughout his occupation with his chief work, Gardiner

found, or made, time for the production of much useful historical

literature of an unpretentious sort, besides rendering services

of high value to the Camden and other historical societies, and

as contributor to collective historical undertakings of various

kinds. His little volume entitled The Thirty Years’ War, together

with his Camden society volumes, Letters and Documents illus-

trating the Relations between England and Germany, 1618–20,

show how exceptionally he was qualified to become the historian of

a struggle destined, as it would seem, to remain without a fully

adequate historical treatment of all its component parts. Gardiner’s

lectures delivered at Oxford in 1896 under the title Cromwell’s

Place in History, admirably exemplify his manner as a teacher.

With the great Protector, he claimed some family connection; but,

of Cromwell, as of every other character of the past, he spoke as

intent only on understanding both the man and his actions.

Reasons sufficiently obvious explain why the period of English

history which Macaulay once hoped to reach, and of which the

later and most stirring years were, at first, too near to lend them-

selves to a judicial historic survey—the Hanoverian period, as it

has to be called—long attracted but few writers of independent mind

or higher literary qualities. According to the form of most of his

books, William (generally known as archdeacon) Coxe belongs to

the class of writers of historical memoirs, for the composition of

which he had abandoned that of a comprehensive work on the

historical and political state of Europe. He obtained a large amount

of unpublished material, and put this together with understanding

and skill, on a sufficiently broad basis to make his books useful as

general guides to the political history of their times. His well-

established whig principles are specially manifest in his Memoirs of

Sir Robert Walpole (1798), which, perhaps, is the least likely of his

II] Earl Stanhope 89

works to be altogether superseded. The later Memoirs of the Duke

of Marlborough (1818–19) have, probably, been not less largely

read; but the task, from the biographical point of view, was a

more complicated one, and Coxe's treatment cannot be regarded as

adequate, although no later life of Marlborough has proved alto-

gether successful1. His House of Austria (1807), nowadays,

needs only to be taken up to be laid down again as altogether

defective.

Philip Henry, fifth earl Stanhope, during his membership of

the house of commons as viscount Mahon, rendered good service

to the literary profession in general by his introduction of the bill

which became the Copyright act of 1842, and to historical studies

and interests by his initiation of the National Portrait gallery

(1856) and of the Historical MSS commission (1869), on which he

was one of the first commissioners. His own contributions to

historical literature were of a solid and enduring nature; he laid

no claim to a place among great writers; but students of the

national history, from the war of the Spanish succession to the

great Napoleonic war, owe him a real debt. His industry was

great; his judgment excellent if not infallible; and his candour

unimpeachable. His narrative, if it does not enchain, commends

itself by moderation and dignity of tone. He enjoyed rare oppor-

tunities, of which his readers had the full benefit, of access to

unpublished sources; and although, as his Miscellanies attest, full

of curiosity as to points of detail, he never lost himself in minutiae,

or let slip the main threads of his narrative. His earliest work

was The History of the War of the Succession in Spain, 1702–14

(1832), founded mainly on the papers of his ancestor, the high-

minded statesman who played an important part in the war—a

well-written book of much interest, which created a consider-

able impression, with the aid of an essay by Macaulay, between

whom and lord Mahon a long-continued friendship ensued.

It was followed by The History of England from the Peace of

Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1713 to 1783, which remained

the standard history of England for this period, though, more

or less, it left aside certain aspects of the national life and

progress afterwards treated by Lecky, and cannot be said to

furnish a definite narrative of momentous episodes such as

the American war of independence. In 1870, earl Stanhope

added a beginning or introduction to his History, entitled

1 The late viscount Wolseley's Life, to the Accession of Anne (1894) has a mainly

military interest. For Coxe's other works, see bibliography.

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The reign of Queen Anne up to the Peace of Utrecht. Though it served its turn, it could not but seem a meagre performance to readers whose favourites, both in historical composition and in fiction, had, with brilliant success, illustrated this particular era of English political, literary and social history. Before this, in 1861—2, Stanhope had produced a much superior work, in which the unpublished material at his command had once more stood him in excellent stead, the Life of the Younger Pitt, a biography to which he addressed himself with thorough sympathy and which will not easily be altogether superseded. Stanhope's lesser contributions to English historical literature are numerous and valuable, and the whole harvest of his life reflects high credit on his name. His principal work is, in a measure, supplemented by William Nathaniel Massey's History of England during the reign of George III, which reaches to 1802. It is the work of a moderate liberal, who had no sympathy to spare for the political ideas of king George III.

Two English historical writers who, though in very different ways, came into close contact with important political ideas of the nineteenth century, and, more especially, with those concerning the progressive development of the British empire, were, at not very distant dates, conspicuous personages in the life of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge respectively. Each in his way a master of style, Goldwin Smith and Sir John Robert Seeley differed fundamentally from one another in the political conceptions which pervaded their historical writing. In 1858, Goldwin Smith was made a member of the commission on national education. When, in 1859, the earl of Derby appointed him regius professor of modern history at Oxford, he had gained much experience as an academical reformer and political journalist, but had his reputation as a historian still to make outside his university. Two years later, he published a volume entitled Lectures on Modern History. The most historical of these, On the Foundation of the American Colonies, had, at the same time, a distinct political bearing, and, in 1862—3, was followed by a series of letters contributed to The Daily News, and afterwards reprinted with additions, under the title The Empire, which, in his most forcible style, advocated the separation of the British colonies from the mother-country and their establishment as independent states. This became the governing idea of his political activity, which, at the same time, shaped his later personal life. In 1862, he produced another volume, not less striking in manner and style, entitled Irish History and Irish Character.

years later, he published an admirable series of historical essays, originally produced as public lectures, and called

Three English Statesmen (Pym, Cromwell and Pitt). Before this, the great American civil war, during the progress of which he visited the

states, had found in him an enthusiastic supporter of the cause of the north. Having, in 1866, been compelled by a severe personal

trouble to resign his Oxford chair, he, two years afterwards, transferred himself, with his political aspirations and disappointments,

at first to Cornell university, in the United States, and thence, in June 1871, to Toronto. There, for nearly a generation longer, he

continued to carry on an incessant journalistic activity. The books he sent forth were not of much importance; and, notwithstanding

the fascination of his style, always clear and dignified, the letters from him printed in The Manchester Guardian and

elsewhere gradually became like the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He can only be classed among historical writers by

a courtesy which will hardly be refused to him. He could not keep the spirit of political controversy out of anything he wrote;

and, in truth, that spirit was part of his genius.

The career of Sir John Robert Seeley, who, though less intimately connected with public life, and less gifted for taking

a personal part in it than Goldwin Smith, exercised a far more enduring influence upon imperial politics than he, was of the least

eventful. At Cambridge, he won high distinction as a classical scholar; but his great ability in argument was only known to

a few; and when, being then professor of Latin in London, he was discovered to be the author of Ecce Homo, published in 1865,

the admiration excited by the book, amidst an outburst of controversy, was largely due to its literary qualities1. Paradoxically

enough, it led to his appointment, in 1869, as regius professor of modern history at Cambridge. His inaugural lecture was published,

together with some other lectures and essays delivered by him in the north, in a collection of Lectures and Essays (1870).

Seeley's standpoint as a historical teacher and writer was clear to himself from the first. In the opening sentence of the most

'a favourite maxim of mine,' that history, 'while it should be scientific in its methods, should pursue a practical object.' This

himself the task of training, by his lectures and conversation,

1 See, ante, vol. xx, chap. xiii, p. 297. His edition of the first decade of Livy, with its excellent introduction, is mentioned, ibid. p. 493.

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the statesmen of the future ; the time was not far distant when

his applied history would serve to impress upon the nation political

lessons of which it seemed to him to stand in need. But he was

aware that, while engaged upon this task, he must prove his fitness

for it by the production of a historical work of solid merit ; and

this he was enabled to do by the publication of his Life and

Times of Stein, or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic

Age (1878). The work, which was the fruit of great labour,

though hardly of what could justly be called original research,

might have filled, at least for a time, a gap in the historical

literature of the age in question; for it appeared midway between

the monument of the great statesman piled up by Pertz and the

later elucidations of his career, and of its bearings upon German

and European history, by Max Lehmann and others. The success

to which Seeley's volumes attained was little more than a success

of esteem : although he had attentively studied his subject, he was

hardly quite at home in the whole of it ; and, though clearly, and,

in parts, effectively, written, the work failed to establish itself as

one of those great political biographies which may be supplemented

or corrected, but are quite unlikely to be ever superseded.

In 1883, Seeley put forth the series of Cambridge lectures

on the foreign policy of Great Britain to which he gave the title

The Expansion of England in the Eighteenth Century. Few

political historians have more felicitously carried out the avowed

purpose of combining a lucid and connected narrative of a period

of the past with a statement of conclusions bearing directly upon

political problems of the present. Imperialism, the very opposite

system to that cherished by Goldwin Smith and those who thought

with him, was here demonstrated to be the ideal which it behoved

the British nation to accept and apply as the moving factor in the

determination of the future of British dominion. And this dogma

was proclaimed at a time when, in British and colonial political

life, a parting of the ways still seemed possible ; so that no half-

historical, half-political essay was ever more opportunely timed, or

more effectively directed to its purpose.

Seeley's last work, The Growth of British Policy, was not

published till after his death, which took place in 1895. This book

is described by its editor, G. W. Prothero, as an attempt to put

English history into a new framework, showing how foreign policy

affected every stage of its progress. It was intended to be, in

substance, an introduction to the history of British policy in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but the author had to trace

II] Nineteenth Century English History 93

the current of his narrative back to Elizabeth, who, as he puts it, was married to her people, whereas James I and Charles I were only married to Anne of Denmark and Henrietta Maria. Seeley avowed it to be his object as a teacher, not to interest his hearers or readers in particular men or deeds, but to show them what results the national action of former times had brought about for ourselves and our children after us, and thus to interest them more and more 'to the close.' 'It is impossible,' he candidly added, 'that the history of any state can be interesting, unless it exhibits some sort of development1.'

The history of the British empire in the nineteenth century has, of necessity, employed many pens; but its documentary materials were only in part accessible, and the difficulty of dis-sociating historical narrative from political purpose or 'tendency' was only to be avoided with difficulty. Harriet Martineau, whose manifold contributions to political and social literature, as well as to journalism and fiction, have found notice elsewhere in this work2, in 1848 entered upon the onerous task, begun and aban-doned by Charles Knight, of A History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace, and, notwithstanding a serious interruption, accomplished it before the end of the following year. 'Always,' as was well said of her, 'a little before her time,' she related the history of an age whose striving after reform was its most marked characteristic in a spirit of moral and intellectual sympathy with its ideas, accompanied by a clear critical estimate of the sum of its achievements; home politics were her chief, but by no means absorbing, concerns, and she treated men as well as measures with her habitual candour.

We come nearer to the present age in The History of England from 1830, first published in 1871–3, by William Nassau Moles-worth, vicar of Rochdale and a reformer who dwelt and worked very near the fountain-head. His unpretentious, but lucid, book, justly exercised a wide popular influence. Finally, mention should be made of Sir Spencer Walpole, who, in his History of England from 1815 (1878—86) and its continuation, The History of Twenty-Five Years, 1856 to 1880 (1904–8)3, showed himself alive to the great value of a clear grouping of events and transactions according to the sides of the national life on which they bear, and of the

1 The Expansion of England, p. 119 (edn 1888).

2 Of., ante, vol. xiii, chap. xi.

3 The last two volumes of this were published posthumously, under the supervision of Walpole's friend, Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall.

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demonstration thus afforded of the changes in national policy brought about by the progress in the conditions and ideas of successive generations. He repeatedly contrasts this method with the biographical; but he did good work in both kinds of historical composition. His intelligence and clearness of mind, and his freedom from political partisanship, together with his unusually varied administrative experience, fitted him for his chief historical task, which he carried through successfully, though without conspicuous power or brilliancy. His observations on financial problems are marked by special lucidity.

Though purporting not to be more than the narrative of an episode in the political and military history of the period, Alexander William Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea (1863—87) justified the labour of many years devoted to the work by one of the most brilliant, but by no means one of the most prolific, prose-writers of the earlier Victorian period. His Eothen (1844) is still read as a singularly delightful record of personal impressions derived from near-Eastern travel. His magnum opus, based on the papers of lord Raglan, placed by his widow in Kinglake's hands, was at once an apologia and an accurate and exhaustive narrative of its subject, elaborated with endless care and with the aid of personal observation (he was present at the battle of the Alma), and Homerically ample in its presentment. The opening volumes, with their examination of the causes of the war and their splendid indictment of the author of the coup d'état, formed a magnificent portico to the edifice; but the scale of the whole is excessive, and, more especially since the plan of the book left it incomplete as a history of the war, it has failed to secure a place among great historical works.

Among nineteenth-century historians of Scotland, the precedence, at all events by right of seniority, must be accorded to Patrick Fraser Tytler, who was a joint founder of the Bannatyne club with Scott, and had been a college friend of Archibald Alison. Tytler had historian's blood in his veins1, and many years of his life were devoted to the composition of his History of Scotland (1828—43), an undertaking first suggested to him by Scott. The History plunges in medias res with the accession of

1 His father, Alexander Fraser Tytler (who afterwards took the judicial title lord Woodhouselee) was at one time professor of history at Edinburgh, and wrote several historical works; his grandfather, William Tytler, wrote an apologetic enquiry into the charges against Mary, queen of Scots, which held the field till the publication, in 1869, of John Hosack's much-read Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers, followed, in 1888 (posthumously), by a summary of her case.

II] Scottish History 95

Alexander III, Wallace and Bruce following close, with Bannockburn, and with a thanksgiving that Scotland was spared the doom of Ireland. But a learned enquiry into the state of ancient Scotland displays much antiquarian research, and offers a more graphic treatment of the theme than was, at the time, to be found in any other writer. The narrative ends, almost as abruptly as it began, with James VI's farewell to Scotland on his, in a literal sense, ill-omened departure for his larger kingdom.

The History, which is written in a grave and simple style, deals with matters both of church and state in a vein of genuine Scottish patriotism, and can hardly be said to be altogether obsolete. Tytler, who was the author of further historical works, rendered great service to historical study in both England and Scotland by taking a leading part in the suggestion of the calendaring of state papers, instead of the publication in full of mere selections of documents.

John Hill Burton's History of Scotland, from 1688 to 1745, of which the first portion appeared in 1853, was enlarged by successive additions of earlier periods, and, after Tytler's death, was, in 1870, finally published as extending from Agricola to the last Jacobite rising. Burton, after showing great activity as a periodical writer, editor and journalist, had, in 1816, published The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, of whose economical writings he had made a special study, and had followed this successful effort with some lesser productions in Scottish biography. He afterwards reprinted some of his contributions to journalism in the two most popular of his books, The Book Hunter (1860) and the very interesting Scot Abroad (1862).

His History of Scotland justified his appointment as Scottish historiographer-royal; but, although the fruit of long and unwearying research, it is ill-arranged and loose in composition, and only held the field because of the absence of a competitor in command of the same abundance of material. As editor of two volumes of The Scottish Registers, he rendered an enduring service to the study of Scottish history, which was continued by David Masson. Burton's History of the Reign of Queen Anne (1880), though containing curious matter, is as little satisfactory a piece of work as ever came from a historian's hands; but it was the last larger effort of a long and laborious life1.

1 In Burton's successor as Scottish historiographer-royal, William Forbes Skene, author of Celtic Scotland (1876–80), the antiquary was blended with the historian. For his chief works see, ante, vol. xii, chap. xv, p. 518.

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The last Scottish historian whose name calls for mention here

is Andrew Lang, whose recent death (1912) put an end to an almost

unexampled continuous flow of varied literary work1. It is, perhaps,

as a historian, in a broad sense of the term, that he will be best

remembered. His gift of narrative stood him in good stead even

with so wide a canvas as that of his History of Scotland from the

Roman Occupation (1890—7), which he lived to complete, though

it was hardly carried out with the requisite sustained power. On

the other hand, he excelled in the historical monograph, where his

great and, perhaps, most notable critical gift had full play; and, if

there was an element of ‘mystery’ in the subject of his story,

he felt most thoroughly at home in it. Like Scott, whom, as

himself a child of the Border, he loved with his whole heart,

he was irresistibly drawn to the lost causes of history—above all,

to the Stewart cause; but his critical acumen rarely deserted him

in any field, and, while he was deeply versed in mythology, his

footing was sure on the doubtful ground between history and

legend, and his own favourite among his innumerable productions

was his Life and Death of Jeanne D’Arc (1908).

Among Irish historians, Lecky holds an undisputed pre-

eminence, but of him we shall speak immediately in a wider

connection. Like him, John Patrick Prendergast took up the

defence of his countrymen against the aspersions of Froude;

but, though he bore a name associated with the sufferings entailed

by the Irish policy of Cromwell, and had himself the reputation

of being a nationalist, he was not under the influence of the

sentiments of seventeenth century ‘toryism.’ His works on Irish

affairs, of which The History of the Cromwellian Settlement

(1863) is the best known, form a very important contribution to

the political history of Ireland, and led to his appointment as one

of the commissioners for selecting official papers from the Carte

MSS in the Bodleian. In 1887, he published Ireland from the

Restoration to the Revolution. Sir John Thomas Gilbert was

of English descent, but born in Dublin and brought up as a strict

catholic. In addition to papers on the antiquities of his native

city and country, his researches, which made a generally acknow-

ledged mark on the progress of the studies to which he was devoted,

include The History of the Viceroys of Ireland (1865) and The

History of the Irish Confederation and the War in Ireland,

1641—9 (1882—91), with a great body of work on the documents of

Irish history from ancient times to the early years of the nineteenth

1 Cf., ante, vol. xiii, chap. vi.

II] Historians of India: James Mill 97

century. Caesar Litton Falkiner, who had made the Irish land

acts a subject of special study, and, in 1898, was appointed an

assistant land commissioner, collected and discussed, in studies

and essays published before his early death, much original

material of Irish history in the eighteenth, and, afterwards, in

the seventeenth, century. His seventeenth-century work on the

Historical MSS commission was both voluminous and valuable.

Turning to the historians of British India and the colonies,

we are met on the threshold by the name of James Mill, whose

place in the history of English thought has been discussed

elsewhere1. By his History of India (1817), he was the first to

accomplish, on a scale and with a breadth of treatment befitting

the theme, a history of India under British rule. For the critical

side of his task, he was signally endowed by nature, prepared by

philosophical study and trained by continuous practice as a writer,

more especially in The Edinburgh Review (1808–18). On the

other hand, he had never been in India; and, as he freely con-

fessed, 'if he had any, had a very slight and elementary

acquaintance with any of the languages of the East.' He in-

geniously deprecated the force of these objections by arguments

from analogy; but their fallacy was sufficiently exposed by the

learned Sanskrit scholar Horace Hayman Wilson, who edited the

fourth edition of Mill's History (1840–8), and continued it

from 1803 to 1835. He, also, charges Mill with having, in

book II, Of the Hindus, where it is proposed to summarise,

in some 350 pages, their laws and institutions, religion, literature

and art—displayed the kind of contempt which is not always

based on familiarity; though, in the opinion of Mill's biographer

Bain, if these strictures upon the natives really tended to increase

the difficulties of British rule in India, this effect was more than

outweighed by that of Mill's unsparing criticism of all who had

a share in founding and extending our Indian empire. The

more strictly historical portion of the work is distinguished by

a lucidity of method which, in dealing with masses of matter

distributed over a vast area and, in part, reaching back across

1 See, ante, chap. I. Earlier English historians of India had treated the subject

from particular points of view. Orme's military history belongs to the eighteenth

century (cf., ante, vol. x, pp. 298–4); John Bruce, a political historian of note, who had

formerly furnished Pitt's government with reports on measures taken for the defence

of the country from the days of the Spanish Armada downwards, and had then

been appointed keeper of the State paper office and historiographer to the East

India company, published the history of that company (1810).

E. L. XIV. CE. II.

7

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a great interval of time, is invaluable to the student. Mill, as a

historian, had no example to follow in the school of thinkers to

which he belonged—least of all in Bentham, whose knowledge of

history is not to be reckoned among his strong points. On the

other hand, Bentham severely blamed the style of Mill's book,

and he does not stand alone in his censures1. Of later writings,

a penetrating insight into the course of Indian history, as a whole,

distinguishes those of Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall2, whose imaginative,

as well as philosophical, mind could not rest content with viewing

such a subject as India, with which a long and distinguished

official career had familiarised him, under its political, or under

any one exclusive, aspect only. His Rise and Expansion of the

British Dominion in India (1893) grew, as it passed through

many editions, into an important work of research ; he also wrote

a short life of Warren Hastings, and a full biography of lord

Dufferin. His Asiatic Studies deals chiefly with Hindu religion

in its successive phases.

Colonial history attracted fewer students in the mother-

country during the earlier, than during the later, part of the

century3. Among more recent writers, it seems right to make

special mention of John Andrew Doyle and of Edward John

Payne, both of whom were born in 1844. The former gained the

Arnold prize at Oxford for an essay on the English colonies in

America before the declaration of independence, and the chief

production of his literary life treated the same theme. The latter

devoted the historical labours of his later years to English and

other European colonies and to America in general. His compre-

hensive undertaking A History of the New World called America

(1902—9) was, however, but partially carried out. Sir Arthur

Helps gave to colonial history so much of his busy leisure as was

1 Mill, also, contributed to the Supplement to The Encyclopaedia Britannica

(1816—23) a number of important essays belonging to the domain of political and

political philosophy rather than to that of history. They are analysed in chap. v of

Bain's biography of Mill (1882). Among his numerous critical writings may be noted

an early article (in The Annual Review for 1808) on Charles James Fox's fragment

on the early part of the reign of James II, published in the same year. Mill compares

its high moral tone, to the disparagement of modern historians, with that of the

ancient masters, Thucydides, Tacitus and Livy, and deprecates the modern mode

of philosophical history as containing, besides its philosophical element, little beyond

'a dry statement of vulgar historical facts.'

2 See, also, ante, vol. xiii, p. 202.

3 Sir Charles Dilke's Greater Britain (1866–7), while possessing both historical

and political significance, made its appearance as a book of travel, and is noticed as

such in chap. vii, post.

II] Mandell Creighton 99

left for historical research. His Spanish Conquest of the New

World did not, however, attain to an enduring success, though

the separate biographies in which he reproduced portions of the

work could not fail to be popular.

We have reserved, as the first of two particular groups, some

of the ecclesiastical historians of the united kingdom not already

noted in an earlier volume1. Mandell Creighton, though his

career connected him closely with several of the historians

mentioned in earlier pages of the present chapter, cannot him-

self be appropriately classed as mainly a medievalist, although

his chief historical work is, in part, concerned with the close of

the middle ages in the very centre of their ruling ideas and

influences. Modern Oxford has produced no more accomplished

historian than Creighton, who united with a power of work of

which it was not in his way to make show an insight into the

force of ideas and the play of character which, in writing as well

as in speech, enabled him easily to compass what he prized more

than aught else—the establishment of his influence over others.

On the other hand, although the cynicism at one time affected

by him was superficial only, and was cast aside in face of the most

serious purposes of his life, he was without the moral enthusiasm

which, in different ways, reveals itself in writers so unlike one

another as Freeman and Gardiner. In his History of the Papacy,

this lack shows itself, not so much in the allowances made for the

corruption and other vices of the times in which the lot of some of

the pontiffs was thrown, and through which neither a Borgia nor a

Medici could be expected to walk unspotted, as in the indifference

exhibited towards the chosen spirits of the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries on whom depended the preparation and the prosecution

of the great work of religious reform. Creighton was, perhaps,

less extensively read in the history of early sixteenth-century

Germany than in the Italian portions of his subject; but what

is missing in his fifth volume is not perception or even fairness

of judgment (such as marks the contrast between the ideals of

Raffaelle and those of Luther); it is, rather, a fellow-feeling with

the consciousness of the mighty issues of the struggle which gave

its extraordinary force to the movement set on foot by Luther.

Nothing, on the other hand, could better illustrate at once the

irony and the pathos of history than the characters, as here

drawn, of the reformation popes—Leo X, who could not see why

1 Acts, vol. xii, chap. xxv.

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his improvements were insufficient, and Adrian VI, who could

understand the necessity of real reforms from within, but was

unable to give effect to his insight.

Creighton's History of the Papacy during the period of the

Reformation (1882–94), which should, at the least, have been

carried on to the council of Trent, ended with the sack of Rome.

But the book is neither a fragment nor a torso, and, at all events

in its earlier volumes, sufficiently illustrates the qualities which the

historian brought to bear upon the composition of it, and which

made it something more than a supplement to Ranke's greater

work. The book could not satisfy the demands of lord Acton,

who would have preferred an indictment of the papacy for its

historic shortcomings ; but it helps to explain, without seeking

to palliate, and forms a memorable contribution to the history

of learning. His style was well suited to his method of treatment,

being wholly free from pedantry and artificiality, and sensitive to

any of those lapses into exaggeration which were one of the chief

faults noted by him in his favourites, the Italian humanists of the

pontificate of Nicholas V.

Before Creighton addressed himself to his chief historical work,

he had found many outlets for his critical powers, and had success-

fully practised the art of epitomising on subjects so different as

a history of Rome and a life of Simon de Montfort. After he had

exchanged his Northumbrian parish for the chair of ecclesiastical

history at Cambridge, he engaged anew in varied historical work,

wrote a life of cardinal Wolsey, a history of his native town, Carlisle,

and, later, a biography of queen Elizabeth, which attracted much

favour. He was, also, associated, from 1886 to 1891, with The

English Historical Review—a critical journal the foundation of

which had, at various times, occupied the minds of J. R. Green

and other younger historians, and of which Creighton was

judiciously chosen as the first editor. It marked a very distinct

advance in the method, as well as in the spirit, of English

historical study, and maintained itself, without serious difficulty,

on the level on which, with the co-operation of lord Acton

and others, it had been placed at the start. But, in 1885,

Creighton's appointment to a canonry at Worcester had marked

the beginning of the high ecclesiastical career that awaited him,

and for the sake of which his historical labours had, ultimately, to

be relinquished. The last volume of his Papacy was brought out

while he held the see of Peterborough. But his work there and in

London (whither he was transferred in 1896) must, like the episcopal

II] Writers on Later Church History 101

life of Stubbs, be left out of sight in this place1. His continued

interest in historical studies is shown by the fact that, in 1896,

the year of his appointment to London, he wrote the introduction to

The Cambridge Modern History, in place of his friend lord Acton.

A younger author in the same field of historical research, but

more especially in earlier periods, which he was acknowledged to

have mastered with wholly exceptional completeness, was William

Edward Collins, during the last seven years of his life bishop of

Gibraltar. A writer on English church history of a different

type was John Henry Overton, who died as canon of Peter-

borough and had long been a Lincolnshire rector. His and

Charles J. Abbey's history of The English Church in the Eigh-

teenth Century (1878) is a useful book, which has helped to

remove prejudices ; while his William Law, Non-juror and

Mystic (1881) is, perhaps, the most attractive among his many

large-hearted and well-written contributions to our later religious

history. William Richard Stephens, who died as dean of Win-

chester, was author of various contributions to church history

and joint editor, with William Hunt, of The History of the

English Church, to which he contributed the second volume (from

the Norman conquest to the accession of Edward I); and he wrote

the lives of his father-in-law, dean Hook, and of Freeman.

Thomas Graves Law, who, in his later years, was librarian of the

Signet library at Edinburgh, by some of his writings threw light

on interesting passages in the history of English catholicism in the

later Elizabethan period, more especially on the conflicts between

Jesuits and seculars (1890) and on the archpriest controversy. He

was a man of high ability, and distinguished by broad-mindedness

as well as by learning2.

In Scottish ecclesiastical history proper, the palm must be

assigned to an earlier writer, Thomas McCrie, an ‘original seceder’

from the established church. Through his Life of John Knox

(1812), as the subtitle of the book indicates, he sought to throw

light upon the history of the Scottish reformation. It was

followed by The Life of Andrew Melville, and the two books,

which were supplemented by material belonging to a later period,

became standard narratives of the greatest historical movements

in Scottish national life. McCrie further contributed to the

history of the reformation two less exhaustive works, on its

1 It is told in the second volume of Mrs Creighton’s Life and Letters of her

husband (1904).

2 He was, also, eminent as a biographer, and edited The New Testament in Scots.

102 Historians [CH.

progress and suppression in Italy and in Spain. Whether, had he carried out his design of a life of Calvin, it would have proved equal to his life of the great Scottish reformer, it is, of course, impossible to say; but few ecclesiastical historians were better qualified for essaying even so thorny a theme.

The history of civilisation cannot rightly be described as a product of the nineteenth century; yet, on the one hand, the immense advance made in the course of that century in the methods, as well as in the range, of scientific studies, and, on the other, the unprecedented interest which, from about 1830 or 1840 onwards, began to be taken by historians, as well as by politicians, in the life and social conditions of the people at large, gave a wholly new impulse to the cultivation of this field of enquiry. Its originator was, of course, Voltaire; and, though, throughout the nineteenth century, this branch (if it can be called a branch) of history was vigorously carried on by writers of various kinds in Germany, France never lost her hold upon it. So early as 1830, Guizot's Histoire de la Civilisation en France, as an organic part of a more comprehensive scheme, sought to execute the design which Voltaire had proposed to himself in his Essai sur les Mœurs. At a later date, the philosophy of history was incorporated by Comte in his system of positivism, and, more especially, in social science (or sociology), as intended to teach the evolution of social life, and to define the laws which govern its conditions and mutations. The philosophy of history, thus recast, ignored any but natural laws, although, not unfrequently, its disciples differed as to what justified the elevation of a particular experience to the authoritative position of a general law. Comte was neither a historian nor the intellectual progenitor of historians; but one English writer, at least, was led by his influence to attempt what amounted to a new departure in our historical literature, since Robertson and Hallam, while following Voltaire and Guizot respectively, had not gone far in developing their principles.

Of Henry Thomas Buckle it may be averred that his History of Civilization in England (of which the first volume appeared in 1857, and the second in 1861) 'hit the taste of the time,' as few works of the kind have done--one of these, perhaps, being Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants, of which Buckle says that 'the immense success of this great work must have aided that movement of which it is itself an evidence.' Buckle's volumes were little more than an introduction to his subject, the first dealing, in a way which can hardly be called rambling, but is

II] Lecky's Earlier Works 103

certainly deficient in perspicuity of plan, with the preliminaries of the theme, which it ends by sketching in outline, while the second treats, specifically, of two applications of the method of enquiry adopted. The historical subjects chosen are the history of the Spanish intellect from the fifth to the middle of the nineteenth, and that of Scotland and the Scottish mind to the end of the eighteenth, century. Both sections of the volume are so vigorous, not to say racy, in treatment that the success of this portion of Buckle's work is not wonderful, even if, to some, it may seem to indicate, as the book did to Milman, that its author was himself 'a bit of a bigot.' In his earlier volume, he had proclaimed his views of history and historians with the utmost clearness. The most celebrated historian was esteemed by him 'manifestly inferior to the most successful cultivators of physical science'; for the study of man is still in its infancy, as compared with that of the movements of nature. No believer in a science of history need, therefore, disturb himself as to the problem between freewill and predestination which, at one time, overshadowed the world of thought; history, to him, is 'that of a world from which men and women are left out'; and what has to be considered is the influence of physical laws as governing conditions of climate, food and soil.

Buckle's criticism of existing historical methods was, in some respects, an expansion of the ideas of Comte. Perhaps, in spite of his great abilities and accomplishments, and his unwearying devotion, during the greater part of his manhood, to the task he had set himself, he lacked the historical, and, more especially, the ethnographical, knowledge requisite for writing a history of civilisation comprehending east as well as west, or even for applying to the earlier ages of English civilisation standards other than those of his own age and school of thought. He was, as Leslie Stephen says, a thorough-going adherent of John Stuart Mill and the empirical school, and adopted its attitude towards history. The stimulating and, in many ways, corrective effect of his one important book is not to be gainsaid, nor the share which he had in placing the treatment of historical problems on a broader and more scientific basis.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky composed the earliest of the works by which he rapidly built up a great reputation, under the unmistakable influence of Buckle, of whom he was, then, an ardent admirer. He was repelled by Comte, but acknowledged that Comte had 'done more than any previous writer to show that the speculative opinions of any age are phenomena resulting

104

Historians

[CH.

from the totality of the actual influences of that age1.' The

actual firstfruits of Lecky's Dublin training—if we may pass over

a still earlier anonymous broad-minded essay entitled The Religious

Tendencies of the Age—were the impassioned, likewise anonymous,

Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland (1861). Though this

production bore testimony both to his patriotism and to his

eloquence, it fell quite flat; but it was reprinted after he had

become famous and, again, in an enlarged form, in 1903. Its

initial bad luck disheartened the writer, and left him at a loss

whither to turn. Early in the following year, before beginning

a long succession of travels (centring in visits to libraries) in

Spain and other continental countries, he began the work which

was to spread his reputation almost as quickly as Buckle's had

been spread by his History; or, rather, he wrote a treatise, The

Declining Sense of the Miraculous, which, after being printed

separately, formed the first two chapters of his History of the

Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (1865).

By means of an argument of transparent clearness, conveyed in

a style congenial to the theme, but revealing, here and there, the

author's power of giving expression to strong feeling, it demon-

strates that European progress is due to the spirit of rationalism,

the opposite of that of theological dogmatism, just as the tolerance

demanded by reason is adverse to the persecution engendered by

bigotry. The argument is developed at great length and with a

superabundance of illustration; but neither the writer's youth

nor the nature of his mind inclined him to brevity, and the

interest of most readers in such a subject can only be sustained

by a copious use of concrete exemplification. Lecky's second

work (which always remained his own favourite), The History of

European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), dealt

with the same field of philosophical enquiry as its predecessor; but

it differed from the general survey of European 'illumination' in

undertaking to examine, as it were ab extra, the origin and

growth of moral ideas which dominated a period of European life,

and to show the development undergone by these ideas in the

course of their contact with the actual condition of men and

things. The later book, necessarily, contains a larger amount of

purely philosophical discussion than the earlier, and it brought

upon the author attacks from the utilitarian school.

Lecky, who, at the time of the publication of his second

1 See the estimate of Comte's position in literature in Memoir of W. E. H. Lecky,

by his wife, p. 54, note.

II] Lecky's History of England 105

important work, had barely passed his thirtieth year, now turned

to political, in lieu of philosophical, history. He was always

averse from fragmentary composition, and the nursing of a great

design seems to have been almost a necessity to his years of

maturity, at all events so long as he remained out of parliament.

He felt that he had a good opportunity 'of airing his Irish

politics in a parallel or, rather, a contrast, between the Scotch

and Irish business'; and the appearance of Froude's English in

Ireland lent a special force to the full treatment of Irish history

which, at the risk of disproportionateness, he intended to offer

in his forthcoming work. But A History of England in the

Eighteenth Century (1878—90) was designed on the broadest of

bases, and on lines well according with the most comprehensive

demands of political philosophy : being intended, as the preface

states, 'to disengage from the great mass of facts those which

relate to the permanent forces of the nation, or which indicate

some of the most enduring features of the national life.' Fore-

most stood the history of political ideas and of their embodiment

in political institutions; but economical and social history re-

ceived a measure of attention far exceeding that usually bestowed

upon it in previous histories of the eighteenth century; while

religious history (the rise of methodism, for instance, and the

progress of religious tolerance) were allowed full consideration.

On the other hand, much that possessed 'a biographical, party

or military interest' was, for lack of space, suppressed, although

Lecky was always interested in individual character or genius,

and never wearied in pursuing the successive phases of the history

of a mind like Burke's, with whom, indeed, he had, undeniably,

some intellectual affinity. The Irish chapters, alike in the second

and in the sixth to eighth volumes, are, on the whole, the most

successful in the work, as most completely covering their subject.

Historical writing such as this can afford to dispense with minor

attractions, and to make no pretence of creating interest either

by accumulation of details or by devices of style.

The last volumes of Lecky's History, published in 1890, con-

tained an account of the rebellion and the union, perhaps the

most striking and the most stirring portion of the entire narrative.

When he had finished his great work, he had, although not yet

much more than fifty years of age, become 'a little tired of

history'; a happy marriage, and consequent new sphere of life,

together with a sense of unbroken success, may have helped to

make him unwilling to resume the historian's pen, although he was

106 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH.

assiduous in the revision of the works he had already produced.

His Democracy and Liberty (1896) took him back into the sphere

of political philosophy ; its tone is studiously moderate, although

the applications of the principles enunciated to actual politics are

undisguised. The Map of Life (1899) is more distinctly aphoristic

and was, perhaps in consequence, more widely popular. His latest

publication was, as has been seen, a revised edition of his earliest

contribution to history—a study and a science of which he may

fairly be said, about the turn of the century, to have been the

foremost British representative.

B. Biographers and Memoir-Writers

Biography, like portrait-painting, has always flourished in

England—whether because of the love of the concrete which

marks our race, or because of the individualism of character as

well as of intellect to which our insularity and our freedom have

been alike propitious. But, although the number of English

biographies is legion, and many of them have not floated away

into oblivion with the outward facts of the lives recorded in them,

few have secured for themselves a permanent place in our litera-

ture. To some of these, already mentioned under the names of

their authors or of the great writers of whom they treated, we do

not propose to return in the present chapter; passing by even such

a masterpiece of English biography as the Life of Sir Walter Scott

by his son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart1. The subject of this

delightful biography is, indeed, itself incomparable ; for which of

our great English men of letters is Scott's equal in blended

humanity and serenity—except Shakespeare, of whose life we

know next to nothing?

Scott's own historical works, apart from the Tales of a Grand-

father from Scottish and French history, comprise the Scottish

history which he wrote for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia

immediately after he had completed the last of his imaginative

works, Anne of Geierstein, and the rather earlier Life of Buona-

parte. The latter, written 'in the midst of pain, sorrow and ruin,'

is an extraordinary effort—a twelvemonth's labour extending over

what, 'on the original model of his works,' would have filled from

thirteen to fourteen volumes; but its details met with sharp

criticism, and it can hardly be said to warrant Lockhart's pre-

diction that 'posterity will recognise Napoleon's Livy in Scott2.'

1 Cf., ante, vol. xii, chap. i, and bibliography.

2 Lockhart himself published a History of Napoleon Buonaparte (1829) and a History

II] Moore. Southey. Sir William Napier 107

His influence upon historical literature, which continued and immeasurably developed that of Châteaubriand, was of far greater importance than were his own contributions to it. Perhaps the most direct and signal expression which it found was in French literature; Thierry's Norman Conquest, as has been well observed, could hardly have been written, or at least written as it was, without Ivanhoe1. But, at home, too, the doctrine of local colouring had impressed itself, once for all, upon historical narrative.

Byron's autobiographical memoirs have perished, perhaps not unhappily for his fame, inasmuch as he ‘was never written down by anyone but himself2’; Moore's life of his friend (1830), appended to Byron's Letters and Journals, however, with all its shortcomings, whether from the critical or from the purely historical point of view, will never be laid aside. Moore had previously tried his hand at biography in a superficial but pleasant Life of Sheridan (1825); at a later date, he wrote a Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, of whom he had no personal knowledge as he had of Sheridan and Byron. He also left behind him an autobiography, which was edited, together with his journals and correspondence, by the willing hand of his friend lord John Russell.

Southey's History of the Peninsular War, already noted among his other historical and biographical writings3 was, to all intents and purposes, superseded by Sir William Napier's work on the same subject (1828–40). Napier, in the words of his biographer4, had himself ‘nobly shared in making a history which he afterwards so eloquently wrote.’ Yet his book, while containing passages of magnificent élan, by reason of its lengthy and general method of treatment survives chiefly as a military history, in which character it has few competitors in our literature5.

1 Barante, too, in his Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne, presents himself as under the same influence. Cf. the entire sec. III of bk. v of Fueter, E., Geschichte der neueren Historiographie (1911).

2 Cf., ante, vol. XII, p. 108.

3 Cf., ante, vol. XI, p. 167.

The first lord Aberdare.

5 Of the famous Wellington Despatches, edited by colonel Gurwood (18 vols. 1834–9), which attracted the ingenuous admiration of their author himself, whose have references to the Peninsular war are contained in vols. IV to XI. (1834–8). Sir William Napier's Life and Opinions of Sir Charles Napier (1857), though written ‘in the spirit of a knight errant...to vindicate the fame of his brother Charles, as The Peninsular War had been written to vindicate that of his chief, Sir John Moore,’ is rendered quite unsafe by partisanship, reproducing, as it does, the assertions of his Conquest of Scinde, and Administration of Scinde, books whose noble qualities are marred by violence of attack as well as by eagerness of defence. No more fiery spirit

108 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH.

The biographical form of composition was adopted by William Roscoe in his chief historical works, which included an English version of one of the best, because one of the sincerest, autobiographies of all times, The Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine Artist: written by himself. Roscoe was drawn to the study of the Italian renascence by a congeniality of taste and feeling which he had cultivated, on his own account, from his youth up, and to which he had remained true through all the vicissitudes of an active career of business and politics. He thus became a mainspring of the intellectual movement which led many English lovers of letters and art in his and the following generation to turn once more to Italy as the chief fountain of their inspiration. From his youth onwards, he had cherished the idea of making Lorenzo de’ Medici the subject of his first work; nor would it have been possible to find any second figure of the Italian renascence so typical of both its political and its literary side. The book which, at his own cost, he printed (1796) in sumptuous fashion was itself short, but furnished forth with appendixes of excerpts, sparkling in Latin, and with a series of notes seductive to a learned eye. The unqualified success of Roscoe's Lorenzo was not, altogether, repeated in his Life of Leo X; which covered ground, in part, too dangerous to be trodden without censure. But, though the Italian translation of the later work was placed on the Index, while the original proved by no means palatable to the adherents of the German reformation, it is a delightful book and breathes the atmosphere of that Rome from which Benvenuto preferred to withdraw on the death of the Medicean pope. In his later years, Roscoe published an interesting volume of further illustrations of his Life of Lorenzo, in defence of his hero, besides producing an edition of Pope. He had in him the making of a historian of civilisation, as well as of a merchant-prince; but life is an unkind task-master, and it is to his honour that, by the efforts of his own literary genius, he succeeded in doing much for the humanities which he loved1.

A later, and, to some moderns, less attractive, phase of the renascence movement was brought nearer to English readers by the one larger work published, amidst a number of smaller contributions to the literature of scholarship and adjoining fields of research, by ever burnt in the heart of a historical writer; yet he was never more himself than when inditing an unfrequent apology.—John Campbell's Lives of the Admirals (1742–4) went through several editions, and an abridgment appeared so late as 1870.

1 As to J. A. Symonds’ contributions to the history of the Italian renaissance, see, ante, vol. xiii, chap. xii.

II] Mark Pattison. Sir James Stephen

109

Mark Pattison, the renowned rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.

Yet, his Isaac Casaubon (1875), though an admirable piece of work,

fitly described by Pattison's pupil and friend Richard Copley

Christie as 'the best biography in our language of a scholar, in the

sense in which Pattison', in common with Casaubon and Scaliger,

understood the word,' was not produced till the author found

himself anticipated (by Jacob Bernays) in the life of Scaliger, for

which, during thirty years, he had been preparing. Although much

of what Pattison wrote besides Isaac Casaubon (including the

collected Essays and a characteristic life of Milton in the 'English

Men of Letters' series) is worthy of preservation, it was in his own

posthumously published Memoirs (reaching to 1860) that he made

an addition of surpassing interest to biographical literature. His

express prohibition of the cancelling of a word of these Memoirs,

except a few paragraphs at the beginning which seemed to be of

too egotistical a character, was conscientiously obeyed; and the

result is a book of self-confession—but of the sort that obliges the

writer to confess his opinion of others as well as of himself. He

tells us how it was only at an advanced period of his life that

he had come to understand Goethe's ideal of self-culture, and

the pollution and 'disfigurement' of it by literary ambition.

Luckily, 'the vulgar feeling that a literary life means one de-

voted to the making of books' so far prevailed with Pattison that

his pen was rarely idle, and that he made himself memorable, not

only in the educational history of his university, but, also, in the

history of learning and letters.

Whatever may be the place of Sir James Stephen among the

historical writers of the earlier Victorian period, he is sure of

remembrance among English biographical essayists. His 'works,'

no doubt (as Charles Lamb might have said), repose, for the most

part, at the Colonial office, which he ruled for many years as

under-secretary. But the fruits of his scanty leisure, gathered in

1849 under the title Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, together

with Lectures on the History of France, the solitary published

memorial of his efforts as William Smyth's successor in the

1 See his notice of Pattison in vol. xxiv, D. of N. B. 2 C. Christie was himself a

scholar of the type to which he refers, and produced, besides other scholarly work,

his excellent monograph, Étienne Dolet, the Martyr of the Renaissance (1886). Cf,

ante, vol. xii, p. 838.

2 The lectures of William Smyth, who resided at Peterhouse for more than forty

years—the last of four modern history professors belonging to that college, of whom

two preceded Gray—form, together with those of Sir James Stephen, a link between

the earlier and the later days of history teaching in the English universities. At

Cambridge, the call for serious historical study had hardly begun to be raised in

110 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH.

modern history chair at Cambridge, display high literary qualities,

with characteristic features of their own. To his legal training,

Stephen owed his introduction to administrative work, and he was

the maker of many constitutions, before, in his Lectures on the

History of France (which extended over the whole period from

the separation of Gaul from the Roman empire to Louis XIV), he

expounded at length the inner political history of that country.

The ‘sociological’ view of history was an abomination to him.

His early connection, strengthened by marriage, with the evan-

gelical school of religious thought, and, more especially, with

that ‘Clapham sect,’ to which one of the best known of his essays

offers a lasting tribute, lent force to his religious convictions

and warmth to his moral sympathies. He could not see more

than one side to the conflict between the rise of Christianity and

the decay of the Roman empire, and he perceived the retributive

hand of Providence in the troubles of the church of Rome

following on the persecution of the Albigenses. But, as time

went on, his wide reading, combined with the teachings of ex-

perience, broadened his sympathies, more especially as he did not

transfer his official dogmatism into his best literary work. ‘The

historian,’ he says, ‘aims at one kind of praise, the lecturer in

history at another.’ In many of his essays, as well as in those of

his lectures which dealt with ‘the Power of the Pen in France,’ he

succeeded in blending with a vivid characterisation of real men

something of the imaginative power that projects itself into great

lives of the past.

There was, perhaps, more difference than resemblance in the

gifts which the two sons of Sir James Stephen respectively in-

herited from their father, or which were peculiar to themselves ;

but, though Sir Leslie Stephen, in his Life of Sir James Fitzjames

Stephen, naturally dwelt on family features, the elder brother’s

interests did not lie in the direction of biographical or other

history1. Leslie, on the other hand, among his many claims to an

enduring literary fame, has none superior to those arising out of

Smyth’s, or even in Stephen’s, time. Yet, Smyth was not only a highly accomplished

man—a poet of some reputation and an excellent talker—but well-read and discerning,

a moderate whig, able to admire Burke without condemning Mackintosh. Thus, his

Lectures on the French Revolution (1840), considering the incompleteness of authentic

materials, may be described as one of the earliest adequate and dispassionate English

treatments of their subject.

1 His chief eminence was that of a jurist; as a Saturday reviewer, he dealt, mainly,

with subjects appertaining to moral, political, or social philosophy. His Story of

Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey (1885) was an exceptional product

of his Indian life.

II] Collections of Lives III

his work as a biographer, and as the first architect of the greatest monument of national biography possessed by our literature1.

Among collective works narrating in succession the lives of occupants of particular offices, the precedence belongs to the biographies of royal personages. Considerable popularity was attained by Lives of the Queens of England (1840—8), by Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland, published, by the wish of the latter and elder sister, under the name of Agnes only. She followed it up by Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses connected with the Royal Succession of Great Britain and Lives of the Bachelor Kings of England, from William Rufus to Edward VI, to which series her sister Elizabeth was, again, a contributor. Other series ensued, including both Tudor and Stewart princesses, and the seven bishops. She was not a powerful writer, but indefatigable in the accumulation of illustrative detail and conscientious in the use of it. After the completion of Miss Strickland's chief work, Mrs Mary Anne Everett Green, who, previously, under her maiden name Wood, had published Letters of Royal Ladies of Great Britain, brought out Lives of the Princesses of England (1849—55), on which she had been long engaged. The very large amount of valuable work done by her as one of the editors of the Calendars of State Papers at the Record office left her little leisure for literary activity of her own; but she produced, among other books, Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria (1857), a volume based entirely on original research, and collected much material for a series of lives of our Hanoverian queens, to which was to have been prefixed a life of the electress Sophia. It is to be regretted that this plan remained unexecuted, for Mrs Everett Green had sound historical judgment as well as extensive and accurate knowledge of our national history, from the Elizabethan age downwards.

A biographer of royalty, also, was Sir Theodore Martin, whose Life of the Prince Consort (1875—80), undertaken by queen Victoria's desire, is founded largely on original papers, in part of great value for diplomatic history. Martin, who, while an active lawyer, was one of the most accomplished as well as one of the most versatile men of letters of his times—essayist, poetic translator and parodist—also wrote, besides an early memoir of his comrade in 'satire, William Edmonstoune Aytoun, a Life of Lord Lyndhurst (1888)

1 The story of The Dictionary of National Biography is told in Memoir of George Smith, by Sir Sidney Lee, prefixed to vol. I of the first supplement of the Dictionary (1901). As to Sir Leslie Stephen, see, post, chap. xii.

112 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH.

and a memoir of his own adored wife, the great and beautiful actress best known by her maiden name Helen Faucit (1900).

The Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (1860—76) by Walter Farquhar Hook, dean of Chichester, and previously vicar of Leeds, form a characteristic memorial of the evening ‘leisure’ of a long life devoted to the service of the church whose entire history is surveyed in this long series of volumes1. An even greater success than that obtained by this series, though partly of the mixed kind which does not make for edification, attended the publication of lord Campbell’s Lives of the Lord Chancellors (1846—7) and Lives of the Lord Chief Justices of England (1849—57). The Lives of Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham, which followed (1860), filled the cup of remonstrance to overflowing.

(The life of Lyndhurst had, as was just seen, to be, more or less adequately, written over again by another hand) ; as for Brougham, he had found time to add to his innumerable literary offspring his own Life and Times, which was published posthumously (1871).)

Far more attractive, though their humour is by no means devoid of occasional causality, are the pen-and-ink portraits of the Scottish bench and bar in the first quarter of the century published in Memorials of His Time (1856), by lord Cockburn, biographer of lord Jeffrey (1852).

The most important English biography produced in the mid-Victorian age was David Masson’s Life of Milton, narrated in connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time (1859—80). The full title of the book must be given in order to indicate its range ; since, when the author had, at last, brought the work to a conclusion, he was warranted in expressing his satisfaction in having ‘been able to persevere to the very end in the original plan, omitting nothing, slurring nothing, that the plan required.’ In a word, this classical book is a history of as momentous a period of twoscore years as is to be found in the national life of England—grouped, on the principle enunciated by Carlyle,round the personal life and labours of one of its greatest men and one of the greatest of English writers. Everything Milton wrote is here taken into account: of every important poem or prose-work from his hand a complete history and a critical analysis are supplied ; and he is consistently viewed in connection with his times, with the movements which shaped their course, and with the men from whom those movements sprang, in state and in church, in peace and in war, in learning and in literature. Whether it be in the fascinating

1 Cf., ante, vol. xii, p. 274.

II] Masson's Life of Milton. Church 113

picture of Milton in his youth, pure as the Castalian fount from

which his soul drank inspiration, and rich with ten talents and the

resolve to multiply by cultivating them—or in the complete

review of the prose-works which Pattison and others deplored,

but which Masson preferred to explain—or in the survey of

the last seven years, and of Milton's surroundings in life and

literature, and his solitude in the presence of Paradise Lost—this

biography nowhere loses sight of its subject or contracts it within

narrower limits than are necessary in relating the life of a great

man who, while his name belongs to all times, was himself part of

his own. Though the magnitude of the scheme necessitates frequent

surveys or retrospectives, which sometimes look like digressions, but

are not really such, the general arrangement is clear ; here and

there, perhaps, the scaffolding is still visible. Masson's style,

rather conspicuously, lacked ease and grace, without possessing

that irresistible note of individuality—the individuality of genius

—which belonged to the style of his friend Carlyle. But, in

candour and sincerity, at all events, the biographer of Milton

was equal to the editor of Cromwell's letters, and he surpassed

the greater writer in assiduity of research and in the simplicity of

his attitude towards the facts of history1.

Of the great masters of continental literatures, Dante missed

an English biographer of the highest qualities in Richard William

Church, though the essays on him by this delightful writer and

admirable critic are among the most notable of his literary pro-

ductions, which include short lives of St Anselm and of Spenser2.

Goethe, to whom, from Henry Crabb Robinson, the author of the

Diary, onwards, a growing body of English readers had, largely under

the influence of Carlyle, come to look up with veneration, found in

George Henry Lewes the most widely popular of all his biographers.

Lewes had made a name for himself by his Biographical History

of Philosophy (1845–6), as well as by less ambitious work ; in his

Life of Goethe (1855) he produced a work of great literary skill ;

yet it unmistakably lacks the deeper note, which he may have been

well-judged in not attempting to force.

John Forster, by his Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith (1854),

1 For Masson's other biographical works, see bibliography. A biographical historian

of considerable merit, who also produced a useful edition of Dryden, was William

Dougal Christie, whose Life of the First Earl of Shaftesbury (1871) deserves com-

mendation as a book of value as well as of capacity, though the ‘rehabilitation’ of

Achitophel may not be regarded as complete.

2 As to dean Church, of., ante, vol. xii, pp. 271–2. The distinguished Italian

scholar, Arthur James Butler, published, in 1886, a short Dante, his Times and his Work.

E. L XIV. CH. II.

8

114 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH.

his Life of Walter Savage Landor (1869) and his Life of Charles Dickens(1872—4), together with some admirable biographical essays and the first volume of a Life of Swift, took a place in the first rank of English biographers, and was, for a long time, the friend and oracle of many eminent English men of letters of his day. In his earlier years, he had cherished a more concentrated kind of ambition. So far back as 1830, he had thought of writing the life of Cromwell; and, although this was not to become the chief work of his maturity, it was included in his valuable series entitled Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth (1836—9). The life of Sir John Eliot was afterwards (1864) expanded by him into a larger biography, and he had previously (1860) published a brace of monographs (one of them enlarged from an earlier essay) based on a careful examination of parliamentary material and dealing with two critical episodes of the struggle between Charles I and the Long parliament. Forster had entered deeply into the spirit of the great struggle of the Stewart age, as is shown by the essay On English Freedom under Plantagenets and Tudors prefixed to the second of these works. Altogether, whatever may have been his, in the circumstances very excusable, foibles, his literary life was one of generous purpose, and of rare energy.

Among the numerous memoir-writers proper of the century, there can be no doubt that, notwithstanding the habit of self-depreciation, at times truly pathetic, to which his fastidious and complicated nature was secretly prone, Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville bears away the palm. The three series of The Greville Memoirs (1874—87), which comment on the course of English politics and society from the accession of George IV to the year 1860, in some measure differ from one another ; in the earlier volumes, the writer adheres to the principle of leaving time to soften, and even to arrest, his judgments ; in the second, and, no doubt, in the third, series occasional suppression was, in consequence of the relative nearness of events, found necessary by the editor, Henry Reeve; while, on the other hand, the years brought with them a gentler tone, together with an occasional weariness of the great world. For the rest, Charles Greville was always ready to play the part of mediator as well as that of confidant; and his essential qualities as a memoir-writer remained to him throughout. He was gifted with an insight into character hardly surpassed by any of the great predecessors whom he could never quite keep out of view. His style, though, as it were, instinctively polished, was free from all desire for epigrammatic

II] Croker and Creevey 115

effect; he never says either too much or too little. Neither personal goodwill nor personal dislike hindered him from perceiving the failings of Wellington or ignoring the merits of Peel; and the vagaries of Brougham diverted him too much to allow of his even here lapsing into caricature. The set characters which, on the occasion of their deaths, he drew of the former two, and of personages so diverse as Melbourne, Althorp and Harrowby, Talleyrand and Macaulay, lord George Bentinck and Charles Butler, lady Harrowby and Mme de Lieven, Luttrell, Alvanley and D'Orsay, are all, more or less, masterly, and this list is by no means exhaustive. When he occasionally tried his hand at a political pamphlet or letter, neither his force nor his self-restraint deserted him, and his anonymous book The Policy of England to Ireland (1845), in which he advocated a policy of concurrent religious endowments in Ireland, was a rare instance of political foresight as well as of historical judgment.

The Croker Papers, not published till 1884, when nearly a generation had passed after John Wilson Croker's death (1857), and more than half a century since his retirement from active public life (1832) throw a great deal of light upon the bitter party conflicts of the twenty-two years during which he held the secretaryship to the admiralty. In this office, his first important task was to defend the Walcheren expedition; but attack rather than defence was his métier. He was of the inner councils of his party on most of the great political questions of these years, and among the unconvinced opponents both of parliamentary reform and the repeal of the corn-laws. But his chief services to the conservatives (he was the inventor of this name, scouted by Disraeli, who had no love to spare for him) were rendered in the pages of The Quarterly Review. The Croker Papers, which are held together by a very thin biographical thread, derive their chief interest from the letters comprised in them from the duke of Wellington, lord George Bentinck and others, and from Croker's occasional journal addressed to his patron, the marquis of Hertford.

The Creevey Papers, published in 1903, about seventy years after the death of the writer or recipient of the letters of which, together with fragments of diaries, they mainly consist, have no pretension to rank in historical significance by the side of The Croker Papers, or in literary value by that of The Greville Memoirs. Thomas Creevey, though born in Liverpool, seems to have regarded Ireland as his native country, but was an absentee

8—2

116 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH.

till he had turned sixty. His position in the political and social

world was really due to himself, and to a combination of fidelity

and adaptability which made him, at one time, a member of the

extreme radical faction, and, at another, commended him to the

'perfidious Billy.' He had a caustic style, not untouched with

the grossness fashionable in the days of the regency, and his use

of nicknames is appalling in its irreverence. His notices of

Brougham ('Wickedshifts') are even more vivid than Greville's;

but he rarely rises to a higher tone, though his account of

lord Grey (to whom he loyally adhered) in his latter days does

honour to both. Creevey, at one time, contemplated writing a

history of his times, and, in 1826, published, as a pamphlet, a series

of letters on reform addressed to lord John Russell (whom he

could not abide).

A novel form of political memoir—though it had, of course,

been previously used for other ends—was that of Conversations

with M. Thiers, M. Guizot and other distinguished persons

during the Second Empire, recorded by the wellknown economist

Nassau William Senior and posthumously published in two series,

covering together the years 1852 to 1863. Senior's interlocutors

were largely, but not altogether, political opponents of the empire,

and they include many literary celebrities; so that the Conversa-

tions faithfully mirror the thoughts of the intellectual flower of

contemporary France. These volumes had been preceded by

Journals kept in France and Italy, and by Correspondence and

Conversations of A. de Tocqueville, who pronounced Senior's the

most enlightened of English minds. The rather earlier Journals,

Conversations and Essays relating to Ireland (1868) comprise,

with reprinted earlier papers on a subject always full of interest to

the author, journals of visits to Ireland in 1852, 1858 and 1862, and

conversations with people of all sorts whom he met on his travels,

up to his former tutor and lifelong friend archbishop Whately.

This rapid and unavoidably incomplete review of the progress

of English historical literature in the nineteenth century could not

be more fitly concluded than by a reference to the eminent

teacher and scholar, the very type of modern historical learning in

its maturest development, with whose literary ideas and designs

the present work may claim a kind of collateral kinship. To

speak of lord Acton as a teacher might seem to attach an undue

significance to the exertions of six years out of a full life, great as

II] Lord Acton 117

those exertions were, and marked by a touching desire to be, within academic limits, ‘all things to all men.’ But it is not to his professorial work that the tribute suggested should be limited. His inaugural lecture (though he had not devoted several years to the preparation of it, as Gray did to that of a discourse he never delivered), besides being, in elevation of tone, as noble an utterance as has, perhaps, ever been made on a similar occasion, indicates, partly with playful irony, partly with high moral dignity, the purposes and qualities needing to be combined in the study of history at the stage of progress now reached. Acton’s own historical learning has often been represented as barren ; and it is true that, notwithstanding his extraordinary diligence in the daily increase of his store, its accumulation resulted in the production of no great historical work. The plan of a history of liberty which he had formed early in life was never carried out by him, and there remain only the hints given in two popular lectures delivered by him at Bridgnorth, so early as 1877, to show his conception of the theme.

By liberty he meant the assurance that every man should be protected in doing what he believed to be his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion1.

The problem of his personal life was how to reconcile this principle with submission to the authority of the church of which, throughout life, he was a devout member. The influence of Döllinger had long dominated his mind, and it reflects itself even in his literary manner. But, as a writer, he held the principle of liberty, as above defined, sacred in great things and in small, and in the affairs of both church and state. The edict of Nantes, he told his Cambridge class, ‘forms an epoch in the progress of toleration, that is, in the history of liberty, which is the marrow of all modern history2.’ The struggle against absolute monarchy in England ‘is the point where the history of nations turned into its modern bed. It is the point also where the Englishman became the leader of the world3.’

Undoubtedly, the task of Acton’s life, as he had set it to himself, fell short of accomplishment because of the actual endlessness of the method, which, for a long time only half consciously, he had pursued in making ready for it. “Ἔστιν θάλασσα—but to no mortal is it given to exhaust that sea, though his knowledge may cover, besides a wide range of theology, the whole field of history, and

1 Cf. Gooch, G. P., English History and Historians (1913), p. 324.

2 Lectures on Modern History (1906), p. 171. 3 Ibid. p. 206.

118 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH.

include an intimate acquaintance with the by-paths and hidden lanes

that lead to it, and though he may possess, and turn over with daily

and nightly hand, four libraries owned by him at the same time in

four distinct counties or countries1. Yet it would be a mistake to

suppose that Acton found difficulty in making good literary use of

the knowledge he was thus incessantly acquiring, and that, while

one of the fullest of historical writers and critics, he had not, at

the same time, a ready pen, or one possessed of a humour which

only a feeling of reverence prevented from running rapidly into

sarcasm. Many a distinguished author has taught himself the calm

dignity of manner which came naturally to Acton, both in writing

and in personal intercourse; his foible was rather to let his

text wear the aspect of notes (at times the more enjoyable the

more carefully they are studied), or, at least, of apophthegms

following one another so closely as to produce the effect of over-

loading.

Acton's literary career began (a little before his parliamentary)

in 1859, with his nominal editorship of The Rambler, in succession

to Newman, the main editorial work being still carried on by

Richard Simpson, the biographer of Edmund Campion. Acton's

contributions to this journal, which began with an article 'Mill

On Liberty,' were by no means confined to the discussion of

topics connected with the growth of liberal catholicism; and

the same was the case with his numerous articles and reviews

(under the heading 'contemporary literature') in The Home

and Foreign Review, which, in 1862, took the place of the

departed Rambler2. Three years later, The Chronicle made its

appearance, for which Acton wrote many articles of political and

historical interest, ending with a notable paper on the massacre

of St Bartholomew, besides carrying on a succession of notes on

the political situation in the papal and other Italian states, and a

continuous comment in the shape of reviews, on 'contemporary

literature.' When, to these, are added his contributions to The

North British and The Quarterly Review, as well as to The

English Historical Review3, together with occasional lectures

and addresses, it will be seen that Letters of Quirinus and the

subsequent Open Letter to a German Bishop on the Vatican

Council (1870), and his letters to The Times on the Vatican

1 See lord Bryce's account in Studies in Contemporary Biography (1903), p. 882.

2 Acton wrote its final word, ' Conflicts with Rome.'

3 The first number contained a characteristically comprehensive article by Acton

entitled 'German Schools of History,' followed in a later number by 'Döllinger's

Historical Work.'

[I] Acton's Historical Principles 119

decrees—or, rather, on Gladstone's celebrated letter about them—

(1874), form only a part of a prolonged many-sided literary activity.

After his removal to Cambridge, his lectures (of which two series

have been published since his death) proved the firmness of his

grasp not less than the wellknown width of his learning, and

reawakened the expectation of further historical work of an

enduring character from his hands.

It had been hoped, by Acton himself, and by many who would

have taken pride in working under his leadership, that The

Cambridge Modern History would, besides embodying some of

his historical ideas, offer an opportunity to its projector of laying

down in its opening chapter his conception of the legacy of the

middle ages, and that his editorship and successive contributions

would inspire the progress of the work as a whole. Neither hope

was destined to be fulfilled. But his elucidation of its plan remains

to demonstrate what, to a great scholar, whose opportunities had

surpassed those of any previous or contemporary historian, seemed

the range of the sphere in which modern history moved and had

its being, and in what spirit the materials now open to historical

criticism should, in his judgment, be transfused into historical

narrative. Across the century, the spirit of the greatest of modern

writers on ancient history—Niebuhr—seems in contact with the

spirit of him who had most closely scanned the course of modern

history ; and, together, they seem to vindicate the right and duty

of the advance made in historical studies and literature during

the century's course in England and elsewhere. 'The historians

of former ages,' lord Acton said, in the incomparable inaugural

lecture already cited, 'unapproachable for us in knowledge and

in talent, cannot be our limit,' because 'we have the power to

be more rigidly impersonal, disinterested and just than they.'

C. Political Orators and Writers of Pamphlets

The great age of English political oratory might seem to have

passed away with the fatal year (1806) which removed both Pitt

and Fox from the scene of their mighty conflicts; a greater orator

than either—Burke—had died nearly a decade earlier. When, in

1802, James Mill arrived in London, he at first thought the

eloquence of the house of commons inferior to that of the

general assembly (though nearly a generation was to elapse before

the chair of that assembly was filled by Chalmers, the most brilliant

of all luminaries of the Scottish pulpit). But Mill listened with

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admiration to Fox and Sheridan, as well as to some other well-known parliamentary speakers of the time.

One of these was William Wilberforce, then in the midst of his immortal efforts for the abolition of the slave trade, accomplished in 1807. The all but unique position which, after this, he held in public estimation was by no means due only to his self-devotion to a cause appealing to the deepest instincts of humanity, and to his detachment from all party motives of action, in 'any undertaking which had the welfare of mankind for its object1.' It, also, owed much to the charm of his personality, the modest dignity of his bearing and the unaffected ease and simple grace of his delivery.

Among other parliamentary figures prominent in the early years of the century was William Windham, whose birth and breeding as a country gentleman of ancient descent had implanted in him, together with an unextinguishable interest in the peasantry, a spirit of unflinching patriotism and of independence which refused to bend before any pressure of court or party. A school-fellow of Fox, and a follower of Burke, he had imbibed a love of literature which induced Johnson to describe him as, in that region, inter stellas Luna minores. His oratory, however, found its proper sphere in the house of commons, and it was when he led the Grenville party in opposition that his ability as a debater was most conspicuous. His speeches, of which a considerable collection remains, are full of apt, rather than striking, Latin quotations, besides occasional native sallies. In a different key from his attacks upon the peace of Amiens, and his stern comments on the seizure of the Danish fleet, is his long and temperate speech on the scandal which drove the duke of York from office. No politician was ever more free from self-interest, or orator from rant. 'Nothing,' he said, 'is more agreeable than to praise the Athenians among the Athenians; but I rather consider it the duty of public men to speak wholesome truths.'

Samuel Whitbread had been educated with the same care as Windham and, by his marriage with the sister of his school-fellow, afterwards earl Grey, was brought near to the innermost whig circle, though his wealth was derived from the great trading concern in which he was a partner. Long a devoted follower of Fox, he was fearless in the denunciation of all kinds of abuses; during the last six years of his life, he is said to have been the most frequent speaker in the house of commons, and

1 See the admirable essay on Wilberforce in Sir James Stephen's Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography.

II] Erskine. Tierney I2I

was the soul of the agitation in favour of the princess of Wales. His vehemence of manner was a constant source of derision to satirists with pen or picture, who always remembered the brewery ; but, though his impetuosity reflected his enthusiasm for what he held right, he could, as both Sheridan and Burdett found, be prudent on occasion.

Thomas, afterwards lord, Erskine seems never to have quite caught the tone of the house of commons, though a consistent member of the whig party, whose principles he, also, upheld with his pen1. But his fame rests on his forensic oratory, which entitled him to choose for the motto of his peerage the words ‘trial by jury.’ He was engaged in a series of cases bearing on the liberty of the press and the charge of constructive treason; and defended in turn lord George Gordon, Thomas Paine, the publisher Stockdale, who had incurred the wrath of the house of commons, and the radical founder of the London Corresponding society, Thomas Hardy, whom he brought off amidst the wildest popular enthusiasm. That his triumphs, described by earl Russell as those of ‘the sword and buckler’ which ‘protected justice and freedom,’ were free from meretricious glitter seems to be borne out by those of his speeches that have been preserved out of an enormous mass of oratory, if allowance be made for the egoism which seems inseparable from the Ciceronian manner and which was certainly not alien to Erskine’s nature.

George Tierney, on the other hand, was a parliamentary politician proper, whose course of public action was determined by personal interest as well as by political opinions. Though of Irish descent, he was educated at Eton and Cambridge (Peterhouse); and though, from 1797 onwards, a declared opponent of Pitt (with whom he fought a blank duel in the following year), he was not a favourite of Fox, and, indeed, for a time, carried on the struggle against Pitt on his own account, as nobody’s friend, unless it was as the ‘friend of humanity.’ His later career was equally varied, though he attained to a leading, rather than a commanding, position. His ability as a debater made him a most formidable, as he was a most vigilant and tenacious, adversary and he may be regarded as the last of the great parliamentarians of the revolutionary period. His speeches seem to have been often colloquial in manner, but never deficient in point, and to have excelled in the art of restating an adversary’s case so as to ‘turn it inside out. Unlike lord Castlereagh, the extraordinary faultiness of whose

1 See his Defence of the Whigs in vol. xv of The Pamphleteer (1820).

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style, in both speech and writing, seems to reflect shortcomings

which have been allowed to weigh too heavily against such merits

as should be conceded to his foreign policy, George Canning,

whose star shone forth in full splendour as that of Castlereagh

sank below the horizon, had long been famed for the force of his

political oratory as well as for the irresistible wit of his political

writing. He gained a place among the foremost orators of the

day by his great speech in December 1798 against the resumption

of negotiations with France; among the tributes paid to the mighty

spirit of Pitt after his death in 1806, Canning's soared into the

loftiest sphere of eulogy. In 1808, he vindicated the seizure of

the Danish fleet—for which, as foreign secretary, he was primarily

responsible—in a speech of extraordinary power. But his great

popularity began with his addresses to the constituency of

Liverpool; and it was, in the first instance, the fire of his oratory

which prepared the triumph of his statesmanship. After he

had begun to rise to the height of his parliamentary position,

and had delivered the great speech (28 April 1825) upholding the

principle of pacific non-intervention in the case of Spain, he

returned to the subject in a memorable address at Plymouth,

which strikes a note of far-sighted grandeur such as no other

political orator has reached in England since the days of Burke.

When the recognition of the Spanish American colonies was an

accomplished fact, Canning, in the famous defence of his policy,

12 December 1826, spoke of himself as having 'called in the new

world to redress the balance of the old.' When he became prime

minister of Great Britain, without even then commanding the

firm support of either king or parliament, his strength still lay

in the popularity which, in a free community—be it Athens or

England—always sustains the statesman who has mounted to the

foremost place among its leaders; and this Periclean supremacy

was the direct offspring of his oratory as well as of his states-

manship. The duke of Wellington—at least a candid critic—

pronounced Canning the finest speaker he had ever heard; and

his admiration extended to his state papers. Although, in his

published speeches, it is not often, except in the greatest of them1

that we can catch a notion of his completeness in matter united

1 A characteristic example of Canning at his best will be found in the long speech

On unlawful Societies in Ireland' in vol. v of the 6 vol. edition of his Speeches (1828).

he grand personal note (in regard to himself as part cause of the Peninsular war) is

or wanting here, nor are humorous quotations, ranging from Dr Johnson to Mrs

Slaprop.

to perfection in manner—of the 'rich, gay, aspiring eloquence'

ascribed to him by lord Morley—there is a family likeness in

them all. Imaginative power and wit, often inimitably apt, are

sustained by a scholarship which abhors an unpolished corner in

the structure; and, through all, there is visible a large-mindedness

beyond the common range of public oratory, and a large-heartedness

inviting that kind of popularity which Canning was not ashamed

to allow he loved. Of vagueness or of violence, there is nothing

in his speeches; and, when defending himself against misrepre-

sentation, he could grandly say: 'If you have not heard me in

vain, it is well; if you have, I have troubled you too long, but

it has been for the last time.'

The other great orator of Canning's later years, and beyond,

was Henry lord Brougham, whose oratorical powers, exercised, in

one way or another, during a period of some years, are, together

with his other gifts, to be described only by the word prodigious.

His resources were infinite, and the aptness of his use of them

unrivalled; but his forte—we should rather say his fortissimo

—must have lain in conversation, in which his exuberance of life

and spirit were altogether incomparable. His speeches, on the

other hand, as Greville, whose pages sparkle with Broughamiana,

happily puts it, were too long by reason of the perpetual bubbling-up

of new ideas. And there was (can it be denied?) something else

which interfered with his full success as an orator, as, of course

in a profounder sense, it did with the completeness of his political

career. He was, in public life, trusted by neither friend nor foe;

and, with all his brilliancy and all his force, he conveyed an

undefinable impression that he had no strong opinions on any

subject that he took up for attack or defence. Yet, when all

deductions have been made, the power and the versatility of his

oratory, due, in no small measure, to the care which he bestowed

upon his efforts, remain one of the wonders in the history of genius.

The scornful fire of his invective burnt itself into the hearts and

souls of its victims, and he was not less himself in long and

elaborate discourses, on subjects outside the ordinary range of

political controversy. His eloquence associated itself with his

labours as a law reformer, with his services to education and the

advance of science and with a vast miscellaneous literary produc-

tivity; but its fame outstripped that of all his other achievements,

and will make him remembered when much that he did and all

that he wrote will have fallen into oblivion.

One of the few speakers, whether on legal or on other themes,

I 24

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whom Brougham was unable to crush was John Singleton Copley,

lord Lyndhurst, who, according to Greville, was master of the one

thing, which, in the end, the house of lords preferred to every-

thing else, and which Brougham could never compass—conciseness.

Lyndhurst, whose career and views present certain points of

resemblance to those of his friend Disraeli, made his way to

eminence by an unusual union of qualifications, which included an

oratory of rare polish and point. It showed itself to particular

advantage in those annual reviews which adorned the close, and

pointed the failure, of many a parliamentary session, and which,

though Melbourne called them Lyndhurst’s exercitationes, were

certainly not academical in the sense of innocuousness. On the

judicial bench, he had excelled in summing up; and a famous

judgment of his1, though afterwards reversed on an appeal which

he resisted in a second address of extraordinary ability, is

described, by one who was no kindly chronicler (lord Campbell),

as ‘by all accounts the most wonderful ever heard in Westminster

Hall.’

Among later luminaries of the bar and bench who played a

prominent part in English political life, it is impossible to pass by

Sir Richard Bethell, afterwards lord Westbury, who combined with

extraordinary acumen and lucidity of statement a gift of sarcastic

innuendo which voice and manner rendered absolutely intolerable.

Sir Roundell Palmer, afterwards first earl of Selborne, a refined

scholar and devout churchman, who, as an equity pleader, was

inferior neither to Westbury nor to Hugh M’Calmont, afterwards

first earl, Cairns, became one of the greatest judicature reformers

of the age. Like Selborne, Cairns, though of an austere nature,

was a most effective speaker in parliament (as in his defence of

Ellenborough) and might have led his party had he chosen. Sir

Alexander, afterwards lord, Cockburn, in the greatest crisis of lord

Palmerston’s career, proved his most valuable ally, and rendered

other political services at the close of a brilliant legal career.

In the great reform movement, with whose triumph a new era

in English political life began, the foremost figure is that of Charles

second earl Grey, to whose courage and sincerity the chief credit of

the passing of the bill is, above all, due. Since, in 1786, he had

(though matters of finance were never much to his taste) in an

admired maiden speech attacked Pitt’s commercial treaties, he

never faltered, either in the days of the eclipse of the whig party,

or in those of catholic emancipation (in which he delivered a speech

1 In the case of Small v. Attwood.

II] Orators of the Reform Bill Period 125

which Stanley (Derby) said he would rather have made than four of Brougham's) and of reform. It was thought regrettable that lord Grey allowed the fiery nature of John George Lambton, first earl of Durham, to domineer over him; but this was, chiefly, a matter of temper. Durham's own career was brief and stormy1; the celebrated report on Canadian affairs by which he is most generally remembered is said to have been mainly written by his secretary Charles Buller, a young liberal of great personal popularity, a lively orator and an acute reasoner in both speech and pamphlet.

In the debates on the Reform bill, Macaulay's renown as an orator was first established; although, perhaps, he never quite fulfilled the exorbitant expectations formed of him at the time of his first entrance into the parliamentary arena. It was but natural that what was most admirable in his speeches should be their literary qualities; they were usually of the nature of harangues or set orations, carrying away in their rush the arguments of his adversaries. But they were not designed as replies and, thus, lack some of the most stimulating qualities of parliamentary oratory. Among his later speeches, those on the question of copyright, to which he could contribute a most extraordinary wealth of illustration, are notable as having not only influenced but actually determined legislation.

Outside parliament, the Reform bill campaign was carried on in innumerable speeches, among which those of Henry ('Orator') Hunt should, perhaps, not be passed by. When, after the great bill had passed, he entered parliament, he soon sank into a nonentity, and was said by Cobbett to be 'really as inoffensive as Pistol or Bardolph.' Hunt and Cobbett died in the same year (1835); but no comparison is possible between their powers.

To oratorical distinction, neither John Charles, viscount Althorp (afterwards carl Spencer), lord Grey's lieutenant in the house of commons, where he enjoyed a unique personal regard, nor his successor in the leadership of the whig party and as prime-minister, William Lamb, viscount Melbourne, had any wish to attain. The latter, indeed, though he went so far as to declare that 'the worst thing about the Spaniards was their speaking so well,' could hardly do this as most other things well when obliged to do them. The two statesmen, in turn colleagues and rivals, who succeeded lord Melbourne as heads of the liberal party, lord John, afterwards

1 His advanced radicalism is reflected in his speech of 1833, explaining his own reform project, printed in The Pamphleteer, no. xxxii, vol. xxi.

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[CH.

earl, Russell and Henry Temple, viscount Palmerston, were, neither of them, born to sway senates by the force or grace of their eloquence. But the extraordinary self-confidence inbred in the former and his early services to the cause of parliamentary reform, helped him over the repeated breakdowns, at times self-provoked, of his career, and occasionally seemed to warm up the outward coldness of a courageous and patriotic nature. Lord Palmerston, whose easy disposition, great capacity for affairs and quick perception of the mainsprings of personal popularity established him in the end as a national favourite, made at least one great speech in his life (the Civis Romanus speech of 1850), besides many other successful, and some unsuccessful, efforts; he neither shrank from claptrap, nor always avoided flippancy, but the ring which found an echo in English hearts was not wanting where there was a need for it. In Palmerston's early days, Byron had called his oratory unconvincing; but he had learnt something from Canning, besides the traditions of his foreign policy.

It is not as an Irishman that it is usual to remember Palmerston; but not a few orators of Irish birth were the descendants of an age when the art of oratory had been fostered by the spirit of parliamentary independence, or themselves lived at a time when the Irish bar, as the one high-road to a career of public distinction, encouraged an eloquence directly appealing, in manner as well as in matter, to broad popular sympathies. Among the successors of Grattan, William Conyngham, afterwards lord, Plunket—to whom, in spite of O'Connell and 'the anti-vetoists, the conduct of the catholic relief movement was, in the first instance, entrusted—was probably, the most finished speaker. His career at the Irish bar reaches back some years into the eighteenth century, and he did not resign the Irish lord chancellorship (in which he had exhibited very high judicial qualities) till 1841. One of the finest of his speeches was that of 21 February 1829, on the catholic claims, which, while demonstrating that the exclusion of catholics from the legislature was a constitutional innovation, upheld the Irish church establishment as, historically, part of the constitution. This and other speeches by him which remain are, certainly, on a very high level of both argument and style. The gravity of his eloquence frequently rose to imaginative loftiness ; and, in the opinion of a cultivated critic1, he would, had he been bred in parliament, have been the greatest speaker that

1 The first earl of Dudley. See The Life, Letters and Speeches of Lord Plunket, by Plunket, D., with an introductory preface by lord Brougham (2 vols. 1867), p. 07.

II] Plunket. O'Connell. Sheil 127

ever appeared in it. Lord Brougham compares his twofold

eminence, at the bar and in parliament, to that of Berryer,

perhaps the most exquisite speaker to whom it has been the lot

of anyone now living to listen. But, from the point of view

of popular effect—effect exercised not upon this or that assembly

only, but upon the nation as a whole, the name of every other

Irish orator—perhaps that of any orator of whatever people

or age—pales before that of Daniel O'Connell. There is

little if any exaggeration in this statement, albeit exaggeration

was his element. He told Jeremy Bentham that, in his opinion,

it was right to speak of one's friends ‘in the strongest language

consistent with truth’; and, as to his adversaries, from Wellington

and Peel downwards—apart from the magnificent scurrilities

which he hurled at such offenders as lord Alvanley and Disraeli—

the vituperative habit had, as we read, grown upon him in ordinary

talk till such words as ‘rogue,’ ‘villain,’ ‘scoundrel,’ had, in the end,

lost all precise significance for him. But, as an orator, he had his

vocabulary as he had the whole of his armoury of action under

control; nor was there ever a demagogue so little led away either

by his tongue or by the passion within him. Rude, when it suited

him to be rude, and coarse, when coarseness was expected from

him, he was irresistible as an orator; first, because he never lost

sight of his purpose, and, secondly, because he was never out of

sympathy with the whole of his audience—indeed, speaker and

audience were one. That he should have remained true both to

the aspirations of the Irish people and to his principle of ex-

cluding illegal means or violence from the action which he urged,

was, perhaps, the greatest triumph of his oratory. It was forensic

in both origin and features; but the orator, like the man—his wit,

his ardour, his impudence, his piety—were racy of the soil to

which he belonged by blood and indissoluble congeniality, and,

though he held his own against the foremost debaters of the house

of commons, he was at his best, from first to last, in his native

surroundings, in law courts or city hall, or facing the multitudes

at Limerick or on Tara hill.

The third name in the triad of great Irish orators who strove,

though not always in concord, for the welfare of their country

was that of Richard Lalor Sheil. Educated under old-fashioned

legitimist and Jesuit influences, he had literary gifts, which, in his

younger days, made a name for him in poetic drama. But the

life's work of this ‘iambic rhapsodist,’ as O'Connell—not felicitously

—called him, was, both at the bar (where his most brilliant, and

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[CH.

surely longest, speech was in defence of the ‘liberator's' son, 1844) and in the house of commons, devoted to the cause of Ireland, and to that of catholic emancipation in particular. His parliamentary position was never either an uncompromising or a commanding one, though his fire and fluency alike called forth admiration and made Gladstone, in his youthful days, avow himself unwilling to follow him in debate. Nor is it easy even now to resist the effect of such a speech as that in which (in October 1828) he advocated the catholic claim before a Kentish audience on Pennenden heath and taunted England with being, in the matter of religious tolerance, ‘behind almost every nation in Europe.’ He shone both in exordium and in peroration ; but his taste was less pure than Plunket's, and his invective less torrential than O'Connell's.

We pass abruptly to the other side of politics, though the first name to be mentioned is still that of an Irishman. But the duke of Wellington made no pretence of figuring among the orators of his age. Insensible as he was to popular applause, he sometimes spoke well without knowing it, and, also, at times (as in the great reform debate of 1831), spoke very badly. His oratory, in every sense of the word, was unstudied, and, on constitutional questions, quite out of its element. His despatches would suffice to show that he was not without style ; but he reserved it for matter of which he was master1.

With the great name of Wellington is inseparably associated that of Sir Robert Peel, whose political life more distinctly, perhaps, than that of any English statesman since Walpole, centred in the house of commons. Outside that assembly, a certain stiffness, born of reserve rather than of haughtiness, may, at times, have stood in his way; and he could be set down as ‘a cold feeler and a cautious stepper.’ But the house of commons he knew, and came to sway for a long time with an undisputed pre-eminence; and the list is long of his speeches which mark momentous advances in our political history and attest his extraordinary personal ascendancy. His maiden speech, delivered in 1810 at the age of twenty-two, was thought to have been the best since the younger Pitt's; and, nine years afterwards (when the question was under discussion whether Canning or he was fittest for the leadership of the house), Canning described the speech in which Peel

1 His eldest brother, Richard marquis of Wellesley, a brilliant classical scholar and a lover of literature (Italian in especial), was also a highly accomplished orator, though he spoke but little in parliament.

II] Peel. Derby 129

introduced the resolutions providing for the resumption of cash payments, on which 'Peel's act' was founded, as the greatest wonder he had ever witnessed. Ten years later, in March 1829, Peel delivered one of the greatest, and, at the same time, one of the most characteristic, speeches of his entire career—that on catholic emancipation, ending with a noble peroration fitly described as eloquent with the spirit of duty. Yet, the most memorable part of his career as a parliamentary statesman and orator only set in with his definitive return to office in 1841. In the following year, he made his first great budget speech—'a complete course of political economy'—and to this period, too, belongs his speech (1843) on the Factory acts and the existing distress, which, to baron Brunnow, seemed 'eloquence as the ancients understood the word.' After his historic resignation, he made one further great speech—on 28 June 1850, the day before that of his fatal accident—against the vote of confidence in Palmerston's foreign policy. Bright commemorated it as Peel's 'last, most beautiful and most solemn' utterance ; and it was as worthy of him in its moderation as it was in its truthfulness. Peel's greatest quality—his moral courage, to which he owed the self-confidence that made him, in his own words, 'pique himself on having never failed in carrying anything proposed by him'— is reflected in his oratory. It is neither impassioned nor richly ornamented (though he was a good scholar); but it never falls short of its purpose and can rise with the greatness of the issues which it is directly designed to bring about.

During the long period of waiting which followed after Peel had broken up the party, the conservatives were under the leadership of Stanley, with lord George Bentinck (who died in 1848) and Disraeli as his lieutenants in the house of commons. Edward Stanley—lord Stanley from 1834, and (fourteenth) earl of Derby from 1851—had, after distinguishing himself at Oxford, begun his political life as a whig, and, in the Reform bill debates, opposed Peel, and put down Croker in a most successful speech (1831); but he separated from that party in 1835, and became a supporter of Peel, whose Irish policy he championed with great spirit against O'Connell. He twice filled the office of prime-minister, but was in opposition during most of his later political life. Though far from reckless in the guidance of the counsels of his party, as a speaker, the 'Rupert of debate,' as Bulwer Lytton called him in The New Timon, was, beyond doubt, one of the most splendid, as he was one of the most impetuous, foemen in the field. His oratory was,

E. L. XIV. CH. II.

9

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[CH.

however, under the control of a well-trained taste1, and free from

the artifices of rhetoric. While his vivacity caused him, at sixty,

to be thought one of the cleverest young men in parliament, he

was occasionally accused of a levity of tone recalling other contests

than those of the political arena. The earl of Derby's colleague, the

earl of Ellenborough, remained one of the foremost orators of the

house of lords, even after he had resigned the presidency of the

board of control in 1858. He was a man of brilliant gifts ; but his

oratory reflects the masterfulness of disposition which he had

most prominently displayed as governor-general of India.

In the revolt against Peel, of which the house of commons

was, necessarily, the chief scene, the leading parts were played

by lord George Bentinck and Disraeli. Lord George had made

a high-minded sacrifice of his interest in the turf, and, during

his short political career, proved a very effective, if not always

highly refined, speaker, who took great trouble with facts and

figures. The parliamentary career of Benjamin Disraeli, first earl

of Beaconsfield, really began with those attacks upon Peel which

left their mark upon the political history of the country. They,

also, left their mark upon his style of oratory, which, after, at

first, deriving its significance from its invective, retained the

original seasoning even when it was applied to the unfolding or

defence of a positive policy. Disraeli's power of sarcasm (which no

orator ever more successfully heightened by scornfulness of manner

and by mimicry of gesture) was, however, only one of the gifts

conspicuous in a long succession of speeches—some delivered,

as it were, at bay, some, in the moment of triumph. None of

these gifts was more assiduously cultivated by their possessor

than the imaginative faculty, with which he was sumptuously

endowed and which, in great matters and in small, though in

imperial, in preference to ‘parochial,’ questions, he constantly

turned to the fullest account, but always with consummate dis-

crimination and often, as it was said, ‘behind a mask.’ Thus,

the splendour of his ideals, which, in his younger days, had been

largely associated with fantastic conceptions or racial traditions,

became, in the end, one of the most valuable of his political ways

and means, took captive queen and country, and, for a time, made

the world listen to his eloquence as to the messages of an oracle.

Among the politicians to whom the name of Peelites clung

even after their leader had passed away, Sir James Graham,

who, at first, was regarded as their leader and who, at one time,

1 As to his translation of the Ittad, see, ante, vol. xi, p. 334.

II] Granville. Devonshire. Cobden 131

seemed likely to rise to a foremost position in the conduct of affairs, was a fine speaker, though rather inclined to pompousness, and the best in the house on financial and economical subjects (William Huskisson, whose knowledge of these had been most valuable to Peel, was without oratorical power). But, with all his ability and statesmanlike insight, he could not gain the full confidence of his contemporaries, perhaps because he seemed to be without perfect trust in himself. The most brilliant (except one) of his political associates, Sidney Herbert, afterwards first lord Herbert of Lea, died before his oratorical and other gifts had secured to him the highest political honours.

Among ministers whose attention was chiefly, though, in neither case, exclusively, given to foreign affairs, the earl of Clarendon and earl Granville were the most conspicuous ; they were alike men of great personal charm and accomplished speakers, skilled in the art of diplomatic composition and in the use of forms and turns of courteous speech, an art which has often been missing in English statesmen who lacked their cosmopolitan training. To these qualifications, Granville, whose unselfish services were of the utmost value to his chief, added that of a popular vein, which won him many friends outside the foreign offices of Europe, and made him singularly winning as an orator. During many a long year of party conflict, Gladstone had no more loyal adjutant than the marquis of Hartington, afterwards duke of Devonshire, who possessed in a degree never surpassed the power, invaluable in debate, of bringing home to friends and opponents the absolute sincerity of his utterances.

Inseparably linked together in political history, and most of all by the isolation in which the pair found themselves at more than one stage of their political career, are the great radical names of Cobden and Bright. From the days when the elder of them, Richard Cobden, first entered parliament, in order there to prosecute, with a single-mindedness as complete as that of the platform, the campaign for cheapening the food of the people, an absorbing care for the condition of the people, remained, from first to last, the note of his oratory, and of the remarkable political writings in which he gave occasional expression to his principles. In all his deliverances, he is found transparently sincere, perfectly definite in purpose and as free from ad captandum devices as any orator who has commanded the applause of vast popular audiences or has conquered the attention of a vigilantly antipathetic house of commons. His persuasiveness,

9—2

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[CH.

which Bright described as irresistible, was based on a ground-

work of facts, and their logic convinced his hearers, as his

imperturbable sureness of himself showed them to have con-

vinced the speaker. Although a self-taught orator as well as

politician, Cobden was not wholly without a literary sense—the

notorious reference to the Ilissus was a mere bit of mischief;

but, neither fancy nor humour, nor even the deeper movements

of indignation, entered much into the spirit of his speeches,

which, penetrating to the kernel of the matter, scattered all the

mistakes and false doctrines by which it was enveloped. In the

Corn law meetings, he left it to his indefatigable coadjutor

William Johnson Fox (Browning’s far-sighted friend), who was

always intent upon the interests of the working classes, to draw

touching pictures of the social suffering which the leaguers were

seeking to remedy. Even his antagonism to war, to which he

gave thoughtful expression long before he inveighed against the

concrete example of the conflict with Russia, rested, primarily,

on other than humanitarian grounds. He was not an enthusiast

in either love or hate, and could believe in the sincerity of

others—even of Palmerston—as he was absolutely sincere him-

self. John Bright—Cobden’s comrade in the earliest and most

unequivocally successful phase of their public lives, and in their

opposition to a national war which reason and conscience made

them deem unjust, but virtually without his steadfast associate’s

support in the long campaign for that extension of the franchise

on which modern democracy is based—was, beyond all doubt, one

of the greatest orators of his own or any other age of English life.

The individuality which mirrored itself in his eloquence, and the

ascendancy which it exercised, were those of genius. Although

he insisted on yielding to Fox, who spoke less frequently and with

more elaboration of art, the palm of orator of the anti-Corn-law

league, he displayed, even in this early period of his life, those

qualities which gradually developed into majestic grandeur. In

many respects, the simplest of men, and an adherent of many

of the homely ways of his community, he seemed to tower among

those around him by an unquestioned, half-heroic, dignity of

personality and presence. The arts of flattery were as strange

to his oratory as they were to his daily converse; and irony and

sarcasm seemed alien to the pure truthfulness of his nature. He

was well-read—though not, perhaps, in the common sense of the

phrase. His mind was steeped in the Bible; in his loftier flights,

he seemed to be breathing the atmosphere of the Old Testament;

II] John Bright. Robert Lowe 133

the thoughts and cadences of Milton were ever on his lips;

and he was familiar with a few other great writers capable of

inspiring noble passages of his eloquence. Solemn reproof, lofty

appeal, sympathy with woe and awe of the divine—all these are

to be found in his speeches, where they touch the heights and

depths of human feeling. Of himself, unlike many great orators,

he says little; but the whole history of his public life reveals itself

in his speeches on free trade, or peace and reform, on Ireland,

on India and on that great transatlantic republic whose cause

he upheld, by the side of John Stuart Mill, in the critical hour.

His oratory resembled his life in the grandeur of its simplicity—

hardly a gesture to heighten the effect of the magical voice, only

an occasional sally of wit or humour to relieve the earnestness in

which moral force was naturally blended with human-kindness,

and the whole a self-consistent and unfaltering advance, and a

repose on the heights, when they had been reached, of prophetic

faith. Milton, he said, had taught him, when in his youth he was

beginning to think about public affairs, that true eloquence is

'but the serious and hearty love of truth1'; and the precept,

from first to last, shone like a beacon on his path.

A place of his own among the political orators of his day

must be assigned to Robert Lowe, afterwards viscount Sherbrooke,

a liberal in the general tendency of his ideas and texture of his

intellect, but raised to the height of his political influence and

oratorical renown as the protagonist of the struggle against

democratic reform, with Edward Horsman as the second spokesman

of the Cave (1866-67). In Lowe's speeches, as in his conversation

(his writings were few), his academical training found very distinct

expression, though antithetically mixed with a stinging wit and

with a knowledge of registration and administration taught by

eight years of colonial, followed by a long and varied home,

experience of parliamentary and official life. But the intrinsic

power of his oratory was such as to enable him to fight with un-

paralleled effect the battle on which he had chosen to enter against

what he called the sentimental, the fatalistic and the aggressive

or compulsory democracy, as represented by Mill, Gladstone and

Bright; and his brief autobiography remains to illustrate the

nature of his wit, under which all sentiment withered away.

In this enumeration, we must pass by those whose public life was

mainly occupied with questions, whether of foreign or home policy,

which did not reach their solution in the nineteenth century and

1 Cf. Trevelyan, G. M., The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 886.

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some of which remain unsolved at the present day1. Among these were, on the conservative side, at least one statesman of commanding personality—Robert Cecil, third marquis of Salisbury—who, without ever quite laying aside the ‘flouts’ and ‘gibes’ of less responsible days, and often, seemingly, careless of the immediate effect of indiscretions which would have shaken the trust in the self-control of a lesser man, impressed large audiences as well as the discerning few with his fitness to guide the vessel of state through storms or shoals.

The life of Joseph Chamberlain ended only yesterday, but in the chief campaign which it was not given to him to carry to an issue, he had exercised too potent an influence upon the future of the British empire to make it easy to pass by his name in silence in the present connection. But the whole of his parliamentary career, shortened as it was by physical failure, falls outside the limits within which we judge it right to confine this chapter.

On the other hand, the main transactions and interests of two generations of the national history seem to gather themselves into the threescore years of the public career of William Ewart Gladstone, and into the oratory which gives expression to every stage and aspect of it; though it is only the earlier portion of that career on which we can here dwell. Brought up, as he said, in his native Liverpool under the shadow of the name of Canning, welcomed at the outset of his parliamentary life by Peel, the most talented member of Aberdeen’s new ministry of all the talents, wooed by the tories and indispensable to the whigs, and head of four successive administrations, he ended as the chosen chief of the democracy which he had helped to call into life. To very few other great statesmen of any age has it been given so indissolubly to unite with his name and fame as a statesman those of the orator who expounded, commended and placed on record the chief undertakings of his political genius—unless, indeed, it be thought fit to compare him to the master-spirit who of old both perfected and controlled the Attic democracy. In the year before Gladstone’s death, he made the remark that, as to politics, the basis of his mind was laid principally in finance and in philanthropy—no very strange combination if, by the side of some of the most brilliant triumphs of his oratory, the series of budget speeches, be placed his ardent efforts on behalf of the

1 Of some distinguished divines, lawyers and men of letters whose parliamentary oratory added to their renown, the names will be found in other chapters, and in the bibliography.

II] William Ewart Gladstone 135

suffering Christian subjects of the Turk. But the saying cannot

be accepted as adequately indicating either his chief intellectual

interests or all the most vitalising elements of his inexhaustible

eloquence. On the threshold of manhood, the bent of his mind

had been towards the clerical profession; and for some time he

continued to contemplate secular affairs 'chiefly as a means of

being useful in church affairs.' When, six years after entering

parliament, he produced his celebrated book entitled The State in

its Relations with the Church (1838), he took his stand on the

principle that the state must have one religion, and that must, of

course, be the religion which it had recognised as the true. From

this view, he gradually passed to the acceptance of freedom of

religious opinion, coupled with the conviction that the preservation

of truth may be left in other hands than ours1, and thus fulfilled

Sheil's prophecy that the champion of free trade would become

the advocate of the most unrestricted liberty of thought. But,

even after he had ceased to stand forth as the champion of the

church he loved, religious feeling continued to be the woof that

crossed the warp of his noblest and most stirring eloquence.

Nor, again, is it possible, in considering the characteristics

of his oratory, to mistake the extraordinary fineness of its texture,

or to refuse to attribute this, in part, to the congenial dialectical

training of a singularly subtle mind. Gladstone was a classical

scholar, whose imagination delighted to feed on Homer2, and whom

a stronger intellectual affinity had familiarised with the pearls of

Vergilian diction; while, among modern literatures, he loved the

Italian with a fervency that inspired in him his earliest incursion

into the domain of foreign affairs and his first endeavours on behalf

of oppressed national aspirations. But he could not be called

either a man of letters, or thoroughly trained in the methods of

scholarship. On the other hand, he was, as a logician, trained in

the use of the whole armoury of the schools, and employed it

habitually and without effort. It was a humorous criticism which,

in the days of his still incomplete economic conversion, described

one of his speeches as consisting of arguments for free trade and

of parentheses in favour of protection; but, in his later, as well as

in his earlier, days, he thoroughly understood, and applied with

consummate skill, the defensive side of the science of debate,

including the use of reservation. No doubt he had what may be

described as the excesses of some of his qualities, and there was

1 Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. III, p. 19 (speech on Affirmation bill).

2 Cf. ante, vol. xii, p. 234.

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[CH.

point in the advice of his intimate friend Sir Thomas Acland that, in speaking on the Jewish emancipation question (1847), he should be as little as possible like Maurice, and more like the duke of Wellington.

Those who think of Gladstone as an impassioned orator are apt to overlook the fact that, in the earlier part of his career, he very rarely gave occasion for being thus described; indeed, his platform triumphs belong almost exclusively to his later life, and his ascendancy in the house of commons had not been gained by carrying it away, but by convincing it—at times, as it were, in spite of itself.

The gifts of voice and personality remained with him almost to the last—the magic voice of which, after his great budget speech of 1860, he was admonished to take care not to destroy the colour, and the personality which disdained all the small animosities of political conflict.

And, with these, he retained the lucidity of arrangement and exposition which rendered his most complicated statements of facts and figures not only intelligible but enjoyable—a gift which had been the most notable quality of his middle period.

To these, had, in his latter days, been added, in fullest measure, the animating influence of indignation and the prophetic note of aspirations for the future.

Of few great political orators of modern times has there been preserved so luxuriant a store of recorded eloquence.

Gladstone, whose title to be regarded as the foremost political orator of his century few will be disposed to dispute, was, also, in this country, at all events, the most effective of political pamphleteers.

Thrice, above all, in the course of his life he intervened in this way in the course of European politics—for his two Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen (on the state prosecutions of the Neapolitan government, 1851); his Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance (1874), with its sequel Vaticanism (1875), and his Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (1876), followed by Lessons in Massacre (1877), sensibly affected the development of some of the most important political problems of the times.

Nor were these the only occasions on which it seemed to him expedient to address a wider public than could be reached by the actual accents of his voice or the reports of his speeches; and, even after the greatest catastrophe of his political life, the defeat of the Irish Home Rule bill of 1886, and the ratification of this result by an adverse general election, he sat down to compose a double-barrelled pamphlet on the Irish question.

II] Political Pamphlets 137

Gladstone's pamphlets do not stand alone as memorable expressions of opinion put forth by noted British politicians in the nineteenth century. To those dating from the period which may be held to close with the deaths of Cobbett and Godwin (1835 and 1836), there is no necessity for returning here1. The following period had its new themes, in addition to the old, connected with political reform, religious freedom and economic progress, and with the support of the expanding struggle for the claims of nationalities. So early as 1836, Cobden published the earliest pair of a long series of pamphlets, of which the second, provoked by the 'indiscretions' of David Urquhart, brought to a head in a pamphlet by that truculent ex-diplomatist, ably combated any attempt at armed intervention against the eastern policy of Russia. Cobden's pamphlets deserve a notable place in our political literature, and, among the large number of publications of this kind produced by the French invasion panic of 1852—3, his 1792 and 1853 was a protest of much more than passing significance. Bright was capable of writing vigorous public letters; but his pen was not a favourite weapon with him as it was with Cobden and with W. J. Fox. Bright's chief adversary in the battle of franchise, Lowe, was born and bred a pamphleteer. He had taken up arms against the famous tract which brought to a close the most notable series of religious pamphlets known to our literature; and, during his sojourn in Australia, he contributed to the discussion of the land question in that continent a luminous address which went to the very root of the problem (1847). But, on his return to England, his political activity as a pamphleteer soon merged into that of a journalist.

And such (to conclude this brief note) might seem, with exceptions which almost prove the rule, to be the inevitable tendency in this later age of political writing designed to produce an immediate effect. Journalism has not destroyed the pamphlet; but the greater part of its activity has for some time seemed to be absorbed by an organised form of publication which provides both writers and readers with opportunities that are at once more rapid, more facile and more commanding. The future only can show whether the irrepressible desire of individual opinion to find wholly independent expression, together with the recurrence of great crises in which every voice capable of making itself heard finds solace and encouragement in accomplishing this, will suffice to keep alive a form associated with many great names in our literature as well as with many important or interesting epochs of our history.

1 Cf. ante, vol. xi, chap. ii.

CHAPTER III

CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE

John Ruskin and others

The critical and miscellaneous prose of the Victorian age is a somewhat unmanageable subject, both because of its volume and because of its variety. Classification is extremely difficult. There are some writers who must clearly be ranked as literary critics and others who, for want of a better word, may be said to belong to the aesthetic school. Others, again, because of that charming note of personal friendliness for which Lamb is supreme, may be described as essayists par excellence. But how are we to classify Borrow ; or Lafcadio Hearn, the interpreter of Japan? And is there any one class which will hold at once the author of Modern Painters and the author of Munera Pulveris?

The line of which the evolution is clearest is that of literary critics, and it will be convenient to treat first those who can be classified under this head.

The critics of the Victorian age inherited from Lamb, Coleridge, Hazlitt and Carlyle a tradition which was certainly more wholesome than that which had prevailed in the days of Gifford and Jeffrey ; and, thanks to this tradition, criticism grew decidedly more urbane. The oldest of this group by many years was Abraham Hayward, who is now, perhaps, best known as author of The Art of Dining, a volume made up, like much of Hayward's work, of contributions to periodicals written long before their separate publication. But Hayward began with work of a widely different sort—a very good prose translation of Faust; and he never abandoned his interest in Goethe. Near the end of his life, he himself published a volume on the poet whom he had begun by translating. He was interested in other foreign writers also, and contributed to The Edinburgh Review articles on the countess Hahn-Hahn and on Stendhal, at a time when these authors were hardly known in England. Hayward could draw a good biographical sketch or build up a very readable article out of

CH. III] Brimley. Dallas 139

anecdotes, just as he made his reputation in society from the same materials ; and his articles on contemporaries, such as those on Sydney Smith and Samuel Rogers, are valuable for their personal reminiscences. He could also construct an ingenious argument, as in his More about Junius. But, for critical principles, we search his works in vain. Somewhat akin to Hayward in his love of anecdote, though inferior to him, was John Doran, the pleasant author of Knights and their Days and Their Majesties' Servants. The latter contains much information, but seems to have no clear end in view, and has little depth of scholarship.

Doran's reputation among contemporaries is evidence that the level of criticism about the middle of the nineteenth century was low. It was, however, soon to be raised. Ruskin, who, incidentally, is a critic of literature as well as of painting, published his first volume of real weight in 1843. The Germ, the organ of the pre-Raphaelites, appeared in 18501. And Matthew Arnold's earliest critical essay was prefixed to his Poems of 1853. That stirring of the spirit which their appearance indicated was shown, also, in the critical work of George Brimley, whose feeble health, resulting in an early death, alone prevented him from winning a great name. His most notable criticism, and the only one to which he affixed his name, was the essay on Tennyson which appeared in Cambridge Essays in 1855. Though he is less than just to Tennyson's Poems of 1830, holding that they 'scarcely reach the altitudes of common sense,' and condemning the 'perverse, unreal treatment' in the poems inscribed with the names of women, yet, with perfect comprehension, he traces the evolution of Tennyson's art from 1830 to 1842. While none of the other essays can rank with that on Tennyson, they are generally right in tone and substance.

In the case of Brimley, principles are rather implied than stated ; they are to be inferred from his judgments on particular works. The attempts in English to make the statement of a principle the main object have been few and incomplete ; but, among the few, that of Eneas Sweetland Dallas deserves honourable mention. Both by blood and by training, Dallas was drawn towards a philosophical treatment of his subject, for he was of Scottish parentage, and he studied at Edinburgh under Sir William Hamilton. His journalistic career carried him, at times, far enough away from philosophy ; but, when he had leisure to write a volume, his thoughts took a philosophic cast—both in the somewhat immature Poetics, and Essay on Poetry, and in that unhappily

1 See, ante, vol. xiii, chap. v.

140 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

named book, The Gay Science. How he came to write, also, the

pseudonymous Kettner's Book of the Table, a Manual of Cookery, it

is not altogether easy to understand. The Gay Science is, certainly,

one of the most remarkable works of its class that we possess. It

is, first of all, lucid both in thought and in style; and it is suggestive

in a very rare degree. The preface proclaims that the author's

purpose is 'to settle the first principles of Criticism.' But, while

Dallas feels himself to be a pioneer, he is not unconscious of the

limits of his actual achievement, and admits that he has done little

more than lay down the groundwork of a science. It must be

remembered that his design was never carried to completion; there

were to have been four volumes, but only two were written. The

incurable English distrust of system condemned the book to oblivion.

The Gay Science is psychological from the foundation, and, in more

points than one, anticipates by a generation the development of

opinion. In nothing is this anticipation more remarkable than in

Dallas's view of what is now called the subliminary self. This, he

holds, lies at the root of all art. Aristotle's theory that art is

imitation, is, in his opinion, false, and 'has transmitted an heredi-

tary squint to criticism.' What art does is not to imitate what

any eye can see, but, rather, to bring into clear vision what is

first apprehended only by 'the hidden soul.' Art has to do with

pleasure, but not alone with the pleasure which the sensual man

recognises as such; there is hidden pleasure, as well as a hidden

soul. It is everywhere the subliminary self which is active in art,

and the subliminary self to which true art appeals. Dallas prided

himself most of all on his analysis of imagination, and imagination

he pronounced to be 'but another name for the automatic action

of the mind or any of its faculties.' Everywhere, then, The Gay

Science moves in the region of ideas. Dallas has a refreshing

confidence that there is a cause for everything in art as well as in

physical science: a cause, for example, why the earlier poets of

modern civilisation delight most of all in sunrise, while those of

the nineteenth century delight in sunset. This is clearly an im-

portation, through Hamilton, of the German spirit; and, if Dallas

appears to be guilty of that excess with which he charged German

criticism—that it is 'all idea'—it must be remembered that his

work is incomplete, and that the unwritten concluding volumes

would have redressed the balance.

On a lower plane stood James Hannay, who had ended a naval,

and begun a literary, career before he was twenty. It was not

unnatural that his experience in the navy should suggest the

III] Bagehot. Hutton 141

possibility that he might follow in the steps of Marryat, and Singleton Fontenoy and a collection of short stories are based upon that experience. But the knowledge of a boy could furnish no such groundwork as Marryat's long years of storm and battle. Hannay turned, rather, to criticism, and, in the essays contributed to The Quarterly Review, which were afterwards reprinted, as well as in the lectures entitled Satire and Satirists, he showed taste and judgment.

About the same time, both Walter Bagehot and Richard Holt Hutton began to write. They were associated for nine years as joint editors of The National Review ; and Hutton's fine memoir of his colleague bears testimony to the closeness of their friendship. Of the two, Hutton, though far the less gifted, was, as a literary critic, the more influential ; for Bagehot was, essentially, a publicist, and his Literary Studies, a collection of papers contributed to The National Review from the early fifties onwards, are little more than a by-product ; while, in Hutton's case, notwithstanding the theological inclinations shown in a volume on cardinal Newman, in Aspects of Religious and Scientific Thought and in one of the volumes of Essays, Theological and Literary, the critical element is the most important. Yet, Hutton is rarely free from some preoccupation which is not purely literary. His personal tastes, first of all, were theological ; and, in literature, he most willingly dealt with writers in whom some theological interest was either latent or explicit. It was partly, at least, this that made him the consistent though discriminating admirer of the verse of Matthew Arnold. He detected that undertone in Arnold to which critics indifferent to such interests have been deaf. On the other hand, this preoccupation narrowed Hutton's range. To purely aesthetic considerations he was not highly sensitive, and his criticisms are not, intrinsically, of very great value. But Hutton was more than himself. For over thirty years he was one of the editors of The Spectator ; in no small degree he impressed upon that journal his own character ; and, in estimating his significance, heed must be paid to the great influence it wielded under his control.

Bagehot was an editor, too ; but the most important part of his editorial career was that in which he conducted The Economist. It thus emphasises his work as economist and publicist rather than his work as literary critic, and readers will grieve or rejoice according to their taste. Undoubtedly, Bagehot had gifts that would have secured great success in either sphere. If his reputation is, even now, below his deserts, it is probably because

142 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

his interests were varied and his energies, in consequence, dissipated. He is at once biographer, critic, economist and publicist.

In his critical essays, the keen incisive phrases, the humour, the penetrating analyses of character, the touches of philosophy, give

the impression of the presence of a great man. Bagehot was never content to play upon the surface, he sought to penetrate to

the principle underneath. He had the qualifications requisite to make him what Dallas called a systematic critic. But, as he did

not choose to concentrate himself upon literature, his criticism, though brilliant, remains fragmentary. In Biographical Studies,

another collection of contributions to periodicals, Bagehot's interest in politics comes into the foreground. Even in his

literary essays it could not be entirely suppressed : there is, for example, an analysis of the forms of social organisation in the

paper on Sterne and Thackeray. In other respects, his biographical sketches show much the same qualities as his literary

essays ; and the resemblance is all the closer because his critical essays largely depend for their effect upon insight into

character. When Bagehot wrote about Shakespeare, he chose, characteristically enough, to lay emphasis on the man, rather than

on the poet or the playwright. In Biographical Studies, there are the same short crisp sentences that we find in Literary Studies,

the same epigrammatic point, the same humour, the same abounding life, the same easy, sometimes colloquial, diction.

But it was to his work as economist and as publicist that Bagehot gave the greatest part of his strength. He is at his best

in Lombard Street and in The English Constitution1. Some, it is true, have set Physics and Politics above either. But Physics

and Politics has not worn so well as the other two ; its contemporary influence was due, not exclusively to its intrinsic

merits, but, partly, to a deft application of the conception of evolution to political society, an application which seemed more original

than it really was. Yet, the other two books might have been expected to show the more serious signs of wear. The laws of

human society at large are more stable than the forms of a given constitution ; and political economy has been largely revolutionised since Bagehot wrote. Even the most conservative is now

more socialistic than would have seemed possible to Bagehot and to the vast majority of his contemporaries. But, in spite of this,

Lombard Street and The English Constitution are almost as fresh as they were at first. The reason is that they are descriptive

1 See, ante, chap. I.

III] Leslie Stephen 143

of an actual state of affairs. No change which has taken place, or which may take place, in the organisation of the money market can invalidate Bagehot's lively and entertaining analysis of the money market of his day. The facts were open to all, yet no one knew how to interpret them till Bagehot, in Lombard Street, showed the way. So, too, of The English Constitution. It is not a history, but a philosophical discussion. Stubbs and Hallam and May tell the story of three stages of the growth of the constitution; Bagehot appraises the actual values of the elements of the constitution. It was a work no less difficult, no less valuable, than that of the historian, but it called for a gift of a different sort : not the gift of research but that of speculative insight; not learning, but philosophy. Bagehot is comparable, not to Stubbs, but to Burke; and, while he is inferior to the great Irishman, there is no other writer of English to whom, on this his special ground, he need yield the palm. It needed a great mind to penetrate the hollowness of the theory of checks and balances, and to discover that a board of gentlemen with no legal status possesses more real power than either king or lords or commons.

Sir Leslie Stephen showed a similar diversity of interests. The first volume that bore his name was the collection of agreeable essays on mountaineering entitled The Playground of Europe; but he had already published anonymously a series of humorous and satirical Sketches from Cambridge, and, under initials, a grave statement of the case for the North in the United States civil war. Yet another vein is opened in Essays on Free Thinking and Plain Speaking; for Stephen was one of the numerous men of letters who were troubled by the difficulty of reconciling modern thought and the discoveries of modern science with traditional beliefs. Before this volume appeared, however, Stephen had become editor of The Cornhill Magazine, a post which he held from 1871 till 1882, when he assumed the still heavier burden of editing The Dictionary of National Biography. Stephen seems to have felt, at times, that editorial work was drudgery; but, at least, as contributor to The Cornhill Magazine, he had a free hand; and the three series of Hours in a Library made up of his articles may fairly be taken to show him at his best as a critic. On the other hand, the plan of the great Dictionary necessarily limited his freedom, and the 378 articles covering 1000 pages which he contributed to it must be read with this consideration in view. They are, essentially, biographical, and only incidentally critical. The necessity of thus conforming to a plan, however,

144 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

meant to Stephen by no means what it would have meant to such

a critic as Coleridge or as Arnold. That his natural bent was

towards biography is shown not only in his Studies of a Biographer,

but in all his fine contributions to the two series of 'English Men

of Letters,' and, above all, in the admirable monograph on Johnson.

Stephen's most ambitious and weightiest books, however, lie out-

side the sphere both of literary criticism and of biography.

They are contributions to philosophy—History of English Thought

in the Eighteenth Century and The English Utilitarians—and

have been considered elsewhere in the present volume1. Like the

fine essay, An Agnostic's Apology, they reveal Stephen as a

rationalist, and suggest an explanation of his limits as a critic.

His ear was keen for what is heard in literature, but a little

dull to what is overheard; and, so, he is apt to be warmer in

writing about the school of Pope than he is when he deals with

the romantic poets.

The tendency of periodicals, the contributions to which, until

recently, have been unsigned, has been to make the literary life,

for a time, flow, as it were, underground. Thus, Leslie Stephen

was nearly forty before his name became familiar to the public

outside literary circles. Though Richard Garnett was a younger

man by several years, a different mode of publication gave him

a status in literature earlier than Stephen. He sought fame first

as a poet; but, though he had a true lyrical gift, it was neither

very strong nor very original; and, so, the poetical strain in him

does better service in imparting an aroma to his criticism than

when it impels him to write verse. He was a master of the art of

writing literary biography, and nothing of the same kind shows

a defter touch than his unpretending but masterly primer on

Coleridge or his monograph on Carlyle. The most original of his

works is The Twilight of the Gods, a collection of singular tales in

which he shows an unexpected power of sarcasm.

Perhaps the most remarkable instance of the tendency of the

periodical to submerge the man of letters is afforded by Theodore

Watts-Dunton, a richly gifted critic, a poet and a romancer, who

was yet practically unknown by name outside literary circles until

he was nearly sixty, and whose earliest independent publication

appeared when he was sixty-five. A great mass of valuable

criticism is still and, it may be feared, will remain, buried in The

Athenaeum. But his admirable article on poetry contributed to

The Encyclopaedia Britannica, and that entitled The Renaissance

1 See, ante, chap. I.

III] Watts-Dunton. Borrow 145

of Wonder in Poetry in Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature, are enough to prove that Watts-Dunton had in rare fullness the qualities which go to make a great critic. He had scholarship, refined taste and a firm grasp of principles ; and they are all generously used for the purpose of securing recognition for rising genius. No one did more pioneer work in criticism than he. Nor were Watts-Dunton's gifts limited to criticism : he had the gift of poetry and the gift of the romancer ; and he put both at the service of the gypsies whom he had studied for many years—the first in The Coming of Love and the second in Aylwin.

A less conspicuous instance of submergence in the periodical is offered by Sidney T. Irwin, who is more likely to be remembered by the short and slight memoir prefixed to the letters of the Manx poet Thomas Edward Brown, than by articles contributed to magazines and reviews, though these show a gift of keen appreciation as well as of happy expression.

His interest in gypsies brought Watts-Dunton into touch with George Borrow and with Francis Hindes Groome. It was Borrow who first gave gypsies a citizenship in literature, though his knowledge of them, as of many other things, seems to have been wide and general rather than exact. Watts-Dunton's authority is conclusive, and he declares1 that Borrow's first-hand knowledge of gypsy life was superficial compared with Hindes Groome's; yet Borrow made gypsies live in the English mind as neither Hindes Groome did in his absurdly named and ill-constructed Romany novel Krispel, nor Watts-Dunton in Aylwin.

In a loose sense, Borrow might be called a scholar, since he knew many languages, and spoke and wrote them freely. He was a traveller, and has told the story of his travels with extraordinary verve. He has written books that read wonderfully like picaresque stories; but, in these, Wahrheit is so mingled with Dichtung that they stand in a class by themselves. On the whole, it seems best to regard him as one of the most remarkable of autobiographers. 'What is autobiography?' he asked. 'Is it a mere record of the incidents of a man's life, or is it a picture of the man himself—his character, his soul?' If, as seems reasonable, we take this to be applicable to Lavengro and The Romany Rye, it links together the works of Borrow that really matter—these two and The Bible in Spain. 'In the last, no doubt, there is more precise truth of fact, but it is at least possible that there is more perfect sincerity in the less literally true books. The correspondence between Borrow and

1 The Athencum, 22 February 1902.

E. L. XIV. CH. III. 10

146 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

the Bible society, for which he worked, gives evidence that, some-

times, there was friction between that society and its extraordinary

colporteur.' In The Bible in Spain, the adventures ring true; but,

though there can be no doubt as to Borrow's hatred of popery and

his consequent zeal, of a sort, for protestantism, the piety is, by no

means, so convincing. Alike in this book and in the two gypsy

tales, Borrow is unsurpassed for graphic power. In Wild Wales,

he shows the same gift, though not quite in the same degree.

Essentially, he is a man of the open air; and few have equalled

him in the art of transporting the reader's spirit into the wilder-

ness, while his body sits by the fireplace. His books are planless,

as picaresque books are apt to be. Events succeed one another;

they are not consequent upon one another. But, nevertheless,

the books are held together by the personality of the author;

and it is the sense of his personality, in addition to that sense of

the open air already mentioned, which makes Borrow eminently

readable. By reason of these gifts, Borrow, in the literary sense,

is far superior to Hindes Groome. Yet the latter was a very

skilful literary craftsman. His sketch of Edward FitzGerald throws

a pleasant light on an interesting character, and his paper on his

own father, A Suffolk Parson, is rich with racy local anecdotes.

What neither Kriegepiel nor In Gypsy Tents could impart was

that sense of abounding vitality which sparkles in every page

of Borrow.

The Romany group has diverted our attention, for the moment,

from the literary critics of the period. Among these, in the latter

part of the nineteenth century, William Minto held a respectable

position in the second rank; but his writings hardly rise above

the level of good journey-work. Henry Duff Traill1, a man of

higher and more varied gifts, was among those whom the pressure

of journalism deprived of the fame which he had the capacity to

win. In addition to a considerable critical faculty, which is

attested by his monographs on Coleridge and Sterne, and by the

essays entitled The New Fiction, he had the happy knack of

writing light satirical verse, one volume of which, Saturday Songs,

by its title commemorates his connection with The Saturday

Review. He also wrote on constitutional and political questions.

In The New Lucian and in Number Twenty, he gave rein to his

imagination, and, in the former, he reaches his highest point in

pure literature. It was a bold conception, that of writing new

dialogues of the dead; and to say that Traill completely succeeded

1 See, ante, vol. xix, chap. vi.

III] Dowden. Henley 147

would be very high praise. He did not. Sometimes his opinions

seem to get between him and the character he delineates.

Nevertheless, the book shows not merely ability but genius. It

is always well written, frequently witty and sometimes eloquent.

There remain two critics who may be taken as specially

representative, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the

one of academic, and the other of non-academic, criticism.

Edward Dowden was for many years the most widely known of

the former group, and William Ernest Henley1 was the most

highly gifted and the most influential of the latter. Both were

something more than critics; but what, for the present purpose,

may be called the extraneous activities of Dowden were of far less

importance than Henley's; for Dowden's graceful and accomplished

verse is light in the balance against Henley's virile and varied

poetry. And, except for one venture into the realm of the muses,

Dowden, until his death remained, what his earliest and best

known book proclaimed him to be, a critic. It is rarely that

a young man wins fame with a single effort, as Dowden did

with Shakespeare . . . his Mind and Art; and still more rarely

does a first book remain, at the end of a long and active

literary career, the best known and the best liked. This ready

acceptance and this permanent fame were due, partly, to the

merits of the book, and, partly, to the wide interest felt in Shake-

speare. There was plenty of Shakespearean criticism even half

a century ago; but it was mostly of what Dallas called the

editorial class. Dowden supplied something different and higher

—a thoughtful interpretation of the spirit of Shakespeare's work.

It was expressed, too, in a style lucid and attractive, though not

free from the faults which, long afterwards, were pointed out in

Matthew Arnold's pungent essay on Dowden's Life of Shelley.

For the rest, his numerous essays are invariably scholarly, and

they usually show that insight which a genial sympathy gives.

The point where Dowden is weak is just that where Henley

is peculiarly strong. No recent critic has been more boldly, and

even defiantly, original; none has expressed himself in more striking

phrases. Perhaps his greatest service, as a writer of prose, was

that he taught the power of inclusiveness to a generation which

was prone to lose itself in words. His criticisms in Views and

Reviews, alike in the section devoted to literature and in that

devoted to art, are brief—vignettes rather than full-length

portraits—but they are pregnant. He plunges at once in medias

1 See, ante, vol. xiii, chap. vi.

III] Ruskin's Early Writings 149

his works. She and her son read it together from beginning to

end, turning to Genesis again as soon as they had reached the

close of the Apocalypse. But there was a disadvantage as well

as an advantage in these intimate family relationships. In a

sense, Ruskin was never sui juris so long as his parents lived;

and, affectionate as were his feelings for them, before the end he

had begun to chafe at their control as a thing almost intolerably

irksome. In his maturity, Ruskin became a heretic in religion

and a revolutionary in economics, while his father was orthodox

on both points.

In his youth, however, notwithstanding the mistake of over-

indulgence and excessive protective care, Ruskin gained enor-

mously from the devotion of his parents. The early journeys

of mingled business and pleasure in England supplied much food

for eye and mind; and, when Prout's Sketches in Flanders and

Germany suggested a longer tour, it was promptly undertaken.

Similar tours followed, year after year. If, when he went to Oxford

in 1837, Ruskin was ill equipped in respect of the ordinary sub-

jects of study, he already knew a great deal more than most of his

teachers about the things that, for him, were important. He had

laid deep and sure the foundations of Modern Painters, the first

volume of which was published in 1843; and repeated visits to

the continent in after years enriched him with materials for the

subsequent volumes, and for much of his other work as well.

Even before the appearance of the first volume of Modern

Painters, Ruskin was a practised writer. From 1834 onwards,

he was a fairly active contributor, in prose to Loudon's Magazine

of Natural History and Architectural Magazine, and in verse to

Friendship's Offering and The London Monthly Miscellany.

The verses, with the Newdigate prize poem Salsette and Ele-

phanta, and with later contributions to The Keepsake and other

compilations, were gathered together and reprinted more than half

a century after most of them were written. Not till after more

than ten years of effort did Ruskin finally make up his mind that,

though he could write fluent and melodious verse, he was not a poet.

The early prose pieces, being on the true line of development, are

of superior interest to the early verses. Some of these prose pieces

were included in On the Old Road, and a complete series, The

Poetry of Architecture, was separately reprinted in 1892. Con-

sidering the boyish years of the writer, the early essays reveal, in

a very remarkable degree, the mature Ruskin. He liked to lay

a scientific foundation for his aesthetic theories; and the embryo

III] Ruskin's Early Writings 149

his works. She and her son read it together from beginning to

end, turning to Genesis again as soon as they had reached the

close of the Apocalypse. But there was a disadvantage as well

as an advantage in these intimate family relationships. In a

sense, Ruskin was never sui juris so long as his parents lived ;

and, affectionate as were his feelings for them, before the end he

had begun to chafe at their control as a thing almost intolerably

irksome. In his maturity, Ruskin became a heretic in religion

and a revolutionary in economics, while his father was orthodox

on both points.

In his youth, however, notwithstanding the mistake of over-

indulgence and excessive protective care, Ruskin gained enor-

mously from the devotion of his parents. The early journeys

of mingled business and pleasure in England supplied much food

for eye and mind ; and, when Prout's Sketches in Flanders and

Germany suggested a longer tour, it was promptly undertaken.

Similar tours followed, year after year. If, when he went to Oxford

in 1837, Ruskin was ill equipped in respect of the ordinary sub-

jects of study, he already knew a great deal more than most of his

teachers about the things that, for him, were important. He had

laid deep and sure the foundations of Modern Painters, the first

volume of which was published in 1843 ; and repeated visits to

the continent in after years enriched him with materials for the

subsequent volumes, and for much of his other work as well.

Even before the appearance of the first volume of Modern

Painters, Ruskin was a practised writer. From 1834 onwards,

he was a fairly active contributor, in prose to London's Magazine

of Natural History and Architectural Magazine, and in verse to

Friendship's Offering and The London Monthly Miscellany.

The verses, with the Newdigate prize poem Salsette and Ele-

phanta, and with later contributions to The Keepsake and other

compilations, were gathered together and reprinted more than half

a century after most of them were written. Not till after more

than ten years of effort did Ruskin finally make up his mind that,

though he could write fluent and melodious verse, he was not a poet.

Wisely, prose pieces, being on the true line of development, are

of greater interest to the early verses. Some of these prose pieces

were included in On the Old Road, and a complete series, The

Poetry of Architecture, was separately reprinted in 1892. Con-

sidering the boyish years of the writer, the early essays reveal, in

a very remarkable degree, the mature Ruskin. He liked to lay

a scientific foundation for his aesthetic theories ; and the embryo

150 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

man of science is shown in the titles of three early papers—

Enquiries on the Causes of the Colour of the Water of the Rhine,

Note on the Perforation of a Leaden Pipe by Rats and Facts

and Considerations on the Strata of Mont Blanc. Again, in The

Poetry of Architecture, some of the leading principles which were

afterwards developed in The Seven Lamps of Architecture and in

The Stones of Venice are already taught; and, above all, the very

title of that early work asserts the central principle of all his

aesthetic writings. What he means by the poetry of architecture

is, he explains in the sub-title, ‘the architecture of the nations of

Europe considered in its association with natural scenery and

national character.’ In Modern Painters, he declares that the

distinctive character of his writings is ‘their bringing everything

to a root in human passion or human life.’ This distinctive

character, then, is present from the start; and no student of

Ruskin can doubt that it remains present to the end. When we

turn from substance to style, we find the same harmony between

these early essays and the best known of Ruskin’s aesthetic

treatises. Alike in diction, in structure and cadence of sentences

and in the love of such ornaments as alliteration, the boy is father

to the man.

More remarkable, however, than any of the published articles,

as an anticipation of the future Ruskin, was a paper written, in

1836, in answer to a ribald criticism in Blackwood’s Magazine of

the paintings exhibited by Turner in that year. As Turner ‘never

moved in these matters,’ the paper was not then printed; and,

when Ruskin came to write Praeterita, he could find no fragment

of it. But he there refers to it as ‘the first chapter of Modern

Painters,’ and the copy subsequently discovered, which is printed

in the library edition of his writings, proves that, at seventeen, he

was already, to a surprising degree, master of the principles he

enunciated in that work. The gradual expansion of the plan of

Modern Painters is highly characteristic of Ruskin. In con-

ception, at first, merely a pamphlet in answer to an objectionable

critique, it becomes a reasoned examination of a great artist,

and, finally, a treatise on art based upon such a view of art that

almost anything in heaven or earth becomes relevant. Systematic

it is not, although there is a show of system. Ruskin’s mind was,

naturally, discursive, and it is fortunate that he was compelled to

follow the bent of his mind. The book would have been much

less rich than it is had it been really systematic. The success

of the first volume was so great, and the vistas of work which

III] Modern Painters 151

it opened out before him were so vast, that the general lines of Ruskin's future activity were practically determined by it. Seventeen years were to pass before Modern Painters itself was finished. The journeys, year after year, through France to Switzerland and Italy not only furnished materials for it, but opened up ever new vistas. The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice were both by-works, undertaken and carried through while it was still on hand. All three, in their author's view, were educational works. Modern Painters was conceived in a mood of 'black anger' at the ignorance and insensitiveness of England; the author felt he had a mission to dispel the ignorance and to pierce the insensitiveness. Architecture was as little understood as painting; even those who were trying to revive Gothic architecture showed, by their actions, that they knew not what they did. Hence, to expound the nature of Gothic was as essential for the spiritual welfare of the people as was the vindication of Turner. Though Ruskin disappointed the hopes of his parents, who had destined him for the church and who saw in him a future bishop, he was all his life a preacher. The sense of duty, growing ever deeper, compelled him to take up fresh burdens. Thus, in 1850, he intervened on behalf of the pre-Raphaelites, as, in 1843, he had intervened on behalf of Turner. In the latter case, his aid was volunteered; in the former, it was sought; but, in both, it was given from the same sense of duty. He, the man who had vision, was bound to remove the scales from the eyes of the blind. He was all the more bound to the pre-Raphaelites because, working, in the main, independently of him, they were putting into practice in their painting the principles which he was maintaining in his books. Hence, the letters to The Times on the art of the brotherhood, and the subsequent pamphlet on pre-Raphaelitism. Academy Notes, in which, each year, from 1855 to 1859, he somewhat pontifically instructed the faithful what they must believe concerning contemporary art, were another outcome of the same spirit. These, however, were strictly within the province which Ruskin had made his own. Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds, issued in the same year with Pre-Raphaelitism, was much more questionable in every respect. Ruskin had no such authority in the sphere of theology as he had in that of art, and the former work showed that he was altogether incapable of gauging the practical difficulties in the way of a re-union of the sects.

Yet another development of his activities is shown in the

152 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

various series of lectures which he delivered during the sixth and seventh decades of the nineteenth century, before his official position as Slade professor of fine art at Oxford made lecturing part of his business. Probably, the closer contact with his audience as lecturer than as writer satisfied his hunger for sympathy. It was, moreover, essential to get all the strength he could upon his side ; for 'what with that infernal invention of steam, and gunpowder, I think the fools may be a puff or barrel or two too many for us.' He lectured, therefore, in order to enlist recruits in the army of the wise which was to condense the steam into water and to pour it upon the gunpowder. His lectures On Architecture and Painting Art (afterwards included in A Joy for Ever) consisted of two lectures delivered at Manchester in 1857 ; and in The Two Paths were gathered together five lectures which are related by unity of purpose, though they were delivered at different places. These lectures were all directly concerned with Ruskin's primary business, art ; but the very title of the second course indicates the change which was coming over him. He was half serious as well as half playful when he wrote to Norton that he wanted to give lectures in all manufacturing towns. He was approaching the great dividing line of his work and life, which he crossed when, in 1860, he published both the last volume of Modern Painters and the five essays afterwards known by the title Unto this Last.

The last volume of Modern Painters had, for the most part, been written in the winter of 1859—60. While it was passing through the press, the author was already busy with his revolutionary essays on economics, the first of which appeared in The Cornhill Magazine for August. The outcry against these papers was so great that Thackeray, the editor, at the instance of the publisher, intimated to Ruskin that the series must be stopped. The same fate attended the series of essays contributed in 1862—3, on the invitation of Froude, to Fraser's Magazine. The fragment afterwards received the title Munera Pulveris. The strong opposition aroused by these papers was due, mainly, to the heterodoxy of Ruskin's opinions. Writing when the Manchester school was at the height of its power, he flatly denied its gospel. But another cause operated to increase the irritation which was felt against him. In the transition from the criticism of art to the criticism of industry, Ruskin seemed to break with his own past ; and, while his countrymen were now willing to listen to his exposition of the political economy of the

III] Ruskin's Economics 153

former, they asked impatiently what he knew about the political economy of the latter. He had given ground for the question by the statement in the preface to The Political Economy of Art that he had never read any author on political economy, except Adam Smith1.

Ruskin had to create a public for his economics, as he had created one for his aesthetic doctrine.' But there was no break and no inconsistency. Evolution there certainly was—an evolution mainly from within, though influenced by Carlyle. The transition from art to industry was the natural outcome of Ruskin's doctrine of art as an expression of the whole life. He knew that life is social, and he felt that the imperfections and the unreality of modern art are intimately related to the ugliness of modern industry. There was, from the first, much in his writings that might have prepared a close student for the transition. He had vigorously protested in The Seven Lamps of Architecture against the uselessness of much of the toil to which the working classes are condemned. In Modern Painters, he had distinguished the lower picturesque from the higher, and declared that the essence of the difference between them lay in the fact that the lower picturesque was heartless. Most clearly of all, the last volume of Modern Painters revealed the drift of his thought.

There, he had condemned the modern 'monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money';—that is to say, that inverted asceticism which renounces the kingdom of heaven in favour of this world, just as medieval asceticism renounced this world in favour of the kingdom of heaven; he had maintained that, if all physical exertion were utilised, no man need ever work more than is good for him; and, after Carlyle, he had thrown out for the consideration of a mercantile era the doctrine that the best work, whether of soldier or sailor, or of spiritual teacher, or of writer or artist, was never done for pay, but for nothing or for less than nothing—for death.

Just because the development was wholly natural, it proved to be no more passing phase. Henceforth, Ruskin's writings and his practical work alike proclaim him an economist and social reformer as well as a critic of art. On the practical side, the proof is plain in the guild of St George; while among his writings there are, from Unto this Last onwards, two great groups, one in which the

1 It seems probable that this statement was inaccurate, as Ruskin's annotated copy of Mill's Political Economy is now in the British museum (Cook, vol. xii, p. 12, note 1). But is there anything in the notes to show the date at which they were written?

154 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

aesthetic element is most conspicuous, the other in which it is

subordinate to the economic. The increased prominence of the

latter element inevitably influenced Ruskin's style. After Unto

this Last, there is less gorgeousness; but the author's own high

opinion of that volume as a piece of English was justified.

During the years which followed Unto this Last, the conflict

in Ruskin's mind between the aesthetic and the social and economic

interests is unmistakable. On the whole, the latter triumph. The

Queen of the Air belongs to the domain of aesthetics, and so does

the report on the Turner drawings in the National Gallery. In

The Cestus of Aglaia, he laid down the laws of art for the use of

schools. But the laws of art prove to be very close to the laws of

morals; and, in The Ethics of the Dust, which treats of crystallo-

graphy, there is asserted a similarly close connection between

morals and science. In Sesame and Lilies, and in The Crown

of Wild Olive, the predominance of the social over the aesthetic

interest is very evident. The former became at once, as it still

remains, the most popular of all Ruskin's writings, partly, perhaps,

because of the elements of the fanciful and the sentimental in it.

Both these books were collections of lectures; for Ruskin still

loved to meet an audience. He loved, also, at this time and for

years afterwards, to speak through the medium which brought him

into contact with the largest number. He entered into several news-

paper controversies. These 'letters to the editor' were afterwards

collected by an Oxford pupil, and published under the title Arrows

of the Chace—a volume full of paradox, but full, also, of sparkling,

and memorable sayings. Of these letters, some belong to the

aesthetic, and others to the social, divisions of Ruskin's writings.

The remarkable series entitled Time and Tide by Weare and

Tyne belongs wholly to the social division; and, apart from the

letters in Fors Clavigera, it was Ruskin's last important contri-

bution, in a direct way, to the subject. Afterwards, he tried in

a practical way, by the guild of St George, to further the ends

he had at heart.

The unfavourable reception of his economic theories had,

probably, caused some discouragement in Ruskin's mind. At

any rate, after Time and Tide and The Queen of the Air, he

turned to a study so far removed from economics as Greek

mythology. He also occupied himself with such tasks as the

production of catalogues of pictures. Then, in 1869, came his

appointment to the post of Slade professor of fine art at

Oxford; an office to which he was again appointed in 1883.

III] Ruskin's Lectures. Fors Clavigera 155

This (without at all extinguishing his social interests, which were manifested in road-making, street-sweeping and tea-selling, as well as in other less eccentric ways) gave a decisive impetus to the aesthetic element in his mind; for the professorship made aesthetics his business and his duty. He was a busy and highly successful lecturer, delivering, in the year 1870, the series afterwards published under the title Lectures on Art, in which, after four introductory lectures of a general nature, he dealt with painting; and that on sculpture, entitled Aratra Pentelici. In the following year, he delivered his lectures On Landscape, which were not published till 1897, and a much-debated discourse entitled The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret. The violent exaggerations of this discourse evoked vigorous repudiations from more than one authority on art, and even put some strain upon Ruskin's relations with one or two of his friends. Before the end of his first tenure of office, he had delivered, in all, eleven courses of lectures. But, besides lecturing and teaching through the eye and hand at Oxford, Ruskin conceived it to be his duty to act as a sort of director general in Florence and St Mark's Rest were conceived by him to be part of the work of his chair.

Unfortunately for his own health, Ruskin was not content with the tasks which his enthusiasm for art imposed upon him. Though the professorship had breathed a new life into his work for art, it left him still convinced that the problems raised by modern industry were of vital importance. The guild of St George was conceived at this period, and, in 1871, he started Fors Clavigera. By far the greater part of that extraordinary collection of letters, the most comprehensive and the most characteristic of all Ruskin's writings, was produced while he was still Slade professor. Every phase of Ruskin is illustrated in it, except that of the master of gorgeous English. For insight into the range of Ruskin's style, it is only necessary to compare the first volume of Modern Painters with Fors. All through his career, he had been moving consistently, though with variations due to the nature of his theme, towards greater simplicity. But the simplicity is still elegant, and, in Fors, it is wonderfully flexible; for it has to be adapted successively to every one of the author's interests and emotions.

Overstrain brought on, in the summer of 1878, a serious attack of brain fever; and Ruskin never regained his old vigour. He was active enough, and most discursivly active. Science, art,

156 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

theology, literary criticism, economics, are all treated with more

or less fullness in the writings of the next two or three years.

His re-election to the professorship at Oxford meant more lectures,

those entitled The Art of England and The Pleasures of Eng-

land; but the latter course clearly showed as it proceeded that his

mind, in some degree, had lost its balance. He resigned, once more,

and, for the remaining years of his life, he produced nothing of

importance except the admirable Praeterita. This was finished

in 1889. The years of life which still remained to him are best

described by the phrase which he himself applied to the closing

phase of Scott's life—jours de mort.

Ruskin is now passing through that period of depreciation

which seems to be the lot of all writers who, at any part of their

career, have been regarded with exaggerated admiration. Time

was when Ruskin was Sir Oracle on art; now, it is frequently

maintained that his principles are antiquated, that the world can

afford to forget him. It is curious that, in respect of his work as

economist and social reformer, opinion has moved in precisely the

opposite direction. Though probably few, either of statesmen or

of economists, would accept without large reservations the views

advocated by Ruskin, these views have influenced life and legisla-

tion; and those who bear in mind how closely the two sections of

his work were associated in his own mind will doubt whether

the aesthetic teaching can be entirely superseded. It was the

conviction that while life without industry is guilt, industry

without art is brutality, which drove Ruskin to examine the kind

of industry by which the modern world escapes guilt—only to fall

into brutality. At any rate, the intense humanity which inspires

all Ruskin's work, economic and aesthetic alike, can never become

antiquated. A false conception of aesthetic principle is fatal to

him who holds that art exists for art's sake, but not necessarily

to him who holds that the end of art is to raise life from brutality

to graciousness.

Nearly all our subsequent aesthetic criticism is derived from,

or more or less deeply influenced by, Ruskin. Benjamin Robert

Haydon stands quite apart from him. Though a far older man

than Ruskin, Haydon, as the author of printed works, comes after

him in chronological order; for, even Haydon's Lectures on

Painting and Design, the earliest of which was delivered in 1835,

was not published till near the close of his life; and the fascinating

Autobiography, which is his sole title to literary fame, was

III] Haydon. Mrs Jameson. Symonds 157

posthumous. Ruskin's scathing judgment on Haydon as an artist is well known. In Modern Painters, he singles out Haydon and Barry as examples of 'the desire of greatness as such, or rather of what appears great to indolence and vanity,' and states that 'nothing except disgrace and misguidance will ever be gathered from such work' as theirs. Whether this be so or not, the Auto-biography is entirely unaffected. It has that value which must always belong to any sincere revelation of a human soul, and takes a very high rank in that delightful class of books which Ruskin himself afterwards enriched by his charming Praeterita. Haydon's Autobiography is not, however, except in a very slight degree, a work of aesthetic criticism, and he is connected with this group rather through his paint-brush than through his pen.

It was otherwise with Anna Brownell Jameson. She, too, was greatly senior to Ruskin, and had made a name as a miscellaneous author while he was still a boy. The facility of her style makes her volumes pleasant reading, and her analyses of Shakespeare's heroines won, and have retained, as they deserve, considerable popularity. But the very title of one of her works, The Loves of the Poets, is suggestive of superficiality and popularity in the less favourable sense; and the fact that, in her Characteristics of Women, she, without qualification, ranks lady Macbeth as intellectually the superior of her husband, proves the suspicion to be well founded. She was in the field before Ruskin, but she was deeply influenced by him, and her various books on different groups of legends and legendary art bear his mark. Ruskin, however, in Praeterita, has pronounced a characteristically candid and gently satirical judgment upon her.

But it was in Ruskin's own university that the aesthetic school took root, though its flowers and its fruit were not precisely what he would have desired. The disciples never gave that weight to ethics which the master desired, and, as time went on, they paid it less, rather than more, attention. Of this group, John Addington Symonds may be described as an outlying member, and his principal work, Renaissance in Italy, illustrates the weakness of the school to which he belonged. It is lacking in unity and is one-sided, not only in the sense that it dwells upon art and passes lightly over other factors in the history of the period, but, in the treatment of art itself, emphasis is laid upon the emotional element at the expense of the intellectual. Symonds's other works, likewise, fall short of greatness. His poems are accomplished rather than inspired. His literary monographs and criticisms do not rise

158 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

much above the average of their kind; and, sometimes, as in

Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama, they are not

sufficiently thorough on the side of scholarship. Symonds's prose

style is nearly always too highwrought and too diffuse.

On a far higher plane of literature stands Walter Pater; but

he, though he was influenced by Ruskin, is singularly different

from the elder writer, and the difference sheds back a light upon

the master's theories. Ruskin, bowed with sorrows though he was,

remained unconquerably optimistic, and, so long as he was capable

of work, he laboured with even excessive hopefulness at schemes

of social regeneration. Pater retires from the dust of con-

flict into an artistic seclusion. The conclusion of his Studies

in the History of the Renaissance is, in the highest degree,

significant. Its teaching is that, to beings like men, beings under

sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve, the love

of art for art's sake is the highest form of wisdom. 'For art comes

to you, proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality

to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments'

sake.' The Oscar Wilde development had not the good will of

Pater any more than that of Ruskin; but it logically follows from

Pater's principle.

Pater was one of the most fastidious of literary artists. By his

artistic theory he was driven to seek perfection of style. If art

for art's sake is the highest thing of all, if life is a series of

moments and its aim is to make each moment as exquisite as it

can be made, it follows that each sentence, in a sense, is an

end in itself. The result is a style beautiful indeed--at its best

very beautiful--but overlaboured. The purpose partly defeats

itself. The whole suffers from the excessive pains bestowed upon

the parts, and the reader shares the oppression felt by the writer.

Pater's literary career began with the essay entitled Winckel-

mann, which he contributed, in 1867, to The Westminster Review,

and this, with other papers contributed to periodicals, constituted

the volume which was published in 1873. In the second edition,

the conclusion which has been quoted above was omitted, because

Pater felt that it might mislead young men. It was, however,

subsequently restored; and the conceptions it indicates form the

substance of the fine romance, Marius the Epicurean, which shows

clearly that Pater's own epicureanism was of a very noble sort, but

which fails, like every form of epicureanism, to show why any one

kind of pleasure should be the pleasure of all. Imaginary

Portraits followed, and then Appreciations, Plato and Platonism

III] Walter Pater. Hugh Miller 159

and the charming 'imaginary portrait,' The Child in the House.

This was the last volume published during Pater's life, but several

followed it posthumously. Pater gave a colour of his own to

everything he touched. His criticism reveals so much of himself

that the question is naturally suggested, whether it reveals as

much of the artist or the writer criticised. But it must be remem-

bered that the criticism that does not carry the atmosphere of

personality is a singularly dull affair; and, also, that Pater was un-

usually well endowed with both the emotional and the intellectual

gifts of the critic. There are few whose judgments are deserving

of closer attention.

While Pater represented the aesthetic movement in its most

earnest phase, Oscar Wilde gave utterance to its principles in

the language of persiflage. In verse and in prose, in lyrics, in

'trivial comedies for serious people' that sparkled with wit, in

essays often bright with raillery and occasionally weighty with

thought, he proved that he possessed a remarkably varied genius.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis are the product

of his tragic overthrow, and are well worth all that he had pre-

viously written.

Of the ill-defined genus miscellaneous prose, there is nof...

species more delightful than that of the essay in the stricter

sense of the word, the essay which is the expression of a mood

rather than, like Macaulay's, a fragment of history, or, like

Matthew Arnold's, a fragment of criticism. Quite a considerable

group of essayists in this stricter sense belongs to the Victorian

period. The oldest of the group were Hugh Miller and Robert

Chambers, both born in 1809, the one in the north, and the

other in the south, of Scotland, both, ultimately, editors in Edin-

burgh. The most valuable of Miller's contributions to journalism

have been gathered into books which have a coherence of their

own, like The Old Red Sandstone and the delightful auto-

biography My Schools and Schoolmasters; but much still remains

in the form of scattered essays, of which one volume was published

in 1862 and another in 1870. Science, however, on the one hand,

and religious controversy, on the other, absorbed most of Miller's

energy, and, though he was the greater writer of the two, left him

a smaller place, in this particular sphere, than Robert Chambers,

the founder, in conjunction with his elder brother William, of

Chambers's Journal. Both the brothers were busy writers, and

the younger had a gift of humour which served him in good stead

in the numerous essays which he contributed to his own journal.

160 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

It was to Hugh Miller's journal The Witness that John Brown

contributed his first noteworthy paper. But, though Brown

became a man of letters, he never ceased to be a physician. He is

doctor in the medical sense as unalterably as Samuel Johnson is

doctor in the academic sense. It seems to have been partly by

accident, and partly through domestic insistence and encourage-

ment, that Brown gradually became a writer as well as a physician.

Hence, his entry was late and his production always remained

leisurely. His earliest paper in The Witness appeared in 1846,

and the total of his work fills only three small volumes. It is

fortunate for Brown's fame that the fact is so. His genius was

beautiful and delicate rather than robust, and the characteristic

charm of his essays is not of a sort that is susceptible of great

expansion or of indefinite repetition. The essayists of the personal

and confidential type are never voluminous writers. There is,

nevertheless, considerable variety in Brown's work. His papers

on medical subjects afford pleasant and profitable reading; he is

an excellent critic both of art and of literature; he shows great

sensitiveness to natural beauty and great power of describing

it. But he is happiest of all when he deals with the dog. Here,

he is not only unsurpassed but unequalled. The most deservedly

famous of all his writings is the beautiful story Rab and his

Friends. But he has delineated many dogs besides Rab, and

always admirably.

While Brown was born a citizen of the Scottish capital,

Alexander Smith only became a citizen by adoption. Though

seldom read, he is still known by name as one of the 'spasmodic'

poets; but, until lately, it was half forgotten that he was also a

skilful writer of prose, author of an extremely pleasant story, of

the most readable of guide-books, if A Summer in Skye may be

degraded by that description, and, above all, of Dreamthorp, one

of the finest volumes of essays since Lamb's. The friends who,

shortly after his death, predicted that he would take rank below

only a few of the greatest of British essayists, were not bad critics.

Smith had the temperament of the essayist and the clearest possible

understanding of the principles of the form of art which the

essayist attempts. Nowhere in our literature is there a better

exposition of the essay as conceived and written by Montaigne

than in the second essay of Dreamthorp, On the Writing of

Essays; and there are not many better examples of 'atmosphere'

than the title essay.

On a much lower plane stand Smith's two contemporaries,

III] Robert Louis Stevenson 161

A. K. H. Boyd and John Skelton. Boyd first became widely known through the volume of pleasant but garrulous and unsubstantial essays entitled Recreations of a Country Parson, which he had contributed to Fraser's Magazine. It was the earliest of many volumes which continued to appear at short intervals down to 1896, when The Last Years of St Andrews was published. There was a stronger fibre in Skelton, whose pseudonym Shirley was subscribed to some of the most readable of the papers contributed to Fraser's Magazine and Blackwood's Magazine during the latter half of the nineteenth century. From his earliest production Nugae Criticae to The Table Talk of Shirley, Skelton showed great skill as an essayist, blending in a rare degree the love of nature with the love of books, and imparting both to the reader through a style redolent of the writer's own personality. Skelton was a historian as well as an essayist. Though he is, perhaps, sometimes advocate rather than judge in his essays and books on Mary queen of Scots, they who most widely differ from him in opinion must be sensible of, and grateful for, the charm of his presentation of the case.

Of all this group, the greatest was Robert Louis Stevenson1. Versatility was one of Stevenson's most conspicuous qualities, for, besides being the foremost essayist since Lamb and a master of fiction, whether in the form of romance or in that of short story, he was also a dramatist and a poet. The essay, however, was the form in which he first gave promise of his future distinction, and the publication of Ordered South may be regarded as his real entrance upon literature. Ordered South lifts the veil from Stevenson's life and gives insight into conditions which profoundly affected all his work. It is the essay of an invalid, and an invalid Stevenson was destined to remain till the end. But he was an invalid with the spirit of a robust adventurer. A victim to tuberculosis, who, at times, could scarcely breathe and who seemed to need all his energies in order merely to live, he was a lover of the sea and a daring voyager, and, long after he had reached manhood, still played, with tireless zest, a war-game of his own invention. In his case, broken health did not quench, but rather stimulated, the heroic in his nature. Hence, feeble as was his hold on life, in forty-four years he accomplished far more than the vast majority of those who live the full span in the enjoyment of vigorous health. The body was weak, but the spirit was indomitable. It was the eagerness of his spirit and his keen

1 See, ante, vol. xiii, chap. vi.

E. L. XIV. CH. III.

11

162 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

sympathy with men of action that saved Stevenson from the be-

setting sin of the artist in words, the temptation to subordinate

meaning to sound.

It was not until the publication of Treasure Island as a

separate volume in 1883 that Stevenson was generally recognised

as a great writer; but, prior to that, he had written and published

some short stories and many essays. The records of personal

experience which are embodied in An Inland Voyage and in

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes are essentially essays.

Fugitive papers were gathered into volumes, intimate and con-

fidential, as in Virginibus Puerisque, or critical, as in Familiar

Studies of Men and Books. Both in matter and in manner

they were excellent, but they did not make their author

famous. Other volumes, akin in spirit and substance, were

added in later years—fragments of autobiography and travel,

such as The Amateur Emigrant, The Silverado Squatters

and In the South Seas, and collections of miscellaneous

papers, such as Memories and Portraits and Across the Plains.

In all his work of this class Stevenson is easy, graceful and

friendly, except on occasion, when, as in A Christmas Sermon,

the tone is too lofty for these adjectives. But there, too, he

is intimate, and there, perhaps more clearly than anywhere

else, he reveals the moral interest which underlies most of

his work.

The body of short stories grew along with the essays, and

Stevenson was a master of story-craft no less than of essay-craft.

He never surpassed some of his earlier tales: The Pavilion

on the Links and Thrawn Janet both appeared before Treasure

Island. But, among English-speaking people, it is difficult to

make a great reputation out of short stories. The stories pub-

lished under the title The New Arabian Nights were supposed

to be responsible for the unpopularity and failure of London,

the periodical in which they originally appeared. Stevenson

might, therefore, have added masterpieces such as Markheim

and The Beach of Falesa, and still have remained obscure. But,

after Treasure Island, he was obscure no longer, and the brilliant

success of that excellent story for boys won readers for the essays

and the short stories who, save for it, would have paid no heed

to them. It made Stevenson a prosperous man, and did much

to determine the direction of his subsequent efforts. It was

followed by a series of romances—Kidnapped, with its sequel

Catriona, The Black Arrow, The Master of Ballantrae and

III] Stevenson. Rands 163

others, down to his masterpiece Weir of Hermiston and the unfinished St Ives. In these romances, Stevenson is at his best, like Scott, when he is dealing with his native land ; but a comparison with the Waverley novels shows that, fine as his work is, it falls decidedly short of the greatest. Only in Weir of Hermiston does he for a moment rival Scott. Stevenson was growing till he died, and the wonderful creation of the old judge, one of the best drawn characters in prose fiction, deepens the regret that his days were numbered. Like Dickens, he had the excellent habit of identifying himself with his characters, and this, no doubt, explains his success. He acted their parts while he dictated, and imitated their voices.

In other departments, Stevenson's work was less excellent. The dramas wherein he collaborated with Henley were not very successful ; but it must be added that their failure was largely due to imperfect acquaintance with the conditions of the theatre. Both writers were too highly gifted to produce work destitute of literary merit, and Beau Austin, in particular, seems, from this point of view, to deserve more success than it won.

Stevenson has been called the laureate of the nursery, but the title has also been claimed for William Brighty Rands; and it seems more justly to belong to the elder writer. Certainly, Rands preceded Stevenson, and the latter has nothing finer than Rands's 'Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World.' From 1864 onwards, in Lilliput Levee, Lilliput Revels, Lilliput Lectures and Lilliput Legends, in verse and in prose, Rands was second only to Lewis Carroll and Juliana Horatia Ewing in the production of those books about childhood and for childhood, which are among the most striking features of recent English literature. He wrote, and wrote well, for adults as well as for children. His essays, Tangled Talk, are, it is true, disappointing ; but his Chaucer's England, though not a work of profound learning, is a very interesting book ; and his Henry Holbeach, Student in Life and Philosophy, proves that he was a thinker as well as a skilful writer. The uncertainty of the judgment of contemporaries is vividly illustrated by the fact that this striking book passed almost unnoticed and remains unknown except to students, while Sir Arthur Helps's commonplace Friends in Council, which is also the work of a 'student in life and philosophy,' won for its author a high place among writers of the second grade. Helps attempted history, the drama and prose fiction, as well as the dialogue on social questions by which he won his fame. His histories are

11—2

164 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH.

treated elsewhere1. His dramas are forgotten. His Realmah

resembles the works of Disraeli in that it is partly political, but

it is not, like them, a document of historical significance. His

Brevia, a collection of short essays and aphorisms, makes con-

spicuous that lack of substance which is evident in Friends in

Council. This charge cannot be brought against the thought of

William Rathbone Greg, whose Creed of Christendom, in spite of

its sympathetic moderation, in 1851 fluttered the dove-cots of

orthodoxy. Enigmas of Life, fully twenty years later, testified

to his permanent interest in the ultimate problems of existence.

The expression is sometimes striking, but the principal charm of

the book arises from the atmosphere of sincerity which pervades

it. Greg was a philosophical politician, as well as a philosophical

student of religion; and, in Rocks Ahead and Mistaken Aims

and attainable Ideals of the Artizan Classes, and in a number

of essays, he showed himself to be by no means easy in mind as to

the tendency of the times. Like Bagehot, he saw that democracy

was inevitable, and, like Bagehot, he felt that the problem how to

give the masses their due share of power without making them

all-powerful was still unsolved.

The nursery work of Rands links on, at one point, to the work

of Andrew Lang2, whose many-coloured fairy books were, of course,

not of his own composition, but gathered out of many lands and

many ages in the course of his studies in mythology and folk-lore.

Lang seemed to have all the necessary gifts of the essayist; yet,

already, his essays have lost somewhat of their flavour. Only now

and then, as in the lightly humorous philosophy of prefaces in the

preface to The Orange Fairy Book, does Lang strike the true

note firmly; and he has not enough of this quality to keep his

essays in permanent remembrance. He dissipated his powers and

attempted too much. Folk-lore, the occult, history, the Homeric

question, literary criticism—in all he was active. Under such

conditions, it was scarcely possible to be quite first-rate in any

department. Specialists in each could point out his mistakes;

but it remains much to his credit that he never failed to make

himself interesting. The fact that, whether right or wrong, he is

interesting in every page of his short sketch of English literature

is not the least striking illustration of this power.

Two ‘rolling stones,’ both of whom gathered moss, as the

elder hinted in the title of one of his books, were Laurence

1 See, ante, chap. XI.

2 See, ante, chap. II, and vol. XIII, chap. VI.

Oliphant and Lafcadio Hearn. Oliphant's books bear testimony

to his wanderings. His earliest volume dealt with Khatmanda ;

and his next, The Russian Shores of the Black Sea, caused him

to be consulted when the Crimean war broke out. In two wars,

he acted as correspondent of The Times. He was in Japan while

Japan was still in the medieval stage, and nearly lost his life in an

attack in which the weapon of the assailant was a two-handed

sword. So stirring a life afforded rich materials for various

lively narratives from his pen, and for the essays which were

gathered up near the close of his life in Episodes in a Life of

Adventure. But the most extraordinary episode of all was

Oliphant's subjection to the 'prophet' Thomas Lake Harris,

whom the disciple believed to be not only a prophet, but 'the

greatest poet of the age,' and to whom he surrendered the whole

of his property. One outcome of this discipleship was Sympne-

mata, a singular book, the joint composition of Oliphant and

his wife, who both wrote, or believed that they wrote, under the

dictation of a spirit. Other products were of a very different

sort ; for Oliphant seems to have united with this trait of enthu-

siasm a marked talent for business, which the prophet was shrewd

enough to employ for his own benefit. Hence, The Autobiography

of a Joint-Stock Company, in which Oliphant embodied the

knowledge he had gained of the methods of American financiers.

In the literary sense, however, Oliphant's most valuable work was

the satiric fiction Piccadilly, which shows him to have been a keen

observer and a penetrating critic of the society of his time.

Long afterwards, he returned to the realm of fiction in Altiora

Peto, and proved that he still retained his old fineness of touch.

Lafcadio Hearn began his career as a contributor to two

Cincinnati journals, but it was a subsequent residence at St Pierre,

Martinique, that gave him the materials for his first noteworthy

work, Two Years in the French West Indies. In this, he showed

that power to receive and faithfully to reproduce impressions,

which was his special gift ; and his position in literature must

depend upon this gift as it was exercised in relation to Japan,

whither he migrated in 1891. Probably no one can instruct

the man of the west about what Japan was before the completion

of the process of modernisation so well as Hearn ; but that he

does so on the strength of mere impression is shown by the fact

that, though he married a Japanese wife, he could neither speak

to her or to his children in their own language, nor, after a residence

of fourteen years, so much as read a Japanese newspaper. What

166 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH. III

is valuable in his work is not his reasoned opinions, but the feeling

produced in his soul by what he saw and heard; and it is im-

portant to notice, as Gould insists, that what he saw was little

more than a blur of colour; for he was ‘probably the most myoptic

literary man that has existed.’ Hence, the best of the Japanese

books is the first, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, because in it

he was forced to rely almost wholly on impression. In his later

volumes, he reacts on the impressions and injures them. For this

reason, the latest, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, though

the most ambitious—for it is an attempt to present in one lordly

dish the cream of all he had learnt about Japan—is far from being

equal to those early glimpses. Besides scenes, Hearn produced

tales, both in America and in the Japanese period. He betrays

in them an unhealthy love of the gruesome; but he could, on

occasion, rise to a high level, as he proved by his masterpiece in

this form, the story of Karma.

While Oliphant and Hearn found their literary capital in the

distant and unfamiliar, the sphere of Richard Jefferies was, as the

title of one of his volumes indicates, the fields and the hedgerows

around us. His task was to show that the unfamiliar lay beneath

men’s eyes. He belongs to the class of field naturalists like

White of Selborne, and, in days more recent than even those of

Jefferies, Denham Jordan, who is better known by his pen-name

‘A Son of the Marshes.’ But Jefferies was more ambitious than they

and wider in his range. In Hodge and his Master, he deals with

the human element in rural life; but he does not show that complete

comprehension which he.shows of beast and bird and flower. His

name first became familiar through The Gamekeeper at Home;

and, for the ten years of life which remained to him, he was a

diligent writer. All who are qualified to judge, testify to his

accuracy of observation as recorded in volume after volume, down

to Field and Hedgerow, which appeared after his death; but,

while the style is good, there is a marked tendency to catalogue

minute facts which, doubtless, have a value as natural history, but

hardly any from the point of view of literature. On the other

hand, a certain vein of poetry is present in all the works of

Jefferies. It is especially rich in Wood Magic, and it gives charm

to the fine spiritual autobiography, The Story of My Heart.

CHAPTER IV

THE GROWTH OF JOURNALISM

To pass from the conditions recorded in the chapter entitled 'The Beginnings of English Journalism1' to those with which the close of the nineteenth century was familiar, is almost like being carried on the magic carpet of oriental romance from the middle of the Sahara to the bustling, electricity-lighted thoroughfares of a modern European capital.

The chapter to which reference is made treats of the hand-written letter in which some, more or less professional, observer, for the benefit of a few known subscribers in the country, detailed whatever gossip he was able to pick up in the taverns and streets of London.

His lineal descendants are still to be seen in the writers of the London letter which figures in the columns of nearly every daily provincial paper, and finds, latterly, a counterpart in several of the journals established in London.

The information in these London letters differs, for the most part, from that which is to be obtained in the ordinary news columns, and has nothing in common with the reasoned leading article, in which is discussed the uppermost political incident of the day.

The chapter above referred to took its readers from these manuscript letters through various experiments in printed news-books and sheets of intelligence, issued by, or in behalf of, groups of politicians, or news purveyors, to the establishment of The London Gazette and the few occasional journals which made their appearance towards the end of the seventeenth century.

The transition from a small pamphlet containing some definite piece of news, and bearing an appropriate title, to the sheet published periodically under a distinctive and regularly repeated name, carrying not one but a great variety of collected items of news, was, in itself, great; but, when the change was brought about, the convenience and attractiveness of it ensured permanence.

1 See, ante, vol. vii, chap. xv.

168 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

There was even a public ready for the news writer. Howell, in his Familiar Letters1, tells that the ploughman, the cobbler and the porter would spare no effort to educate their children, and the records of the university of Cambridge show numerous instances of the sons of husbandmen being entered as students.

Apart; then, from the necessity to the merchant and trader of being acquainted with current events, it is natural that the country, as a whole, should wish to be supplied with news. Dr Johnson characterised English common folk as more educated, politically, than the people of other countries, and this because of the popularity of newspapers.

The extent of the influence of the cheap newspaper in the early part of the eighteenth century is shown by the petition of publishers against the legislation described by Swift as ruining Grub street by the imposition of a tax which extinguished all halfpenny newspapers and many of the more highly priced.

It was urged that halfpenny newspapers were used very largely throughout the country as a means of teaching children to read, and that, without them, there would be a failure in this respect. In these conditions, statesmen could not fail to recognise that the newspaper press might be made to serve their purposes, and they did not hesitate to employ men of marked ability and political knowledge to supplement or give finish to the work of the professional inhabitants of Grub street.

For these higher services, payment was made, sometimes in coin—and, otherwise, by state or church preferment, or by admission to social comradeship. Publishers of newspapers, also, found it to their profit to employ writers who could mix the useful with the pleasant.

Swift says that he refused £50 offered to him by Harley in 1710—11

The growth of journalism in the eighteenth century was expedited by Palmer's establishment of a series of stage coaches, leaving London at stated hours and carrying parcels as well as passengers, distribution being thus much more rapid and regular than when it depended upon the older waggon.

Meanwhile, newspapers had to struggle against the hand of authority. Prosecutions for libel were numerous, and daring writers had to stand in the pillory, besides being imprisoned and fined.

Parliament, in especial, was jealous of the news collector; though, now and again, some member might protest that the constituencies had a right to know how their parliamentary representatives spoke and voted, leading politicians and the houses, as a whole, resented,

1 Section viii, Letter viiii (circa 1640).

IV] Eighteenth Century Newspapers 169

as breaches of privilege, any account of their proceedings, and

Cave, one of the earliest and most celebrated of parliamentary

reporters, recorded the discussions as if they took place in China,

referring to individual statesmen by entirely fictitious names,

which, like those employed in Gulliver’s Travels, were, doubtless,

understood by very many readers. Nor were prosecutions for the

publication of parliamentary reports confined to London. Quite

early in the eighteenth century, some of the leading provincial

cities and boroughs could boast their own newspapers. The

Newcastle Courant was established in 1711, and its publication

continued into the second half of the nineteenth century. The

Liverpool Courant was printed in 1712, Burron’s Worcester

Journal in 1709, The Salisbury Postman in 1715, The York

Mercury about 1720), The Leeds Mercury and The Northampton

Mercury in 1720. Manchester, somewhat late in the field, had a

newspaper, The Gazette, in 1730. Cave, in 1722, sent reports of

the proceedings of parliament to The Gloucester Journal, whose

owner, thereupon, was brought into direct conflict with the house

of commons.

Some of the journals in this intermediate period were, in fact,

collections of essays; and the writers of the chief among them,

such as Swift, Addison and Steele, are dealt with in other chapters.

Johnson’s essays, for the most part, were, like those of Goldsmith,

written as the literary attractions of news-sheets; it being recog-

nised that the public, while eager to buy current news, wanted,

also, some more substantial and lasting literary food. Like

similar efforts of journalism at the end of the nineteenth century,

they were composed with rapidity, recording momentary impressions

aroused, probably, by some piece of current gossip; being, in

this respect, entirely removed from the earlier essay associated

with the name of Bacon. Through the whole period, however, is

to be noted a constant progress in the collection and dissemina-

tion of news.

Charles Lamb divided books into two classes, one of which is

literature, and the other not; and, perhaps, it may be said that

some journalism is literature and other is not. A sketch of

journalism in the nineteenth century must include both, whether

or not it attempts to differentiate between them. In any reasoned

survey of the period, it is impossible to ignore among newspaper

writers a changing attitude which synchronised with a change in

their readers. The journalism of the beginning of the century

was, mainly, intended for the wealthy and educated classes, though

170 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

underneath it was a stratum of popular writing struggling against authority which gladly would have suppressed it ; at the end, with the exception of a few weekly reviews—and, perhaps, of a few penny daily papers, and of The Times—journalism appealed to a lower average of social standing, and, making allowance for educational progress in the nation, to a lower average of literary appreciation. The enormous circulations of which today certain newspaper owners loudly boast result, largely, from an endeavour to cater for classes whose education has been restricted to the elementary school, or who, of more advanced schooling, always run with the crowd—possibly a tendency natural to democratic times. Writing so near to these developments, it would be premature to pronounce judgment upon them.

As to amenities, journalism, in many ways, has improved during the century. No journal in the front rank would now apply to a rising statesman language such as The Times, in the early forties, used about Macaulay, when it referred to him as ‘Mr Babbletonie Macaulay,’ and said, ‘he was hardly fit to fill up one of the vacancies that have occurred by the lamentable death of Her Majesty's two favourite monkeys.’ One may suppose that Sir Walter Scott had such conditions in mind, when, having dissuaded his son-in-law Lockhart from journalism, he wrote : ‘none but a thorough-going black-guard ought to attempt the daily press, unless it is some quiet country diurnal.’ Dickens's sketch of Eatanswill journalism was very little of an exaggeration. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether, in the closing years of the century, there was such intimate connection between journalism and writers upon whose work time will impress the hallmark of literature, as in the first half of the century. The newspaper work of Coleridge was done in the last years of the eighteenth century, and the beginning of the nineteenth. Many of Hazlitt's criticisms of literature, art and the drama were written for daily or weekly journals. Perry, pro-prietor and editor of The Morning Chronicle, complained of the length of Hazlitt's dramatic criticisms ; but the public for which the journal was written looked for articles which, in the literature of the country, have taken a position far above that accorded to the writings of any dramatic critic—and there were several of distinguished ability—at the end of the century. Charles Lamb, also, was a dramatic critic, and, although what he did, in this domain, is of less value than much of his other writing, it possesses permanence, because a man so steeped as was Elia in

IV] Art Criticism 171

Elizabethan literature could scarcely fail to invest his criticism with atmosphere1.

In regard to another branch of art, if we turn to Lamb or to Hazlitt, by way of gauging the alteration in the attitude of critics—and, therefore, apparently, of their readers—towards painting, we find that criticism, at the beginning of the century, dealt with the artist's ability to imagine and realise some scene or incident, taking for granted all questions of technique and of what, nowadays, is styled decorative pattern, whereas, recent art criticism has been more and more devoted to these2. Hazlitt, who, like many modern critics, had received, unprofitably, some training as a painter, protests against the idea that a critic ought to possess practical acquaintance with the art, and the protest involves the belief that a critic, writing for the public, has nothing to do with the artist's craftsmanship. The alteration of attitude has thus been enormous, and, intellectually, the later outlook is smaller. In the political world, also, while the average of writing, and, possibly, of instructed thought, no matter to what side or party it may be devoted, has, doubtless, improved, there is now less direct connection between statesmen of the first rank and journalism. Greville could point to articles in The Morning Chronicle of the fifties as attributable either to Palmerston or to the ambassador of Napoleon III; The Times could make and maintain an unique reputation abroad, because it was supposed to voice the opinions of important members of the British government. Henry Reeve, who, between 1840 and 1855, wrote for The Times 2482 leading articles, characteristically dwelt, in his journal, on the surpassing value of his knowledge of cabinet matters. Perhaps, allowance must be made for his pride in his work; but the association between cabinet ministers and certain newspapers was, undoubtedly, intimate in the first half of the century. On the other hand, a large degree of independence was shown, and, although great editors might, not un- naturally, be influenced by the society in which they moved, they did not come under suspicion of corruption. Their general

1 Much dramatic criticism by Leigh Hunt, as, later, that by G. H. Lewes, comes within the same class, being based on literary principles.

2 As an instance, in the case of Charles Lamb, may be cited the papers he wrote for The Athenaeum in 1838. There is no mention of Titian's brushwork. Lamb's interest in the Ariadne lay in the artist's conception of the situation indicated by Ovid, and his power of impressing this conception upon the mind of an intelligent observer. This, also, was Thackeray's standpoint, in his criticisms of paintings.

172 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

character, in this respect, appears in a letter from earl Grey to princess Lieven in 1831 :

I saw the article last night in The Courier, and it vexed me very much. We really have no power over that, or any other paper in great circulation. All that we can do is by sending them sometimes articles of intelligence (but even to this I am no party) to conciliate them, when public opinion is not against us. But when there is a strong general feeling, as in the case of Poland, it is quite impossible to control them.

Lord Palmerston, in reply to Horsman, who had insinuated that he was influencing The Times, protested that, between himself and Delane, there was no bond but that of ordinary social intercourse. At the present day, though, occasionally, information is given privately by ministers to journalists, the latter have grown more and more shy of seeming to be under the influence of ministers ; they are afraid lest a reputation of this kind should damage them in public estimation. Ministers, on their part, have adopted a somewhat different method of appealing to the public, or to foreign powers. The development of reporting, and of the transmission of news, has led them chiefly, though not invariably, to make their appeals from the public platform, or from their places in parliament. This change has caused the political pronouncements of our leading journals to be regarded as less weighty. How far they represent a large mass of public opinion is always debatable; a political party having the support of the great majority of journals with large circulations has, at times, gone to the country only to find itself in a very decided minority. In sum, therefore, journalism would seem to have lost authority because statesmen have adopted other means of publishing their views, while it has not gained materially in influence derived from a pretension to represent the general trend of opinion in the country, or, what is even more questionable, to direct this opinion. In 1883, there arose a controversy as to whether journalism was advancing or retrograding. The Spectator held that the influence was declining yearly. Matthew Arnold, in 1887, describing what was known as the new journalism, said :

It is full of ability, novelty, variety, sensation, sympathy, generous instinct; its one great fault is that it is feather-brained. It throws out assertions at a venture, because it wishes them true;...and to get at the state of things as they truly are, seems to have no concern whatever1.

Prophets, in journalism or politics, are always unsafe. Two features of newspaper work which had their rise in the

1 The Nineteenth Century, May 1887.

IV] The War Correspondent 173

nineteenth century are the leading article and special correspond-

ence discussing foreign affairs, or describing war. The war corre-

spondent, indeed, may be said to have been born, run his full course

and expired in the second half of the century. Reputations such

as were made by W. H. Russell, of The Times, in writing of the

Crimean war, or by Archibald Forbes, of The Daily News, in the

Franco-Prussian war, and Henry Labouchere, describing Paris

in a state of siege, are no longer possible. Lord Raglan com-

plained that The Times published information which, even with the

then limited means of transmission, found its way back to Russia,

and interfered with his plans ; both French and Germans thought

the messages of Forbes and his colleagues similarly detrimental ;

and, in the war between this country and the Boers, which closed

the century, a very severe censorship was set up, which practically

extinguished the independence of the war correspondent. In

the wars of the earlier part of the twentieth century, military

authorities have kept war correspondents very many miles away

from the front, and government censorships have come into play,

with most striking effect. Foreign correspondents—of whom,

Henry Crabb Robinson, sent out by The Times in 1807, was one

of the earliest—have maintained their position. So, too, has the

leading article, despite the judgment of Richard Cobden, when he

was one of the proprietors of The Morning Star, that ‘people did

not like leading articles,’ and also despite the practice, followed by

a large part of the halfpenny press, of avoiding reasoned exposi-

tions of political principles.

The nineteenth century, however it may be contemned by

later critics of the Victorian drama, painting, music and fiction,

was, indeed, a period of revolution, and its changes in regard to

journalism were such that, whereas, at the beginning of the

century, a newspaper circulating two or three thousand copies a

day was looked upon as phenomenally successful, by the end of

the century, circulations rising to 250,000 or more daily were

recorded of the penny newspapers, which had now become the

dearer class ; and much larger of the halfpenny press. There

had also been a multiplication in the number of daily and weekly

journals ; and, in their supply of news, some of the best of

the provincial papers rivalled the majority of those published

in London. In the year 1800, so far as there is definite in-

formation,

barring the Irish capital, there were no daily Journals published outside

London, and the total number of news sheets was only about 250, as

174 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

compared with nearly 2500 at the present time. Today, the total of daily

papers alone is over 2401.

In 1815, the number of newspapers in the United Kingdom was

252 ; but this was on the eve of an increase in the duties, and,

subsequently, there was a fall. In 1824, it is stated2,

there were published in the United Kingdom, 266 papers in all…. In the

present year (1874) the aggregate number is 1585. Estimating the news

sheets printed in 1824, we cannot place the number at more than 30 millions.

In the present period, we do not doubt that the issue is 650 million sheets

per annum.

In 1832, E. L. Bulwer Lytton (afterwards lord Lytton), in his

famous speech advocating the abolition of the stamp, reckoned

that every newspaper paid 1s. 4d. a sheet (a paper-maker's sheet)

in paper-duty, 4d. in stamp-duty and 3s. 6d. for each advertise-

ment, this being equal, with cost of printing and agency added, to

5½d. on a 7d. paper ; so that but 1½d. was left for literary and

other expenses, and for profits. To carry the figures a little

further, it is said that, in 1782, there was published in the United

Kingdom one newspaper to 110,000 inhabitants; in 1821, one to

90,000 ; and, in 1832, one to 55,0003. But the figures do not tell

the whole story. There had been a complete revolution in the

speed of printing. Prior to 1814, not more than 750 impressions

an hour could be obtained from one machine, and, if more than

one machine were operated, for each was required a duplicate set

of types. In 1814, John Walter, the second of that name who

owned The Times, showed that, with the aid of steam, newspapers

could be printed at the rate of 1100 copies per hour. Various

improvements were made afterwards, greatly expediting the work.

But, half-way in the century, papermakers made long rolls of

paper, to run in a press fitted with cylinders on which were

fixed, in the first instance, type, and, afterwards, cast metal plates

reproducing pages of type ; so that, by the end of the century, one

cylindrical press could print, at the rate of 25,000 copies per

hour, journals twice the size of those issued at the beginning of

the century. Further, when a mould of a page of type has been

taken, the printer can cast plates for about a dozen presses,

each producing its 25,000 copies, and, by the application of

photography to etching, it is possible to illustrate these rapidly

produced journals. The substitution of mechanical type-setters,

1 Sell's Dictionary of the World's Press for 1901.

2 Francis, John C., History of the Athenaeum, vol. XI, p. 826.

3 Partington's British Cyclopaedia of Arts, Sciences, etc., vol. III, p. 94.

IV] Nineteenth Century Journalism 175

and, more especially, the linotype, for hand composition, has greatly quickened and cheapened this department of production. Viewed from the mechanical standpoint, therefore, journalism shared to the full the inventive ability which marked the period, and to this is due, in part, its extraordinary growth.

The collection and presentation of news may be regarded as one of the applied arts—the application of literature to the recording of current, and often very transient, facts, providing, however, abundant material from which historians may reconstruct the life of the century. The student of Greek and Roman history must, of necessity, have recourse to such inscriptions as time and vandalism have failed to obliterate; from these, he devours to picture the actual conditions of peoples, their everyday work, their amusements, morality, hopes and fears. The journalism of the nineteenth century is a much ampler record of human activity in almost every direction, and this rapidly multiplied in volume as the century neared its close. Even advertisements are indicative of national life, its industries and amusements, educational and social institutions; often of religious or political and social thought. News embodied in today's journals is more detailed and plastic. The development of reporting, aided by railway transit, by telegraphy and, still later, by the telephone, has placed readers in almost immediate touch with the thought of the whole world; and any observant person who has seen the growth in size of the daily papers during the last quarter of the century, and of the increasing variety of their reports, ought to be able to trace many fresh paths of public activity, for example, the formation of societies, and the holding of meetings for the discussion of ideas upon every conceivable subject. Important, too, has been the discovery that paper could be made from wood pulp. But for this, it is certain there could have been no such multiplication of newspapers as the century saw.

The extension of British journalism has been the result, largely, of cheapness and of ability to obtain news in increasing quantity, and, in some respects, with greater accuracy—always with increasing speed. This was made possible only by a constant growth of revenue from advertisements. In the course of the century, shipping, manufacturing and finance were multiplied as if by some magician's wand, and, for daily information regarding them, men of all classes had resort to the newspaper press; the cost to individuals of obtaining such information for themselves being, in most instances, prohibitive. The

176 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

construction of railways, and even the invention of the motor-car, have revolutionised the means of placing newspapers in the hands of readers. The enterprise shown in distributing The London Evening Courier before the days of railways has been outdone1.

Politically, the century was highly favourable to the advance of the newspaper press. In its earlier years, the nation was exercised about the Napoleonic war. Later came demands for the abolition of the corn-laws, catholic emancipation, popular education, the extension of the franchise, with a host of other political changes, often consequential upon what had gone before ; the Crimean war, the Indian mutiny, the expansion of the British empire, also did their part. The growing number of religious sects, of projects for social betterment, the multiplication of universities and of scientific and literary societies, new being added to old, partly as a result of the university extension movement, the growth of trade unions, the spread of concerts and of tours by dramatic companies, each of them advertising and requiring notices of its performances, the increasing work of representative local governing bodies, the planting of the schoolmaster in every little parish--these things have converted the newspaper press from a luxury into what seems to be a necessity of daily life. In Great Britain, it must further be noted, newspapers, for most of the century, have been unfettered by peculiar and restrictive legislation or censorship. In earlier years, this was not so. It was held illegal to publish the report of a criminal case heard before a magistrate, but not finally decided ; and verdicts for libel were given against newspapers on this account. Prosecutions at the instance of governments were numerous ; parliament often called editors and proprietors to its bar. The press, however, after not a little struggling, was able to assert a large degree of freedom, though it is noteworthy that, when the Newspaper society was founded, in May 1837, one of its chief concerns was the amendment of the law of libel, and that, seventy years later, the same subject was still under consideration.

One consequence of the increased mechanical rapidity of journalism in all its branches is the gradual disappearance, not of Bohemianism, but of alcoholism, among journalists. It is

1 In Chas. A. Cooper's Fifty Years of Newspaper Work, it is related that, in 1865, The Scotsman of Edinburgh altered its system of sending parcels by railway with such effect that, whereas in February 1865, the circulation of the paper was 17,000 copies per day, in 1877, it had grown to 50,000.

IV] The Revolution in Journalism 177

impossible to imagine the occurrence, at the end of the century, of

an incident like that detailed in James Grant's Newspaper Press,

when the one reporter left on duty by his colleagues in the house of

commons fabricated, for the benefit of an Irish colleague, a speech

by Wilberforce, eulogising the virtues of the potato, with the

result that the speech appeared in all the London newspapers

except The Morning Chronicle, on which the practical joker

himself was employed. Nor would it be possible for a famous editor

to be intoxicated night after night, like the editor of The Aurora,

depicted in William Jerdan's autobiography. Jerdan was a man

of considerable pretensions to literature, and, in 1817, produced

The Literary Gazette, the earliest weekly venture of the kind; for,

though The Examiner made a feature of dramatic, and, to some

extent, of literary, criticism, its main intention was political.

Newspaper men have become as reputable and trustworthy as

any workers in the nation. Proprietors and editors demand from

their staffs unvarying fitness for duty; a Coleridge, working

only when in the humour, could have little chance of employ-

ment. Nor would a brilliant but irregular Maginn ('Thackeray's

captain Shandon) be likely to edit a newspaper 'written by gentle-

men for gentlemen,' or even one written, as sometimes seems to

happen, by the ignorant for the ignorant. Journalism, moreover,

has been yoked with the requirement of special knowledge of

science, the arts and literature. Journalism, in short, passed

through a revolution in the nineteenth century.

The business of providing the public with news has always

been precarious; more so in London than in the provinces,

though, even in the latter, there are many instances in which

newspapers have sprung up, made a reputation and maintained

it during many years, bringing wealth to their proprietors, and

providing professional writers with what appeared to be per-

manent means of livelihood, and have then been overtaken by

competitors, and, eventually, been extinguished. Still, there are,

in different parts of the country, many which have run their course

through the nineteenth century, and others which, though with

altered titles, can show a similar continuity. In London, there

are only three daily journals able to make such a boast. The

Morning Post has had a continuous history since 1772; The

Times was started by the first John Walter in 1785, as The Daily

Universal Register, a title which, on 1 January 1788, gave place

to The Times; and The Morning Advertiser was founded in 1794.

In this sketch of nineteenth-century English journalism, priority

E. L. XIV. CH. IV.

12

178 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

may be given to The Times because, undoubtedly, during the

greater part of the century, it was foremost among British news-

papers ; its fame in other countries far exceeded that of any of

its contemporaries ; it was the first newspaper to be printed by

steam-power (29 November 1814) ; it was the first to send special

correspondents—as Wotton said of ambassadors—‘to lie abroad’ ;

it was the first to commission one of its staff, W. H. Russell, as a

war correspondent; it was the first to print what is known as a

parliamentary sketch or leading article; it was the latest to oppose

the abolition of the stamp and paper duties, or to lower its price

in the various stages through which other ventures showed the way,

until, recently (1915), it has been compelled, by pressure of com-

petition, to take its place among the penny morning papers ;

finally, until a few years into the twentieth century, it was mainly

the property, and always under the active control, of the Walter

family. Early in its career, it adopted the policy of enlisting

among its contributors men of eminence in politics, in science,

in literature, in the arts and in religion. During the greater part

of its existence, the pecuniary profits of The Times were very

large, and it could procure information by means too expensive

for its contemporaries. Such was its position, that most people

believed it to be beyond challenge by any rival1. The first John

Walter was its first editor; he resigned his sceptre into the hands

of the second John Walter in 1803. The Times had already

achieved notoriety by certain libels, for some of which John

Walter spent sixteen months in Newgate. His efforts to obtain

news from the continent, and especially from France, brought

the paper reputation among politicians and financiers; he was

competing with the well-established Morning Chronicle under

the editorship of James Perry, who had surrounded himself with

a brilliant literary staff, and had effectively organised the reporting

of parliament by relays of reporters who could produce their copy

in time for publication in the next morning’s Chronicle. Perry’s

method of organisation is still in force. John Walter the second

learned by experience that the business of a proprietor interfered

with editing, and he left much authority in the hands of members

of his staff. Henry Crabb Robinson, sent out as foreign cor-

respondent in 1807, was, in the next year, installed as foreign

editor, and, some two years or so later, Dr (afterwards Sir) John

Stoddart was appointed general editor. The British press, as a

1 See, for instance, Andrews’s A History of British Journalism (1859), in the passage

discussing the attitude of The Times towards the repeal of the stamp duty.

IV] The Times 179

whole, was violent in attacking Napoleon, who, in 1802, pressed the British government to

adopt the most effectual measures to put a stop to the unbecoming and seditious publications with which the newspapers and writings printed in England are filled.

The government admitted that ‘very improper paragraphs have lately appeared in some of the English newspapers against the Government of France’; but they repudiated responsibility, and suggested that the first consul might sue the newspapers in the English courts. There was a prosecution of a French newspaper published in London; but nothing came of it. The Times was among Napoleon’s most coarse and violent assailants. Indeed, in 1817, John Walter, for this reason, removed Stoddart, installing Thomas Barnes, already on the staff of the paper—the first of two editors whose fame has never been excelled. When lord Melville had been dismissed from office in 1805, Peter Stuart, proprietor and editor of The Oracle—brother of the more famous Dan Stuart, of The Morning Post—defended Melville in an article reflecting severely upon the House of Commons. There were long debates in the chamber, and, in the course of them, the chancellor of the exchequer said,

It was almost the common fault of those connected with the press that they assumed a loftier tone, and perhaps gave themselves more importance, than naturally belonged to them 1.

The Times has never been wanting in a sense of its own importance, and, whatever mistakes may have been made by it in the course of the nineteenth century, it has, throughout, been above suspicion of corruption. For the rest, The Times opposed the repeal of the corn-laws, until it was converted, not by argument, but by the magnitude of the demonstrations in Manchester and elsewhere, and by the wealth and local status of the men who took part in them. It opposed Stratford Canning’s policy of maintaining the Turkish empire against Russian attack, until it saw that Palmerston, heading steadily for war with Russia, had the country at his back. Later, in the Russo-Turklsh war of 1876, it still supported the Turks; but, towards the end of the century, as the attitude of important British politicians differed considerably, in this respect, from that of their predecessors, it turned to the

1 As to the quarrel of The Times with Bright and Cobden in 1850, see Morley’s Life of Richard Cobden, chap. xxiii, and R. H. Fox Bourne’s English Newspapers, vol. ii, pp. 188, 189.

12—2

180 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

opposite side. These changes need not have resulted from a

desire to discover what the public wanted, and to satisfy the

want; The Times was neither always lagging behind the views

of those classes for which more particularly it was written, nor

always anxious to see which way it ought to jump.

That The Times possessed enormous influence under Barnes

and his successor (1841), John Thaddeus Delane, is indicated in

all the political memoirs of the period. In the first number of

The Saturday Review (3 November 1855), it was stated that one

of the chief functions of the vigorous newcomer was to undermine

this influence 'by the exercise of common-sense and ordinary

perspicacity.' 'No apology,' it wrote, 'is necessary for assuming

that this country is ruled by The Times. We all know it, or if we

do not know it, we ought to know it.' In 1834, lord Althorpe

had written to Brougham,'then lord chancellor, 'What I wanted

to see you about is The Times; whether we are to make war on

it, or come to terms.' By politicians, it was read, in its opposition

days, for the slashing articles, first, of Peter Fraser, and, next, of

captain Edward Sterling, father of John Sterling, the friend of

Carlyle. Sterling is said to have put into lively and vigorous

langnage ideas already floating in the minds of his readers. He

gained for The Times the title 'The Thunderer', by writing, 'We

thundered out the other day an article on social and political

reform1'; and, of his writing, Wellington, in 1812, said 'Here is

someone not afraid to write like a man.' Macaulay, as is recorded

by Thomas Moore in his diary, contributed verses to The Times in

1831. Leigh Hunt, radical though he was, wrote literary reviews

for it; Coleridge made advances to the second John Walter,

proposing the impossible—that he should be appointed editor,

with a perfectly free hand as to policy; George Borrow, while

wandering in Spain, collecting materials for his famous book,

acted as correspondent for The Times, and, writing with a freedom

from the dignity which hedged in staff-writers of the great

journal, became, it is said, a model for many who wrote for the

cheaper newspapers. According to Escott, 'the young lions'—

(Matthew Arnold's name for the writers on The Daily Telegraph)

—owed much to Borrow, and one of captain Hamber's staff on

The Standard 'had so steeped himself in Borrow's pure and easy

phrasing that some of the disciple's Letters from Corsica were

mistaken by experts for the Master's own.' But it is to Peter

Fraser, a veritable man-about-town in behalf of his paper, that

1 Escott's Masters of English Journalism, p. 175.

IV] John Thaddeus Delane 181

was attributed the influence won in the city of London by The Times, in the first quarter of the century. The Times always

desired to feel the pulse not only of Westminster, but, also, of the city ; it scarcely recognised public opinion in the manu-

facturing centres ; hence, in part, at least, its opposition to all the great political evolutions of the century. Under Delane, The

Times attained a larger cosmopolitan standing. It is said that Barnes furnished his coming successor with useful introductions,

including one to Charles Greville of The Memoirs. Delane was, perhaps naturally, and certainly by training, more given to society

than Barnes ; he was not a writer in the same sense as his predecessor ; at no time did he write much, and, in later years,

he confined himself almost solely to receiving information which enabled him to direct or control other men. Disraeli had ap-

peared in The Times with his Runnymede Letters (1836) and had won the friendship of Barnes1. He had some practical experience

of newspaper work in behalf of his party, and formed notable conclusions upon the value of journalism2. Delane's advent was

followed shortly by the defeat of the Melbourne administration, and much credit for this was taken by, and given to, The Times.

Delane had a cross bench mind; though representing the con-

servative tendencies largely inherent in the professional and well-to-do classes, he was yet ready to criticise freely, not merely

the government of the day, whatever its party complexion, but, also, a great mass of constitutional and social anomalies, thus paving

the way for reforms. The famous letters by S. G. O. (lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne, who, twenty-five years after the appearance of

his letters, read the service at Delane's funeral), were a rousing call for better conditions for the agricultural labourer. In 1839,

The Times had opposed the duties on corn; but, apparently, John Walter was personally hostile to Sir Robert Peel, and The Times

attacked both Peel and Sir James Graham. Especially was it against Peel's suggestion of a sliding scale of duties; but, to

Bright and Cobden and the anti-Corn-law league, it was consistently adverse, though it assisted them grudgingly when op-

position was seen to be useless.

A notable illustration of the way in which Delane picked up a policy is connected with the Crimean war. During the Aberdeen

administration of 1852, the eastern question came to a head.

1 See, ante, vol. xiv, chap. xi.

2 It is certain that, at the time of his weekly newspaper, The Press (1853), he looked up to The Times articles as a model.

182 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

Thomas Chenery was then Constantinople correspondent of The Times, and reflected the opinions of Stratford Canning, the British ambassador. In September 1853, Delane wrote to Chenery, fiercely declaring it to be

impossible for you to continue to be our correspondent, if you persist in taking a line so diametrically opposed to the interests of this country…. You seem to imagine that England can desire nothing better than to sacrifice all its greatest interests, and its most cherished objects, to support barbarism against civilisation, the Moslem against the Christian, slavery against liberty, to exchange peace for war—all to oblige the Turk. Pray undeceive yourself.

Aberdeen drifted; Palmerston became the favourite of the classes for which The Times wrote; and Delane adopted the policy Chenery had been advocating.

During the war, The Times, by means of the letters written by W. H. Russell, its correspondent with the army in the Crimea, rendered signal service to the nation. There was then no press censorship, and Russell described freely conditions which brought needless suffering upon our troops. The facts gave rise to a loud outcry, and Florence Nightingale, assisted by ‘S. G. O.,’ and others, organised an adequate hospital system. The Times had now, undoubtedly, a commanding position, and its reputation was sustained in such a degree that when, in 1870, on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, the general staffs of the two powers issued strict regulations for duly licensed war correspondents, all others being threatened as spies, there were, in this country, persons of repute for intelligence who wondered whether The Times would ‘consent’ to such a limitation of its enterprise.

During the sixth, seventh and eighth decades of the nineteenth century, foreign statesmen looked much to The Times as indicating the probable policy of this country. Greville records that, in 1858, lord Derby asked him to see Delane, to dissuade him ‘from writing any more irritating articles about France,’ for these articles ‘provoked the French to madness,’ and lord Derby was concerned as to the consequences. Napoleon III, however, was quite ready to use The Times by sending it important information1 without the knowledge of his ministers.

During the American civil war (1866), The Times again represented the majority of the professional and wealthy classes, in favouring the secessionists. Needless to say, it was not a

1 Greville's Memoirs (third part), vol. i, p. 112.

IV] The Walters 183

supporter of slavery, and it would not, in all cases, have advocated the right of a portion of a kingdom or a federation to separate from the remainder. Probably, the underlying sentiment was that the southern states embodied a continuance of the traditions surrounding ancestral homes and estate holding, while the north was associated with manufacturing and trade.

Delane supervised very carefully the articles by leader writers and correspondents, altering, or adding finishing touches; for instance, to a narrative of the Heenan and Sayers prize fight, he added, ‘Restore the prize ring? As well re-establish the heptarchy.’ The prize ring, in a modified form, has since been re-established. His caution was great. When, in 1875, Blowitz, of world fame in his day as Paris correspondent of The Times, sent word that Bismarck contemplated a fresh war with France, to prevent the latter from recovering her military strength, Delane held back the news for a fortnight—risking the grave possibility of being forestalled—while Chenery went to Paris, and obtained evidence fully confirming the report. This caution has been, not unnaturally, contrasted with the action of The Times in 1886, when the paper published the famous facsimile ‘Parnell’ letter, the forgery of which was afterwards confessed by Pigott.

John Walter the third had succeeded his father in 1847 when the paper contained normally about six times as much matter as The Times of 1803; and a large part of its prosperity was due to the forty-four years’ management by the second John Walter. His successor was twenty-nine years of age, and on the eve of entering parliament as a liberal-conservative. Delane was firmly seated in the saddle, and, though the Walter family steadily turned to the conservative side, the paper continued more or less independent until the last years of Delane’s editorship, when Disraeli’s foreign policy, and, for the most part, his internal policy, had the support of the journal.

In the next period, The Times suffered from the competition of the penny press; and, at the very end of the century, from that of the halfpenny press also. Among its chief competitors were The Daily Telegraph, with its exuberant vitality, and the more steady-going, but more fashionable, Morning Post1.

Daniel Stuart bought The Morning Post in 1795, when its circulation was only 350 copies daily; in seven years, this rose to between 4000 and 4500—more than twice that of any other daily paper.

1 Later changes in the proprietorship and control of The Times may not be noted here.

184 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

Stuart is sketched in Charles Lamb's Newspapers Thirty-five Years

Ago :

'He ever appeared to us' writes Lamb 'one of the finest tempered of editors.

Perry, of The Morning Chronicle was equally pleasant, with a dash, no slight

one either, of the courtier. S. was frank, plain, and English all over.'

Lamb asserts that the 'sixpence a joke' which he received was

thought high remuneration. Daniel Stuart and his brother Peter

had already made their mark as printers and publishers. The

Morning Post was whig in politics ; the new proprietors turned it

over to the tory side. James (afterwards Sir James) Mackintosh

married the Stuarts' sister, and wrote much for them. Lamb

was introduced to Daniel Stuart by Coleridge, to whose work

De Quincey, writing of the newspaper press as a whole, pays a fine tribute—

Worlds of fine thinking lie buried in that vast abyss, never to be disentombed

or restored to human admiration. Like the sea, it has swallowed treasures

without end, that no diving bell will bring up again; but nowhere, throughout

its shoreless magazines of wealth, does there lie such a bed of pearls, con-

founded with the rubbish and purgamenta of ages, as in the political papers

of Coleridge. No more admirable monument could be raised to the memory

of Coleridge than a republication of his essays in The Morning Post, but

still more of those afterwards published in The Courier1.

He contributed to The Morning Post the famous satirical poem, The

Devil's Thoughts. The connection was broken by his second tour

in Germany and Italy, and it is said that, while he was abroad,

Fox declared that his articles had led to the rupture of the truce

of Amiens2. Most, if not all, of Coleridge's prose contributions

to The Morning Post were reproduced in his Essays on His Own

Times. In his absence, Southey wrote occasionally for The Morn-

ing Post, chiefly, if not wholly, verse; as also did Wordsworth, and

Lamb's Birmingham friend, Lloyd.

The Morning Post represented an energetic foreign policy,

and supported Palmerston in the Aberdeen ministry. Upon the

formation of the Palmerston ministry, in 1855, Greville wrote :

1 Most of them, were republished. Coleridge's boast that, in one year, he raised

the sale of the Post from a very low figure to 7000 copies daily, has led to much

controversy; so, too, has the amount of work which he did. Stuart maintained that

the rise in circulation was due to his own energy and the good reporting of news,

Coleridge could scarcely have been other than erratic as a journalist; health, no less

than mental characteristics, unfitted him for the daily effort which newspaper work

entails. His claim as to the circulation of The Morning Post was examined carefully

by Charles Wentworth Dilke—a most competent authority—who was of opinion that

it could not be maintained. Coleridge was tried, among other things, at parlia-

mentary reporting, apparently with indifferent success.

2 See Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, and Andrews, vol. II, p. 29.

IV] The Morning Post 185

'Palmerston will soon find the whole press against him, except his own papers, The Morning Post and The Morning Chronicle, neither of which has any circulation or influence.' It is noteworthy, as bearing upon the curious question of the actual effect which newspaper writing may have upon national opinion, that, despite this overweighting of the press against him, Palmerston steadily advanced in popularity. The Morning Post came eventually into the hands of a Lancashire papermaker named Crompton, and, about 1850, Peter Borthwick, who had migrated from Scotland to London, obtained a position in the office as what his son, the late lord Glenesk, called gérant.

He had already a position in politics and society, as M.P. for Evesham from 1835 to 1847, and was known favourably as a vigorous and resolute conservative speaker1. His only son Algernon was sent to Paris as correspondent. He could speak French like a native, as well as write in it, not only all necessary prose, but some very passable verses, if some way after those written in the same language by another Paris correspondent, Frank Mahony ('Father Prout'), The Globe's representative on the Seine during later years of the same period.

On the death of Peter Borthwick, in 1852, his son took his place, and, it was said, 'afforded a fresh justification for the Caledonian boast that the London press was a Scottish creation, and that Flodden had avenged itself in Fleet Street.' With the help of Andrew Montagu—a Yorkshire millionaire related to his mother—Algernon Borthwick purchased The Morning Post. He attacked Palmerston for his ecclesiastical appointments—Palmerston's bishops being evangelical and Borthwick a high churchman; but, otherwise,

the polite world looked to the Post, not for news, but to see the whole mind of Palmerston, which often meant only the whole mind of Borthwick....The briefs prepared by Palmerston to direct the manufacture of leaders often proved full enough, and finished enough, for wholesale production in the leader columns2.

A great friendship subsisted between Borthwick and count Walewski, French ambassador in the fifties; and there was a popular belief that Napoleon III subsidised the paper. Similar statements as to subsidies to other papers have been made with much greater probability: The Morning Post was not in pecuniary

1 It is said that when some of his later speeches were received with suggestions that he had spoken at sufficient length, he told the house, 'If I am not allowed to conclude at my own time, and in my own way, I am determined not to conclude at all.' Life of Peter Borthwick, by Lucas, 8.

2 Elscott, who states that he had his information from lord Glenesk.

186 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

difficulties. It was the last of the London papers in the century

(1882) to reduce its price to one penny. Always maintaining its

reputation as a record of the doings of the aristocratic and

wealthy, and as an advocate of a forward foreign policy, The

Morning Post, also, followed high ideals in its literary and

artistic articles. It is said to have been the first London daily

paper which, early in the century, printed regularly notices of

plays, operas and concerts, and this feature has always been well

maintained. Towards the end of the century, its articles on

military topics, too, began to attract much attention. It was

protectionist in the days of Peel, and in those of Chamberlain.

Of the morning papers in the first half of the century, The

Morning Chronicle was, in many respects, the most famous.

During several periods of its career, there were associated with

it some most brilliant writers, and, even in its later stages,

failure could not be attributed to lack of quality in the members

of its staff. Any attempt to record the history of the newspaper

press is confronted here, as in many other instances, with a

problem all but insoluble—that of determining the actual causes

of success or failure in journalistic effort. Often, the decisive

cause would seem to be quality, but with a strangely inverted

application. Sir Thomas Gresham, writing on the coinage, lays it

down as a principle that, if you have in a country good coins and

deteriorated coins of the same metal current side by side, the bad

will drive out the good, and Gresham’s law may often be applied

to literature, to art and, especially, to journalism. The largest

circulations have often been attained by newspapers not ex-

hibiting the highest characteristics; indeed, newspapers have

been known suddenly to reach enormous sales by publishing

articles describing the careers of notorious criminals. The

phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ must, therefore, be used ‘with a

difference.’ The Morning Chronicle had belonged to William

Woodfall, whose brother Sampson is famous for his publication of

The Letters of Junius. Perry, editing The Gazetteer, competed so

strongly with The Chronicle, that the latter came into the market,

and, with the aid of the duke of Norfolk and others, Perry became

its chief proprietor and editor. This was in 1789, when the whigs

were in want of an organ, and The Chronicle filled the gap.

Sheridan, Sir James Mackintosh, John Campbell (the future lord

chancellor), Thomas Campbell the poet, Thomas Moore, David

Ricardo, Henry (lord) Brougham, Albany Fonblanque and, as

we have seen, Charles Lamb, were among those enlisted by Perry

or by John Black1, who, having been on the reporting staff of

The Chronicle, became its joint editor in 1817, obtaining complete

control in 1821, on Perry's death. Perry's writing had a lightness of

touch unknown to his successor; but Black had higher quali-

fications for discussing public questions; Bentham called him the

greatest publicist the country had seen, and among his favourite

contributors were James and John Stuart Mill, the latter being

only seventeen years of age when he contributed three letters

condemning the punishment which Richard Carlile, his wife and

her sister suffered for publishing unstamped papers. Black

offended many of his whig friends by seeing good qualities in the

duke of Wellington. His style was not free, but, according to

John Stuart Mill, he was

the first journalist who carried criticism and the spirit of reform into the

details of English institutions…. Black was a frequent visitor to my father,

and Mr Grote used to say he always knew by the Monday morning's article

whether Black had been with my father on the Sunday.

Black, in The Chronicle, was at war with The Times; as was no

secret, one of his reporters, Charles Dickens, caricatured the

quarrel2. Black regarded Dickens as the finest shorthand

writer he had ever known—a judgment borne out by men

who were colleagues of Dickens in the parliamentary gallery.

Thackeray began his newspaper career as an art critic for the same

paper. In the fifties, when the Peelites controlled The Chronicle,

Palmerston inspired The Morning Post, and Greville, during the

negotiations closing the Crimean war, said:

Palmerston continues to put articles into The Morning Post, full of arro-

gance and jactance, and calculated to raise obstacles to the peace. This is

only what he did in '41, when he used to agree to certain things with his

colleagues, and then put violent articles in The Morning Chronicle totally

at variance with the views and resolutions of the Cabinet.

In 1862, The Morning Chronicle ended a notable career.

Daniel Stuart, in 1799, obtained possession of The Courier, an

evening paper. To The Courier, in Stuart's hands, Wordsworth

is said to have sent extracts from his then unpublished Cintra

convention pamphlet, and, also, articles on the Spanish and

Portuguese navies. Beginning with admiration for the French

revolution, The Courier followed the popular lead in this country,

1 Byron was a constant reader of The Chronicle; some of his jeux d'esprit were

published in it, as also were the verses—the last he wrote—on his thirty-sixth

birthday.

2 See Escott, Masters of Journalism, p. 161.

188 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

and became an opponent of the French cause, and especially

of Napolcon. In 1827, it supported Canning ; William Mud-

ford, the editor, author of a series of tales in Blackwood's

Magazine, became a personal friend of this statesman. As

a result, it was denounced by the ultra-tory party, and lost

circulation, and, though, on the death of Canning, it reverted

to toryism, there was no recovery of position. John Galt1 edited

it about 1830, and was followed by James Stuart, who, some years

previously, having been libelled by Sir Alexander Boswell, son

of James Boswell, had challenged him to a duel, and killed him.

Stuart conducted The Courier as a whig paper, and, apparently,

was the first editor of an evening paper to publish, once a week,

an enlarged sheet with one entire page devoted to book reviews.

In 1836, he was succeeded by Laman Blanchard. Shortly after-

wards, however, the paper was again sold to the tories, and, with a

new editor, lasted a few years longer.

The Morning Herald, first published in 1780, ran until 1869.

It was founded by a somewhat notorious clergyman, Henry Bate

Dudley, who had previously edited The Morning Post. It was

not very successful until after 1820, when it received a large

increase in circulation on account of its reporting of Bow street

police cases, Wight, its reporter, afterwards editor and partner,

exaggerating into caricatures his descriptions of the proceedings.

So attractive was this feature that a selection from the reports was

issued, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. An enterprising

policy in regard to news raised the circulation, until, according to the

official stamp returns for 1828, The Morning Herald had then a

publication of 1000 copies daily above The Times. This position,

however, was not maintained. In 1843, or 1844, Edwin Baldwin, a

proprietor of The Evening Standard, purchased The Morning

Herald, improved its literary quality, and, as it happened that the

railway mania followed close upon his purchase of the paper, he was

able to spend heavily. During the mania, the advertisement revenue

of many newspapers was enormous. But the prosperity was not

lasting, and, in a few years, Baldwin became bankrupt. James

Johnson, an official in the court of bankruptcy, purchased The

Morning Herald and The Evening Standard, and established The

Standard as a penny morning paper. This was after the abolition of

the newspaper advertisement duties, and when The Daily Telegraph,

The Daily News and The Morning Star were being issued at a

1 See, ante, vol. xii, chap. xi.

IV] The Morning Advertiser 189

penny. Later, The Herald was discontinued; but, for many years,

The Standard has occupied a high position in London journalism.

It was a staunch supporter of the conservative party, and among its

leader-writers numbered Alfred Austin, afterwards poet laureate.

In conjunction with it, The Evening Standard was maintained, a

paper with which was eventually amalgamated The St James's

Gazette, an evening review and newspaper founded by Frederick

Greenwood, one of the foremost journalists of the second half of the

century, when a change in the ownership of The Pall Mall Gazette

led to his retirement from that paper1.

The third morning paper which lasted through the century

(after The Morning Post and The Times) is The Morning

Advertiser, whose literary importance at no time equalled that

of its two colleagues. It was first published in 1794 by the

London society of licensed victuallers. Naturally, it was de-

voted to trade interests, rather than to the support of any one

political party. Its circulation, however, fostered by the society,

was, in the middle of the century, second only to that of The

Times. The Morning Advertiser was one of the leaders in

the attack upon the Prince Consort, which reflected widespread

fears of non-constitutional interference in the management

of public affairs2. Subsequently, the policy of the paper was

changed.

Charles Dickens was not successful as a leader-writer, though

he had been as a reporter. In 1845–6, there was a demand

for a liberal paper which should be wide in its sympathies,

looking towards the educational and industrial advancement

of the masses, and treating religious questions from the point

of view of those who ‘faintly trust the larger hope.’ Dissatisfied

with the reception of an offer he made to write a series

of sketches for The Morning Chronicle, Dickens talked over with

his publishers the possibility of starting a rival newspaper, and, in

the following year, agreed to edit The Daily News. Judged from

the standpoint of the end of the century, Dickens's scheme of

editing was much too solid and heavy. The paper contained his

opening article, followed by three others, all dealing with corn-law

reform; more than a page was occupied with a report of a meeting

1 See post, p. 195.

2 Cf. Greville's Memoir (third part, chap. v), on the subject of newspaper

attacks on the prince. Somewhat later, Henry Dunckley, editor of the since defunct

Manchester Examiner and Times, attained celebrity by a series of articles, afterwards

(1878) republished under the title Crown & Cabinet, which he based largely, though

not solely, upon the prince's position.

190 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

at Ipswich, and a speech there by Richard Cobden. A review of

railway affairs and reports of railway company proceedings nearly

filled another page1. After seventeen numbers had been issued,

Dickens, as he said, ‘tired to death, and quite worn out2,’ ceased

to edit the paper. John Forster took up the work, carrying it on

to the end of the first year. It is said that, though all the pro-

prietors were agreed in demanding the repeal of the corn-laws,

there were great differences, not only among them, but, also, on

the editorial staff, upon other questions, especially those bearing

on foreign policy. Among its contributors, after 1852, was

Miss Harriet Martineau—one of the two women who, in the

century, attained especially high eminence as journalists, the

other being Mrs Emily Crawford, later the Paris correspondent of

The Daily News and of Henry Labouchere’s Truth. The Daily

News took its share in the campaign against the stamp duty, the

tax on advertisements and the paper duty—the last being

abolished in 1861. It had to cope with a Peelite endeavour to

regain popularity for The Morning Chronicle, and was attacked

in 1856 by the adherents of the then advanced radicalism of

Cobden and Bright in The Morning Star and The Evening Star,

which were started on 17 March 1856. The Morning Star, like

The Daily Telegraph, which had now come into being, was sold

at one penny. But the advanced radical paper was never able to

attract the general public, and its attitude towards the Crimean

war, no doubt, spoiled any chance of success which it might have

had. On its staff, however, it numbered several distinguished men

of letters and other journalists of subsequent high repute. The

Daily News maintained an excellent reputation. After the open-

ing of the Franco-Prussian war, in 1870, it was joined by Archibald

Forbes. The ability of one man—though the subject of his articles,

in this case, was of overwhelming interest—to give popularity to

a newspaper was never exhibited more clearly; during the war,

the circulation of The Daily News rose from 50,000 to 150,000

a day3. Writing in The Nineteenth Century of August 1891,

Forbes indicated some of the dangers attending war correspondents

during the time of his service. Referring to the Crimean and

other campaigns before 1870, and recognising, generously, that

W. H. Russell ‘had made for himself a reputation to vie with

which no representative of a newer school has any claim,’ he

1 See Fox Bourne, English Newspapers.

2 See chapter on Dickens, vol. xiii, and cf., as to Forster, ante, chap. ii.

3 Fox Bourne.

IV] The Daily Telegraph 191

pointed out that the advent of the telegraph had increased the labour of the correspondent—as it has, indeed, in all departments of daily journalism—and that the older correspondents did not run the same risks as the later of being shot.

Before far-reaching rifle firearms came into use, it was quite easy to see a battle without getting within range of fire. With siege guns that carry shells ten miles, with field artillery having a range of four miles, and with rifles that kill without benefit of clergy at two miles, the war correspondent may as well stay at home with his mother, unless he has hardened his heart to take full share of the risks of the battlefield. In the petty Servian campaign of 1876, there were twelve correspondents who kept the field, and went under fire. Of those, three were killed, and four were wounded. Certainly not more than thirty correspondents and artists all told, were in the Soudan from the earliest troubles to the final failure of the Nile expedition, but on or under its cruel sand lie the corpses of at least six of my comrades.

Noteworthy among later contributors to The Daily News was Andrew Lang1.

Of those who took a leading part in the production of The Daily Telegraph, the first lord Burnham died while this chapter was passing through the press. To his constant care and unrivalled experience of affairs, the paper has owed much of its success. It was launched in 1855, and, in the course of a few months, passed into the hands of the Levi-Lawson family, who issued it as the first penny newspaper published in London. It was edited by Thornton Hunt, a son of Leigh Hunt, and early obtained celebrity for its enterprise and somewhat flamboyant style. Matthew Arnold scoffed at it; and a grandson of the first proprietor says that, when at Oxford, his tutor admonished him to ‘try not to write like Sala.’ To borrow a simile from the art of painting, the writers who gained reputation for The Daily Telegraph were, of choice, colourists. During many years, among the leading members of its staff was Sir Edwin Arnold, one of the brilliant Oxonians of the newspaper press, who is reported (by J. M. Le Sage) to have said that

whether the chief—whom we loved—asked him (Arnold) to write the first leading article, the description of some great historical event, or an ordinary news paragraph, he would do it to the utmost of his ability; that the test of loyalty was not to do some big thing, but some small thing—and to do it well.

The loyalty and affection here indicated, shared, as they were, by the whole staff, played a great part in making The Daily Telegraph so successful that, for some time before the advent of the halfpenny

1 See, ante, chaps. XI and XII, and vol. XIII, chap. vi.

192 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

newspapers, it was able to boast that it possessed 'the largest circulation in the world.' The influence of the style of The Daily Telegraph upon the newspaper press of this country has been great; being, indeed, the basis of popular journalism. Not that the latter repeats the styles of Sala, of Edwin Arnold, of Edward Dicey, of Bennet Burleigh and of other men who long were looked upon as representing The Daily Telegraph; for, with features showing their influence has been combined a greater directness of statement; but the picturesqueness at which they aimed has had enduring effect. The loyalty of the staff accounted for the success of the paper in obtaining early information. Its enterprise has been shown in other directions. In 1873, George Smith was commissioned by it to make and describe archaeological exploration on the site of Nineveh, and among his discoveries were a number of fragments of the cuneiform narrative of the Deluge. Two years later, The Daily Telegraph joined The New York Herald in sending Henry M. Stanley into central Africa, where he surveyed lakes Victoria and Tanganyika, and traced the source of the Congo; later, for the same papers and The Scotsman, he was sent to rescue Emin pasha from Equatoria; but Emin refused to be rescued, and escaped from the rescue party. In 1884–5, it was associated with Sir Harry Johnston's exploration of Kilima-njaro, and, in 1899–1900, with Lionel Decle's journey from the Cape to Cairo. Its foreign staff have interviewed monarchs and statesmen; Bismarck, some time before the Franco-German war, confided to Beattle-Kingston that the military authorities had pressed him to quarrel with France—a course to which he was then opposed.

Its musical and dramatic criticisms by E. L. Blanchard, Joseph Bennett and Clement Scott were always read by the chief members of the professions affected.

Another morning newspaper established successfully during the century is The Daily Chronicle. Its founder, Edward Lloyd, was already the prosperous owner of Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper. In 1842, intending to compete with The Illustrated London News, he published Lloyd's Illustrated London Newspaper, unstamped. The authorities intervened, and, in 1843, he rearranged his publication without illustrations, calling it Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper. In this form, it competed with other Sunday publications; such as The News of the World, Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper, The Weekly Times, The Weekly Dispatch. Of these papers, The Dispatch was long the most prominent. Its owner had been in

IV] The Halfpenny Morning Press 193

the front of the fight against the stamp duty; but Lloyd's Weekly soon became well established, especially under the short editorship of Douglas Jerrold from 1852 to 1857, and, thereafter, under that of his son Blanchard, who had among his coadjutors Hepworth Dixon, better known as editor of The Athenaeum, from 1853 to 1868.

In 1877, Edward Lloyd purchased a daily paper which had been started as The Clerkenwell News, but had expanded its name to The London Daily Chronicle and Clerkenwell News. He reduced the title to The Daily Chronicle, and adopted an independent radical policy. The venture prospered, and has latterly become one of the leading halfpenny morning papers.

The closing years of the century saw that advent of the halfpenny morning press to which reference has been made. There had been such papers in the provinces for thirty years, The Northern Echo being established in Darlington in 1869, The North Star in the same town in 1880 and, about the same time, The Newcastle Express, in the closing years of a long life, was published at the same price. But, though The Northern Echo achieved somewhat wide reputation in 1880, when it was edited by W. T. Stead, the issue of a halfpenny morning paper in London was a highly speculative undertaking. The Daily Mail, however, was launched in 1896, and proved most popular. Much of its earlier attractiveness was due to the writing of G. W. Steevens, who, after a brilliant career at Oxford, plunged into daily journalism, speedily became famous and died of fever in Lady-smith, where he was one of the besieged in the Boer war. The Daily Express made its appearance in 1900.

In the earlier part of the century, there were, in London, seven evening papers; at the end, only six, and the general development of evening journalism had not been commensurate with that of morning papers, having, for the most part, been limited to London and its suburbs, while morning journals were carried to all parts of the country. The change was owing chiefly to the growth of country evening papers, these being able by telegraph and organisation to print later information, notably concerning all forms of sport1.

1 The supply of news to a morning paper is usually complete by 3 a.m. and, thus, there is little actual need for late editions, but the news for an evening paper, the incidents of the day, comes in a continuous stream, its end being fixed only by the publication of the latest edition for which a sale can be had. The morning paper prints the news of twenty-four hours; the evening paper, as a rule, that of only eight.

E. L. XIV. CH. IV.

18

194 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

Before The Courier was purchased by Daniel Stuart, it was

joined, in the last number of The Anti-Jacobin, with The Star as

forming a 'seditious evening post'; and, in 1792, at the instance

of Pitt, The Sun was started to advocate the ministerial home and

foreign policy. But it did not achieve a high position, and, in

1823, The Edinburgh Review said of it 'The Sun appears daily

but never shines.' The Globe, which, in the second half of the

century, became tory, was, in its origin, radical, competing with

The Star, the organ of the booksellers. Contemporary with The

Globe was The Traveller, intended to support the interests of

commercial travellers. A few years after its first publication,

The Traveller became the property of Robert Torrens, an eager

disciple of Jeremy Bentham, and a writer on political economy.

Torrens and his friends purchased The Globe in 1823, and during

many years the paper appeared with the double title. In all

respects well conducted, it was recognised as one of the chief

liberal organs, and the Melbourne administration of 1835 often

used it for the first publication of ministerial news. It preserved

its literary character, and, many years later, its sketchy serial and

historical articles were widely known as 'Globe turnovers,' their

length always slightly exceeding a column. Francis Mahony,

'Father Prout,' was one of its regular contributors. In 1889,

with new proprietors, it became moderately conservative, and,

with varying fortune, so continued until after the end of the

century. The Pall Mall Gazette obtained larger renown for its

philosophic statesmanship. It was founded in 1865 by Frederick

Greenwood, its proprietor being the wellknown publisher George

Smith. The name was taken from Thackeray's sketch of captain

Shandon in the Marshalsea, drawing up the prospectus of

The Pall Mall Gazette—'written by gentlemen for gentlemen.'

Greenwood turned the satire into reality. Under Thackeray, he

had sub-edited The Cornhill Magazine, and his scheme contem-

plated the production of a paper which, with the publication of

news, should combine some of the characteristics of the already

flourishing Saturday Review and Spectator. Connected with the

paper were men of mark in literature, such as (to mention men of

very diverse qualifications) Anthony Trollope, Henry Maine, Fitz-

james Stephen and E. C. Grenville Murray. On several occasions,

Bismarck tried to form friendly relations with it. Greenwood,

undoubtedly, was one of the great editors of the century, revising

the work of his contributors, suggesting topics and their treat-

ment and, with a masterly hand, adding finishing touches. His

IV] W. T. Stead 195

sources of information gave him early news of the intention of the

French government, in 1875, to obtain control over the Suez canal,

by purchasing from the khedive of Egypt a large number of the

shares held by him in that undertaking ; and the fact was brought

to the notice of Disraeli, the prime-minister, who forestalled the

French. When, in 1881, the liberal party obtained a large majority

in the house of commons, Henry Yates Thompson, a son-in-law of

George Smith, had become proprietor of The Pall Mall Gazette,

and, as he was a supporter of Gladstone, Frederick Greenwood

and his colleagues were superseded by John (now viscount)

Morley, who was installed as editor, with W. T. Stead, of The

Northern Echo, as his chief of staff. Greenwood thereupon

started the St James's Gazette, but could not acquire for it

the vogue of his earlier paper. The career of W. T. Stead, who

in 1883 followed Morley as editor, was remarkable. Brought

up in a north country manse, and under the influence of

fervent religious emotions, he believed that every step in his

course was dictated directly from heaven. He assured the present

writer that the Almighty set up finger-posts for him, whose inten-

tion was unmistakable, and that, on several occasions, when he

had seen these directions, he had obeyed the command, apparently

risking everything that most men hold precious. His efforts

startling in their form, for the more stringent protection of girls,

and the pride with which he suffered the consequences of his

action, illustrate this attitude. He was, however, possessed of

much humour, and was a most graphic correspondent. At the end

of five years, another change of editor took place ; and, later

still, in 1892, The Pall Mall Gazette passed into a new proprietor-

ship. At the same time, The Westminster Gazette was launched,

which was conducted on much the same lines as those of the

liberal Pall Mall Gazette had been, and, during several years, was

the only London penny paper supporting the liberal party. One

especial feature of The Westminster Gazette has been its brilliant

political caricatures. Stead was drowned in the disaster to the

'Titanic.'

For many years, London had one halfpenny evening paper,

The Echo (established 1868). Similar halfpenny papers were

already in being at Manchester and Bolton in Lancashire. Later,

The Evening News and The Star appeared.

Many as were the morning and evening papers published in

London during the century, they were far outnumbered by weekly

papers. Besides high-class and popular political weeklies, the

18—2

196 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

pictorial papers, from The Illustrated London News, The Illustrated

Times (now extinct) and The Graphic, to those depending largely

on the portraits of brides and bridegrooms, sportsmen and sports-

women, actors, actresses and ladies of the ballet, the satirical

and humorous papers from Punch1 and Fun (now extinct)

downwards, the century witnessed the establishment of scores of

weekly newspapers, dealing with almost every description of special-

ised interest—religious, atheistic, scientific, mechanical, financial,

military, naval, architectural, dramatic and artistic, a marvellous

record of the mental activity of the nation. All these make their

particular appeal, and even to indicate the character of each would

be impossible in these pages. Some of them, indeed, however

well their articles may be written, make no pretence of belonging

to the domain of literature.

Why one newspaper succeeds and another fails, even the

most experienced journalist will (as already hinted) hesitate to

decide. The Constitutional, issued in 1836, had for its editor

Laman Blanchard, with Thornton Hunt, afterwards editor of

The Daily Telegraph, as his assistant. Thackeray's Paris Sketch

Book is reminiscent of the fact that he was Paris correspondent

for the paper, in which his step-father and he had unfortunately

invested money; and among its constant contributors were

Bulwer Lytton, Douglas Jerrold and Sir William Molesworth.

It existed only seven months. Another was The Hour, issued in

1873 with captain Hamber as its editor. Hamber, who had been

at Oriel college when lord Robert Cecil, afterwards third marquis

of Salisbury, was also at Oxford, served in the Crimean war,

and then turned to journalism. During several years, he edited

The Standard with signal ability, but, eventually, quarrelled with

its proprietor, who desired less independence of official conser-

vative party control. Thereupon, The Hour was started as an

ultra-protestant conservative paper, independent of the re-

cognised party leaders. It never found a sufficient public, and,

in 1876, Disraeli 'heard with a pang that The Hour was no

more.'

A much more important publication was The Press, originated,

in 1853, as a weekly representative of progressive conservatism,

its first moving spirit being Disraeli, who, for some time, was a

frequent contributor2. It editor was Samuel Lucas (not the

Samuel Lucas of The Morning Star) and the writers included

Bulwer Lytton, George Smythe, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor,

1 See, post, chap. vi. 2 Cf., ante, vol. xiii, chap. xi.

IV] The Examiner 197

lord Stanley, Sir J. E. Tennant, H. L. Mansel (afterwards dean of St. Paul's) and Edward Vaughan Kenealy. Among later contributors were Richard Holt Hutton and Sir J. R. Seeley. It never obtained a circulation of more than 3500, and though, at its best period, it seems to have been financially stable, it ceased to exist in 1866.

Journalism has always allowed equality of literary opportunity to men and to women, to men who have made their mark at the universities and to those whose chief or only schooling has been such as they could pick up in the intervals of other occupations. Swift's judgment of Mrs Manley was that her writing, at times, was better than his own1. Defoe had an audience greater than that of Addison or Steele. In the early part of the nineteenth century, one of the self-educated had popularity and influence equal to those of any of his contemporaries. This was William Cobbett, born in 1762, of whom, and of whose Political Register, something has been said in a previous volume of this history2.

In 1808 appeared the first of a distinctive school of weekly periodicals, combining surveys of politics, literature, the drama and the pictorial arts, in articles intended more nearly to resemble a careful and a deliberate essay than the current comments of the daily newspaper. This was The Examiner, launched by John Hunt, and his more famous brother James Henry Leigh Hunt, of whose influence on English criticism and poetry an estimate will be found in an earlier volume of the present work3. In 1805, John Hunt issued The News and Leigh, then in his twenty-first year, was its theatrical critic. The Examiner followed. The dramatic criticism of The News had been free and independent, and attracted much attention. Writing of the kind was, according to Leigh Hunt's Autobiography, a great novelty. Similar independence in politics and literature marked The Examiner ; and, not less for outspoken comments than for high quality of writing, it soon attained eminence. Before it was one year old, it came under prosecution for libel, but without result. In 1811, a scathing article on the prince regent—'a violator of his word... the connpanion of gamblers and demireps'—was followed by prosecution; and, though Brougham, as on a previous occasion, defended the brothers, they were fined £500 each with costs of about £1000, and sentenced to imprisonment for two years. Their confinement

1 See letters to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley. No. xxxiv, 28 Oct. 1711.

2 See, ante, vol. xi, pp. 49–51.

3 Ante, vol. xii, pp. 390–4.

198 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

was not severe. Leigh Hunt had his wife and family with him, and visitors came every day—Charles and Mary Lamb, Hazlitt, Shelley, Barnes (later to edit The Times), Byron, Moore, Bentham and others. The popularity of The Examiner was not maintained; but, with varying fortunes, it continued in the hands of the Hunts until 1821, and, eventually, found a new and famous editor in Albany Fonblanqué, a radical of the Benthamite school. Thus, during a quarter of a century, his paper was representative of the advanced group of politicians. John Forster followed him, and, later, Henry Morley, but the management and scheme of the paper were not modified to suit new conditions arising out of the competition of The Spectator and The Saturday Review, and, in the course of a few years, The Examiner’s career ended.

In 1828, Joseph Hume and others raised money to enable Robert Stephen Rintoul to start The Spectator as an organ of ‘educated radicalism.’ It was, indeed, to perform for radicalism a service like that which Disraeli intended The Press to render to toryism, but, in the forefront, whether of educated radicalism, or of a liberalism not easily to be distinguished from independent conservatism, The Spectator has consistently held up the banner designed for it by its founder. Under Rintoul, it disputed the supremacy of Fonblanqué’s Examiner and led the advocacy of lord John Russell’s franchise measure of 1831 by demanding ‘the Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill’—a demand which The Examiner was obliged to echo, thus, in effect, acknowledging leadership.

In 1855, The Saturday Review made its appearance without the compendium of news which had formed a large portion of The Spectator and The Examiner, and the former of these, after the death of Rintoul in 1858, was remodelled in the hands of Meredith Townsend and Richard Holt Hutton. Until Gladstone adopted the Home Rule policy in 1885, The Spectator was his constant supporter; but its attitude towards the liberal party hereupon changed as to this and as to some other subjects.

According to their initial declaration, the Peelite projectors of The Saturday Review, as has been seen, wished to free thirty million people who were ruled despotically by The Times. Among early writers in The Review were Sir H. S. Maine, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, W. Vernon Harcourt, E. A. Freeman, J. R. Green, Abraham Hayward, William Scott (an eminent Puseyite), Mrs Lynn Linton and lord Robert Cecil. The paper was noted

IV] Weekly Papers 199

especially for the pungency of its satire, the brilliance of its

style and the nicety of its scholarship. The political events

of 1885 lost the liberal party not a few of its supporters in

journalism, and, therefore, The Speaker was launched under the

editorship of Sir T. Wemyss Reid, who had previously edited

The Leeds Mercury. It was conducted with ability and existed

a number of years without making headway in competition with

The Spectator or The Saturday Review. Upon its discontinuance,

The Nation appeared as an advocate of advanced liberalism.

Other qualified successes in this form of journalism were Charles

Mackay's London Review, in which Lawrence Oliphant, Charles

Isaac Elton and William Black, the novelist, participated in

1860, and The Leader, started, in 1849, with George Henry Lewes

as principal writer and a staff including Herbert Spencer, Marian

Evans, Alexander William Kinglake and Edward Michael Whitty

—the last a peculiarly gifted writer of sketches of parliamentary

celebrities.

Mention should be made of William Ernest Henley's effort to

establish, in 1889, The Scots Observer as a literary review and an

organ of imperialism, to be issued in Edinburgh, so that the Scottish

capital might rival London in the possession of a weekly review, as

it had done in quarterly reviewing and in daily journalism. Henley

summoned to his colours the most famous Scottish writers of the

day, but, in a couple of years, it was found necessary to tranfer

the paper to London, and to alter its title to The National

Observer. Even so, unfortunately, it did not find room for per-

manent growth.

A position of its own was achieved by The Economist, which for

seventeen years was under the editorship of Walter Bagehot, of whose

great critical powers, primarily, but not exclusively, devoted to

the elucidation of economical and political questions, something

has been said elsewhere1.

Although The Guardian, primarily, was a religious weekly, being

founded, in 1846, by a number of churchmen, including Gladstone,

it gave much attention to political, social, and literary subjects, and

among its constant contributors were men of high rank in their

respective departments of knowledge. Until 1885, it was generally

a supporter of the liberal party, but, thereafter, its political inde-

pendence became more and more pronounced. It is impossible

here to survey the wide field of religious periodicals, valuable

though such a review would be as illustrating a gradual change

1 See, ante, chapters x and xx.

200 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

in the attitude towards religious journalism not only of the general

public, but, also, of trained theologians of various schools. A

mere catalogue of professedly religious papers might be misleading.

In specialised journalism, literature has always had a prominent

place. In the first half of the eighteenth century, a weekly

literary paper was founded entitled The Grub Street Journal,

Alexander Pope being an early contributor. Its most notable

successor, in the early part of the nineteenth century, was The

Literary Gazette, established by William Jerdan, in 1817. George

Crabbe, Mary Russell Mitford and Barry Cornwall wrote for it,

and its career extended into the fifties. In 1828, it met an

antagonist destined to win the first place—The Athenaeum. A full

history of this long-lived literary paper has been written by the son

of John Francis, who, at an early age, became associated with

its business management. The Athenaeum, in 1830, was only

struggling for existence when Charles Wentworth Dilke was placed

in authority. The help given him by John Francis was of great

value, but Dilke, in addition to being an enterprising proprietor,

was, also, a man of letters, and, by his own writing, did much

towards making secure the position of the paper. It would be

impossible here to enumerate the nineteenth-century English

writers who had more or less close connection with The Athe-

naeum and though, at various times, endeavours—such as those of

The Reader and The Academy—have been made to depose it,

these have not been attended with success.

Of journalism dealing with society in its many phases, much

has been seen, not only in daily newspapers but, also, in specialised

weekly publications. Of these, in the first half of the century, John

Bull, which was also a political paper, became notorious, and was

often threatened with prosecutions for libel, so much so that its

chief conductors Theodore Hook, R. H. Barham, T. Haynes Bayley

and James Smith (of Rejected Addresses) sheltered themselves

in an anonymity which prosecutors were not able to penetrate.

In more recent years, The World, founded by Edmund Yates

and Henry Labouchere, and Truth, launched by the latter after

some disagreement with Yates, became celebrated by their daring

criticisms.

A brief notice must be added of the illustrated press, which is

one of the distinctive growths of the century. Rough woodcuts,

illustrating old chapbooks and thus appealing to the masses,

attracted by representations of crimes, and other incidents

narrated to them in literary form, were followed by work much

IV] Illustrated Papers 201

more artistic, but making appeal by means essentially the same. The adaptation of the art was possible, first, by improved mechanical production, and, later, by the application of photography, which, because of its ability to image an actual scene, has taken the place of the craftsman who, working from rapid notes, assisted by his power of imagination, contrived to represent not merely the facts, but, also, something of their meaning. The illustration of news pamphlets was common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1740, The Daily Post contained a narrative of admiral Vernon’s attack on the Spaniards at Porto Bello illustrated with a view of the fleet, the fortifications, the harbour, the position of the Spanish fleet and the town; and Owen’s Weekly Chronicle, in 1758, portrayed the British attack on Rochefort. These are said to be the earliest attempts in a newspaper to illustrate a news article1.

The Observer, a Sunday paper still in existence, was the first to adopt wood engraving after Bewick’s development of the art; but, in 1806, The Times had an illustration, slightly influenced by Bewick’s method, of Nelson’s funeral car. The Observer’s illustrations of the Cato street conspiracy in 1820, of the trial of queen Caroline in the same year and the coronation of George IV, of his visit to Ireland in the following year and of the famous murder of Weare by Thurtell, Probert and Hunt in 1823, were striking instances of ability to cater for a public on the look-out for sensational effect. The Observer, indeed, was a worthy forerunner of the cheap illustrated newspapers numerous at the end of the century.

The Illustrated London News was, however, a great leap forward. Among the thirty-two woodcuts of the first number was a view of the burning of Hamburg, apparently drawn from the inner Alster. Some of the character-sketches are as good as any published since, and far more distinctive than any photographic illustrations. Kenny Meadows, Birkett Foster, John Leech, Sir John Gilbert, Alfred Crowquill and their colleagues, employed by Herbert Ingram, were associated with writers already known, and the paper soon attained a large circulation. It was followed by The Pictorial Times and this, again, by many others; but, chief among its surviving competitors are The Graphic, The Queen, The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, The Field, The Sphere. The Graphic made a step in advance when it was supplemented by The Daily Graphic.

1 The Pictorial Press (1885), by Mason Jackson.

202 The Growth of Journalism [CH.

We have noted several praiseworthy, but unsuccessful, attempts

to found journals, and, although this narrative deals mainly with

the nineteenth century, we may add references to two which fall

in the twentieth. One was the issue of The Pilot, partly in com-

petition with The Guardian. The literary quality and variety of

interest in the articles of The Pilot deserved a success which was

not attained. The difficulties in the way of fighting a well-

established periodical are very great, a newcomer having to incur

expenses practically equalling those of the periodical with which

it competes, while its advertising revenue is, necessarily, very small

in comparison ; and it often happens that the strain involved in

such conditions is greater than the projectors are able or willing

to bear. A similar comment may be made upon the fate of

The Tribune, intended, by its projector, to take a position at the

head of liberal journalism. The intention was admirable ; and,

from a purely literary point of view, many were the regrets

when it was learnt that the paper was a financial failure.

If the history of the newspaper press of the ‘provinces’ could

be traced in detail, it would be found, in the main, the vehicle

of opinion entirely independent of that expressed in London,

admitting the leadership of the London press as little as other

members in parliament would allow it to those sitting for London

constituencies. The ‘provincial’ press has, indeed, been much

more free than the London press from the influence of political

organisers. It has been read by weavers and shoemakers no

less than by employers, of labour and professional men1. No

doubt, newspapers printed in London have always had a wider

circulation in the provinces than country newspapers have had

in London. One of the prosecutions which Cobbett and the

Hunts underwent was for reprinting an article written for and

published in The Stamford News; and, though London has

exercised an attraction for newspaper writers because of the

greater variety of opportunities which it offers them, many news-

papers published out of London have been as well written and

edited, as careful and, within limits, as enterprising in the

collection of news, and as skilled in the arrangement of material,

as any London journal. Several of the country newspapers

existing at the end of the nineteenth century could boast a career

longer than that of any London paper, though many have dis-

appeared, and some, in the course of a long life, have lost

the importance which, as compared with rivals, they once possessed.

1 See Bainford's Passages in the Life of a Radical (1840 -4).

IV] The ‘Provincial’ Press 203

There were country papers in the early part of the eighteenth century ; and, though they copied from their London contemporaries much of their general and foreign news, they printed information peculiar to the districts in which they circulated.

The ‘provincial’ press has attracted men of ability. The Sheffield Iris had, as editor, James Montgomery the poet ; Hugh Miller, the geologist, edited The Edinburgh Witness ; James Hannay, The Edinburgh Courant ; William Henry Ireland was editor of The York Herald when, in 1823, Sydney Smith sent to it for publication the manuscript of his earliest political speech, that at the Three Tuns in Thirsk.

That Sydney Smith and his friends should want their speeches to be published in this way, indicates the importance of the country press at the time1.

John Mackay Wilson, author of Tales of the Borders, edited The Berwick Advertiser ; William Etty, the painter, was a compositor on The Hull Packet ; De Quincey, during a part of his residence in the lake district, walked once a week into Kendal to edit The Westmorland Gazette and see his leading article printed ; Alexander Russel, of The Scotsman, was as influential and as independent as any writer in the United Kingdom.

These men flourished in days when, according to some writers, the provincial press was a weak reflex of opinions published in London—a statement which would be entirely ridiculous if applied to the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the extended use of the telegraph had made it possible for the provincial newspapers to receive simultaneously with the London press reports of important occurrences and speeches, and to comment upon them the same night.

Indeed, there have been occasions when complaints were made in behalf of an eminent statesman that, though he spoke in London, the provincial newspapers could print his speech and leading articles upon it, while his supporters in the London press could not do more than print his speech—commenting on it the following day.

As in London, so in the country, the removal of taxes upon paper, newspapers and advertisements gave a great impetus to journalism, many papers being started, and not a few of the weeklies being converted into dailies.

Space will not permit a sketch of these, valuable though it would be, if not, indeed, essential, in any complete narrative of the industrial, social and educational development of the country.

Mention, however, must be made of The Manchester Guardian, because, at the end of the century, through a variety of causes, it became the chief morning 1 See G. W. E. Russell’s Sydney Smith, p. 109.

204 The Growth of Journalism [CH. IV

exponent of liberal policy in the United Kingdom, and because, during many years, there were associated with it writers of the highest rank in special subjects. It is remarkable that these qualities did not, in any way, lessen its experience of the keen competition set up by less expensive journalism. Manchester had been the scene of the first endeavour to issue a daily paper in the provinces. This was in 1811 1. Another journal issued outside London should, also, be mentioned because of its metropolitan character. The Scotsman was founded in Edinburgh in 1817, to promote reasoned liberal opinions. It developed into a daily paper, and, in the hands of Alexander Russel, achieved a wide and sound reputation. Its support was wholly given to the liberal party until 1885.

The halfpenny evening papers of the biggest centres in the provinces and Scotland are better arranged than those of London. Like the chief morning papers, they are connected with London by private telegraph wires, and it would be impossible for any London evening newspaper to obtain, within their areas, a circulation of more than a few dozen copies, bought for some especial feature.

The tendency of journalism towards the end of the century was not of the kind anticipated by writers and thinkers of the middle period. It depended more and more upon advertisements; in many cases, the cost of procuring news and articles, and printing and publishing them, are materially greater than the prices charged for the newspapers; and those with very large circulations are not always noted for careful ascertainment of facts or for deliberation in their political judgments.

The journalist has no title to usurp the functions of prophet, and, therefore, no attempt is made here to look into the future. The great dependence of newspaper properties upon advertisements may or may not subject them to a rude shock, or, as a result of a reorganisation of industrial conditions, to a gradual loss of revenue. In either case, no doubt, the contraction of their activities in the matter of the very expensive collection of news would be probable, since a growth in circulation cannot compensate for the shrinkage of advertisements. Our task has been to record the past of English journalism, and this, as we have endeavoured to show, has been at least in harmony with the general development in arts and science, and in the industrial, social and political conditions of the country.

1 Andrews' History of British Journalism, vol. ii, p. 124.

CHAPTER V

UNIVERSITY JOURNALISM

THE man in the train has settled habits and views, definite experience of life, its problems and difficulties. The undergraduate changes yearly, and is in the tentative period of youth, though the influence of his school and his restricted atmosphere (in England, at any rate) keep him fairly constant in type. He has much of the freedom of manhood without its responsibilities. For him, life is a comedy, or, at most, a tragi-comedy; he has not begun to understand. He writes, if he writes at all, at leisure, and the product of idle hours beneath the shade, as Horace hints, is not often destined to be remembered beyond the year. Horace, who owed his success largely to a good schoolmaster and the university of Athens, is, in tone and form, the ideal poet of university life. He is half-serious, half-sportive, with an exquisite sense of form and metre, and he has more university imitators than a dozen good prose writers can boast. These imitators have a zeal for form due to their reading. The study of the ancient classics gives a sense of conciseness, and a detestation for the mere verbiage which is frequent in ordinary journalism. University journalism thus follows a great tradition, but it does not start a new one.

An anarchic age like the present is inclined to underrate the sense of tradition, which does not, perhaps, foster the most seminal minds; but modern masters of prose and verse have mostly been trained in it, and the maxim, 'the form, the form alone is eloquent,' is worth remembering. In particular, the sense of comedy which comes from playing at life has found expression in classical parody and light verse. Here, Cambridge can show a long line of masters whom she has trained, from Prior and Praed to Thackeray, Calverley and J. K. Stephen. Oxford, more in touch with the world, has been more serious and more prolific

206

University Journalism

in prophets, but can claim a first-rate professor of the sportive

mood in Andrew Lang. Calverley, however, is the leading master

and his inimitable short line has had many disciples :

The wit of smooth delicious Matthew Prior,

The rhythmic grace which Hookham Frere displayed,

The summer lightning wreathing Byron's lyre,

The neat inevitable turns of Praed,

Rhymes to which Hudibras could scarce aspire,

Such metric pranks as Gilbert oft has played,

All these good gifts and others far sublimer

Are found in thee, beloved Cambridge rhymer1.

Among many excellent composers of parody in verse, A. C.

Hilton is pre-eminent. The two numbers of The Light Green,

which are mainly his work, were produced just before and after

he took his degree at Cambridge (1872), and are still sold in

reprints. They represent a solitary flowering of wit and craftsmanship,

for he died young. The Light Green ridiculed The Dark Blue,

a magazine now forgotten, which was published in London,

but was understood to represent the life and thought of

young Oxford2. Hilton's supreme achievement is a parody of

Bret Harte's Heathen Chinee. The Heathen Pass-ee secretes

about his person tips for examination purposes instead of the

cards of his prototype :

On the cuff of his shirt

He had managed to get

What we hoped had been dirt,

But which proved, I regret,

To be notes on the rise of the Drama,

A question invariably set.

In the crown of his cap

Were the Furies and Fates,

And a delicate map

Of the Dorian States,

And we found in his palms which were hollow,

What were frequent in palms—that is dates.

The last two lines are perfect in point, expression and likeness

to the original. Almost equally famous are The Vulture and

the Husbandman, after Lewis Carroll, and The Octopus, after

Swinburne.

Special brilliance is certainly needed to make university

1 J. K. S., Lapsus Calami, 'To C. S. C.' See, ante, vol. xiii, chap. vi.

2 Russell, G. W. E., Collections and Recollections, chap. xxviii.

v] The Cambridge Review 207

magazines live; their humour is limited in scope, and refers to persons who do not survive in the public memory; jests pass with many repetitions from Oxford to Cambridge and back again, and even to America, where an old story of Whewell is now current concerning a new professor of encyclopaedic range. Hence, a great number of university magazines are forgotten, and a study of them at large does not suggest that they deserved to be more than ephemeral.

The Shotover Papers, or Echoes of Oxford (1874—5) may serve as a typical example of parodies and comments which, praised in their day, have now lost their savour. In such magazines, the social history and atmosphere of the university are fairly recorded for the future historian; but the Promethean touch which lifts the local to the permanent is wanting.

Great men, however, will always attract great attention even by their immature efforts. Thus, The Snob and The Gownsman are still remembered because they contained the work of Thackeray; but they were not brilliant periodicals; and comic treatments, by comparatively unknown persons, of subjects set for prize poems are quite as good as Thackeray's Timbuctoo.

The credit of having been the first lasting university organ belongs to The Cambridge Review, which was started in 1879, and has been published weekly in term time ever since. The first number expresses the idea that university men are too busy to have much time for journalism; but the purpose of the Review—to give a representation of the life and thought of the university—has been well maintained.

It has a semi-official claim, too, on serious readers, in publishing weekly the university sermon. Perpetual discussions of university topics which, to the outsider, seem of small moment is characteristic of all universities; learned and sedentary persons are prone to controversy; and, perhaps, for this reason, the Review has not paid so much attention to belles lettres as some of its light-hearted predecessors.

It has, however, had its humours, as the selections in The Book of the Cambridge Review (1898) show, and, for many years, it has excelled every February in valentines, ingenious quotations and perversions of quotations, addressed to men of note both in and outside Cambridge.

In the nineties, The Granta started as a light and bright commentator on Cambridge affairs, and absorbed some of the humour which would 'otherwise have found a place in the Review. The wayward genius of J. K. Stephen, already an accomplished rimer in his Eton days, shone in both periodicals. His verse is the more

208

University Journalism

[CH.

astonishing inasmuch as it was casually and rapidly produced.

His best known lines (The Cambridge Review, 1891),

When the Rudyards cease from kipling

And the Haggards Ride no more1,

have become so familiar that their author is often forgotten.

Of other Cambridge periodicals, the best are The Cambridge University Magazine, which came out under the title The Symposium in 1840, and contained some good work by George Brimley, and The Tatler in Cambridge (1871—2) which was illumined by the wit of A. W. Verrall.

The Cambridge Observer was started in 1892 by a small group including G. W. Steevens, an Oxford man then in Cambridge, S. V. Makower and others.

Largely ignoring the ancient classics, it set out épater le bourgeois, and was defiantly propagandist concerning foreign authors.

It contested the claim of contemporary critics, and discovered the best of all art in the New English Art Club.

Such a paper could not last, but did something, in spite of its extravagancies, to enlarge the average mind of the university.

The Oxford Magazine, which was started in 1883, has lasted till today, and secured a recognised position as a commentator on university affairs.

Resembling The Cambridge Review in general, it differs in being the organ of the don.

The talent for writing English is more widely valued at Oxford than at Cambridge; essays figure largely in examinations; and the Oxford paper is more elaborately written than its contemporary.

It is, in fact, almost too well written, and loses, sometimes, in irony and paraphrase what it would have gained by naturalness.

It has that excessive use of negative forms of expression which is characteristic of Jane Austen and it has maintained an excellent standard of serious verse.

The pieces in Echoes from the Oxford Magazine: being reprints of Seven Years (1890) form a collection unrivalled for brilliancy.

R. W. Raper is supreme in his parody of Whitman.

The volume is also strong in that humour which comes from imitating in English the style and manner of an ancient author.

'L'Envoy,' concerning the purpose of The Magazine, is a good specimen of Oxford prose.

As The Cambridge Review was supplemented by The Granta, The Isis was started in 1892 as a light-hearted and flippant variant on the sobriety of The Oxford Magazine.

A prominent feature in the paper is the series of 'Isis Idols' with illustrations.

Of other Oxford magazines of the nineteenth century, The

1 J. K. S., Lapsus Calami, 'To R. K.' See, ante, vol. xiii, chap. vi.

v] Scots University Periodicals 209

Oxford Critic and University Magazine (1857), conducted chiefly by undergraduates, was the first to shake off the lumbering verbosity which came from Johnson and survived longer in the universities than elsewhere. Its criticism was occasionally smart, but its verse lacked distinction. The Oxford Spectator of Copleston and Nolan (1868), in shape and size like Addison’s famous periodical, is still remembered as a deserved success. It was humorous on esoteric subjects like Oxford philosophy, but, also, was capable of seizing the charm of Oxford in such a passage as this:

When I look back to my own experience, I find one scene, of all Oxford, most deeply engraved upon ‘the mindful tablets of my soul.’ And yet not a scene, but a fairy compound of smell and sound,‘and sight and thought. The wonderful scent of the meadow air just above Iffley, on a hot May evening, and the gay colours of twenty boats along the shore, the poles all stretched out from the bank to set the boats clear, and the sonorous cries of ‘ten seconds more,’ all down from the green barge to the lasher. And yet that unrivalled moment is only typical of all the term; the various elements of beauty and pleasure are concentrated there.

The conditions of academic life in Scotland differ considerably from those prevailing in Oxford and Cambridge, and the resultant journalism does not make so general an appeal as the best of the English writing of the sort. The Scots tongue, in spite of its unqualified successes with most English readers, is not known or liked by all, and the same may be said of Scots humour, which is apt to be grim, and of Scots metaphysics. Apart from these differences of language, the Scots student has not the full advantage of the corporate life from which it is difficult for the Oxford or Cambridge undergraduate to differentiate himself. The first magazine proper of Aberdeen, The King’s College Miscellany (1846), printed mathematical and physical problems with solutions, and translations from Greek and Latin authors. Alma Mater, also of Aberdeen, is the oldest of the existing Scots university periodicals, starting in 1883. It is thus six years senior to The St Andrews College Echoes, and The Glasgow University Magazine of 1889, and four to the Edinburgh Student. During the first half of the century, Aberdeen was a desert so far as literature is concerned, and it was the vivid interest of Minto that suggested to his students the idea of Alma Mater. It has done much to bring together the diverse elements of the university, and, from time to time, has had excellent plates. It has also done much in the way of academic history and reminiscence, which, previously, had been less cultivated here than in England. St Andrews claims a light poet and parodist of distinction in A. W. Murray, the

E. L. XIV. CH. V. 14

210

University Journalism

[CH.

author of The Scarlet Gown (1891). Andrew Lang, indeed, might

have been one of the glories of St Andrews journalism; but the

weekly magazine which he helped to found never reached the

dignity of print.

The University Maga is the happiest of early efforts in

Edinburgh academic journalism. It ran for twenty-four weekly

numbers in 1835 and 1837–8. Edward Forbes was mainly respon-

sible for it, and contributed some good verses and a number of

excellent caricatures and sketches. It was altogether a lively

production, and reflects the spirit of the times better than its

fellows. It was not until 1887 that it was possible to establish

a university journal with a reasonable chance of permanence, and

this can be easily understood in an intensely independent and

individualistic society with no common meeting-place and prac-

tically no sport. The students' representative council improved

matters, and The Student was started in 1887 as a private venture

with the idea that the council would, in time, assume the respon-

sibility of financing it. This happened in 1889, and, since then,

The Student has appeared weekly, and become a recognised

university institution.

The university of Edinburgh includes among its academic

writers R. L. Stevenson. The essay entitled ‘A College Magazine’

in Memories and Portraits describes the brief fortunes of The

Edinburgh University Magazine (the fourth of the name), which,

with three collaborators, he edited, and which perished after four

numbers.

The magazine appeared, in a yellow cover which was the best part of it,

for at least it was unassuming; it ran four months in undisturbed obscurity,

and died without a gasp. The first number was edited by all four of us with

prodigious bustle; the second fell principally into the hands of Farrer and

me; the third I edited alone; and it has long been a solemn question who

it was that edited the fourth.

As a matter of fact, the literary standard of the magazine was

high, and lord Neaves made some excellent contributions to it.

The paper by Stevenson reprinted in Memories and Portraits,

‘An Old Scotch Gardener,’ even after allowance for mature cor-

rection, must be regarded as an excellent character-study. But

the people of Edinburgh, academic or unacademic, could hardly be

credited with sufficient self-detachment to see special points in a

type of character long familiar in Scots life. And character-

studies are mature work, needing a mature audience, not the

faulty judgment of the young college man who worships only

v] Kottabos 211

success and brains. Stevenson speaks, in the former essay, of 'young gentlemen from the universities' who 'are encouraged, at so much a line, to garble facts, insult foreign nations and calumniate private individuals.' It is a great merit of academic journalism that these things are not done in the universities themselves. To calumniate is dangerous in view of the law of libel; but the increasing zeal for personal gossip, trivial when it is not unpleasant, has taken little hold on university journalism. The free use of slang, preferably of American origin, and excessive attention to public entertainers are, further, not characteristic of such periodicals, and, in this respect, universities may do well in being behind the general movement of the press.

Irishmen have a way of being brilliant, and Trinity college, Dublin, has had a galaxy of talent for its academic ventures in journalism. The Dublin University Review, which started in 1885, was really good during its short career. Collectors now give high prices for single copies of this Magazine of Literature, Art and University Intelligence. The magazine had a wider scope than English periodicals of the sort, finding room for the strongly divergent views of Irish politicians. It was a pioneer, too, in including poetry in the original Irish (probably the first specimens of Irish type seen in a modern review).

The oddly named Kottabos is, however, perhaps the cream of Irish academic wit and scholarship. It appeared three times a year and was started by R. Y. Tyrrell in 1868, running for thirteen years. Its fortunes and revival after an interval from 1888 to 1895 are recorded in Echoes from Kottabos1 (1906). Tyrrell was a brilliant classical scholar with an extraordinary memory and an incisive wit, and his magazine excelled in light verse, translations and imitations (reverent and burlesque) of poets ancient and modern, from Aeschylus to Kipling. The contributors included Edward Dowden, John Todhunter, Oscar Wilde and Standish O'Grady. Kottabos is more definitely classical than most magazines of the sort, and some of its exercises passed into Dublin Translations into Greek and Latin Verse, a form of journalism, perhaps, too learned to gain general recognition. Still, it may be remembered that, without distinction in Latin verse translation, Addison might never have had the chance to establish the periodical essay, or Prior the school of light verse which is the chief distinction of university writing.

1 κóτταβος, a game in vogue at Athens depending on the skilful throwing of wine from a cup.

14—2

CHAPTER VI

CARICATURE AND THE LITERATURE OF SPORT

PUNCH

The literature to be described in this chapter owes so much, in origin and in development, to pictorial art, that the subject demands a brief preliminary account of the growth of engraving, and especially of caricature, in England. Caricature, in the sense of pictorial comment on contemporary political or social conditions, was not unknown in the reign of James II. William III brought with him from Holland Dutch artists, among them de Hooghe, who produced work of this nature; and their presence spurred on native artists. In the reign of Anne, caricature was frequent. A print of 1710 shows Sacheverell taking counsel of the devil and a Roman catholic priest; and Sacheverell often appeared in political plates. The famous pamphlet ascribed by Swift to Arbuthnot, Law is a Bottomless Pit or The History of John Bull (1712), was a fertile source of figures for draughtsmen. If this pamphlet did not originate the impersonation of England as 'John Bull,' it made it popular; while the appearance of Louis XIV as 'Lewis Baboon,' of Holland as 'Nick Frog,' of Charles of Spain as 'The Lord Strutt,' of the English parliament as 'Mrs Bull,' and so forth, provided political draughtsmen with ideas of the kind that they needed. Now, as later, tories freely used this weapon against whigs. The South Sea Bubble, in the year 1720, gave a strong impetus to English caricature. Pine, Bickham and Picart were among the many artists who produced plates on the subject; but more important than any was the work of Hogarth. After the time of the South Sea Bubble, caricatures became more and more popular; to some extent, they took the place of the political pamphlets which had been common in the previous century1. Gravelot, in 1727, made an engraving which appears to have been the first attack of this kind on the prevalent corruption at parliamentary elections;

1 See, ante, vol. vii, chap. xvi.

CH. VI] Hogarth 213

and he was one of many caricaturists who found a fruitful

subject in Walpole and his whig government. The caricatures

of the day were not all political. Social conditions were freely

criticised ; many of the plates being grossly improper and many

very ill-drawn. The designing of these pictorial jests or attacks

became something like fashionable : amateurs indulged in it, such

as the countess of Burlington and George Townshend. Pope was

a favourite subject, and lord Bute was frequently attacked for his

patronage of the Scots; while one of the best known prints is

the caricature of Handel as a pig playing the organ, by Goupy,

drawing-master to George III.

Setting aside his artistic greatness, the service which Hogarth

rendered to caricature was twofold. On the one hand, he showed

that both political and social subjects could be treated forcibly

without deliberate grossness. To modern taste, a good deal of

Hogarth appears coarse : comparison of his work at its coarsest with

plates by the common run of unknown or little known artists of

the early part of the eighteenth century will show him by contrast

refined. The social satirist must needs handle foul matter ; but

Hogarth never, like some of his contemporaries, indulges in gross-

ness for its own sake, nor appears to enjoy it. Henry Fielding's

tribute to Hogarth's work in the introduction to Joseph Andrews

raised the estimation of caricature to a higher position than it had

yet occupied ; and if, later (in their treatment, for instance, of

lady Hamilton and Nelson), English caricaturists forgot what they

had learned from Hogarth, his influence was never wholly lost.

Pictorial art, following the example of literature from Defoe,

through The Spectator, to Fielding, turned with interest to the

common life around itself. Hogarth found a various and strong-

featured world to his hand. The life of fashionable people,

Heidegger's masquerades, the Italian opera, Rich and his panto-

mimes, plays representing 'low life'--in the two famous Pro-

gresses and in many other plates these subjects are recorded

for us without the grotesque exaggeration which was frequent

among caricaturists of his day. In Gin Lane, Beer Street, The

Enraged Musician and other plates we have the London life

that was under the artist's eyes preserved for our own ; and in

such plates as England, France and Calais Gate may be found

that feeling of 'John Bull' towards the Frenchman which was

apparent in Smollett's Travels through France and Italy, and

was to become a prominent element of the literature and life of

England till long after the fall of Napoleon. To Hogarth's choice

214

Caricature and Sport

[CH.

of subject and to his treatment of what subjects he chose, English

literature owed a considerable debt.

The second benefit which Hogarth conferred upon pictorial

illustration and caricature lay on the commercial side of the

artist's work. With George Vertue and others, he was instru-

mental in obtaining from parliament an act to vest in the designer

the exclusive copyright in his own works. This bill received the

royal assent in 1735, just before the publication of The Rake's

Progress, and was destined to have important effects upon the

commerce of engraving a few years later. Meanwhile, among

those who were to benefit immediately were the caricaturists of the

middle period of the eighteenth century: John Collett, S. H. Grimm,

Bickham, Bamfylde, captain Minshull and captain Topham (two

half-amateur artists whose designs were usually engraved by

others), besides certain French artists working in London. About

this time, too, the political magazine found its way to favour, and

a number of artists supplied these magazines with caricatures,

which were usually signed with pseudonyms. Eminent names

in the latter half of the eighteenth century were Sayer and

Darley. Sayer was a poor draughtsman, but an efficient carica-

turist. In the pay of Pitt, he attacked the governments of

Rockingham, of Shelburne and of the coalition; of Sheridan, he

frequently made caricatures, dwelling especially on his relations

with the prince regent; and the caricature, A Nightmare, which

appeared in The Anti-Jacobin in 1799, is one of the most im-

pressive ever drawn. Founded on a picture by Fuseli, it shows

Fox hag-ridden and otherwise tortured in sleep by phantoms of

the French revolution. Sayer was also, to some degree, a poet:

he wrote satires, and also the poem on the death of Pitt, 'Elijah's

Mantle,' which was ascribed to Canning. George Darley is chiefly

known as the pictorial satirist of maccaronis, as the travelled and

effeminate fops of the period were called. Between 1780 and

1785, the supremacy of Sayer was challenged and overthrown by

a Scottish caricaturist, James Gillray. Gillray's first caricature

'was an engraving of lord North, published anonymously in 1769.

Till 1780, he was chiefly engaged on social subjects; after 1782,

his work was almost exclusively political. He published in that

year a series of designs concerning Rodney's victory over De

Grasse off Dominica. By 1811, when he became imbecile, he

had executed some 1500 caricatures, and won an unique position

in his art. The lesson that Hogarth had taught, Gillray mainly

neglected. His work is savage and brutal; he can be as bitter as

Swift and as crossgrained and coarse as Smollett. But his vigour was great and his invention fertile; and he demands mention in this chapter because he passed on the lamp to his young friend Thomas Rowlandson. But, before considering Rowlandson and another of his friends, Bunbury, it is necessary to go back and pick up another thread of the story.

Hogarth and his fellows had won for the artist copyright in his own engravings; but the market remained for some years restricted to England. Duties on prints entering France were so high as to close the French market to English artists; meanwhile, French prints found their way in large quantities to London. The removal of this disability of English engravers was chiefly due to the artist and print-seller, John Boydell. Boydell began his successful career by engraving small landscapes, which, because print-shops were few, he exhibited in the windows of toy-shops. From small landscapes he went on to large views of London, Oxford and Cambridge and other places; and, in 1751, having done well with a volume of views in England and Wales, he set up as a print-seller. Ardent in his encouragement of British talent, and aided in the early years of the reign of George III by a bounty allowed to English prints for sale in France, Boydell succeeded in turning the print-trade with that country from an import trade to an export trade with an annual revenue of £200,000. The impulse given to English engraving was, naturally, very strong; and it lasted after the outbreak of the French revolution had destroyed the trade with France. Boydell's illustrated edition of Shakespeare was published in 1802; but he had begun to collect materials for it so early as 1786. His object was to encourage English painting, as he had encouraged English engraving; and he employed the most eminent artists of his day.

With Boydell, the print-seller first developed into the patron and employer, and the development was to have an important, if indirect, influence upon the relations of pictorial art to literature. The large number of capable artists whom the new conditions had brought into being gave pictorial art the power, as it were, of dictating to literature. These artists were accustomed (amid the barrenness and mock-antique solemnity of the academic art of the day) to deal freely and naturally with the common scenes, whether topographical or human, of the world about them. They worked for the people, not for connoisseurs; and, in time, they came to find the need of a literature that should form a vehicle for their productions. This movement was greatly advanced by Rudolph

216

Caricature and Sport

[CH.

Ackermann, a German by origin, who, in 1795, opened a print-

shop in the Strand. Among Ackermann's achievements was the

establishment in England of lithography as a fine art. He used

the process largely in his monthly publication, The Repository

of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, which ran from

1809 to 1828. More important to the present subject is the

fact that he turned to caricaturists for the provision of illus-

trated books; and among the earliest that he published was

Bunbury's work, Academy for Grown Horsemen . . . . by Geoffrey

Gambado, Esq. William Henry Bunbury, sportsman, caricaturist

and writer, was already known for his admirable chalk-drawings

of scenes in real life, most of which were engraved for him by

other artists—Rylund, Gillray, Rowlandson, Watson, Bartolozzi,

Brotherton the print-seller and Dickinson. Never treating politi-

cal matters, he had done good work in social subjects, such as

the seven plates entitled The propagation of a lie, burlesque

designs for Tristram Shandy, the plate named A Chop House,

which contains one of the many caricature portraits of Samuel

Johnson, and A Long Minuet (as danced at Bath). Boydell

had employed him to make designs for Shakespeare's comedies.

To Ackermann, he brought a series of comic plates of horse-

manship (a subject that he well understood), accompanied by

a descriptive letterpress that is still of a fresh and ingenious

humour. Geoffrey Gambado, the supposed author, is described as

'Master of the Horse, Riding Master, and Grand Equerry to the

Doge of Venice,' and he is presented as having been drowned at

sea while on his way to teach horsemanship to the English. The

frontispiece shows him as exceedingly corpulent. The advice

given by this worthy Venetian, and the letters supposed to be

addressed to him by horsemen anxious for his advice, make up a

small and constantly entertaining volume, which is important

from several points of view. It is an early example of the litera-

ture of sport, in which the succeeding half century was to be rich;

it was read and enjoyed by Apperley, Surtees, Smedley and other

'authors of novels of sport; and it was the first of the illustrated

humorous books for which Ackermann's publishing house became

famous. Bunbury was far more draughtsman than writer; and,

though both letterpress and illustrations were his work, this book

must be regarded as an early instance of pictorial art calling

literature into being. A few years later, caricature was to

prove, through Ackermann again, more markedly the patron of

literature in the domain of comedy. Among the artists working

VI] Rowlandson and Combe 217

in London was a young man, Thomas Rowlandson, who, after studying, to the great advantage of his art, in Paris, had given up portrait-painting for caricature, or genre-painting, in oils, and for brilliant comic sketches, which he tossed off in great quantity. Dissipated and improvident, he was incapable of managing his own affairs, and was all the better for attaching himself to a taskmaster of Ackermann's good sense and acumen. His caricature was occasionally brutal; but he lived in a 'hard-hitting, hard-riding, hard-drinking age,' and he portrayed it faithfully. His friend, John Bannister, the actor, is said to have suggested to him a series of plates representing a country curate travelling about England. Travels were popular at the time. Much of Ackermann's success was won from his series of picturesque tours, to which further reference will be made later; and, whether the idea were Bannister's, or Rowlandson's, or another's, there can be little doubt that it was inspired by the very popular books of travel in England written and illustrated between 1782 and 1809 by William Gilpin. On approving of the idea, Ackermann entrusted the writing of the letterpress to William Combe.

William Combe had begun his literary career with The Diaboliad (1776), a savage satire in verse on a nobleman (said to have been Simon, lord Irnham), whose cast-off mistress he had married on a promise of money, that was not paid. Its successors, The Diabo-lady and The Anti-Diabo-lady, are equally spirited. Combe, as a satirist, is still readable for the vigour and rapidity of his verse; but he had not the temperament nor the talent to achieve greatness. In life and letters alike he was unprincipled; and among his deceptions are the spurious Letters of the late Lord Lyttelton, and the spurious Letters of Sterne to Eliza, in writing which, no doubt, he drew upon the acquaintance with Sterne which he had formed in Italy. As a hack-writer for a publisher he was valuable, and never more so than when he wrote for Ackermann the verses that were to accompany Rowlandson's drawings of the adventures of Dr Syntax, as the travelling clergyman was named. The work was done, by both artist and author, under extraordinary conditions. A certain quantity had to be supplied monthly for publication in Ackermann's Poetical Magazine. One drawing at a time only was sent to Combe, then a man of sixty and confined for debt in the King's Bench prison. Combe, thereupon, wrote, or dictated, the requisite number of lines (the printer, as the story goes, waiting in Combe's presence for his 'copy' lest the dilatory author should postpone

VI]

Dr Syntax

219

his simplicity. A great eater, a great smoker and a great talker,

he is loved for his companionable spirit. He makes powerful

friends, and at the close has won not only a handsome price for

his book but ecclesiastical preferment which will make him easy

for life. Combe's verse ambles along with the very paces of

the doctor's Grizzle. It is (like most dictated work) frequently

flaccid ; and it moralises at too great length and with too little

force for modern taste. But it seldom goes for long without wit

and sense. It is the verse of an able journalist, as might be said

today, who knows what people in the world are talking about.

Take, for instance, Syntax's soliloquy on the picturesque. He

will paint the cottage, the coppice and the elm-trees ; but he will

omit the pigs.

For, to say truth, I don't inherit

This self-same picturesque spirit,

That looks to nought but what is rough,

And ne'er thinks Nature coarse enough.

Their system does my genius shock,

Who see such graces in a dock;

Whose eye the picturesque admires

In straggling brambles, and in briers;

Nay, can a real beauty see

In a decay'd and rotten tree.

People were talking in those days about the picturesque, the

'trim' of art and so forth; and Combe knew what would interest

his readers.

So successful a work was sure to find imitators. Among them

were The Tour of Dr Syntax through London, Dr Syntax in

Paris and The Adventures of Dr Comicus, a parody of Combe's

verses, illustrated by burlesques of Rowlandson's engravings.

Ackermann, finding the collaboration profitable, set the same

pair to work upon other productions. Rowlandson drew a series

of designs of The Dance of Death, 'with the View of applying

it exclusively to the Manners, Customs, and Character of this

Country'; and, as before, Combe 'accompanied with Metrical

Illustrations' the drawings as they were delivered to him. Issued

originally in successive numbers, The English Dance of Death was

published in two volumes in 1815-16. Describing the death-scene

of a number of different characters, the verse shows Combe in his

most serious mood; but it lacks both impressiveness and variety,

while, on the other hand, the plates by Rowlandson are various,

impressive and full of the peculiar beauty of this artist's best

work. In 1816 came, also, The Dance of Life, by Rowlandson and

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Combe. The poem and the plates recount the life of a young man

of position. Since part of the story concerns a period of dissipa-

tion in London, it touches a kind of work to which reference will

be made later, and, by comparison, shows Combe, who could be

coarse upon occasion, as a writer of some taste and reticence.

The two fellow-workers had, by this time, made each other's

acquaintance ; and Combe implies, in his advertisement prefixed

to the poem, that he had suggested to Rowlandson some of the

ideas, though, in the main, they had followed their old plan of

working. He makes the claim more strongly in the introduction

to a second tale of Dr Syntax, to whom they returned in 1819--20.

Issued, as a book, in 1820, The Second Tour of Dr Syntax in

Search of Consolation narrates how the reverend doctor, having

lost his vulgar but valued wife, is persuaded by his friends to seek

relief in another tour. In the Lakes, Bath, London and else-

where, Syntax visits scenes and people of interest ; and, of such

humour as there is, beyond the lively and homely circumstances

of Mrs Syntax's death, much is supplied by the Irish manservant

who accompanies his master. But Combe was now nearly eighty.

A well-read man, he makes free use of his knowledge, but dilutes

his originals excessively. His verse is garrulous and spiritless,

compared with that of the first tour, and Rowlandson's invention

was either flagging or too closely bounded by the scenes that he

thought fit to introduce. The work is dull, and was not so popular

as its predecessor. In The Third Tour of Dr Syntax in Search

of a Wife, however, published, as a book, in 1821, both artist and

verse-maker revived; the studies of various kinds of women are

full of character and give no little information about the feminine

types of the day. Finally, in 1822, Rowlandson and Combe

produced Johnny Quae Genus, the Foundling of the late Dr

Syntax, which is the feeblest, and was the least popular, of the

series.

Two other series of drawings, which Rowlandson made in

lighter vein, may be mentioned here. In 1815, he drew a set of

plates for The Military Adventures of Johnny Newcome, the

letterpress for which was written, probably, by colonel David

Roberts, who became a writer after a wound, received in the

Peninsular war, had incapacitated him for military service. In

1818 appeared The Adventures of Johnny Newcome in the

Navy, in which Rowlandson's sixteen plates were accompanied

by a poem in four cantos by 'Alfred Burton,' a pseudonym of

John Mitford, author of The Poems of a British Sailor and

VI] Gilpin 221

a contributor to The Scourge, the journal for which George

Cruikshank, also, worked. Mitford, who had served in the navy,

was worthy of collaborating with Rowlandson in such a book

as this. Verses and drawings alike are full of hearty humour, and

there is dramatic quality in their exposition of the troubles of

a new hand, of ‘larks’ at sea and on shore and of the tyranny

and brutality that marked the naval service in those days.

Comic drawings, the development of his caricature, were not

the only work that Rowlandson did for Ackermann and other

publishers. This was an age in which illustrated books of travel

became popular; and Dr Syntax, as we have seen, satirised

a general taste. The fashion owed much to the books of

William Gilpin, a clergyman, who, in 1782, published his Obser-

vations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales,

where the picturesque was easily found. Gilpin, who, in his

views on education and on poor-law reform, was in advance of

his time, was in advance of it, also, in his drawings, which have

been described as studies for landscape rather than portraits of

particular places. With the pen, like Dr Syntax, he ‘prosed it

here and versed it there,’ his descriptions erring, as Combe

thought, in excess of poetical diction, but being enriched with

many ingenious reflections. This handsome work was followed

by others of the same kind from his pen and pencil. Volumes

on Cumberland and Westmorland, on Hampshire, Sussex and

Kent, and on Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, were

published during his life or posthumously; in 1790, he issued

Remarks on Forest Scenery and other Woodland Views (relat-

ing chiefly to picturesque beauty), illustrated in the scenes of

the New Forest, with plates by his nephew, William Sawrey

Gilpin, who was the first president of the Royal Society of

Painters in Water-Colours, or the ‘Old Society’; and, in 1798,

Picturesque Remarks on the Western Parts of England and

the Isle of Wight. Gilpin, in fact, was the apostle of the

picturesque; and the illustrated tour (which brought Dr Syntax

a handsome sum of money) was a fashion of the day. Boydell

had followed up his volume of views in England and Wales with

two volumes (1794 and 1796) on the Thames, in which the letter-

press was written by William Combe; and illustrated books of

travel were among the most successful publications of Ackermann,

who issued a series of ‘picturesque tours’ on the Rhine, the Seine,

the Thames, in the English Lakes, in India and other works. For

his great publication of 1821–6, The World in Miniature, the

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earlier of the 637 plates were the work of Rowlandson, and

the others of William Henry Pyne. To Pyne, who was both

painter and writer, Ackermann owed at least the idea of his

Picturesque Sketches of Rustic Scenery, and his Views of Cottages

and Farm Houses in England and Wales; Pyne himself wrote

the text of Royal Residences, which Ackermann issued in 1829

with 100 coloured engravings, and, under the pseudonym Ephraim

Hardcastle, was the author of Wine and Walnuts, an anecdotal

book published in 1823. In antiquarian works, again, literature

owed much to the needs of engraving. Pyne and Combe to-

gether wrote the text of Ackermann's important publications,

the histories of Westminster Abbey, of The University of

Oxford and of The University of Cambridge. Rowlandson and

Combe were, again, together connected with one of Ackermann's

most interesting and valuable works, The Microcosm of London,

which was issued, in and after 1808, in three volumes. In the

many coloured plates that illustrate, or constitute, this work,

the figures were drawn by Rowlandson, and the architecture by

Augustus Charles Pugin, while the text was written by William

Combe. The work is concerned not only with the antiquities of

London, but with its contemporary life. It takes in Astley's

and the Royal Cockpit, as well as the Charterhouse and West-

minster abbey, and to this day remains full of information and

interest.

The Microcosm of London was dedicated to the prince of

Wales, afterwards George IV. So, also, in the year after his

accession to the throne, was a less august work, which still, in

its way, reflects the interest in London and the interest in

ordinary life, both of which had been fostered by the influence of

caricature and the increasing popularity of illustrated books. The

book referred to was Pierce Egan's Life in London; or, The Day

and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq. and his elegant friend

Corinthian Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, The Oxonian, in

their Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis, a work

which was issued in and after July 1821, in shilling numbers.

Of Pierce Egan, the author of this work, more will be said in

connection with books on sport. A journalist, and a wellknown

character in his day, he wrote nothing so popular as this Life

in London. Indeed, the taste for it amounted to a craze. For

his illustrations, Egan went to two brothers, Isaac Robert and

George Cruikshank, sons of a Scottish artist who had settled in

London. George Cruikshank, the younger and abler brother, had

VI] Life in London 223

already maintained the succession from Gillray and Rowlandson as a political caricaturist. His designs in The Scourge and The Meteor; his plates in William Combe's 'hudibrastic poem' The Life of Napoleon (1814—15); his coloured etchings in The Humourist, a collection of comic tales published in 1819—21, and his many caricatures of Napoleon, of the prince regent and his wife, of Frenchmen and of the excesses of English fashion, had laid the foundations of a fame which was greatly increased by his work for Life in London. Each of the coloured plates is stated to be by I. R. and G. Cruikshank; but, later in his life, George Cruikshank, by then a reformed character and an ardent teetotaller, declared that his doubts about the morality of Egan's work had caused him to leave two-thirds of the illustration to be done by his brother Robert. Be that as it may, the success of the work was so great that the artists could not colour the engravings fast enough for the demand. It suited the taste of the time, when a 'fast' life had become a sophisticated and conscious aim. Life in London is a guide to a fast life. Egan was a 'sporting' man who did not sport. Except for a jejunely described run with hounds, a statement that Corinthian Tom had a set-to with John Jackson, the ex-champion pugilist of England, at his rooms in Bond street, and some praise from Tom's friends for his 'superior style' and 'coolness and skill' in a fencing-bout with O'Shaunessy, there is not a word of true sport in the book. The remainder is mainly drinking, gambling, rioting, cock-fighting and other branches of debauchery, either practised or contemplated by the friends. It is significant that, of the three adventurers, the name of Corinthian Tom appears in the largest type upon the title-page. Tom, indeed, is the hero of the tale. He is the ideal 'man about town'; and, however lavishly the author may praise his elegance and accomplishment, he remains the type of the polished blackguard, unworthy to associate with his country cousin, Jerry Hawthorn, the cheery fool to whom he shows 'the pleasures of the town,' and only a shade more tolerable than the bestial creature, Bob Logic, who is intended for a model of good-humour and wit. In his first chapter, or 'invocation,' Egan appeals to Fielding, Goldsmith, Smollett and Sterne ('Come, then,' he characteristically writes, 'thou shades of departed talent'). His book, with its leer and wink of knowing vice, its sickly affectation of warning young men from the haunts and pursuits that it lustiously describes, would have disgusted even Sterne in the moments when his physical weakness was most perverting his facile

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imagination. The candid rogues of great picaresque fiction would

be ashamed to own Tom or Logic for their kin. Thackeray,

indulging in sentimental reminiscences in days when 'the literary

contents of the book' had 'passed sheer away' from his memory,

declared that, in the days when the work appeared,

we firmly believed the three heroes above named to be types of the most

elegant, fashionable young fellows the town afforded, and thought their

occupations and amusements were those of all high-bred English gentlemen.

Twenty years later, when he had read 'the literary contents of the

book' again, he said:

But the style of the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me; I even

thought it a little vulgar ... and as a description of the sports and amuse-

ments of London in the ancient times, more curious than amusing.

Thackeray, therefore, nowhere has a good word to say for anything

about Life in London except the pictures. 'More curious than

amusing' is a just criticism. The work is curious, partly for the

details that it furnishes of London life in a period when manners

were very pompous or very vulgar; and partly for its wealth in

the slang of the time. Egan was a master of the 'flash' and the

flashy; and Life in London contains as many slang phrases as he

could put into it. Two years later, he was to furnish the slang

phrases to Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

(1823); and one of his two illustrators, George Cruikshank, had

already drawn a plate for Andrewes's Dictionary of the Slang

and Cant Languages (1809).

Part of the success enjoyed by the work was due, no doubt,

to its readers' belief that they could name the originals of the

fictitious characters. Imitations came swift and frequent. In the

summer of 1822 plays founded upon the story were being acted at

no less than ten theatres in and about London; and among the

adapters were Charles Dibdin, whose version was played at the

Olympic, and W. T. Moncrieff, whose play ran for more than 300

nights at the Adelphi theatre. It was Moncrieff who, in answer

to the accusation that Egan and he had made their age the age of

flash, replied in the wellknown but inconclusive saying, 'Any age

is better than the age of cant'-cant implying, of course, the pro-

tests of certain portions of the press and of some religious bodies.

Egan himself produced, in 1822, a dramatic version of the story,

which was played without success (save for a pony-race round the

theatre) at Astley's. The book was, also, translated into French.

Out of the sixty-five imitations of it which Egan stated that he had

VI] The English Spy 225

reckoned, the most important was Real Life in London, or, the Rambles and Adventures of Bob Tallyho, Esq. and his cousin, the Hon. Tom Dashall, through the Metropolis, exhibiting a living picture of fashionable characters, manners, and amusements in high and low life, which was published in sixpenny numbers in 1821, with excellent illustrations by Heath, Aiken, Dighton, Rowlandson and others.

Real Life in London is a pleasanter book than its prototype. Some have held that Egan wrote it; but the author had a purer style, a cleaner mind and a wider knowledge of London than Egan. The book shows many more sides of London life than his; though the formal descriptions of wellknown scenes or buildings, here and there inserted amid matter of a very different character, recall very forcibly Mr Bouncer's letters to his aunt in Verdant Green.

Another imitation was Life in Paris: The Rambles of Dick Wildfire (1821), written, it is suspected, by David Carey, and illustrated by George Cruikshank, who had never been to Paris, but was accustomed to drawing his own idea of French people in his caricatures, and took his scenes from the drawings and paintings of other artists.

An offshoot of Life in London was The English Spy. An Original Work, Characteristic, Satirical, and Humorous, illustrated with many coloured plates, of which the greater number are by 'Robert Transit' (i.e. Robert Cruikshank), at least one (not in his pleasantest vein) by Rowlandson and a few by other hands, and written by 'Bernard Blackmantle,' a pseudonym for Charles Molloy Westmacott.

Westmacott, whose Points of Misery (1823) was illustrated by George Cruikshank, appears to have been a blackmailer; but he was a spirited and amusing writer, and, though The English Spy, both in text and in illustrations, is sometimes as coarse as ever was Smollett in word or Gillray in drawing, it contains many lively representations of life, 'high and low, gives much curious information about the customs and manners of the day and about real people still recognisable under their fictitious names, and preserves many tales of a past age.

It attempts to do for many places in England what Life in London and Real Life in London had done for the metropolis. Eton and Westminster schools, the university of Oxford, Brighton, Bath and Cheltenham, London and the suburbs of London, Cowes, Portsmouth and Doncaster races, all find a place in Westmacott's racy pages; and Robert Cruikshank's plates are as full of vigour and variety as the author's prose and verse.

In or about 1823, a young artist, named Theodore Lane,

E. L. XIV. CH. VI. 15

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brought to Pierce Egan a series of original and effective designs representing the life of an actor from his stage-struck days to his triumph; and round them Egan wrote The Life of an Actor, which was published in 1824. Though it suffers from all the faults of Egan's flashy style, the book is well designed and interesting, while the footnotes are full of theatrical stories of various merit. It was Lane, also, who illustrated Egan's Anecdotes, Original and Selected, of the Turf, the Chase, the Ring, and the Stage, published in 1827. In the following year, Egan brought out The Finish to the Adventures of Tom, Jerry, and Logic, in their Pursuits through Life In and Out of London, with illustrations by Robert Cruikshank. To some extent, the work was intended as a sop to those who had attacked the immorality of Life in London. Logic dies, at which no one would be surprised, though it is difficult not to resent the attempt to make his end pathetic. Corinthian Tom, attempting a little genuine sport, breaks his neck in the hunting-field; his cast-off mistress, Corinthian Kate, dies of drink and starvation, and Jerry alone is left alive, to settle down in the country with a virtuous wife. The illustrations are admirable; and the text is more amusing, less vulgarly written and less offensive in subject than that of Life in London. Among the books on life in London during the end of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth centuries, one other demands notice, A Book for a Rainy Day, or Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766—1833 by John Thomas Smith. John Thomas Smith, who was born in a hackney coach on the way from Earl street, Seven Dials, to Great Portland street, on a June evening in 1766 and died in April 1833, was an artist, a writer and a Londoner, and wrote a life of his father's master, the sculptor Nollekens, which is unmatched for malicious candour and vivid detail. Art-student, portrait-painter, sightseer, writer, gossip, and keeper of the prints in the British museum, Smith spent his sixty-seven years in close touch with the artistic and literary life of London. He had a keen curiosity about things and people past and present, a retentive memory and a gift for gossip; and his book is one of the most entertaining and most trustworthy memorials of his period. Published twelve years after his death, it forms a valuable corrective to the flashy fictions of Egan and his like.

It is significant that, within twelve hours of the appearance of Life in London, the title, the names and the story were seized upon by James Catnach, who put forth, from his printing-house

VI] James Catnach 227

in Monmouth court, Seven Dials, a twopenny broadside, entitled Life in London; or, the Sprees of Tom and Jerry; attempted in cuts and verse, with twelve plates very roughly imitated from the Cruikshanks'. James Catnach had long been doing for the poor what Egan attempted to do for the rich—provide them with highly seasoned literature. The son of a north-country printer who, at Alnwick, had issued volumes illustrated by the wood-cuts of Bewick and Clennell, James Catnach set up as a printer of popular literature in Seven Dials in the year 1813. He was the most eminent and successful of his class, though the rivalry of the older business of Pitts, in Great St Andrew street hard by, was at first severe. In those days, when newspapers cost 7d. or 8½d., and good cheap literature was all but unknown, Catnach performed an important service for the working classes.

He printed and sold illustrated books for children, some at a farthing, some at a halfpenny, some at a few pence; and very good, in their way, they were, with their simple renderings of famous fairy stories, their moral lessons and improving or amusing verses. He wrote, or procured for so much as 2s. 6d. apiece from the street poets, ballads on passing events—the battle of Waterloo, the death of princess Charlotte, the attempt to rid Covent garden theatre of what Tom and Jerry called 'gay Cyprians,' while Tom Dashall and Bob Tallyho knew them as 'dashing.' Catnach sold history at one penny a sheet; he mourned the death of Jack Randall, the eminent pugilist; he published very interesting cuts of the cries of London; he gave, from day to day, a vivid and various picture of the life of his times; and in his broadsheets and flysheets may be found the mind of the labouring and the criminal classes of his period. To Catnach one may turn for information about coaching, about omnibuses, about Sir Robert Peel's new and derided police—about all the turbulent life of the London streets. He dealt, also, largely in fiction disguised as truth—much as a modern newspaper does. Part of the handsome fortune that he made must have arisen from the dreadful scandals, the duels between ladies of fashion, the elopements and so forth, that he invented for the delectation of his readers' hearty appetites.

But chiefly he was known for his works on crime. Those were the days of highwaymen; and about highwaymen, whom the educated classes knew to be pitiful scoundrels, there is practically no contemporary literature except that of the kind published by Catnach or Pitts. Those were the days of public executions, when not only a gay demeanour but a confession and 'last words' were expected 15—2

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of the criminal. The ordinary of Newgate usually published a

paper; but his accounts were jejune, compared with those that

Catnach or Pitts could produce. There was a safe and brisk

market for 'Last Sorrowful Lamentations,' with portrait, con-

fession and a woeful ballad, all on one sheet. In the description

of murders Catnach excelled. On the occasion of the famous

'Red Barn' murder, in 1828, Catnach sold, it is said, more than

one million copies of the murderer Corder's confession and a

ballad. Previously, he had done very well with the yet more

famous murder of Weare by Thurtell, in 1823.

Catnach, however, did not enjoy the field of murder all to

himself. At this period, the interest in brutal crime and more

brutal punishment was, perhaps, even livelier in all classes than it

is today. On the Cato street conspiracy of 1820 The Observer

newspaper sailed to triumph. Clement, the proprietor, not only

gave pictures of the stable and hayloft in Cato street where

the conspirators were captured, but defied the law by publishing

a full account of the trial before the verdict was given. On the

occasion of the murder of Weare by Thurtell, he was yet more

lavish, and was, indeed, held to have overstepped the mark of

propriety. The objections, which were levelled chiefly at the

illustrations, may be held to have been captious, and even inspired,

to some extent, by the envy of less enterprising newspapers; for

these were days when no reputable journal was ashamed to

give great prominence to reports of crime: even The Annual

Register published the evidence and the verdict in important

cases. These were the days, too, when The Newgate Calendar

was brought out. The original series, The Newgate Calendar; or,

Malefactors' Bloody Register, published in or about 1774, con-

tained in its five volumes notorious crimes from 1700 to the date

of publication. Between 1824 and 1826, Andrew Knapp and

William Baldwin, attorneys-at-law, issued, in four volumes, The

Newgate Calendar, comprising interesting memoirs of the most

notorious characters; and, in or about 1826, they issued, in six

volumes, The New Newgate Calendar, which consisted of their

original series much enlarged and with the preface abbreviated.

The Calendar consists of the lives, crimes, trials and (where

inflicted) tortures and executions, of criminals of many kinds,

from miserable thieves or forgers to murderers, from murderers

to those accused of rebellion and high treason. It is, indeed,

as Sir Walter Scott's little friend, Marjory Fleming, said, 'a book

that contains all the Murders: all the Murders did I say, nay all

VI] The Newgate Calendar 229

Thefts and Forgeries that ever were committed.' Of The Newgate Calendar, there is no better critic than Marjory Fleming. 'The Newgate Calender,' she writes, 'is very instructive [and] Amusing, and shews us the nesesity of doing good and not evil.' 'The history of all the Malcontents that ever was hanged is very amusing,' she writes later; but, at the same time, it 'fills me with horror and consternation.' The author of the very improving preface to the first series could have said no more. Knapp and Baldwin, in the preface to their earlier series, attempt to connect their labours with the protest, then being raised, against the severity of the English law; but Marjory Fleming goes to the root of the matter. The Newgate Calendar stands at the head of the English literature of crime. It was worth the while of attorneys-at-law to do for the educated classes what Catnach and others had long been doing for the poor; and The Newgate Calendar was developed out of the sheets sold by hawkers at public executions.

The success of Life in London was partly due, no doubt, to Pierce Egan's great personal popularity; he was known as 'Glorious Pierce,' and the prince regent had commanded that he should be presented at court. For Egan was the first great sporting journalist, in days when journalism had discovered the dignity and the beneficence of sport. To understand Egan's eminence in this field, it is necessary to go back some years. The eighteenth century—the century, in England, of reason and system—systematised, to some extent, English sport. From the eighteenth century, the then distinctively English sport of pugilism received organisation and science. In the reign of George I, fighting with fists had begun to take the place of the combats with sword or cudgel. James Fig, 'the father of the ring,' who opened in 1719 the Academy in Tottenham-court road, where the famous captain Godfrey and other athletes exhibited their skill, was swordsman as well as boxer. It remained for Jack Broughton, the champion from 1734 to 1750, to reduce boxing to an accurate science; and Daniel Mendoza, champion from 1784 to 1820, introduced 'a new, a more rapid, and more elegant style of boxing, and a more artistic technique.' By the close of the eighteenth century, boxing had not only, like hunting, become systematised; thanks to the pleasure taken in the prize-ring by the prince of Wales and his brothers, pugilism was the most fashionable of amusements and of spectacles. The passion for this form of sport ran through all classes, and was more ardent even than the modern passion for

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football. On the one hand, it may be remembered that the last desire expressed before execution by Thurtell, the murderer of Weare, was 'to read Pierce Egan's account of the great fight yesterday.' On the other hand, a man of intellect, like William Hazlitt, was a genuine lover of sport, and would take infinite trouble to see a prize-fight. In The New Monthly Magazine for February 18221, Hazlitt describes how he travelled on a cold and wet December night to Hungerford, and went bedless, in order to see 'the Gas-man' (Thomas Hickman) fight Bill Neate. The paper gives what is, perhaps, the most vivid description of a prize-fight ever written. The reader may realise by its means all the details of prize-fighting that to modern taste appear brutal and disgusting; but he will be left in no doubt about the pluck and endurance displayed by the fighters, and, in Hazlitt's comments upon Hickman's 'vapouring and swaggering,' he will find an admirable statement of the virtues of the true sportsman. Indeed, the whole position of sport had changed. That athletic exercises were considered worthy of serious attention, the great illustrated work of the artist and antiquary, Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England from the earliest period (first published in 1801) is a sign. And to pugilism, even more than to hunting, the patriots of the day liked to point, as both proving and developing those qualities—courage, endurance, 'bottom,' or unquenchable spirit—which were held to make the true Briton the equal of any three or more Frenchmen. In the rooms of John Jackson (Byron's tribute to Jackson as man and as boxer will be remembered), Tom and Jerry were shown a picture of an assassination in Rome, the victim having been stabbed with a dagger ; and Logic's comment was :

When comparisons are made, the above plate speaks volumes in favour of the manly and generous mode resorted to by Englishmen to resent an insult or to decide a quarrel.

Pugilism, though already subject to attack as brutal and ferocious, had the great heart of the country behind it. In the service of pugilism Egan made his fame. He was not, of course, the first writer on boxing. Captain Godfrey brought out, in or about 1740, a small Treatise on the Useful Art of Self-defence. Paul Whitehead had sung of the art in The Gymnasiad (1757); John Byrom, Robert Barclay and others, had celebrated it in prose or verse ; and the journals, including The Gentleman's Magazine, The Flying

1 Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. Waller and Glover, vol. xii, p. 1.

VI] Literature of Pugilism 231

Post, The World and others, had published accounts of prize-fights. But Egan was the first to make a name for himself as a sporting journalist. Writing in a florid, slipshod style, by no means devoid of vigour and vividness, he described the fights with understanding and at the same time with what many of his readers probably mistook for ‘a literary touch’; and his example has not yet completely faded from journalism. In 1824, he began editing a weekly paper, Pierce Egan’s Life in London and Sporting Guide, which, later, developed into the more famous sporting journal Bell’s Life in London. Egan’s Book of Sports and Mirror of Life (1832) is a valuable compilation; but his most successful work on sport was his illustrated book, Boxiana; or, Sketches of Antient and Modern Pugilism, from the days of the renowned Broughton and Slack, to the championship of Crib.

The work was founded on an earlier work of the same title, produced by George Smeeton in 1812. The first two volumes of Egan’s book were issued in 1818; and a third in 1821. A new series1, in two volumes, was issued in 1828 and 1829. Here may be read the lives and achievements of Fig, Broughton, Jackson, Gulley, Mendoza, Molineaux, Tom Crib, Tom Spring, Jem Ward—of all the great and lesser heroes of ‘the fancy.’ Henry Downes Miles, who, in 1906, published Pugilistica, the three volumes of which carried the story of British boxing down to Sayers and Tom King and the end of the prize-ring, frequently accuses Egan of inaccuracy; but his book, for nearly a century, was the standard history of the art, and, in his own day, was the classic work upon the principal British sport. Among many other publications of the time concerned with boxing, an honourable place is held by the illustrated journal, The Fancy, which, between 1821 and 1826, published memoirs of famous pugilists, accounts of fights, general sporting intelligence and a few pages of miscellaneous news, all of which are rich in information on the vigorous and not squeamish sporting activities of the period.

Hunting, like pugilism, though in a less degree, was systematised by the eighteenth century, and became a subject of popular, as well as practical, literature. During the first half, or more, of the century, every country gentleman hunted, but very many country gentlemen kept their own packs, which were small and not choicely bred. Few of them, probably, were maintained on even so steady, if so nicely ‘humorous’ a principle as those musical fellows of Coverly hall in Warwickshire. Squire Western’s hounds have

1 For bibliographical details, see Pugilistica, 1906, p. xi.

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not been closely described; but it is not unlikely that, in spite of

Gervase Markham's works, and Richard Blome's The Gentleman's

Recreation of 1683, and the amount of science displayed by

Somervile in The Chace, such hounds as those of lord Scattercash

were not so rare in the mid-eighteenth century as in the mid-

nineteenth. Then came a remarkable master of hounds-one

who, according to a writer commonly supposed to be Sir Egerton

Brydges, could 'bag a fox in Greek, find a hare in Latin, inspect

his kennels in Italian, and direct the economy of his stables in

exquisite French'-a scholar and a sportsman, Peter Beckford.

Beckford, in 1781, published at Salisbury a quarto volume,

Thoughts upon Hare and Fox Hunting, which has been held

to 'mark an era not only in the literature but in the history of

hunting.' This work, and the same author's Essays on Hunting,

laid the foundation of the art of hunting; and Peter Beckford's

name has been held in veneration not only by 'Nimrod' and

other writers on the sport, but by all serious students and

practitioners of the art. After Beckford, good books on hunting

became fairly numerous; and among them should be mentioned

The British Sportsman by Samuel Howitt, a sportsman and

artist, who married a sister of Rowlandson and worked in close

contact with his brother-in-law. Hunting, coaching, and all

sports with horses offered an attractive field to the artists of

the day, as well as to the writers; and Bunbury proved to be the

ancestor of a long and numerous line, which includes George

Cruikshank, Leech, Robert Seymour and many other famous

names. Among the earliest successors of Bunbury is Henry

Alken, who did excellent sporting pictures between 1816 and

1831. A man of obscure origin (he is supposed to have been stud-

groom or trainer to the duke of Beaufort before he won fame as

an artist), Alken was commended by a writer (probably Christopher

North) in Blackwood's Magazine for his understanding of English

gentlemen-a subject in which George Cruikshank was held to

fail. In the great popularity of sport, Alken found ready employ-

ment as draughtsman. His National Sports of Great Britain

contains fifty admirable coloured engravings, in which his accurate

knowledge and his artistic sense are cleverly combined; to The

Analysis of the Hunting Field, a volume of papers on the com-

ponents of a hunt reprinted from Bell's Life in London, he

contributed six of his finest designs; and his comic series,

Specimens of Riding, Symptoms of being amazed and others,

deserve the popularity they achieved. If Alken could draw like

VI] Literature of Hunting 233

a gentleman, he was soon to be associated with one who could write like a gentleman. When Lockhart said of ‘Nimrod’ that he could ‘hunt like Hugo Meynell and write like Walter Scott,’ he was doubtless excited into exaggeration by the pleasure of having hit upon a man who could write of sport without the vulgarity of Egan. ‘Nimrod,’ whose name was Charles James Apperley was a man of education, a country squire and a genuine sportsman. Loss of means turned him to literature; he contributed articles on sport to The Sporting Magazine, The Quarterly Review and other journals; but is best known by his two books, The Life of a Sportsman, and Memoirs of the Life of John Mytton, both of which were illustrated with coloured engravings by Alken. The Life of a Sportsman, published in 1842, contains a very pleasant account of country life in days when sport was no longer confused with debauchery; while its descriptions of runs to hounds, its lore of hunting and of four-in-hand driving1 and its variety of incident and anecdote make it still both valuable and agreeable. Apperley, though not a Walter Scott, was a good writer; he knew his subject thoroughly, on both the scientific and the personal sides, and this work of fiction, though poor in plot, is rich in interest. Memoirs of the life of John Mytton appeared as a book in 1837, a portion of the work having been printed in The New Sporting Magazine in 1835. It shows a difficult task performed with fidelity and tact. Apperley had been Mytton’s neighbour in Shropshire, and had extended to him all the care that was possible when both were living in Calais in order to avoid their creditors. Apperley’s task was to write the life of a man who, while he was one of the most heroic sportsmen that ever lived, was also drunken, diseased and insane; and he performed the task with admirable judgment.

Before the death of Apperley, a new sporting writer, of a more humorous turn, had begun a brilliant career. Like ‘Nimrod,’ Robert Smith Surtees was both sporting writer and sportsman. The second son (and, in his fortieth year, the successor) of a Yorkshire landowner, he contributed in youth to The Sporting Magazine, and, in 1831, started, with Rudolf Ackermann the younger, The New Sporting Magazine, which he edited till 1856. Here first appeared the comic papers, which, in 1838, were published in a book under the title of Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities, with coloured plates by Alken. Lockhart shared the general

1 For the driving of stage-coaches, see Cross, Thomas, The Autobiography of a Stage Coachman, 1861.

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admiration for these comic sketches of sporting life, and urged Surtees to write a book. Surtees made further use of the conception of Mr Jorrocks, the grocer of sporting tastes, and produced

Handley Cross, or the Spa Hunt, which was enlarged into Handley Cross, or Mr Jorrocks' Hunt, with pictures by John Leech. Then came Hawbuck Grange, illustrated by 'Phiz'

(Hablot Knight Browne); Ask Mamma, or The Richest Commoner in England; Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour, illustrated by Leech; and Mr Facey Romford's Hounds, illustrated by Leech and

Browne, besides other novels. Surtees was also the author of the papers in Bell's Life in London, some of which were issued, with illustrations by Alken, in a volume mentioned above, The

Analysis of the Hunting Field. It is possible that the true worth of Surtees's work has been a little obscured by the fame of the author of

Pickwick, of which the original idea, a tale of cockney sporting life, was to some extent suggested by the adventures of Mr Jorrocks. Surtees is a comic writer of a broad and hearty humour and a

deft and subtle touch. In the invention of comic character and speech, he comes second only to Dickens. Mr Jorrocks, 'Facey' Romford, lord Scamperdale and his friend Jack Spraggon,

Mr Sponge, Mr Jawleyford of Jawleyford court—these, with nearly every character that Surtees troubles to elaborate, are rich in humour; while the dialogue in these novels has a force and a

flavour comparable only with that in Dickens, or in some piece of flourishing invective in Nashe or Greene. Surtees's comedy is, doubtless, like that of Dickens, mainly a comedy of 'humours' or

personal oddities; and Surtees, it must be admitted, was careless about construction and about such necessary ingredients of a novel as did not interest him; but all the fun is rooted in human nature,

and set out with abounding energy. Surtees was fortunate in the assistance of two young artists who were then carrying on the succession of Alken and George Cruikshank. Both John Leech

and H. K. Browne were keen sportsmen and good artists; and, though Leech never learned to draw a horse, while Browne's horses were as good as Alken's, both men were comic draughtsmen of

inventiveness and humour. Browne found good material in the novels of another sporting writer, Francis Edward Smedley, a cripple with a taste for sporting literature. Smedley, who was for

three years editor of George Cruikshank's Magazine, wrote three novels of high spirits and rapid comedy, Frank Fairleigh, Lewis Arundel and Harry Coverdale's Courtship; of which the first is

still, and deservedly, popular.

VI] Punch 235

The illustrations to the books of which mention has been made were etched and then coloured by hand. Meanwhile, the art of wood-engraving, which had become degraded and neglected, was revived about the close of the eighteenth century by Thomas Bewick. Bewick and his pupils spread abroad the practice of the art; and thus there came into being a means of illustration in black and white very serviceable for the use of the periodical press. Much as the vitality of pictorial art had helped to bring into being the literature of the various kinds that have been described above, so the existence of a number of able engravers on wood helped to bring into being an illustrated press. In the early years of the nineteenth century, The Observer, Bell's Life in London and other papers owned by William Clement, had made a special feature of their illustrations; and The Observer was quick to take advantage of the revival in the art of wood-engraving. At the same time, the refinement of taste and manners brought the need of a comic journalism that should be free of scurrility and other offence; and, before the middle of the nineteenth century, the two influences had combined to produce the most famous of comic journals, Punch. To the making of Punch and its various component parts, several streams flowed. Some of them have already been noticed in this chapter: the burlesque of the illustrated tour; the illustrated comedy of sport; the political or social caricature; the book of anecdote and jest. George Cruikshank, who, in the art of comic draughtsmanship, marks the transition from the brutality of Gillray or Rowlandson to the delicate humour of du Maurier or Tenniel, issued, for some years after 1835, a Comic Almanack, to which eminent authors, among them Thackeray, contributed; and Thomas Hood had founded his famous Comic Annual in 1830. Account must, also, be taken of certain comic journals that had preceded Punch, among them, especially, the Figaro and the Charivari of Paris. The honour of producing the first English comic journal comparable with Punch belongs to Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, one of many lively young humourists, the majority of whom became contributors to the most successful of comic papers. À Beckett, who was a barrister, and became a police magistrate, started, in 1818, an illustrated comic journal entitled Figaro in London, which was illustrated by Robert Seymour and, after him, by Robert Cruikshank. This journal à Beckett conducted for three years, and among his many other ventures were The Wag and The Comic Magazine. One of his literary contributors was his successor as

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editor of Figaro, Henry Mayhew, and one of his artists William Newman, who afterwards did valuable work for Punch. Punchi-

nello, illustrated by Robert Cruikshank, was another, and a short-lived, predecessor of Punch. Douglas Jerrold's Punch in London

was yet another. In 1830 and onwards, a large amount of young and eager comic talent, both in art and in literature, was finding

expression ; and, in 1841, the best of it combined in the production of the most respectable and most popular of comic journals. The

facts of the founding of Punch have been disputed. The authorised

view 1 is that Ebenezer Landells, a newspaper projector, and a wood-engraver who had learned his art from Bewick, had the idea of a

comic journal similar to the Paris Charivari—an idea that had previously been all but brought to fruit by Douglas Jerrold,

Thackeray, Kenny Meadows, Leech and others. After suggesting the idea to several publishers in vain, Landells took it to the

printer, Joseph Last, who entertained it favourably, and sent him to see Henry Mayhew, the son of Last's legal adviser. Mayhew

took him on to see Mark Lemon, a publican turned dramatist, and the list of the staff was thereupon drawn up. At the next

meeting, Mayhew, Lemon and Stirling Coyne were appointed joint-editors ; Archibald S. Henning, cartoonist ; Brine, John

Phillips and William Newman artists in ordinary, and Lemon, Coyne, Mayhew, Gilbert Abbott à Beckett and W. H. Wills (who

was subsequently secretary to Charles Dickens), the literary staff. The first number, which appeared on 17 July 1841, contained con-

tributions, also, by Henry Grattan (whose full name was Henry Grattan Plunkett, and whose pseudonym was ‘Fusbos'), Joseph

Allen, an artist, and F. G. Tomlins. Before the appearance of the second number the staff had been joined by Douglas Jerrold.

Later additions to the list of contributors in the early days of the journal's existence were Percival Leigh (whose pseudonym was

‘Paul Prendergast'), the author of The Comic Latin Grammar, a doctor by profession, and a scholarly and gentle-minded wit ;

Albert Smith, well known for his popular lectures on the ascent of Mont Blanc; H. A. Kennedy; William Maginn; John Oxenford,

dramatic critic; Thackeray and Horace Mayhew, younger brother of Henry Mayhew.

To the influence of Henry Mayhew has been ascribed the geniality of tone which differentiated Punch from Charivari ;

but that geniality was tempered, in and after the second number, by the work of the most remarkable among the early writers for

1 Spielmann, M. H., The History of Punch, 1895, chap. i.

vi] Contributors to Punch 237

Punch. Douglas William Jerrold was a dramatist and wit who

had already made his mark with his play, Black-eyed Susan, and

his studies of Men of Character (1838), for which Thackeray

drew illustrations. His papers in Punch, signed ‘Q,’ the first

of which appeared on 12 September 1841, were the contri-

butions that attracted attention to the paper; and Jerrold’s

work, thenceforth, gave Punch its tone. Here appeared, in

1843, Punch’s letters to his son; in 1845, Punch’s Complete

Letter-writer; and Mrs Caudle’s Curtain Lectures, which was

issued as a book in 1846. Jerrold wrote several other serial

works for Punch, yet none so popular as Mrs Caudle. This

series, more genialiy humorous and less satirical than most of

Jerrold’s work, made the fortune of Punch. But, in the earlier

years of the paper, it was not Jerrold’s comedy but his more

serious writing—the social and political articles signed ‘Q’—that

gave the journal its character and distinction. Jerrold was a

man of hasty temper and caustic tongue, but of a warm heart

and of quick sympathy with the oppressed. In his political

philosophy, there may have been some traces of the school of

Godwin ; but his leading idea (or sentiment) was the wickedness

of the rich and the oppressed innocence of the poor. With

satire (sometimes personal) and invective, he fought hard and

fearlessly, if not always wisely, in a good cause ; and he gave to

Punch its trend towards liberalism in politics. Thackeray began

his connection with Punch with Miss Tickletoby’s Lectures on

English History, and drawings to illustrate, occasionally other

people’s, but usually his own, writings. In Punch, too, appeared

his Diary of Fitz-Jeames de la Pluche; his Snobs of England,

and his Punch’s Prize Novelists. His regular connection with

Punch practically ended in 1851, though his last contribution

to it was published in 1854. In Miss Tickletoby’s Lectures

some have seen the germ of The Comic History of England

and The Comic History of Rome, written by Gilbert Abbott

à Beckett, and illustrated by John Leech. Besides these two

prolonged efforts of humour, which, considering the extent and

nature of the task, is wonderfully well maintained, à Beckett

wrote a brilliant piece of parody, The Comic Blackstone, illustrated

by George Cruikshank and John Leech, which, even more than the

Histories, has an instructive, as well as a comic, value, and has even

been recommended as a text-book of law. Some of à Beckett’s best

work for Punch consisted of the articles on the trials of a young

barrister which were signed ‘Mr Briefless’ : a series which gave

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rise, many years later, to the letters of ‘A. Briefless, Junior,’ contributed to Punch by Gilbert Abbott à Beckett’s son, Arthur

William à Beckett, who, with his brother, Gilbert Arthur à Beckett, was to join the staff of Punch in later years.

Thomas Hood1 began to contribute to Punch in 1843, and amused himself and his readers with his attacks on the plagiarist,

lord William Lennox, at whom Jerrold and other wits also had their fling. Hood is best known, however, as a contributor

to Punch, by the famous Song of the Shirt, which appeared in the Christmas number of the year 1843. The year 1844 increased

the number of contributors by Kenealy, J. W. Ferguson and Tom Taylor, whose connection with the paper remained unbroken

till his death in 1880. Mark Lemon, into whose hands the sole editorship of the paper soon passed, remained in control of it for

twenty-nine years : a wise and capable director of a journal which, by means of the celebrated weekly dinners, has always been

conducted on the principle of co-operation and mutual criticism among the members of the staff. On his death in 1870 he was

succeeded by Shirley Brooks, who was the first to start the now distinctive feature of the paper, Essence of Parliament; and, on the

death of Brooks in 1874, Tom Taylor became editor and retained the post till his death. Meanwhile, the new contributors had included :

in 1845, Watts Phillips, the dramatist; in 1846, ‘Jacob Omnium’ (Matthew J. Higgins); in 1847, Horace Smith, part-author, with his

brother James, of Rejected Addresses; in 1848, Henry Silver and Sutherland Edwards; in 1850, James Hannay; while other im-

portant contributors were Reynolds Hole, dean of Rochester, and Charles L. Eastlake, keeper of the National Gallery. In 1845

appeared Coventry Patmore’s single contribution to Punch, a poem on the massacre of Arabs at Dahra; and in 1846 came

Tennyson’s reply in verse to an attack on him by Bulwer Lytton. The artists who drew for the paper included, besides Thackeray

and others previously mentioned, H. G. Hine, Alfred Forrester (‘Alfred Crowquill’), Sir John Gilbert, Hablot K. Browne, who

worked for Punch from 1842 to 1869; Richard Doyle, whose work appears first in the same Christmas number for 1843 that con-

tained Hood’s The Song of the Shirt, and who is best known by the cover still in use; and ‘Cuthbert Bede’ (Edward Bradley),

the author of Verdant Green, a book which carried on the tradition of The English Spy and Life in London. Punch, however, is

chiefly famous for its five principal artists. John Leech had been

1 See, ante, vol. xii, chap v.

vi] Contributors to Punch 239

drawing for Bell's Life in London when he was brought to Punch

by Percival Leigh. By 1844, he was paramount on the artistic

side of the paper and in the cartoons. His studies of low life;

some extent, the humours of Mr Jorrocks); his ridicule of the

beards and moustaches that had come into fashion after the Crimean

war, of the female movement known as 'Bloomerism' and of the

crinoline—all these present a full and lively picture of the age on

its social side, filled with gentle satire, never coarse, and only unfair,

perhaps, in the case of the Volunteer movement. In 1850 John

Tenniel began his work for Punch, and brought into the paper the

dignity which, during his career, gave to Punch's pictorial comments

on political affairs an impressive weight without loss of fun. In the

following year, Charles Keene, introduced by Henry Silver, began

those studies of homely humour which continued the tradition of

the earlier works by Leech. In 1860, George du Maurier, the

typical satirist of the mid-Victorian era, put upon Punch the seal of

'gentility.' The follies and foibles of 'society,' the mistakes of the

vulgar, the beauty of refined womanhood were the themes of this

delicate art. And, in 1867, Linley Sambourne brought in his lively

fancy, graceful humour and decorative design.

Punch has had many rivals, the most important of which were

Tom Hood's Fun, illustrated by E. G. Dalziel, and Judy, illus-

trated by Calvert. None of the rivals, however, was able to

sustain the freshness of interest, combined with the moderation

and refinement which have preserved, though they did not

create, the eminence of Punch. During most of the years of the

journal's existence it has proved a faithful mirror of the changing

times; and the art, literature, politics and manners of the age

cannot be studied without it.

CHAPTER VII

THE LITERATURE OF TRAVEL, 1700—1900

A chapter on the literature of travel must treat of widely different things, and should open with some attempt at definition.

The phrase ‘literature of travel’ suggests, in the first instance, such books as Sterne's Sentimental Journey, Kinglake's Eothen, Borrow's Bible in Spain, Dufferin's Letters from High Latitudes, Stevenson's Inland Voyage—books in which the personality and literary power of the writer count for more than his theme, books which need not treat of anything new, but merely of something sufficiently unusual to provide an interesting topic for a writer who, in any case, would be interesting.

The travels described in such narratives need not be historical or intrinsically notable.

Their value rather lies in this, that they provide a topic for literature.

Their writers are known rather as authors than as travellers.

But such books are, relatively, few.

Most writers on travel are remembered as travellers rather than as authors, and the value of their works lies not so much in revealing the personality and literary power of the writer as in successfully describing is journeys and discoveries.

‘No one expects literature in a book travel,’ says Mary Kingsley.

Countless printed pages record the els and discoveries of two centuries.

This chapter can only be within reasonable limits by recognising that the literature of and the written records of travel are not the same thing.

esent purpose is to mention such books only as can claim to literature.

Any general definition would be difficult, y work must be judged by its own merits, and the best was an individuality which refuses to be reduced to Moreover, established repute must be taken into any work which stands as the monument of a great part from purely technical or scientific matter, has iterature.

1, there are two qualifications. In the first place,

CH. VII] William Dampier 241

one who writes about travel should have something of the born

traveller in him, something of the spirit of Tennyson's Ulysses or

Browning's Waring. 'Whatever we do, let us not sit still; there's

time enough for that when we lose the use of our legs.' So writes

a notable traveller, now little read, E. D. Clarke; and, again,

'The joy I feel in the prospect of visiting the countries within the

Arctic is not to be expressed.' Secondly, the author must write

in the same vein, so that the narrative shall itself reflect the spirit

and passion of travel which possesses the writer.

In a travel-book, viewed as literature, accuracy is no merit,

unless the style and character of the work enjoin accuracy. Thus,

in Dampier's Journals or Cook's Narrative or Darwin's Voyage of

the Beagle, since the very nature and purpose of these books

stamp them as faithful records, any flaw in accuracy would be

a literary flaw. But, in reading Borrow's Bible in Spain, one of

the finest travel-books ever written, no one pauses to ask whether

every page depicts actual occurrences exactly as they happened.

For Borrow, catching the very spirit of the picaresque romance,

gives a truer picture of Spain than any accurate description could

offer. He views and depicts the country in the light of his own

sympathetic genius.

In books of discovery, since they are, in some sort, scientific

histories, accuracy is demanded; yet, even in this kind, there are

exceptions—for example, Bruce's Travels in Abyssinia. Here,

the veteran hero, telling his story years after the event, views

through the magnifying haze of memory, illuminated by a pic-

turesque and transparent personal vanity, the fantastic and exotic

melodrama in which he had played a part. It matters little if his

narrative was coloured by his dreams. He has painted for us the

true Abyssinia as no one else could have done.

William Dampier, sailor, logwood-cutter, buccaneer or pirate,

privateer and explorer, may be regarded as the pioneer of modern

travellers. At two-and-twenty, he became under-manager of a

Jamaica estate; but soon wandered away to trade, to logwood-

cutting in Yucatan and to buccaneering. For seven years (1679—

86), he served under various pirate-captains along the Spanish

Main and in the Pacific, and then spent five adventurous year

(1686—91) wandering homewards from California by the E

Indies and the Cape. After publishing narratives of his voy'

he was sent by the admiralty as commander of an ex

pedition to New Holland (Australia). His ship

E. L. XIV. CH. VIII.

242 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 [CH.

'through perfect age' at Ascension on the homeward voyage. Dampier was afterwards tried by court-martial for cruelty to his lieutenant, was found guilty and declared unfit to command a king's ship. However, he soon sailed in command of two privateers to the South sea (1703—7) upon a voyage diversified by mutinies, desertions and disruption. In 1708—11, Dampier served as pilot to the privateer Woodes Rogers.

Dampier's experiences as logwood-cutter and pirate supply the best part of his writings. This common seaman, serving before the mast in a pirate-ship, writes with a curious gentleness and sympathy and in vigorous, dignified, expressive prose. A born wanderer and observer, he describes with quaint and picturesque fidelity seas, coasts, people, plants and animals. His observations on peoples, customs and trade have a distinct historical value.

All the Indians that I have been acquainted with who are under the Spaniards seem to be more melancholy than other Indians that are free; and at these public meetings when they are in the greatest of their jollity, their mirth seems to be rather forced than real. Their songs are very melancholy and doleful, so is their music; but whether it be natural to the Indians to be thus melancholy or the effect of their slavery, I am not certain. But I have always been prone to believe that they are then only condoling their misfortunes, the loss of their country and liberties, while although those that are now living do not know nor remember what it was to be free, yet there seems to be a deep impression in their thoughts of the slavery which the Spaniards have brought them under, increased probably by some traditions of their ancient freedom.

He thus describes a piratical episode in Nicaragua :

The next morning the Spaniards killed one of our tired men. He was a stout old grey-headed man, aged about eighty-four, who had served under Oliver in the time of the Irish Rebellion; after which he was at Jamaica, and had followed privateering ever since. He would not accept of the offer our men made him to tarry ashore, but said he would venture as far as the best of them; and when surrounded by the Spaniards he refused to take quarter, but discharged his gun amongst them, keeping a pistol still charged; so they shot him dead at a distance. His name was Swan. He was a very merry hearty old man, and always used to declare he would never take quarter.

Captain Woodes Rogers, commander of two privateer ships, wrote an admirable account of his expedition (1712). He briefly describes the outward voyage to Juan Fernandez, duly narrates with greater fullness the exciting story of his cruise in the south pacific, the capture of various prizes and of the city of Guayaquil,

the fight with the Manila galleon and her consort. Here and the reader is tempted to discern the hand of his pilot ; for example, in the description of 'humming-birds, not ger than humble-bees, their bills no thicker than a pin,

viI] Anson's Voyage Round the World 243

their legs proportional to their bodies, and their minute feathers

of most beautiful colours.' One passage has a permanent and

singular interest; it describes how they found on the island of

Juan Fernandez

a man cloathed in goat-skins, who seemed wilder than the original owners of

his apparel. His name was Alexander Selkirk, a Scotsman, who... had

lived alone on the island for four years and four months.... He had with

him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock and some powder and bullets,

some tobacco, a knife, a kettle, a bible, with some other books, and his mathematical implements. He diverted himself and provided for his sustenance as

well as he could; but had much ado to bear up against melancholy for the

first eight months, and was sore distressed at being left alone in such a

desolate place. He built himself two huts... thatched with long grass and

lined with goat skins....He... employed himself in reading, praying and singing

psalms, so that he said he was a better Christian during his solitude than he

had ever been before....When his clothes were worn out, he made himself

a coat and cap of goat-skins, which he stitched together with thongs of the

same, cut out with his knife, using a nail by way of a needle or awl....At his

first coming on board, he had so much forgotten his language, for want of

use, that we could scarcely understand him, as he seemed to speak his words

by halves.

In 1740—4, commodore Anson, afterwards lord Anson and

first lord of the admiralty, made his famous voyage round the

world. The account of it was the joint production of Anson

himself and his chaplain Walters. The narrative closely holds

the reader throughout, describing how a squadron of seven vessels

sailed from Spithead for the South sea and Panama, there to join

hands with Vernon's trans-Atlantic expedition; and how, off Tierra

del Fuego, by 'a continual succession of such tempestuous weather as

surprised the oldest and most experienced mariners' it was reduced

to a couple of shattered, half-manned cruisers, and a sloop.'

After long refitting at Juan Fernandez, two ships sailed out—

once more a formidable fighting force. They attacked and burnt

the town of Paita; and, after long watching and waiting, they

captured the Manila galleon carrying a million and a half of

dollars. Finally, Anson reached home in a single treasure-laden

ship.

Thus was this expedition finished, when it had lasted three years and nine

months; after having, by its event, strongly evinced this important truth:

That though prudence, intreplidity and perseverance united are not exempted

from the blows of adverse fortune, yet in a long series of transactions

they usually rise superior to its power, and in the end rarely fall of proving

successful.

The wreck of the 'Wager,' one of Anson's ships, on a desolate

island of southern Chile, produced several narratives. The most

notable of these was written twenty-six years after the event by

16—2

244 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 [CH.

admiral John Byron, nick-named ‘foul-weather Jack,’ who had

sailed as a young officer in the ‘Wager.’ It is a most moving and

well told story of wanderings by land and sea, and possesses a

further literary interest inasmuch as the admiral’s more famous

grandson used his ‘grandad’s narrative’ for the description of

storm and shipwreck in Don Juan. A typical passage may be

given :

I had hitherto steered the boat; but one of our men, sinking under the

fatigue, expired soon after, which obliged me to take the oar in his room and

row against this heart-breaking stream. Whilst I was thus employed, one

of our men, whose name was John Bosman, tho’ hitherto the stoutest man

among us, fell from his seat under the thwarts, complaining that his strength

was quite exhausted for want of food, and that he should die very shortly.

As he lay in this condition, he would every now and then break out in the

most pathetic wishes for some little sustenance; that two or three mouthfuls

might be the means of saving his life. The Captain at this time had a large

piece of boiled seal by him and was the only one that was provided with

anything like a meal: but we were become so hardened against the impres-

sion of others’ sufferings by our own; so familiarised to scenes of this and

every other kind of misery, that the poor man’s dying entrea ties were vain.

I sat next to him when he dropped, and having a few dried shell-fish (about

five or six) in my pocket, put one from time to time in his mouth, which

served only to prolong his pains; from which, however, soon after my little

supply failed, he was released by death. For this and another man … we

made a grave in the sands.

Several voyages of exploration, despatched to the Pacific in

the reign of George III, were described in readable and interesting

narratives by their commanders, John Byron (1764—6), Wallis and .

Carteret (1766—8), James Cook (1768—71, 1772—5, 1776—9)

and George Vancouver (1791—5). To the general reader, there

is some sameness about the maritime part of these narratives,

wherein hardships, dangers and sufferings, the chances of the sea

and losses by disease are quietly treated as matters of course, so

that the story of a voyage is, in great part, almost like a domestic

diary. These narratives become more like travel-books when land

is touched. Carteret wrote an entertaining account of his pro-

ceedings at Madeira, and Wallis gives a more fresh and lively

account of the Society islands, discovered by him, than does his

more famous successor Cook.

The pre-eminent interest of Cook’s first voyage, the greatest

among English voyages of discovery, gives distinction to his

narrative; and it seems almost impertinent to criticise as literature

the book in which a great man plainly and modestly sets forth

a great achievement. Yet, the account which has been most often

published was compiled by Hawkesworth from the journals of

viI] Navigators of the Eighteenth Century 245

Cook and of Joseph Banks, who accompanied the expedition as botanist; and most people will probably find this compilation more readable than Cook's own narrative, and will also find Banks's journal more interesting than Cook's account. Cook's narrative is the work of a navigator: Banks's journal is the work of an alert scientific mind, eagerly on the watch to observe and to describe. Cook writes thus about the most exciting and hazardous incident of the voyage:

Our change of situation was now visible in every countenance, for it was most sensibly felt in every breast: we had been little less than three months entangled among shoals and rocks, that every moment threatened us with destruction; frequently passing our nights at anchor within hearing of the surge that broke over them; sometimes driving towards them even while our anchors were out, and knowing that if by any accident, to which an almost continuous tempest exposed us, they should not hold, we must in a few minutes inevitably perish. But now, after having sailed no less than 360 leagues, without once having a man out of the chains heaving the lead even for a minute, which perhaps never happened to any other vessel, we found ourselves in an open sea, with deep water; and enjoyed a flow of spirits which was equally owing to our late dangers and our present security: yet the very waves, which by their swell convinced us that we had no rocks or shoals to fear, convinced us also that we could not safely put the same confidence in our vessel as before she had struck.

Cook shows a more practised hand in the livelier and easier narrative of his second voyage Towards the South Pole and round the World; also, in the narrative of his third voyage To the Pacific Ocean and for exploring the Northern Hemisphere—a narrative cut short by the death of the great navigator at the hands of savages in the Sandwich islands.

George Vancouver, who had sailed under Cook, Rodney and Gardner, was sent upon a voyage of discovery to the north Pacific ocean (1791—5). His narrative, which was almost completed when he died in 1798, was published by his brother. It contains valuable and often picturesque observations on the countries visited and particularly on the Spanish settlements in California. He describes with warm sympathy the paternal relations between the Spanish missionaries and their Indian neophytes.

The literature of maritime discovery is continued in Arctic and Antarctic voyages accomplished and related by Franklin, Parry, John Ross, James Ross and McClintock. These narratives, carefully written and, for the most part, splendidly illustrated, have the attraction of resource, daring, endurance and brilliant achievement in strange and novel surroundings. The later records of Arctic and Antarctic exploration belong rather to the history of geography;

246 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 [CH.

but mention must be made of captain Robert Falcon Scott's

Journal (1913), a narrative in which the last entry was made by

the dying hand of the writer as he sank under the buffets of storm

and frost on his return journey from the south pole.

The records of land travel in the eighteenth century contain,

generally, a less interesting story and less readable matter than

the maritime records. The object of the writers is, usually, to

impart information and observations laboriously collected. Sterne's

Sentimental Journey is a notable exception, which stands apart.

The prevailing dislike of mountains, of uncultivated lands and

of Gothic buildings was unfavourable to the lighter and more

sympathetic spirit of travel.

Pennant's books of travel in Great Britain were much read

in his day. They are still valuable as antiquarian records and

collections of observations; but they are rather in the nature

of gazetteers, and the reader opens them for information, not

for recreation. The characteristic travel-book of the eighteenth

century is a ponderous quarto or folio, handsomely printed, often

beautifully illustrated, and conveying much leisurely information

concerning monuments, custonis and costumes; but, as a rule, these

productions have about them little of the personal spirit, little of the

lighter literary touch which give vitality to travel-books. Richard

Pococke, who was afterwards bishop of Ossory and was thence

translated to Meath, was an eager student and observer, possessing

something of the traveller's spirit; and his work, preserved in noble

illustrated folios, is an interesting and valuable record. But his

object was rather to give a description of Egypt and of western

Asia than to entertain himself and his readers by recounting his

experiences.

On the other hand, James Bruce, laird of Kinnaird, was a born

traveller, endowed particularly with qualifications for eastern travel

—an imposing stature and presence, great physical strength and

athletic skill, strong self-confidence, a stubborn imperious deter-

mination, and a peculiar gift for mastering languages. Sir Richard

Burton, a kindred spirit, repeatedly mentions ‘the Lord of Geesh’

with admiration. After long travel in Barbary and Syria, Bruce

left Egypt in 1769 for Abyssinia, where he spent two years. He

takes an engaging and open delight in his own prowess and

reputation, in his feats of horsemanship and of shooting, in his

appointment as one of the royal chamberlains and as governor

of Geesh, in the king's gift ‘a chain of 184 links, each link weighing

3 dwt. of fine gold,’ in his friendship with the princess Ozoro

viI] Land Travel in the Eighteenth Century 247

Esther, the most beautiful woman in Abyssinia, who once addressed

him thus: 'Sit down there, Yagoube ; God has exalted you above

all in this country, when he has put it in your power, though but

a stranger, to confer charity upon the king of it.' His vivid account

of the hazardous overland journey from Abyssinia to Egypt is

equal to the rest of the record. Of his departure, he writes :

Neither shall I take up the reader's time with a long narrative of leave-

taking or what took place between me and those illustrious personages with

whom I had lived so long in the most perfect and cordial friendship. Men of

little and curious minds would perhaps think I was composing a panegyric

upon myself, from which therefore I most willingly refrain.

The boast is not an empty one, for a British diplomatist, Henry

Salt, visiting Abyssinia forty years later, speaks of Bruce's enduring

renown in that country and of the extraordinary impression made

upon the people by his noble personality.

A contemporary of Bruce, more famous in his day but of a less

lasting fame, E. D. Clarke, was enabled to satisfy his passion

for travel by a succession of tutorships. He had all the high

spirit and zest of a true traveller, but these qualities appear

not so much in his eleven volumes of Travels in Europe, Asia

and Africa, as in his diaries and letters quoted in the biography

of Clarke by his college friend bishop Otter. Clarke's eager

curiosity leads him into multifarious and exciting risks, now

viewing an eruption of Vesuvius, now surreptitiously visiting

the sultan's seraglio in Stamboul, now pushing his way, in an

English uniform, through a fanatical Neapolitan crowd to view

the miracle of saint Januarius. At Brixen 'Saw a cabinet of

Natural History, extensive and full of trash.' At Vienna,

beheld 'the best clown I ever saw.'

Clarke, through his presence at Alexandria in 1801 when the

French army evacuated Egypt, did much to obtain for England

the Egyptian antiquities and documents collected by the French

savants. To the university of Cambridge, he made valuable gifts.

In 1808, he became the first professor of mineralogy, and, nine

years later, he was appointed university librarian. He sold his

collection of manuscripts to the Bodleian for £1000, and cleared

nearly £7000 by the publication of his travels.

Clarke's friend and correspondent, J. L. Burckhardt, a Swiss

by birth, but by adoption a Cambridge man and, in some sort, an

Englishman, won an enduring reputation by his extensive travels

in Asia and Africa and by his faithful descriptions of oriental life.

'During all my journeys in the East,' he writes, 'I never enjoyed

248 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 [CH.

such perfect ease as at Mecca.’ And Belzoni, the explorer of the

pyramids, writes, ‘What shall I say of the late Sheik Burckhardt,

who was so well acquainted with the language and manners of

these people that none of them suspected him to be a European.’

Meantime, the farthest east found an observer in Sir John Barrow,

who accompanied Lord Macartney in the first British embassy to

China in 1792. But the reader should turn, not to Barrow’s

formidable quarto volumes Travels in China and A Voyage to

Cochin-China, but to his Auto-biographical Memoir, published

half-a-century later. He thus describes the ambassador’s entry

into Pekin :

A multitude of moveable workshops of tinkers and barbers, of cobblers

and blacksmiths, together with tents and booths, where tea and rice and

fruit with various kinds of eatables were to be sold, had contracted the street,

spacious as it was, to a narrow road in the middle, scarcely wide enough to

allow two little carts to pass each other: yet within this narrow space were

processions bearing umbrellas, flags and painted lanterns—trains carrying

corpses to their graves with lamentable cries—others with squeaking music

conducting brides to their husbands—troops of dromedaries laden with coals

from Tartary—wheelbarrows and handcarts stuffed with vegetables; and if

to these be added numbers of pedlers with their packs, jugglors and conjurers

and fortune-tellers, musicians and comedians, montebanks and quack-doctors

—with all these impediments, so little room was left for the persons of the

embassy that it was nearly three hours before we reached the north-western

gate.

Sir John Barrow was for forty years under-secretary to the

admiralty, and distinguished himself as an enthusiastic supporter,

and, also, as historian, of Arctic exploration. The tale of

oriental travel is continued by Sir John Malcolm, who published

anonymously an account of his second journey to Persia in 1810 as

envoy to the shah from the East India company. He observes

characters and renders eastern tales with much humour and

insight. The delightful stories of Abdullah the peasant and of

Ahmed the cobbler will bear the test of reading aloud.

The ‘romantic revival,’ which transformed poetry and fiction,

made itself gradually felt in the literature of travel also. It is

true that solid and formal records, such as are characteristic of

the eighteenth century, continued to appear down to about 1825.

But narratives of a more natural and easy flow were already

beginning to take their place. Sir Leslie Stephen, in an admirably

humorous piece of criticism (chapter II of The play-ground

of Europe) attributes, in part at least, the modern taste for

mountains and rugged scenery to the influence of Rousseau and

viI] Change of Literary Tone 249

his followers. On the other hand, Byron urges that natural

scenery does not, in itself, furnish an adequate topic for the poet.

I have seen as many mountains as most men and more fleets than the

generality of landsmen, and to my mind a large convoy with a few sail-of-the-

line to conduct them is as noble and poetical a prospect as all that inanimate

nature can produce.

And he applies to poetry Pope's dictum : 'The proper study of

mankind is man.' Byron's own poetical book of travels, Childe

Harold, had borne out this observation. What Byron says of poetry

may be applied to literature generally; and the better travel-books

of the nineteenth century respond to this test. They deal less

with monuments, museums, churches and institutions : they deal

more with men and women in relation to their surroundings.

Sometimes, this human interest lies in the pleasant egotism of the

traveller, sometimes in his observations on those among whom

he moves. The change of tone appears notably, if not actually first,

in works by naturalists, impelled to travel by scientific motives.

Alexander von Humboldt's narrative of travels in tropical South

America, translated into English in 1814–21, deeply influenced

later observers and travellers. In 1825 appeared Waterton's

Wanderings in South America, a most entertaining and viva-

cious record of adventurous and unconventional travel. Charles

Waterton was a Yorkshire squire of an ancient Roman catholic

family, educated at Stonyhurst, a keen sportsman and enthusiastic

naturalist, also a devoted reader of Don Quixote, of the Latin

poets and of English literature. He spent eight years managing

an estate in Guiana, and, afterwards, made four journeys of

observation in the Orinoco region, between 1812 and 1824. His

account of his ride on a crocodile is classical :

It was the first and last time I ever was on a cayman's back. Should it

be asked how I managed to keep my seat, I would answer,—I hunted some

years with Lord Darlington's foxhounds.

But one may open the book on any page to be entertained by

vivid and humorous descriptions. Waterton afterwards turned

his Yorkshire park into a kind of preserve or museum of living

creatures. At the age of eighty-three, he was still climbing the

tallest forest trees and rising daily at 3 a.m.

The war of South American independence and the accom-

panying political revolution produced a number of descriptions of

travels in that continent. Among them, the journal of captain

Basil Hall, of the royal navy, has a deserved reputation. Sir Francis

Head's account of his rides across the Pampa, published in 1826,

250 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 [CH.

gives a vivid, rapid and faithful sketch of Gaucho life and character.

It was received at the time with general incredulity, which, in itself,

is sufficient proof of widespread interest. But, among narratives

of South American travel Darwin’s account of the voyage of the

‘Beagle’ is pre-eminent, not only by virtue of its place in the

history of science, but, also, by virtue of its qualities as a

picturesque and readable record of travel.

In 1848, nine years after the publication of Darwin’s first work,

Alfred Russel Wallace sailed to Brazil, where he spent four years

in the scientific exploration of the Amazonian region. His book

fully justifies its frequent reimpressions as a record of travel,

apart from its scientific value. The ship in which Wallace was

returning home caught fire at sea. Her people took to the boats

and were picked up by a passing vessel. Wallace’s collections were

all lost. The event is admirably described by Wallace himself.

Yet, more interesting and better written than his Amazonian

narrative is his work on the Malay archipelago (1869), an account

of eight years of residence and travel in the East Indies—straight-

forward, unaffected and entertaining.

About the middle of the nineteenth century, readable books of

travel multiply with increasing facilities for travel. First among

them should be mentioned a work designed for the use of travellers,

Richard Ford’s Handbook for travellers in Spain (1845). By

intimate association with Spaniards and by travel on horseback

over their mountains and plains, Ford had obtained a singularly

close and sympathetic insight into the ways of the people, besides

an intimate knowledge of their country. Sitting in an armchair at

home, one may enjoy travel in Spain and intercourse with Spaniards

by turning the pages anywhere. The constant allusions to the

episodes of the Peninsular war—which was recent history at that

time—add greatly to the interest of the book; but its principal

charm lies in Ford’s vein of easy conversational comment and

anecdote, illustrated by constant quotation of Spanish proverbial

sayings and local idioms. Ford’s work gains a certain piquancy

from the tinge of satire which pervades it. Although funda-

mentally full of intimate sympathy for Spain and for Spaniards,

nevertheless he writes with a certain assumption of insularity,

from the slightly fastidious standpoint of an English gentleman

—an attitude which is in pleasant contrast with his familiar

knowledge of the jests and idioms of street-corner and tavern.

A contemporary book, The Bible in Spain (1843)¹, by Ford’s friend

1 See, ante, chap. III.

VII] Spain. Eothen 251

Borrow, a work of extraordinary freshness, possessing a singular indescribable quality of its own, is, in some sort, complementary to Ford's work. Borrow writes as a wanderer, as the friend and companion of gypsies, vagabonds and thieves. The two writers together supply a picture of Spain such as can scarcely be found in Spanish literature outside the pages of Don Quixote. They make the reader feel that, in a sense, the Pyrenees are the boundary of Europe, that Spain is, as it were, a detached fragment of the orient, Christian, but not wholly European—a country whose attraction lies in its contrast of rocky wilderness and teeming garden, of natural wealth and contented poverty, in the simplicity and dignity of its life, in the primitive brutality or beauty of its impulses, in its pleasant oriental courtesies.

It is, therefore, a natural transition to books on the east, books which are not so much narratives of discovery as impressions of a world different from ours and only half revealed. In 1844 appeared two Eastern narratives, The Crescent and the Cross by Eliot Warburton, an Irish barrister, and Eothen by his college friend Kinglake, of the English bar, afterwards historian of the Crimean war. Warburton's spirited and picturesque narrative had the greater success at the time. The tenth impression appeared within nine years, just after the author's premature death; for Warburton perished in the 'Amazon,' burnt at sea in 1852 on the way to the West Indies. But Warburton's book, with its slightly melodramatic and self-conscious tone, cannot be compared with the fine literary and scholarly quality of Eothen, which still holds its ground as a classic, and is, perhaps, the best book of travel in the English language. Kinglake rode from Belgrade to Constantinople, thence to Smyrna, by sea to Cyprus and Beyrout, whence he rode through Palestine and across the desert to Cairo—where he vividly describes the plague—then from Cairo to Damascus and Anatolia. From his saddle, he looks about him with something of that aristocratic aloofness which has been already noticed in Richard Ford, but, also, with something of the same scholarly and wellbred insight and sympathy. He carries with him through the desert a trace of the atmosphere of Eton, Trinity, Lincoln's inn and the hunting-field The terms on which the eastern and Latin churches live at Jerusalem remind him of 'the peculiar relations subsisting at Cambridge between town and gown.' He travelled at ease, accompanied by a little cavalcade—servant, interpreter, guide, escort. At every halt, his baggage is unstrapped and his tent is set out 'with books and maps and

252 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 [CH.

fragrant tea.' 'A speck in the broad tracts of Asia remained still

impressed with the mark of patent portmanteaus and the heels of

London boots.' The most famous passage in Eothen is the

imaginary conversation between a pasha and an English traveller.

But some will prefer the fourth chapter, where, full of Homeric

memories, Kinglake wanders through the Troad, and recalls his

debt to his mother: 'She could teach him in earliest childhood

no less than this, to find a home in his saddle, and to love old

Homer, and all that old Homer sung.' Throughout the whole book

one travels in good company.

The same is true of The Monasteries of the Levant by Robert

Curzon, afterwards lord Zouche. Between 1834 and 1837, Curzon

visited Egypt, Syria, Albania and mount Athos, in order to examine

and collect ancient manuscripts. A dozen years later, sitting among

these books, he entertained his solitary evenings in an English

country house by writing

some account of the most curious of these MSS and the places in which they

were found, as well as some of the adventures which I encountered in the

pursuit of my venerable game.

The result was a charming flow of reminiscence, the expression

of an engaging personality. His account of Egypt under Mehemet

Ali has distinct historical value; and, in chapter XVI, he describes,

as an eye-witness, the shocking scene of confusion, panic and death

which took place in the church of the Holy Sepulchre on the

occasion when Ibrahim pasha was present at the Easter ceremony

of the holy fire. In a pleasanter and lighter vein, Curzon relates

with a certain quaint simplicity his odd experiences in remote

monasteries.

But Sir Richard Burton stands first among eastern travellers.

A man of cosmopolitan education and tastes, soldier, linguist,

oriental scholar, he has recorded the strenuous activities of his

crowded life in many volumes recounting travels in Asia, Africa

and South America. In 1853, Burton, disguised as an Afghan

physician and assuming the name Mirza Abdullah, made the

pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, sharing all the experiences of

his Moslem companions. His record of these experiences may

be best described in the words of another oriental scholar,

Stanley Lane Poole:

The pilgrimage to the Holy Cities of Islam records the most famous

adventure of one of the boldest explorers of the century :-its vivid descrip-

tions, its pungent uncompromising style, its intense personal note distinguish

it broadly from the common run of books of travel; and the picture it gives

of Arab life and manners, the insight it reveals in Semitic ideas give it a

VII] The East 253

permanent value as a national record, as true today as half a century ago,

and as true then as a thousand years before. Dashed off in Burton’s rapid

impulsive way, the book is the strangest compound of Oriental learning,

a grim sardonic humour, and an insobriety of opinion expressed in the writer’s

vigorous vernacular.

A more quiet and leisurely, but equally intimate picture, of

eastern life is found in A year’s journey through Central and

Eastern Arabia in 1862—3 by William Gifford Palgrave, who, first

as an officer in the Indian army and, afterwards, as a Jesuit

missionary priest, had won so close an intimacy with eastern

ways and tongues that he was able to live among the Wahabees of

Arabia in the character of a Syrian doctor, in order to investigate

the possibility of Christian propaganda in that region. His book,

which bears no trace of this missionary purpose, is a pleasant

picture of daily life and of intercourse with his Arab neighbours.

Palgrave’s varied career finally led him into the British diplomatic

service.

An eastern travel-book of equal interest though of quite a

different stamp is A Popular account of discoveries at Nineveh

(1851) by Austen Henry Layard, who, also, was a restlessly ener-

getic eastern wanderer of cosmopolitan tastes and habits. More

picturesque, even, than the description of the finding of the great

sculptured man-lion is the account of the removal of the colossal

man-bull by a crowd of yelling Arab workmen ‘half-frantic with

excitement.’ In his old age, after a varied diplomatic and parlia-

mentary career, Sir Henry Layard wrote a charming account of

Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia. Among

literary works of eastern travel, William Hepworth Dixon’s two

works on Palestine and on Cyprus also claim mention.

The exploration of Africa during the nineteenth century

produced a multitude of volumes, recording much heroic effort

and achievement. David Livingstone must come first. His two

books contain the plain straightforward story of a strenuous

many-sided life entirely devoted to missionary work and scientific

observation in south Africa. Their pages do not much lend

themselves to telling quotation: they are clear, well written

records, recalling, in a manner, the maritime diaries or narratives

of the later eighteenth century. And, in general, this is true

of other works concerning African travel. Most of them are more

notable for what they relate than for their manner of relating it.

Burton’s The Lake Regions of Central Africa, expresses the

virile and aggressive personality of that untiring traveller. Speke’s

Journal of the discovery of the source of the Nile, a fine record of

254 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 [CH.

exploration, is, perhaps, best in a literary sense where he describes

the court of 'Mtesa, king of Uganda:

I was now requested to shoot the four cows as quickly as possible. I bor-

rowed the revolving pistol I had given him and shot all four in a second of

time.... The king now loaded one of the carbines I had given him with his

own hands, and giving it full cock to a page, told him to go out and shoot

a man in the outer court; which was no sooner accomplished than the little

urchin returned to announce his success with a look of glee such as one would

see in the face of a boy who had robbed a bird's nest, caught a trout, or done

any other boyish trick. The king said to him, 'And did you do it well?'

'Oh yes, capitally.' He spoke the truth, no doubt, for he dared not have

trifled with the king; but the affair created hardly any interest.

Travel in tropical west Africa is a lurid tale of barbaric negro

states, of slave-hunting and human sacrifice, of monstrous animals

and pestiferous swamps, of mysterious rivers and dangerous forests,

of trading and carousing in the midst of pestilence and death, of

explorers devoting health and life to their zeal for observation and

for science. Among those whose lives were sacrificed to their

passion for west African travel there are two whose literary power

raises their books above the rest. These are W. Winwood Reade

and Mary Kingsley. Reade, a nephew of the novelist, was himself

a man of literary power and promise who gave his fortune and life

to west Africa. His African Sketch-book, a charming record

of three journeys, appeared in 1873. Not long after its publication,

its writer died from the effects of his share in the Ashantee

campaign. Mary Kingsley, whose father and two uncles were all

notable voyagers and authors, travelled for scientific observation.

In 1900 she died at Simon's Town of enteric fever, caught in

tending Boer prisoners. Her Travels in West Africa, though

marred in parts by overlaboured humour, is very good at its best:

On first entering the great grim twilight regions of the forest, you hardly see

anything but the vast column-like grey tree stems in their countless thousands

around you, and the sparsely vegetated ground beneath. But day by day, as

you get trained to your surroundings, you see more and more, and a whole

world grows up gradually out of the gloom before your eyes.... Nor indeed

do I recommend African forest life to anyone. Unless you are interested in it

and fall under its charm, it is the most awful life in death imaginable. And

if you do fall under its spell, it takes the colour out of other kinds of living.

One kind of travel, namely Alpine climbing, has produced a

copious modern literature—peculiarly British in character—which

scarcely goes farther back than the middle of the nineteenth

century. Peaks, passes and glaciers, a series of episodes described

by different writers, appeared in 1859. The play-ground of

Europe by Sir Leslie Stephen is marked by a peculiar literary

viI] Travel in Poetry and Romance 255

distinction. Whymper's books on the Alps and on the Andes provide plenty of exciting matter. Alpine writing, including the works of living writers and also the pages of The Alpine Journal, is generally of good literary quality, being largely the work of accomplished men whose recreation is Alpine climbing.

The growth of the British oversea dominions has produced many books of travel. Conspicuous among them are Sir Charles Dilke's two books Greater Britain (1868) and Problems of Greater Britain (1890) which contain the observations of two journeys in America and the Antipodes. They are notable both for their lucid, easy mode of expression, and still more for their political insight and clear perception of immediate difficulties and of future possibilities—possibilities which have since, in great part, been realised.

Only actual books of travel have here been mentioned. It would pass the scope of this chapter to do more than hint at the influence of these books and of personal travelling reminiscences upon English poetry and prose fiction. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, Michael Scott's Tom Cringle's Log, Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho!, Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island, are typical examples, and the list might be endlessly extended. Every poet of the nineteenth century, from Wordsworth to Tennyson and Browning, has left upon his pages some impression of his travels. From Fielding to Stevenson one may dip into the novelists almost at random to find sketches of travel. The first chapter of Guy Mannering is a vivid picture of a Scottish journey. Tom Jones and Humphrey Clinker take us along the country roads of England. Vanity Fair gives a picture of continental travel before the days of railways: Pickwick is fresh with the more homely humours of the English roadside and coaching inn. Upon another plane, Charles Lever's wanderings inspire his pen. Later literature abounds with smaller books of the same family—fictitious or half-fictitious stories of trips on foot or bicycle, in canoe or caravan, at home and abroad.

One other reflection occurs. Although the literature of travel is not the highest kind, and, indeed, cannot be called a distinct branch, of literature, yet a history of English literature rightly assigns a space apart to such books, because this kind of writing, perhaps more than any other, both expresses and influences national predilections and national character. In view of the

256 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 [CH. VII

magnificent achievements and splendid records of other nations who have preceded or accompanied the British in the fields of travel and discovery, it would be most inappropriate to attempt any kind of national comparison. But books of travel and books inspired by travel have, probably, been more read in Great Britain than any other books except novels. The educational value of pleasant travel-books is great. They have provided the substance of a thousand books for boys; and thus, both directly and indirectly, have guided and fired the inclinations of many generations of boys. And every reader, whether boy or man, finds in his favourite books of travel some image of himself and some hint towards moulding himself.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LITERATURE OF SCIENCE

A. Physics and Mathematics

The brilliant achievements of British mathematicians, astronomers and physicists under the influence of Isaac Newton were followed by a long period of comparative inactivity. This was largely due to the fact that, during a considerable part of the eighteenth century, members of the British school were, more or less, out of touch with their continental contemporaries. A free exchange of views is essential to vigour and, the more varied the outlook and training of those concerned, the more fruitful is the intercourse. The effect of this isolation, moreover, was intensified by the manner in which English writers strove in their demonstrations to follow Newtonian forms. If Newton, in his Principia, confined himself to geometrical proofs, it was because their validity was unimpeachable ; and, since his results were novel, he did not wish the discussion as to their truth to turn on the methods used to demonstrate them. But his followers, long after the principles of the calculus had been accepted, continued to employ geometrical proofs, whenever it was possible, even when these did not offer the simplest and most direct way of arriving at the result.

In short, we may say that, in the course of English mathematical science, the last seventy years of the eighteenth century form a sort of isolated backwater; for this reason, it is unnecessary here to describe in detail the work of the writers of this period. We must not, however, fall into the error of thinking that, amongst them, there were no men of ability. The investigations of Colin Maclaurin, of Edinburgh, on attractions, are excellent; and his treatise on fluxions is, perhaps, the best exposition of that method of analysis. We may also refer to the work of Thomas Simpson, of London, on the figure of the earth, tides and various astronomical problems; of John Michell, of Cambridge, who determined the law of force between magnetic poles, invented the torsion

E. L. XIV. CH. VIII. 17

258 The Literature of Science [CH.

balance and devised the plan of determining the density of the

earth carried out by Cavendish in 1798; of Henry Cavendish1,

who discovered the law of attraction in static electricity, introduced

the ideas of electrostatic capacity and specific inductive capacity

and determined the density of the earth by his wellknown

experiments; and of Joseph Priestley1, who also discovered, in-

dependently of others, the law of attraction in electrostatics and

the existence of oxygen; while, in observational astronomy, we

need only refer to the great achievements of James Bradley and

(Sir) William Herschel. In applications of science, this period

and the early years of the nineteenth century were notable for the

development of the steam-engine. Somewhat earlier, Thomas

Savery and Thomas Newcomen had done much to bring it into

practical use; but modern forms may be said to date from the

improvements introduced by James Watt, Richard Trevithick and

Henry Bell.

With the nineteenth century, a new era in the history of

mathematics and theoretical physics in Great Britain opened.

We shall deal here only with its main features, and, so far as

possible, shall avoid technical details. Unfortunately, limits of

space forbid the introduction of those biographical touches which

would have added to the human interest of the story we have

to tell.

The first thirty or thirty-five years of this period were largely

occupied with work preparatory to the outburst of activity that

characterised the Victorian renascence. Early in the nineteenth

century, the use of analytical methods was introduced in the

Cambridge mathematical curriculum. The advocacy of this change,

originated by Robert Woodhouse, was warmly taken up by George

Peacock, Charles Babbage, (Sir) John Herschel, William Whewell

and (Sir) George Airy. These men worked under the influence of

the great French school, of which Lagrange and Laplace are the

most prominent members, and were hardly affected by their con-

temporaries, such as Gauss, Abel and Jacobi, who were then creating

new branches of pure mathematics. In England, at the beginning

of the century, Cambridge was recognised as the principal mathe-

matical school: all the reformers were residents there, and they

directed their efforts mainly to the introduction of a free use

of analysis in the university course of study. They were

successful; and, by 1830, the fluxional and geometrical methods

of the eighteenth century had fallen into disuse. The leadership

1 See section 2 of the present chapter.