There are few legal allusions in his novels, fewer in proportion than in Shakespeare’s plays, but an ingenious travesty of the English use of legal fictions may be found in the Voyage of Captain Popanilla, a satire on the English constitution and government. Popanilla, who is to be tried for treason, is, to his astonishment, indicted for killing a camelopard.
That historical interest he did feel deeply. One might almost say of him that he was a Christian because he was a Jew, for Christianity was to him the proper development of the ancient religion of Israel. “The Jews,” he observes in the Life of Lord George Bentinck, “represent the Semitic principle, all that is most spiritual in our nature.... It is deplorable that several millions of Jews still persist in believing only a part of their religion.”
Though it has been maintained that in the Dark and Middle Ages a considerable number of Gentiles found their way into Jewish communities and became Judaised.
The high average of intellectual power among the Jews need not be attributed to purity of race; it is sufficiently explained by their history. Nor is it clear that where two of the more advanced races are mixed by intermarriage, the product is inferior to either of the parent stocks. On the contrary, such a mixture, e.g. of Teutonic and Slavonic blood, or of Celtic and Teutonic, gives a result at least equal in capacity to either of the pure-blooded races which have been so commingled.
He had an intellectual arrogance, which made him dislike what may be called the Radical conception of human equality. In the Life of Lord George Bentinck he remarks, “The Jews are a living and the most striking evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine of modern times, the natural equality of man.... All the tendencies of the Jewish race are conservative. Their bias is to religion, property, and natural aristocracy.”
On one occasion he went so far as to deny that he had asked Peel for office, relying on the fact that the letter which contained the request was marked “private,” so that Peel could not use it to disprove his statement (Letters of Sir Robert Peel, by C. S. Parker, vol. ii. p. 486; vol. iii. pp. 347, 348).
See Sir S. Northcote’s report of a conversation with Disraeli in his last years (Life of Sir Stafford Northcote, vol. ii.).
In the Life of Lord George Bentinck (written shortly after Peel’s death), Disraeli, after dilating upon the loyalty which the Tory aristocracy had displayed towards Peel, observes, “An aristocracy hesitates before it yields its confidence, but it never does so grudgingly.... In political connections the social feeling mingles with the principle of honour which governs gentlemen.... Such a following is usually cordial and faithful. An aristocracy is rather apt to exaggerate the qualities and magnify the importance of a plebeian leader.”
When he did set himself to examine the condition of the people, the diagnosis, if not always correct, was always suggestive, e.g. the account of the manufacturing districts given in Sybil, or the Two Nations.
Οἴῳ πεπνῦσθαι, τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀίσσουσιν (Od. x. 495). Used of Tiresias, in the world of disembodied spirits.
To defend Disraeli by arguing that his policy had not a fair chance because his colleagues did not allow him to carry it through is to admit another error not less grave, for the path he took was one on which no minister ought to have entered unless satisfied that the Cabinet and the country would let him follow it to the end.
A Life of Dean Stanley, in two volumes, begun by Theodore Walrond, continued by Dean Bradley, and completed by Mr. R. E. Prothero, appeared in 1893.
When J. S. Mill was a candidate for Westminster in 1868, Stanley published a letter announcing his support, partly out of personal respect for Mill, partly because it gave him an opportunity of expressing an opinion on the Irish Church question, and of reprobating the charge of atheism which had been brought against Mill.
As I have referred to the American Civil War, it is worth adding that there were no places in England where the varying fortunes of that tremendous struggle were followed with a more intense interest than in Oxford and Cambridge, and none in which so large a proportion of the educated class sympathised with the cause of the North. Mr. Goldwin Smith led the section which took that view, and which included three-fourths of the best talent in Oxford. Among the younger men Green was the most conspicuous for his ardour on behalf of the principles of human equality and freedom. He followed and watched every move in the military game. No Massachusetts Abolitionist welcomed the fall of Vicksburg with a keener joy. He used to say that the whole future of humanity was involved in the triumph of the Federal arms.
An admirable life of Archbishop Tait by his son-in-law, Dr. R. T. Davidson (now Archbishop of Canterbury), and Canon Benham appeared in 1891.
They thought his public action scarcely consistent with the language he had used to Temple in private.
Trollope’s autobiography, published in 1883, is a good specimen of self-portraiture, candid, straightforward, and healthy, and leaves an agreeable impression of the writer. Dr. Richard Garnett has written well of him in the Dictionary of National Biography.
This sketch was written in 1883. A volume of Green’s Letters, with a short connecting biography by Sir Leslie Stephen, was published in 1901. The letters are extremely good reading, the biography faithful and graceful.
At one time, however, he learnt a little geology from his friend Professor Dawkins, perceiving its bearings on history.
Odyss. viii. 274: “And upon the anvil-stand he set the mighty anvil; and he forged the links that could be neither broken nor loosed, so that they should stay firm in their place.”
Lord Justice James said of his colleague that he had only one defect as a judge: “He was too anxious to convince counsel that they were wrong, when he thought their contention unsound, seeming to forget that counsel are paid not to be convinced.”
No biography of Lord Cairns has (so far as I know) appeared—a singular fact, considering the brilliancy of his career, and considering the tendency which now prevails to bestow this kind of honour on many persons of the second or even the third rank. One reason may be that Cairns, great though he was, never won personal popularity even with his own political party or among his contemporaries at the bar, and was to the general public no more than a famous name.
Two Lives of Dr. Fraser have been published, one (in 1887) by the late Judge Hughes, the other, which gives a fuller impression of his personal character, by the Rev. J. W. Diggle (1891).
A clergyman of his diocese had once, under the greatest provocation, knocked down a person who had insulted him, and the bishop wrote him a letter of reproof pointing out (among other things) that, exposed as the Church of England was to much criticism on all hands, her ministers ought to be very careful in their demeanour. The offender replied by saying, “I must regretfully admit that being grossly insulted, and forgetting in the heat of the moment the critical position of the Church of England, I did knock the man down, etc.” Fraser, delighted with this turning of the tables on himself, told me the anecdote with great glee, and invited the clergyman to stay with him not long afterwards.
He was himself aware that this caused displeasure. In his latest Charge, delivered some months before his death, he said: “I am charged, amongst other grievous sins, with that of thinking not unkindly, and speaking not unfavourably, of Dissenters. I don’t profess to love dissent, but I have received innumerable kindnesses from Dissenters. Why should I abuse them? Why should I call them hard names? Remembering how Nonconformity was made—no doubt sometimes by self-will and pride and prejudice and ignorance, but far more often by the Church’s supineness, neglect, and intolerance in days long since gone by, of which we have not yet paid the full penalty—though, as I have said, I love not the thing, I cannot speak harshly of it.”
That a defence was needed may seem strange to those who do not know England.
A Life of Lord Iddesleigh, written by Mr. Andrew Lang, presents Northcote’s character and career with fairness and discrimination.
The Life of Parnell, by Mr. R. Barry O’Brien, has taken rank among the best biographies of the last half-century.
An anecdote was told at the time that when he found himself in the prison yard at Kilmainham, he said, in a sort of soliloquy, “I shall live yet to dance upon those two old men’s graves.”
An excellent Life of Freeman has been written by his friend Mr. W. R. W. Stephens, afterwards Dean of Winchester, whose death while these pages were passing through the press has caused the deepest regret to all who had the opportunity of knowing his literary gifts and his lovable character.
The scholars of Trinity were then (1843) all High Churchmen, and never dined in hall on Fridays. Fourteen years later there was not a single High Churchman among them. Ten or fifteen years afterwards Anglo-Catholic sentiment was again strong. Freeman said that his revulsion against Tractarianism began from a conversation with one of his fellow-scholars, who had remarked that it was a pity there had been a flaw in the consecration of some Swedish bishops in the sixteenth century, for this had imperilled the salvation of all Swedes since that time. He was startled, and began to reconsider his position.
Having had about the same time a brush with George Anthony Denison (Archdeacon of Taunton), and a less friendly passage of arms with James Anthony Froude, he wrote to me in 1870: “I am greater than Cicero, who was smiter of one Antonius. I venture to think that I have whopped the whole Gens Antonia—first Anthony pure and simple, which is Trollope; secondly, James Anthony, whom I believe myself to have smitten, as Cnut did Eadric swiðe rihtlice, in the matter of St. Hugh; thirdly, George Anthony, with whom I fought again last Tuesday, carrying at our Education Board a resolution in favour of Forster’s bill.” Trollope and he became warm friends. Froude he heartily disliked, not, I think, on any personal grounds, but because he thought Froude indifferent to truth, and was incensed by the defence of Henry VIII.’s crimes.
It may be added that Freeman, much as he detested Henry VIII., used to observe that Henry had a sort of legal conscience, because he always wished his murders to be done by Act of Parliament, and that the earlier and better part of Henry’s reign ought not to be forgotten. He was fond of quoting the euphemism with which an old Oxford professor of ecclesiastical history concluded his account of the sovereign whom, in respect of his relation to the Church of England, it seemed proper to handle gently: “The later years of this great monarch were clouded by domestic troubles.”
A carefully written life of Lord Sherbrooke (in two volumes) by Mr. Patchett Martin was published in 1896. The most interesting part of it is the short fragment of autobiography with which it begins, and which carries the story down to Lowe’s arrival in Australia.
In his autobiography he writes, “With a quiet temper and a real wish to please, I have been obliged all my life to submit to an amount of unpopularity which I really did not deserve, and to feel myself condemned for what were really physical rather than moral deficiencies.”
There was an anecdote current in the University of Oxford down to my time that when Lowe was examining in the examination which the statutes call “Responsions,” the dons “Little-go,” and the undergraduates “Smalls,” a friend coming in while the viva voce was in progress, asked him how he was getting on. “Excellently,” said Lowe; “five men plucked already, and the sixth very shaky.” Another tale, not likely to have been invented, relates that when he and several members of the then Liberal Ministry were staying in Dublin with the Lord Lieutenant, and had taken an excursion into the Wicklow hills, they found themselves one afternoon obliged to wait for half an hour at a railway station. To pass the time, Lowe forthwith engaged in a dispute about the charge with the car-drivers who had brought them, a dispute which soon became hot and noisy, to the delight of Lowe, but to the horror of the old Lord Chancellor, who was one of the party.
Mr. Gladstone said to me in 1897 that the extension of the suffrage had, in his judgment, improved the quality of legislation, making it more regardful of the interests of the body of the people, but had not improved the quality of the House of Commons.
Sir H. S. Maine’s Quarterly Review articles, published in a volume under the title of Popular Government, come nearest to being a literary presentation of the case against democracy, but they are, with all their ingenuity and grace of style, so provokingly vague and loosely expressed that there can seldom be found in them a proposition with which one can agree, or from which one can differ. E. de Laveleye’s well-known book is not much more substantial, but instruction may (as respects France) be found in the late Edmond Schérer’s De la Démocratie, and (as respects England and the United States) in M. Ostrogorski’s recent book, Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties.
No life of Robertson Smith has yet been written, but it is hoped that one may be prepared by his intimate friend, Mr. J. Sutherland Black. A portrait of him (by his friend Sir George Reid, late President of the Royal Scottish Academy) hangs in the library of Christ’s College, Cambridge, to which Smith’s collection of Oriental books was presented by his friends, and another has been placed in the Divinity College of the United Free Presbyterian Church at Aberdeen. A memorial window has been set up in the chapel of the University of Aberdeen, where he won his first distinctions. I have to thank my friend Mr. Black for some suggestions he has kindly made after perusing this sketch.
There was an aged Jewish scholar who came now and then to Cambridge in those days, and who, as sometimes happens, disliked other scholars labouring in the same field. He was (so it used to be said) one of the few who knew exactly how the word which we write Jehovah or Iahve ought to be pronounced, and it was believed that he had solemnly cursed Wright, Smith, and a third Semitic scholar in the Sacred Name. All three died soon afterwards.
What would have been thought of this in the Middle Ages!
It is hoped that a life of Sidgwick, together with a selection from his letters, may before long be published.
It was his aim to avoid as much as possible technical terms or phrases whose meaning was not plain to the average reader. An anecdote was current that once when, in conducting a university examination, he was perusing the papers of a candidate who had darkened the subject by the use of extreme Hegelian phraseology, he turned to his co-examiner and said, “I can see that this is nonsense, but is it the right kind of nonsense?”
Since this sketch was written a very interesting Life of Edward Bowen by his nephew (the Hon. and Rev. W. E. Bowen) has appeared. Some of his (too few) essays and a collection of his school-songs are appended to it.
He remarked once that he had so nearly exhausted the battlefields of the past that he must begin to devote himself to the battlefields of the future.
The Tammany leaders had him repeatedly arrested, usually on Sunday mornings (that being the day on which it was least easy to find bail) for alleged criminal libels upon them. These prosecutions, threatened in the hope of intimidating him, never went further.
A Mugwump is in the Algonquin tongue an aged chief or wise man, and the name was meant to ridicule the ex cathedra manner ascribed to the Evening Post.
This library, bought by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, was presented by him to Mr. John Morley, and by the latter to the University of Cambridge.
I owe this quotation to a letter of Sir M. E. Grant Duff’s published soon after Lord Acton’s death.
“Gled” is a kite or hawk. The name was Gladstones till Mr. Gladstone’s father dropped the final s.
One of his most intimate friends has, I think, said that “he never knew what it was to be bored.” Fortunate, indeed, would he have been had this been so; but that one who had watched him long and closely should make the statement shows how gently bores fared at his hands.
I recollect his once remarking on the capacity for boring possessed by a gentleman who had been introduced and had talked for some fifteen minutes to him; but his own manner through the conversation had betrayed no impatience.
Sermons belong to a somewhat different category, else I should have to add the discourses of a few great preachers, such as Robert Hall, J. H. Newman, Phillips Brooks.
Though one of Macaulay’s speeches (that against the exclusion of the Master of the Rolls from the House of Commons) had the rare honour of turning votes.
His physical courage was no less evident than his moral. For two or three years his life was threatened, and policemen were told off to guard him wherever he went. He disliked this protection so much (though the Home Office thought it necessary) that he used to escape from the House of Commons by a little-frequented exit, give the policemen the slip, and stroll home to his residence along the Thames Embankment in the small hours of the morning. Fear was not in his nature.
The late Protestant Episcopal Primate of Ireland said that Disestablishment had proved a blessing to his Church; and this would seem to be now the general view of Irish Protestants.
His abdication of leadership in 1875 was meant to be final, though when the urgency of Eastern affairs had drawn him back into strife, the old ardour revived, and he resumed the place of Prime Minister in 1880. It has been often said that he would have done better to retire from public life in 1880, or in 1885, yet the most striking proofs both of his courage and of his physical energy were given in the latest part of his career.
For instance, he recommended Dr. Stubbs for a bishopric and Sir John Holker for a lord justiceship, knowing both of them to be Tories.
His respect and regard for Mr. Bright were entirely unaffected by the fact that Mr. Bright’s opposition to the Home Rule Bill of 1886 had been the chief cause of its defeat.
Usually over-anxious to vindicate his own consistency, he showed on one occasion a capacity for recognising the humorous side of a position into which he had been brought. In a debate which arose in 1891 frequent references had been made to a former speech in which he had pronounced a highly-coloured panegyric upon the Church of England in Wales, the disestablishment of which he had subsequently become willing to support. He replied, “Many references have been made to a former speech of mine on this subject, and I am not prepared to deny that in that speech, when closely scrutinised, there may appear to be present some element of exaggeration.” The House dissolved in laughter, and no further reference was made to the old speech.
His Oxford contemporary and friend, the late Mr. Milnes Gaskell, told me that when Mr. Gladstone was undergoing his viva voce examination for his degree, the examiner, satisfied with the candidate’s answers on a particular matter, said, “And now, Mr. Gladstone, we will leave that part of the subject.” “No,” replied the examinee, “we will, if you please, not leave it yet.” Whereupon he proceeded to pour forth a further flood of knowledge and disquisition.