LECTURES AND ADDRESSES.




NOW READY,
SERMONS
1BY THE LATE
REV. FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON, M.A.,
INCUMBENT OF TRINITY CHAPEL, BRIGHTON.
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LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
ON
LITERARY AND SOCIAL TOPICS.
BY THE LATE
REV. FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON, M.A.,
OF BRIGHTON.
BOSTON:
TIC(KNOR AND FIELDS.
M DCCC LIX.




RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
THURSTON AND  TORRY, PRINTERS.




TO
WORKING MEN,
AND ESPECIALLY TO THE
WORKING MEN OF BRIGHTON,
THIS VOLUME,
CONTAINING SO MANY OF THEIR FRIEND'S UTTERANCES
IN THEIR BEHALF,
IS CORDIALLY DEDICATED.
I*








CONNTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE..........................~.......*.  ix
Two ADDRESSES:An Address delivered at the Opening of the Working
Men's Institute, on Monday, October 23, 1848..     1
Preface to Second Address................. 48
An Address delivered to the Members of the Working
Man's Institute, at the Town Hall, Brighton, on
Thursday, April 18, 1850, on the Question of the
Introduction of Skeptical Publications into their
Library....................................     52
Two LECTURES ON THE INFLUENCE OF POETRY ON
THE WORKING CLASSES:Delivered before the Members of the Mechanics' Institution, February, 1852.
LECTURE   I................................    95
LECTURE II............................... 145
LECTURE ON WORDSWORTH:Delivered to the Members of the Brighton Athenaeum,
February 10, 1853........................... 209




viii                     CONTENTS.
PAGE
NOTES OF A LECTURE, SPEECHES, &C.Notes of a Lecture delivered at Hurstper-point, in 1851,
to the Members of a Working Man's Reading Room 269
A Speech delivered at the Town Hall, Brighton, April
24, 1849, at a Meeting of the Inhabitants, called by
the Early Closing Association, presided over by the
Bishop of Chichester........................... 277
A Speech delivered at a Meeting of the Brighton District Association for Improving the Dwellings of the
Industrious Classes, held at the Pavilion, Brighton,
November 25, 1852............................  296
A Speech delivered at the Town Hall, Brighton, April
20, 1852, in reply to an Address presented to him by
One Hundred Young Men of his Congregation.... 308
A Speech delivered at the Town Hall, Brighton, November 14, 1850, at a Meeting held for the Purpose
of Addressing the Queen in reference to the Attempt
of the Pope of Rome to parcel England out into Ecclesiastical Dioceses under Cardinal Wiseman....  312




PREFACE.
THIS volume consists of Lectures and Addresses
delivered by the late Rev. Frederick W. Robertson
before the members of the Working Man's Institute, or of the Athenaeum at Brighton, to which
have been added some Speeches delivered on occasions of public interest.
It may be fitting, by way of Preface to these
Addresses, some of which have been published
before in separate forms, to give a brief account
of the circumstances attending their delivery. A
few letters have been added as bearing directly
on the subjects.
The first was the opening address of the Working Man's Institute at Brighton, in 1848. This
Institution mainly owed its origin to the late Mr.
Holtham, who, having always felt a warm interest
in the progress of the working classes, elaborated,
during a severe illness, a plan of a Literary Institute, which was to be governed entirely by the




X                       PREFACE.
working men.  They were to owe no part of their
management to the  patronage or assistance of
their richer neighbours, although they were willing
that such should contribute to the funds of the Institution, and even become honorary members.
The  Committee were very desirous that Mr.
Robertson should open the Institute with an Address, and  accordingly  Mr. Holtham, the President, wrote to him on the subject. In reply he
says:" I do not think I am at all the man that should be selected.
They should have some one of standing and influence in the
town, and I am almost a stranger; and my taking so prominent a position might fairly be construed into assumption.
Again, I am much afraid that my name might do them harm
rather than good. They wish not to be identified at all with
party politics and party religion; and I fear that in the minds
of very many of the more influential inhabitants of the town,
my name being made conspicuous, would be a suspicious circumstance.  It is my conviction that an address from me
would damage their cause.  For though the Institution is
intended to be self-supporting, yet there is no reason why it
should wilfully throw away its chances of assistance from the
richer classes, and I am quite sure that of these very many,
whether reasonably or unreasonably, are prejudiced against
me; and perhaps the professedly religious portion of society
most strongly so. Now I do think this is a point for very serious consideration, and I think it ought to be distinctly suggested to the Committee before I can be in a position to comply
with or decline complying with their request.




PREFACE.                      xi
" Besides this, I believe that they have erred in the estimate
of mental calibre. I wish most earnestly for their own sakes
that they would select a better man."
Subsequently he writes as follows:" Last night I attended the meeting of the Working Man's
Institute, and was very much struck with the genuine, manly,
moral tone of the speakers. I went home with quite elevated
hopes for my country, when I compared the tone with that of
the French clubs. And my whole heart sympathized with
what your feelings must have been in the success of your
brave efforts. Of course people who expect in it a perfect
Utopia will be disappointed, or gratified, by finding it so far a
failure. But the similar institutions of the upper classes have
been, like all human things, checkered with good and evil; a
means of increasing the powers of good men for good, and
those of bad men for bad. You do not expect more than this;
the inevitable result of all powers and privileges added to
humanity. But they must be added, come what may. There
is no other intelligible principle which will not be compelled
in consistency to recognize barbarism as the highest state."
Writing  to  Lady  Henley  at this time, Mr.
Robertson says:" I am anxious to enlist your sympathy in the cause which I
am trying to assist. The case is this. About 1,100 working men
in this town have just organized themselves into an association
which, by a small weekly subscription, enables them to have a
library and reading-room. Their proceedings hitherto have
been marked by singular judgment and caution, except in one
point, that they have unexpectedly applied to me to give them
an opening address.




xii                     PREFACE.
"A large number of these are intelligent Chartists, and
there is sonic misgiving in a few minds as to what will be the
result of this movement, and some suspicion of its being only
a political engine. The address on Monday is therefore expected to contain a proposal for boiling down the Irish landlords and potting them, to support the poor this winter; and
another, more democratic still, for barrelling and salting the
aristocracy and the parsons, for home consumption in the
poor-houses. But I must gravely assure you that this is premature. Nor do I think such a measure would be expedient
yet.
"My reasons for being anxious about this effort are theseit will be made. The working men have as much right to a
library and reading-room as the gentlemen at Folthorp's or
the tradesmen at the Athen mum.  The only question is
whether it shall be met warmly on our parts, or with that
coldness which deepens the suspicion, already rankling in the
lower classes, that their superiors are willing for them to improve so long as they themselves are allowed to have the leading strings. I wish they had not asked me, as it puts me in an
invidious position as a stranger in the town; and I begin to
suspect that my reason for writing this long note was to exculpate myself from the charge of affecting prominence in the
town.
" The selection of books for the library is a matter of very
great importance, as I have become aware, since getting a
little insight into the working of this Institute, of an amount
of bitterness and jealousy, and hatred of things as they are,
which I had not before suspected in its full extent. And
people go on saying,' Peace, peace, when there is no peace!'
The address was delivered and created a great
sensation amongst all classes. It was marked by




PREFACE.                    xiii
extraordinary oratorical power, and evinced a
faculty for addressing a popular assembly greater
even than had been expected.
The original plan of the Working Man's Institute failed; doubtless because it was based on a
selfish policy of class isolation, rather than on the
broad principle of union one with another. Some
of the elements of its weakness may be traced in
the second address which Mr. Robertson delivered
to the members of this body. The result of that
address was a determination by the majority to
construct an association on wiser principles, and
during the progress of this work,- the success of
which was very much  owing to  the zeal and
energy of the Secretary and the Committee, Mr.
Robertson was ever ready with wise counsel and
efficient help.  His heart was deeply with  the
working men, and plans and efforts for their elevation occupied much of his thought. The following extracts from letters written at this period
will show that he gave them  no half-hearted or
formal assistance.
"I will pledge myself, if your society is formed, and contains in it the elements of vitality, to give either an opening
address, or a lecture before the close of this year.
"But it seems to me a matter of great importance that
public attention should not be ostentatiously called again so
soon to your efforts at self-restoration, so long as they are only
efforts. If the Institute is needed, really craved and earnestly
2




xiv                      PREFACE.
desired by the working men, they will enroll themselves in
sufficient numbers to ensure its existence without the excitement of an address. If they would not without this, then I
am  sure that to attempt to secure their adhesion by such
means would be very dangerous.
"On the former occasion nearly 700, in a fit of transient
enthusiasm, joined themselves, I believe, and (out of about
1,300) withdrew directly after.  If artificial means are necessary to preserve its existence, then the society will soon die a
natural death; and we should be again covered with the
shame of an abortive attempt.  The cause of the working men
cannot afford this. Better fail silently than make another
public confession of incapacity.
"Now an address at present would draw the attention of
the town. It would perhaps induce waverers to join, as all
public excitement does; and it might secure immediate ready
money.  But these are trifles compared with the risk of the
withdrawal of many soon after.  And suppose that enough to
support the society did not join?
"Let me propose therefore: Begin your society as soon
and as quietly as possible; that is, as quietly as is consistent
with that publicity which is necessary to acquaint the working
men with the fact of a new association being in process of formation. If sufficient members do not present themselves, then
the thing quietly dies away till a better opportunity; and be
sure that no artificial excitement could have given it permanence, though it might have caused a premature abortive birth.
"After some months, if the association lives with internal
strength, then we may try external aids.  I, for my part,
pledge myself as I have said. But the great lesson for us all
in these days of puffing advertisements, is to learn to work
silently and truly, and to leave self-advertisement and selfpuffing to people who are on the verge of bankruptcy."




PREFACE.                       xv
The Committee were anxious that Mr. Robertson should be the President of the New  Association, and in answer to their application on this
subject, he writes:" In reply to your letter of this day, I may briefly say that
the idea of my accepting the Presidentship of the Institute is
quite out of the question. I (to not consider myself competent
for such an office, nor am I sure that it would be to the advantage of the society.....    I believe I could assist the
members more truly, at all events more independently, in a
subordinate position. Prominence and power are things for
which I have no taste.
"I am very anxious that there should be no second failure,
but I think that the greatest wisdom  and experience are
needful to prevent it....  The working men have
shown that even a right-minded majority is unable to protect
itself against a turbulent minority, without the introduction
of other elements of society to support them-to support, not
dictate; for I should be very sorry to see a majority of gentlemen on the committee. But they want some, of weight and
wisdom, to fall back upon. And, indeed, this is the only true
democratic principle to my mind-not an oligarchy of the
poorest; but a fusion of ranks, with such weight allowed,
under checks, as is due to superior means of acquiring information.
" What grieves me to the heart is to see distrust in the
minds of working men of those wealthier than themselves;
and nothing is more mischievous or unchristian than to gain
popularity with them by fostering these feelings, and insinuating that the clergy and the religious and the rich are their
enemies, or only espouse their cause for an end.
"I must not accept any high office; I am their friend, but




xvi                    PREFACE.
I want nothing from them-not even influence nor their
praise. If I can do them even a little good, well; but for
their sakes I must not take any thing which could leave on
one of their minds the shadow of a shade of a suspicion of my
motives."
Some months after, very urgent representations
were made to Mr. Robertson as to the benefit the
struggling Institution would receive by his assistance in a Lecture, and he then wrote as follows
to the Secretary:-' In reply to your communication of the 21st, which I only
had last night after an absence from Brighton, I beg to say
that after much consideration, I have come to the conclusion that it is my duty not to refuse the request made to
me.
I am very unfit at present for the excitement of addressing numbers; but knowing that the insufficiency will be
pardoned, and feeling deep interest in the success of the
working men, I shall not allow this to stand in the way.
" I was not aware that the name of the Institution was to be
changed. Is not this virtually acknowledging that the former
attempt was a failure, instead of the society being, as I believe
it is, the old one purified by experience? Not knowing the
reasons for the change, which perhaps are valid, at first sight
I am inclined to regret it. There is much in names, especially when they are associated with recollections which can
be appealed to, and when they adhere to a society through
many shocks and changes. Besides,' Working Man' is a
noble title for any human being; a human being's right title.'Mechanic' is a poor class title, like Agriculturist, Botanist,
Sailor, &c. &c. Besides, it is not true as a designation for




PREFACE.                  xvii
your society; a schoolmaster is not a mechanic, nor a retail
dealer of any kind, yet many such are in the society. Ought
you not, like good soldiers in a great cause, to stand to your
colours? "
That Society is now  working admirably and
efficiently under the name of the Brighton Mechanics' Institute, on principles which Mr. Robertson  considered to  be  more  in  accordance
with sound views of social and political economy.
The " Two Lectures on the Influence of Poetry " were given in fulfilment of the pledge contained in the foregoing extracts from letters; and
their delivery created a great sensation. To those
who never heard Mr. Robertson speak, it may be
interesting to learn that he was gifted with a
voice of wonderful sweetness and power.  So
flexible and harmonious was it, that it gave
expression  to the finest tones of feeling; so
thrilling, that it stirred men to the heart. His
gesture was simple and quiet;-his whole soul
so thoroughly absorbed in his subject that all was
intensely real, natural, and earnest.
The following letter from  the Earl of Carlisle,
on some points referred to in the Lectures on
Poetry, is given, partly for the sake of the criticism  which  it contains, and  partly  because
it leads, naturally, to  one from   Mr. Robert2W




xviii                  PREFACE.
son, which further illustrates his views on poetry:" I would not thank you for your most acceptable present
till I had enjoyed the pleasure of making acquaintance with
its contents. I have recognized in them all the high ability
and the generous and delicate feeling which I could have
expected.
" Upon one or two points of mere taste we may not wholly
agree, but there is no part of what you inculcate with which I
agree more fully than that in which you commend universality
of taste. I have some doubts, for instance, about this,'the
best poetry demands study as severe as mathematics require.'
"I take, what appear to me to be the highest of human
compositions, the Iliad and Macbeth, and I think they both
are eminently intelligible without pain or effort. Perhaps I
would give up Hamlet to you-not Othello.' I think you rate Dr. Johnson's poetical powers too low.
"' Rest undisturbed within thy peaceful shrine,
Till angels wake thee with a note like thine.'
"I must not, however, indulge in mere prattle. Let me repay your kindness in the same coin, of however inferior value.
I assure you, with all truth, that I look on some things I have
said with more complacency, when I flatter myself that there
is some identity of view between us."
His lordship accompanied his letter by a copy
of his Lectures on Pope, and Mr. Robertson replied" I will not allow a post to pass without thanking you very
gratefully for your kind present, and kinder note, the approval




PREFACE.                       xix
of which I feel to be very invigorating. I was very glad to
find that there was not a syllable of the Lecture on Pope, which
jarred with my estimate of him, which I a little feared. But
the passage quoted from Warton, page 10, and another of your
own, page 16,'Twas not so much the pomp and prodigality
of heaven,' etc. express, though with far more precision, exactly the reasons which I briefly alleged for ranking Pope in
the second order, but, in that order, first.  I congratulated
myself much on perceiving so far this agreement, and in all
the admiration which the lecture contains, I heartily concur.
" The passage, page 105,' Heaven was made for those who
had failed in this world,' struck me very forcibly several years
ago, when I read it in a newspaper, and became a rich vein of
thought in which I often quarried; especially when the sentence was interpreted by the Cross, which was failure, apparently.
" My sentence,' The best poetry demands study as severe
as mathematics require,' is very justly open to criticism; but
more, I think, from the unfinished abruptness of the phraseology than from its real meaning.  The best poetry has a sense
which is level to the apprehension at once; not being obscure
in expression, nor metaphysical or scholastic in thought; but
then any one who had caught this meaning at the first glance
-would be greatly mistaken if he supposed that he had got all,
or nearly all, it meant.
" The dewdrop that glitters on the end of every leaf after a
shower is beautiful even to a child; but I suppose that to a
Herschel, who knows that the lightning itself sleeps within it,
and understands and feels all its mysterious connections with
earth and sky and planets, it is suggestive of feeling of a
far deeper beauty; and the very instances you allege, Macbeth
and the Iliad, would substantiate what I meant, though not
what I awkwardly perhaps seemed to say. Macbeth, all ac



xx                      PREFACE.
tion, swift and hurried in its progress towards denouement, is
intelligible at once. But I spent myself many weeks upon it,
and only began at last to feel that it was simple, because deep.
Some exquisite and fine remarks of Mrs. Jameson on certain
characters in it, and profounder ones of Coleridge on others,
have brought out a meaning that we feel at once was in it, and
not forced upon it. In the sense I meant, I should say Macbeth
could not be understood, especially as a whole, except with
hard study.
" I am very much tempted to accept the challenge of page
28, in the Lecture on Pope.' I would beg any of the detractors
of Pope to furnish me with another couple of lines from any
author whatever, which encloses so much sublimity of meaning
within such compressed limits, and such precise terms.'
"If it were not that the cartel is addressed only to Pope's
detractors, I think I should allege that wonderful couplet of the
Erd Geist in Faust"  So schaff' ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid;'
at least if I might interpret them by Psalm cii. 26, 27.
" In the graceful courtesy with which your lordship acknowledges that there is'some identity of view between us,' I
receive the best and most cheering reward that my little pamphlet has obtained."
The Lecture on Wordsworth was delivered before the members of the Athenseum, and was to
have been followed by a second on the same subject; but Mr. Robertson's health was never afterwards equal to the exertion. This lecture has not
had the advantage of his own corrections. He was
criticized by the South Church Union Chronicle




PREFACE.                      xxi
as teaching in it " Pantheism," and as unfairly
attacking High Churchmen.  To this he replied
in the following letter:"In the columns of the Brighton Guardian, denominated
the' South Church Union Chronicle,' I see some strictures on
certain expressions attributed to me in my Lecture upon
Wordsworth. With the tone of the strictures, excepting one
sentence which I regret,-not for my own sake, for it is untrue, but for the writer's sake, for it is rude and coarse-I can
find no fault. The whole criticism, however, is based on a
misconception.  It proceeds on the assumption that I complained, with blame, that"' High Churchism  regarded with peculiar reverence a
sanctity as connected with certain places, times, acts, and
persons,' &c.
" I did not use those words. That was not my definition of
High Churchism; and to have condemned it as so defined
would have contradicted my argument, for I was actually at
the moment justifying Wordsworth, who is well known to have
entertained such feelings. Had I so spoken, I should have
condemned a feeling of the relative sanctity of such things; a
feeling which I comprehend too entirely to have any inclination to interfere with.
" What I did say was as follows:'The tendency of Pantheism is to see the godlike everywhere, the personal God
nowhere. The tendency of High Churchism is to localize the
personal Deity in certain consecrated places, called churches;
certain consecrated times, called Sabbaths, fast days, and so
forth; certain consecrated acts, sacramental and quasi-sacramental; certain consecrated persons, called priests.'
" I endeavoured to show that the tendency is not necessarily
the error; and that there are High Churchmen, like Words



xxii                   PREFACE.
worth, who recognize in such places, persons, and acts, a
sanctity only relative and not intrinsic,-relative to the worshippers, without localizing or limiting Deity in or to the acts,
times, or places; Pantheistic and High Church tendencies,
each false alone, balancing each other in the particular case
of such men.
" I have no intention of entering into controversy on this
point; and I should, according to my hitherto invariable
practice, have left both the misrepresentation and the criticism unnoticed, were it not that the words, as they stand, if
used by me, would have evidenced an unworthy desire of
turning aside from my subject to pander to the passions of my
audience, and seeking a miserable popularity by an attempt
to feed that theological rancour which is the most detestable
phase of the religion of the day.
" I do not merely say that I was not guilty of this paltry
work. I say it is simply impossible to me. To affirm, whatever may be taught by our savage polemics, whether Tractarian or Evangelical, that the new commandment is NOT this-'that ye hate one another'-and that discipleship to Christ is
proved more by the intensity of love for good than by the
vehemence of bitterness against error, is with me a desire too
deep, too perpetual, and too unsatisfied, to have allowed the
possibility of my joining, even for one moment, in the cowardly
cry with which the terrors and the passions of the half-informed
are lashed by platform rhetoric into hatred of High Churchmen."
And, as further elucidating his opinions on these
subjects, the following extract from  a letter which
he wrote about this time will be of interest:
"I gratefully accept your hint about the definition of High
Churchmanship. I will modify what I said, to prevent mis



PREFACE.                     xxiii
understanding.  At the same time, as High Churchmanship,
in the sense in which I was then speaking, is in my view an
error, I must represent it in its most developed, not in its
modified form, and as the exact opposite of Pantheism. All
grand truth is the statement of two opposites, not a via media
between them, nor either of them alone. I conceive Wordsworth to have held both; the Personality of the Eternal
Being, and also his diffusion through space. Now I cannot
conceal my conviction that it is the vice of High Churchism
in its tendency, to exaggerate the former of these, by localizing
Deity in acts, places, &c. It is the vice of Pantheism to hold
the latter alone.
" When a High Churchman fully recognizes the latter, as
Wordsworth did, I care little for any trifling exaggerations of
the former, and I will always fight for him and maintain that
his High Churchism has no radical error in it, even though
his expressions may to my mind seem to predicate locality of
Him much more than I should like to do it. But when he
represents Personality as a limitation to Time, Space, Acts,
&c., instead of recognizing it in three essential points, all
metaphysical and supersensual, viz: Consciousness, Will,
Character, then I must earnestly and firmly oppose Iigh
Churchism, and say that its tendency is to localize; and I
must quote anxiously those texts which, taken alone, have a
Pantheistic sound.'Howbeit, the Most High dwelleth not in
temples made with hands. Heaven is my throne; Earth is
my footstool; what house will ye build for me,' &c.
"And indeed I do think that this is a very common and
very dangerous tendency. I will modify my definition by
saying it is the tendency of High Churchism. That it is not inseparable from it I showed by defending Wordsworth. High
Churchism I hate. High Churchmen, many of them, I love,
admire, and sympathize with."




xxiv                  PREFACE.
The next in order in this volume is the Lecture
delivered at the opening of a Reading Room  at
Hurstper-point,,a village about eight miles from
Brighton, and which lecture Mr. Robertson consented to deliver from motives of personal friendship.
A  reporter was present, and a fair copy from
his notes was given to Mr. Robertson.  That fair
copy cannot now  be discovered, and  as these
notes, in his own handwriting, appear to be the
original preparative sketch of his lecture, and are
so exceedingly suggestive, it has been judged
better to print them as they were found.
The friend at whose instance this Lecture was
delivered writes:
"... although the language used by Mr. Robertson
was much above the comprehension of the agricultural class
of the village, whose life is more marked by its stern contentment than of much self-education through the medium of
books, yet I am able to record that there was nevertheless
such a charm about this lecture as to excite a considerable
number of the audience to request its immediate publication."
The Speech, on the question of closing shops at
an earlier hour, is printed from a transcript from
the shorthand writer's notes, aided by such private memoranda as were available; it was not
popular with the employes, partly, it is believed,
from some little misconception. Mr. Robertson




PREFACE.               xxv
could never be a mere partizan, and his clear
judgment saw that, however desirable and right
was the object which the young men were striving to attain, there were difficulties to be overcome which it was not wise to ignore; and also
that there were two sides to the question, the
arguments not being exhausted by denouncing
all the masters who hesitated in making the concession, as mean, selfish, and tyrannical.
As delivered, it was a noble speech; it did not
of course win the loudest cheers; but it aided
the cause of the young men more effectually than
some other speakers did, who raised a temporary
enthusiasm by refusing to admit that there were
any obstacles but such as were represented by
covetousness.
The Speech on behalf of the Association for
improving the Dwellings of the Working Classes,
was remarkable on account of the bitterness which
it produced in some minds, owing to the fearless.
ness with which Mr. Robertson treated the Sabbath question.
At the time of this meeting, the Crystal Palace
at Sydenham was being erected, and it was currently reported that the Government had granted
a Charter of Incorporation to the Company, with
permission to open the building to the public
on Sunday. The country was much disturbed
3




xxvi                    PREFACE.
thereat, and Brighton was not behind other places
in  petitioning and  holding meetings.  Sermons
were preached, simultaneously, in nearly all the
pulpits in the town, on the general question of
the desecration  of the  Sabbath; thousands of
tracts on the subject were distributed, and associations formed.
From   this  movement  Mr.  Robertson  held
aloof;  he  preached  a  sermon  on  the  subject,
which, to  many  minds, was most conclusive; 
and in reference to the controversy, which had
become (on one side) very bitter, he wrote to a
friend:"As you will be here next week, I will not write you a
volume, for nothing less would do. I preached on the subject
on Sunday, satisfactorily to myself at least, a thing which has
occurred to'me but once or twice in all my ministry; so I am
thoroughly prepared with an opinion on a matter I have well
considered. I will say at present I am quite resolved to sign
no petition. Dr. V.'s pamphlet'does not go to the root of the
matter. I agree with him in viewing the move, so far as it is
an avowed innovation, with great jealousy, but I cannot ask
for a State enactment to reimpose a law which Christianity
has repealed, without yielding the very principle of Chris* This Sermon is published in the Second Series of Mr. Robertson's
Sermons, and should be read by any one desirous of understanding
Mr. Robertson's views on this question, as it is treated there more
completely than it was possible to do in a letter. There is also- a
Sermon on the " Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath," in the
First Series, which may be read with advantage.




PREFACE                     xxvii
tianity. Historically, the Lord's Day was not a transference
of the Jewish Sabbath at all from one day to another. St.
Paul, in Rom. xvi. 5, 6, speaks of a religious non-observance
of the Sabbath; I cannot say or think that the Crystal Palace
affair is a religious non-observance, believing it to be merely a
lucrative speculation; nevertheless, I have nothing to do with
that. The Sabbath is abrogated, and the observance of a
Day of Rest is only a most wise human law now, not to be
enforced by penalties. Besides, how dare we refuse a public
concession to the poor man of a right of recreation which has
been long assumed by the rich man with no protest or outcry
from the clergy, who seem touched to the quick only when
desecration, as they call it, is noisy and-vulgar?"
His correspondent suggested, in answer, Bishop
Horsley's critical treatment of the question, and
to this letter he replied:" Horsley's Sermons' I only vaguely remember.  I am
quite at ease on thl subject. The critical disposal of this or
that text would not alter my views. I am certain of the
Genius and Spirit of Christianity; certain of St. Paul's root
thoughts-far more certain than I can be of the correctness or
incorrectness of any isolated interpretation; and I must reverse all my conceptions of Christianity-which is the Mind
of CHRIST-before I can believe the Evangelico-Judaic
theory: which is, that Mr..... may, without infringement
of the 4th Commandment, drive his carriage to church twice
every Sunday, but a poor man may not drive his cart;-that
the four or five hours spent in the evening by a noble lord
over venison, champagne, dessert, and coffee, are no desecration of the command; but the same number spent by an
artisan over cheese and beer in a tea-garden, will bring down




xxviii                   PREFACE.
God's judgment on the land. It is worse than absurd. It is
the very spirit of that Pharisaism which our Lord rebuked so
sternly. And then men get up on platforms as... did; and
quietly assume that they are the religious, and that all who
disagree, whether writers in the'Times,' Sir R. Peel, or the'sad exceptions,' of whom I was one, to which he alluded, are
either neologians or hired writers! Better break a thousand
sabbaths than lie and slander thus! But the sabbath of the
Christian is the consecration of all time to God; of which the
Jewish Sabbath was but the type and shadow; see Col. ii. 16,
17. Bishop Horsley's attempt to get over that verse is miserable, I remember.'"' Six hundred churches wanted.' Yes! but when shall we
have different hours for service and different congregations in
one church, say one for three congregations; and so save two
thirds of the money spent on stone and brick, that it may be
spent on the truer temple, human beings in whom God's Spirit
dwells? They do this on the Continent, and with no inconvenience. Besides, the inconvenience and mutual giving way,
would be all so much gain for Christian life, instead of an objection to the plan."
A member of his congregation wrote to him  on
this subject, and, as was his wont, he replied fully
and frankly.*
The occasion  on which  the next speech  was
- That letter is not given here lest it should swell this Introduction
to an undue limit, but it will be printed in a volume of " Letters on
Theological, Philosophical, and Social Questions," which is now preparing for the press. It will not be out of place here to request that
any one who may have received letters from Mr. Robertson on any of
these topics would be so kind as to send them to the Editor of Mr.
Robertson's Lectures, care of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., London.
The letters shall be immediately copied and returned.




PREFACE.                xxix
delivered, was one of the most interesting ever
seen in Brighton.  One hundred young men of
Mr. Robertson's congregation signed an address
to him, expressive of their gratitude for his unwearied zeal in their behalf. They invited him to
tea at the Town Hall. Many others were also
present, but all were men. That evening is well
remembered still. It presented some remarkable
features.  One of the young men, Mr. C. H.
Evans, rose and presented the address, and in
doing so spoke with great feeling and earnestness
of the benefit which he and the others, for whom
he was that evening the mouth-piece, had received
from Mr. Robertson's teaching.  He dwelt on the
reconciling, harmonizing spirit Mr. Robertson had
induced between rich and poor-between the
strugglers in life and their lot. He reviewed the
characteristics of Mr. Robertson's public ministry,
and vindicated it from  the charges which had
recently been brought against it in the columns
of a certain party journal; and having adverted
to the altered state of feeling in the working
classes of the town, which he attributed mainly to
Mr. Robertson's efforts to bring about a union of
classes, expressed an earnest hope that long-very
long-might the town have the benefit of his
talents and self-devotion.
All rose as he spoke.  Mr. Robertson was
3V




XXX               PREFACE.
deeply moved. All felt that if there were many
ministers like him, how far brighter would become
the prospect of a kingdom of Heaven upon earth.
The last speech in this volume was delivered
on the memorable occasion of the attempt of
Pope Pius IX. to parcel out England into Ecclesiastical Dioceses under Romish bishops, with
Cardinal Wiseman as the head of the new Hierarchy. Every one will remember how that attempt
was received. From one end of England to the
other, one unanimous voice arose, " We will have
nothing to do with Rome!" One of the largest
meetings ever held at Brighton came together on
this occasion to protest against this impertinent
intrusion. All sects, all classes, met here on common ground-a stern determination that, whatever foreign despots might succeed in imposing
on their peoples, Englishmen were determined
never again to wear the yoke of priestly tyranny,
least of all, the tyranny of Rome. It will be observed that the ground Mr. Robertson took was
somewhat broader than that generally occupied.
He rested his opposition to the Pope's decree on
the inalienable rights of the individual conscience,
in virtue of which it was not competent for any
priest, or church, to dictate to men the terms of
their belief.
Probably the controversy with Popery would be




PREFACE.              Xxxi
more effectual, and more practical in its results,
if the opinions which Mr. Robertson avowed were
taken as the basis on which it should be conducted.
In former years, Mr. Robertson had delivered
a Lecture at Cheltenham, on the Church of England's Independence of the Church of Rome; but
it is omitted from this volume, because Mr. Robertson frequently expressed a very strong wish
against its being reprinted, observing that his
argument against the Church of Rome would
now be based on altogether different grounds from
those he had taken in that Lecture. Whatever
weight may be attached to the critical rendering
of certain texts-whatever authority may be
claimed in virtue of certain canons or decrees of
councils-the great principle that the conscience
of each individual man is free to judge the Right,
and to act in conformity with that judgment,
without any interference or hinderance from any
man or set of men-will be found to oppose a
firmer barrier than these to Romish progress.
The spread of Romish doctrine is simply impossible where this great principle of spiritual freedom
is believed and obeyed.
It is very noteworthy, that nearly all these
public efforts of Mr. Robertson were in behalf of
those engaged in labour. He had a high idea of




xxxii                 PREFACE.
Work, regarding  it as God's appointment for
every man; and while he always avowed his belief that the men of thought were -labourers, as
much as the men of action, he never lost an opportunity of urging on his hearers that a mere
life of pleasure or of fashion-the life of busy
idleness-was  little  better  than  living  death.
Some of his noblest utterances were those in
which he sought to rouse men up to doing something better worthy of the vocation by which they
were called.  His own life was one long labour,
of which, while others were marvelling  at the
wonderful gifts and graces it displayed, his own
thought ever seemed to be " not as though I had
attained." How little he esteemed the gifts which
others valued so highly in him, may be gathered
from a passage in a letter to a friend, written towards the end of his career.  He says" If you knew how sick at heart I am with the whole work
of'parle-ment,''talkee,' palaver,' or whatever it is calledhow lightly I hold the' gift of the gab'-how grand and divine
the Realm of Silence appears to me in comparison-how
humiliated and degraded to the dust I have felt, in perceiving
myself quietly taken by gods and men for the popular preacher
of a fashionable watering-place-how slight the power seems
to me to be given by it of winning souls-and how sternly I
have kept my tongue from saying a syllable or a sentence, in
pulpit or on platform, because it would be popular"..
When many of the clergy and richer classes




PREFACE.               xxxiii
were looking suspiciously at the growing intelligence of working men, and connecting it with
revolutionary events then going on in Europe, AMr.
Robertson threw himself boldly into their cause,
and avowed his belief that they had rights which,
if trampled on, it was at the peril of the social
fabric; that they had wrongs which it were well
for England if she recognized and set herself
steadily to remedy. In public and private he ever
sought to bring classes together.
His pulpit ministrations were chiefly addressed
to the richer classes of society, and he never failed
to warn them, with a stern yet loving faithfulness, respecting the special responsibilities and
temptations to which they were exposed.  Most
unflinchingly did he seek to impress upon them
the duties they owed to those below them in the
social scale; * while, in speaking to labouring
men, he as faithfully told them  that one great
cause why they were depressed and degraded was
to be found in themselves; that when they could
exercise self-denial, temperance, steadfastness in
self-improvement, it would be simply impossible
for any one to keep them down.  He told them,
too, that in obtaining the mastery over self, they
were attaining in God's kingdom  a rank and a
* See " The Church's Message to Men of Wealth; " published in the
First Series of his Sermons.




xxxiv                 PREFACE.
nobility greater than any mere earthly title could
confer.  And both classes responded to his earnest zeal for their welfare, with a genuine love,
which is very touching, very refreshing, in a day of
conventional flattery and mutual self-laudation.
Amongst many illustrations of the feelings of the
Working Classes towards him  may be mentioned
this one. A pair of candlesticks was sent to him,
accompanied by a letter, of which the following
is a copy:SIR,-A humble individual, desirous of acknowledging the
unflinching kindness you have shown towards the working
classes of this town, begs the acceptance of the enclosed;
and, in doing so, he hopes you will pardon what I am afraid
you will think an un-English way of sending a note without
a name. My apology must be, that as you do not know me,
you will not put any wrong construction as to my motive in
doing so.
"Nothing but the profoundest respect would have induced
me to take the liberty I have.
" Believing you to be a man as well as a gentleman, that you
can come down to the level of working men, and understand
them (a rare qualification now-a-days'in one in the class that
circumstances has placed you), all working men think it so
much the more valuable to have your advice and assistance.
May it long be continued.
"I do not complain that we have not the sympathy of the
upper classes. I believe we have; but there is not one in fifty
that can come down to our circumstances, to the bond of our
common nature, to comprehend that, although the mechanic




PREFACE.                    xxxv
and artisan of this country are deep thinkers, yet they often
stand in need of advice, and the assistance that education gives.
We have their good wishes and pecuniary assistance-thanks
for it, but sometimes a little kindly advice would do far more.
It is this difference that makes us feel we could grasp you by'
the hand as a brother in the cause of progress of the nation.
Would that there were more such. How much more would
true religion, morals, and sound intellect be brought out. No
fear then of the pope or the devil. Believe me, sir, I am very
respectfully yours."
Referring  to  this  letter, of which  he  never
knew  the writer, Mr. Robertson  writes to Lady
Henley:"You are quite welcome to copy that note; it does more
honour to the writer than to the receiver; but except in cases
where you can trust discretion, it would be better not to give
my name. Ninety-nine out of a hundred would put my showing it you down to the score of vanity. You can show it, if
you like, as a proof of the good and generous feeling sometimes
found in lower life; but as there are many who hate me as a
heretic, pray do not let them'have a handle."
It will not surprise any one who knows human
nature, to hear that, while to many people Mr.
Robertson's teaching came like light in a dark
place, to some it seemed revolutionary in politics,
and heretical in creed.
Some influential persons spoke strongly against
his teaching and his influence-it is believed with




xxxvi              PREFACE.
but very little personal knowledge of either; one
vent so far as to warn an attendant on the afternoon service at Trinity Chapel that if that attendance should be continued, the light of his countenance would be withdrawn; and this threat, which
would have been disregarded so far as personal
consequences were to be feared, became operative
when the consideration of the consequences of
such withdrawal to dear relatives was pressed and
considered.
Some persons talked of "Neology;" and an
active platform orator, well known at Exeter Hall,
was brought down to deliver two lectures on
" Neologianism."  It was well understood by Mr.
Robertson's congregation, that it was as a protest
against their pastor that this was done. There
are those who still remember the extreme perplexity of some excellent people who, recognizing in
the names advertised to attend the meeting those
clergymen whom they had been accustomed always to feel quite safe and comfortable in sitting
under, were notwithstanding much confused by
the new word, and anxiously inquired what the
lecture was about.  Was it a religious meeting?
or a scientific meeting? or what was it?
Well, the lectures were delivered, and it is no
disparagement to the zeal of the reverend orator to
say that Trinity Chapel continued just as full, and




PREFACE.                xxxvii
Mr. Robertson's influence just as great, as before
these gratuitous lectures on " Neologianism."
It is gratifying to be able to record that he
against whom these and other similar demonstrations were made-some, by the way, not quite
so manly and open as' this-was in no way disturbed nor annoyed by them. Never did an angry
word pass his lips respecting any of those whom
he knew  were branding him  as a heretic-who
were trying, as far as they could, to hinder his
ministry, or discredit him in the so-called religious
world.
Towards the close of his ministry, it became
evident that the only chance of his restoration
to health was by having rest, and his congregation raised a fund for the payment of a curate;
of course leaving the selection of the curate to
Mr. Robertson.  In a letter written at this time
he says:"One inducement towards accepting their offer is, that it
would enable me to'take a district, and try to work it, with a
view to physical, as well as spiritual, improvement of the poor;
acknowledging Christ as the' Saviour of the body;' a truth
ingeniously ignored."
And writing on the same subject a little later,
he says:"I am anxious, on my own account, for assistance, in order
4




xxxviii              PREFACE.
to enable me to devote myself less exclusively to pulpit work,
and to become more pastoral."
No curate came, however, to Trinity Chapel.
It is not proposed in this place to enter on the
question how it was that the plan was frustrated,
-a more fitting occasion will present itself.
Mr. Robertson felt this acutely, and says of it,
in writing to a friend," I am deeply disappointed; I have looked forward to
friendly cooperation and leisure for pastoral work. Dis aliter
visum: an old heathen adage to be translated silently into
Christian phraseology; but right enough, and pious in feeling."
Those who were with Mr. Robertson at this time,
remember well the utter self-forgetfulness which
characterized his words and actions in relation to
this disappointment.  Three months afterwards,
Mr. Robertson was carried  to his grave; with
such marks of respect, and reverence, and love,
as perhaps never before accompanied a public
funeral.
The family intended the funeral to have been
strictly private; but when vast numbers signified
their intention of accompanying his mortal remains to their last resting-placeit became evident
that it would really be a demonstration of general
mourning.  The shops were closed, the houses
shut up, and the presence of sorrowing thousands




PREFACE.             xxxix
told more eloquently than words could do, what
grief was felt at the loss Brighton had sustained.
Foremost in this genuine expression of feeling
were the working men of the town-the men
he was proud to call " My friends-the working
classes."
November 15, 1858.








TWO ADDRESSES.








LECTURES AND ADDRESSES.
An  Address delivered  at the  Opening  of the
Working  ien's Institute,* on Monday, October
23, 1848.
BROTHER MEN AND FELLOW TOWNSMEN,
I owe it to you and I owe it to myself to
give some explanation of my being here to-night
to deliver an opening address to the Working
Men's Institute.  I owe it to you, or rather, to
some of you, since it is only a few  weeks ago
that, on the plea of ill health, I professed myself
unable to deliver a lecture to the Brighton Athe* A third edition of this Pamphlet having been called for,
I have sent it to the press unaltered; for though the Working
Men's Institute, owing to certain errors in the details of its
organization, has for the present ended in partial failure, yet
the very circumstances of its history have only confirmed me
more than ever in the principles which it was attempted to
express in the following pages.-F. W. R., Oct. 1850.




2          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
nmum. Almost immediately after that I accepted
your invitation, in which there is an apparent
inconsistency. I owe it to myself, because there
will lie against me in the judgment of many a
charge of presumption. I have been in this town
but a single year.  I am but a stranger here.
For one without name, without influence, without
authority, without talent, to occupy a position
so prominent as that which I occupy to-night,
would really seem to justify a suspicion of something like vanity and assumption.
My reasons for undertaking this office are
these: I did it partly on personal grounds.  It
would be affectation to deny that the spontaneous
request of a body of men, delegated by a thousand
of my fellow townsmen, is a source of very great
satisfaction.  It gave me great pleasure, at the
same time that it deeply humbled me. I earnestly wish I-were more worthy of the confidence
reposed in me. My second reason for standing
before you to-night is a public one. It seems to
me a significant circumstance that your request
was made to a clergyman of the Church of England.  A minister of the Church of England
occupies a very peculiar position.  He stands,
generally by birth, always by position, between
the higher and lower ranks. He has free access
to the mansion of the noble, and welcome in the




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         8
cottage of the labourer.  And if I understand
aright the mission of a minister of the Church of
England, his peculiar and sacred call is, to stand
as a link of union between the two extremes of
society; to demand of the highest in this land,
with all respect but yet firmly, the performance
of their duty to those beneath them; to soften
down the asperities and to soothe the burning
jealousies which are too often found rankling in
the minds of those who, from a position full of
wretchedness, look up with almost excusable bitterness on such as are surrounded with earthly
comforts.
It seemed to me that such an opportunity was
offered me to-night. The delivery of a lecture to
the Brighton Athenaeum on a literary subject was
a secular duty, and one from which I felt I might
fairly shrink on the valid plea of ill health; but
the demand that you made upon me for this evening, though I urged it upon you that you had not
selected the right man, was a sacred duty, which
I felt it was impossible for me, on any merely
personal grounds, to refuse. And if your call on
a minister of the Church of England this evening
may be taken as any exhibition of trust in the
sympathy of those classes between whom  and
yourselves he stands as a kind of link,-if my
acceptance of the call may be regarded as evinc



4         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
ing a pledge of their sympathy towards you,then, though all I say to-night may be weak and
worthless, I shall not feel that I have spoken to
you in vain, and to myself at least I shall stand
acquitted of the charge of presumption.
I began to address you to-night by the name
of brother men; I did not adopt the expression
which my friend Mr. Holtham used in reference
to your Committee. Yet, after all, we are at one.
He did not mean to say that you are " gentlemen."  He meant to say that you have, and that
there was no reason why you should not have,
the feelings of gentlemen. To say that a man is
noble, does not mean that he is a nobleman. I
do not call you gentlemen, because I respect you
too much to call you what you are not.  You
are not gentlemen. To address an assembly of
gentlemen by the title of " my lords," would be
to insult them; and to address working men as
"gentlemen," would be felt by you as an insult
to your understanding.
The people of this country stand in danger
from two classes; from those who fear them, and
from those who flatter them. From those who
fear them and would keep down their aspiring
intelligence, they have no longer much to fear.
The time is past for that; that cry of a wretched,
narrow bigotry is almost unheard of now. But




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        5
just in proportion as that danger has passed
away, has the other danger increased, the danger
from those who flatter them. From the platform
and the press we now hear language of fulsome
adulation, that ought to disgust the working men
of this country. There has ever been, and ever
will be found sycophancy on the side of power.
In former ages when power was on the side of
the few, the flatterer was found in kings' houses.
The balance of power is changed. It is now
not in the hands of the few, but in the hands of
the many. I say not that that is the best state
conceivable; there might be a better than that.
We would rather have power neither in the hands
of the privileged few nor in the hands of the privileged many, but in the hands of the wisest and
best. But this is the present fact, and every day
is carrying the tide of power more strongly into
the hands of the numbers; for which reason there
will be ever found flatterers on the side of the
many.
Now, whether a man flatters the many or the
few, the flatterer is a despicable character.  It
matters not in what age he appears; change the
century, you do not change the man. He who
fawned upon the prince or upon the duke, had
something of the reptile in his character; but he
who fawns upon the masses in their day of power




6          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
is only a reptile which has changed the direction
of its crawling. He who in this nineteenth century echoes the cry that the voice of the people
is the voice of God, is just the man who, if he
had been born two thousand years ago, would
have been the loudest and hoarsest in that cringing crowd of slaves. who bowed before a prince
invested with the delegated majesty of Rome,
and cried, "It is the voice of a God, and not of
a man."  The man who can see no other source 
of law than the will of a majority, who can feel
no everlasting law of right and wrong, which
gives to all human laws their sanction and their
meaning, and by which all laws, whether they
express the will of many or of the few, must be
tried-who does not feel that he, single and unsupported, is called upon by a mighty voice within him to resist every thing which comes to him
claiming his allegiance as the expression of mere
will, is exactly the man who, if he had lived seven
centuries ago, would have stood on the sea sands
beside the royal Dane, and tried to make him
believe that his will gave law to the everlasting
flood. For this reason I have not used this expression. I have not used it, because I would
not flatter you even by an epithet. I respect you
too much to flatter you. I used another title of
address.  For there are two bases of union on




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.           7
which men may be bound together.  One is similarity of class, the other is identity of nature.
The class feeling is a feeble bond; for he who
feels awe for another man because he is in a rank
above him, will cease to feel that awe if ever the
man should cease to belong to that class. The
pauperized aristocrat and the decayed merchant
are soon neglected by their class. The man who
respects another because he is in the same rank
as himself, may cease to feel respect in one of
two ways,-either by his own elevation, in which
case he tries to keep the distinction broad between himself and the class that he has left, or
else by the depression of that other man, through
any misfortune.
Now, there is another and a broader bond of
union to be found in identity of nature. When
all external differences have passed away, one
element remains intact, unchanged, the everlasting basis of our common nature,-the human
soul by which we live. " We all are changed
by slow degrees. All but the basis of the soul."
Our tendencies to evil, our capacities of excellence are the same in all classes. It is just in
proportion as men recognize this real, original
identity of all human nature, that it is possible
on this earth to attain the realization of human
brotherhood. It is the only possible ground of
5




8          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
union for the race. It was because this was riot
felt by the Jews of ancient times that they held
themselves and their race proudly distinct from
their Gentile brothers, and by that bigotry worked
out their own inevitable downfall. The Christian
of the middle ages tortured his Jew brother just
because he did not recognize the same identity of
sentiment and moral-nature, which the great poet
of our country has put so passionately and so
touchingly into the lips of Shylock. " Hath not
a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, sub —
ject to the same diseases, healed by the same
means, warmed and cooled by the same winter
and summer as a Christian?"  Had the feudal
lord believed this he would not have put an iron
collar round his serf's neck, nor made one law for
the serf and another for the free-born. In our
own times, if men who have been crying for the
rights of our common humanity and the duties of
our common brotherhood had understood the deep
glorious meaning of their own cry, we should have
heard nothing of those human tortures and that
infernal cannibalism which have disgraced the
cause of freedom. Get this deeply by heart, and
all that is galling in artificial distinctions will pass
away. Well do I know that this language I am




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.           9
using now respecting brotherhood and the equality of our human nature, is language that passes
into cant. It has been defiled by cruelty; it has
been polluted by selfishness; but we will not be
ashamed of it for all that. In an age in which it
has become suspicious, we will dare to believe in
it and love it. It is buried deep in the eternal
truth of things.  That truth can no more pass
away from the things that are, than heaven and
earth can pass away.  Sooner or later it must be
realized in a more substantial form that it has yet
ever assumed. All gradual improvements, all violent convulsions in the world are only doing their
part in bringing this about. The thunder storm
is terrible to look upon; but it leaves behind it a
purer air and a serener sky. Let us hear the Ayrshire ploughman in his high prophetic strain:"For a' that, and a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That man to man the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that."
Therefore it is that passing by all those abortive
attempts which would fain produce a feeling of
union by the false idea of similarity of class, I have
fastened my attention on the real equality of our
common nature, and called you " brother men."
In my address to-night, I propose to let its topics be suggested by the expressions of your own




10         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
sentiments contained in the paper which your
Committee put into my hand. That paper specifies the objects of your institution, and the spirit
in which it has been established.
The objects of the Institution are two: it is intended to provide the working men of this town
with the means of mental, and besides that,, with
the means of moral, improvement.  Farther down
I find mental improvement separated by you into
two divisions. Mental improvement, you say, is
the information of the intellect, and-the elevation
of the taste. You wish -to inform the intellect.,I confine myself to-night to one branch of this
improvement, political information. I do it for
several reasons. First of all, the means of acquiring knowledge which your Institution places in
your hands are in a very preponderating degree
of a political character. By works of history and
the newspapers of the day, you will have that
which will inform you of the constitution of your
country.
My second reason for dwelling chiefly upon
this branch of mental improvement is, that political science is the highest education that can be
given to the human mind. Let me explain myself. When we in popular phraseology speak of
politics, we ascribe to that word a narrow meaning. When we say that two men are talking




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         11
politics, we often mean that they are wrangling
about some mere party question.  When I use
the term " politics " this evening, I use it in the
sense in which it was used by all the great and
noble authors of the ancient world, who meant
by the science of politics the intelligent comprehension of a man's position and relations as a
member of a great nation. You will observe that
in this sense politics subordinate to themselves
every department of earthly science. A man who
understands nothing of agriculture, nothing of
trade, nothing of human nature, nothing of past
history, nothing of the principles of law, cannot
pretend to be more than a mere empiric in political legislation. Every thing that man can know
is subservient to this noble science. Understood
in this sense, the working men of this country
have an interest in politics. For, in the first place,
political ignorance is not a safe thing for this or
any other country. The past is a proof of that.
What was it but political ignorance which dictated a few years ago the letters signed " Swing,"
when the labouring men burned the hay rick and
the corn stack in the wise expectation of bettering their own condition by that?
It needed very little political economy to teach
them that all the wages in the world would not
make a country rich, when its real resources are




12         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
destroyed; that gold is but the symbol of another
and a more real wealth for which it stands as the
convenient expression; that the increase of their
money would not give any increase in their comforts; and that when the country's means of subsistence are diminished all the coin in the country
could not enrich them. What was it but political
ignorance that suggested the workman's strike for
wages?  A very little political information would
have told him that it is to a small extent that the
master can regulate the wages he gives, that they
depend on many things over which he has no
control, as for instance, on the supply of labour in
the market and on the demand for the commodity.
Besides this, if there be a man in the country to
whom politics are of personal consequence, it is
the labouring man. A man in the higher classes
may turn his attention to them, if he likes; nothingforces him to do so. It is to him a matter of
amusement, a speculation-a theoretical curiosity
-not necessarily any thing more. The difference
of a penny in the price of a loaf makes no perceptible change on his table; but it may make
the poor man's grate empty for a fortnight. If
an unfair tax be imposed, a man in the upper
ranks will scarcely be compelled to retrench a luxury in his establishment; but to the poor man it
is almost a matter of life and death. Therefore a




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         13
labouring man will be, must be a politician; he
cannot help it; and the only question is, whether
he shall be an informed one or an uninformed one.
To him politics are a thing of daily feeling;,but
the man who feels a wrong most severely is not
generally the man who is in the best state for
calmly ascertaining the causes of the wrong. The
child which feels the pin that-pricks, knows better
than any one can.tell it that there is something
wrong; but it is not exactly the one to judge
when it strikes at random, whether it be the
nurse's fault or the fault of circumstances. The
uneducated man is precisely in the same position;
he feels politically the sharpness and the torture
of his position; but he is just as likely in his exasperation to raise his hand against an innocent
government as against a guilty one. Therefore
it was that in past times, when a pestilence
came, the poorer classes, believing that it was
caused by the medical men of the country for
their own benefit, visited their fury upon them.
They felt keenly, they struck wrongly.  Tell us,
then, whether it be safe and whether it be wise
that the poor man, or that any class, should be
profoundly ignorant of politics?
There is another reason, one more important
still, for extending political knowledge. In this
free country the labouring man has already a




14         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
political responsibility. By degrees he will have,
and ought to have, more. There is scarcely a
man standing before me who has not something
to do with the political government of his country. It may be that he has a vote in the vestry;
or he is liable to be called on to serve on the jury,
where he disposes of the life and liberty of his
fellow-subjects; or perhaps he has a vote in the
election of a member of parliament. The possession of that vote gives to the working man a
solemn responsibility. Let us not be told that
the injury done by a wrong vote is small; it is
not so that we measure responsibility. If there
be a million voters, and a man votes corruptly, it
is true, it is but the millionth part of the injury
which may arise from a bad law that is attributable to him; but responsibility is measured not by
the amount of injury which results, but by the
measure of distinctness with which the conscience
has the opportunity of distinguishing between
right and wrong. That man is not worthy of a
vote in this country who gives his vote to the
temptation of a bribe; neither is he worthy who
bribes a man to vote against his conscience.
That man is not worthy of a vote who intimidates another; nor is he worthy who suffers himself to be intimidated. That man misuses his
privilege who corrupts by exclusive dealing; so




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        15
does he who votes solely from self or class interest. For example, if the agriculturist voted for
the retention of the corn laws because they enhanced the price of his corn, though he believed
it would be to the injury of the rest of the community, that man was not worthy of a vote. On
the other hand, if the manufacturer voted for the
abolition of the corn laws, because he believed it
would be good for the manufacturing interest,
without considering how it would bear on the
residue of the nation, that man exercised his vote
wrongly; his vote was given him for the good of
the nation, and he was sacrificing the whole of
the nation to a part of it.
Now let me say another thing without offence.
I scarcely know whether it is quite fair to say it
on this occasion; but I feel perfectly confident
that every honest supporter of the People's Charter will not misunderstand me. I will not say
that that man is not worthy of a vote  but I will
say, and I believe your feelings will only echo
mine, that that man has not attained the true,
lofty spirit of a British freeman who requires the
protection of secrecy in his voting, who dares not
risk the consequence of doing right, who has not
manhood enough, except from behind the ballot
box, to do his duty to his country and his God.
Now to vote in this way, to vote incorruptibly, to




16         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
vote on high motives, to vote on large principles,
to vote bravely, requires a great amount of information. How far will the machinery of this Institution insure this?  Only partially.  We do
not expect it will make the corrupt voter honest;
it will not make the selfish voter liberal; but at
least it offers the means of saving the honest
voter from the consequences of his own ignorance,
and of rescuing him from being the passive victim  of the demagogue, or being compelled to
throw his vote blindly into the hands of his landlord or his employer.
I pass to the second division of which you
speak, the elevation of the taste. Taste is perception of beauty; to have taste is to recognize
that which is right and congruous. When we
speak of the moral sense, we mean the power of
distinguishing between right and wrong; when we
speak of taste, we mean the faculty of distinguishing that which is fitting from that which is unbecoming. There are many things which are neither right nor wrong,-but which are yet offensive
to good taste. It is not morally wrong to sit
covered in the presence of a superior; but it is an
offence against the propriety of manners. The
juxtaposition of yellow and olive green is not a
moral fault; but it is a fault to the eye which
perceives the harmony of colours. There is noth



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        17
ing wicked in wearing a hat in a sacred building,
or in discussing religious questions when the toast
and the health are going round; but there is something which is exceedingly offensive to the feelings of religious propriety. The perception of all
these harmonious fitnesses is what we denominate refinement, in contradistinction to vulgarity.
But by vulgarity I do not mean the infringement
of those laws which conventionality or fashion
has laid down; for if fashion choose to decide
that a man shall dine at seven, and he prefers instead to dine at one, though this may be a conventional, it is not a real vulgarism.
Vulgarity is quite distinct from nonconformity
to arbitrary rules. We have sometimes met the
deepest, truest refinement of heart in the man
whose hands are black with labouring at the
forge; we have met the greatest real vulgarity in
the man whose manners wore a perfect outward
polish, and who would never infringe the smallest
rule of etiquette. In this sense do I speak of
taste as a matter of importance to the working
men of this country. What is it that prevents
sympathy between class and class? Not merely
difference of opinion, but difference of taste. The
difference in feeling between educated and uneducated men places a great gulf between them.
We are attracted and repelled by our instinctive




18         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
sympathies even more than by our intellectual
views. Let no one tell us that the workman cannot become refined; he is a refined man in foreign
countries. Vulgarity is a thing almost exclusively English. Look at the poor Hindoo who goes
through your streets asking alms.  There is a
grace even in his very attitude, an elegance in his
address, which would almost make you believe it
if you were told that he had been a prince in his
own land. You may see, or might have seen,
two peasants meeting on a high-road in France,
and taking off their hats to each other with grave
and dignified courtesy. The French peasant girl
at a very trifling expense will dress herself in
clothes that befit her station; but the inward refinement of her mind will be so reflected on the
adjustment of every part of them, that she looks
better dressed than the English lady's maid with
all the aid of her mistress's cast-off finery.
There is another thing. The refinement of the
workman's mind is a matter of importance in the
works of art. Let any mercer place the silk that
comes from Spitalfields beside that which comes
from Lyons, and tell us if the one in point of elegance of design will bear any comparison with
the other?  Let the English watchmaker place
his watch beside the delicate fabric of Geneva,
or his clock beside that which comes from Paris,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        19
and tell us whether it be not rude and clumsy in
comparison? Let the English china-maker place
the manufactures of Worcestershire and Yorkshire on the same table with those of S~vres or
of Dresden, and the superior beauty of the foreign article is visible at once. We are beaten
out of the market whenever it comes to a question of taste. The reason is generally acknowledged to be this,-that on the continent the artist
has freer access to that which is beautiful in taste
and art. In the designs which adorn the Parisian
clocks, you may trace the forms of beauty which
existed originally in the minds, of Raffaelle and
Titian, and transfused themselves upon the work
insensibly through every touch of one whose
fancy had been inspired and kindled at the living
sources of the beautiful.
A few years ago I was engaged in chamois
hunting among the crags and glaciers of the
Tyrol. My companion was a Tyrolese chamois
hunter, a man, who in point of social position,
might rank with an English labourer.  I fear
there would be a difficulty in England in making
such a companionship pleasurable and easy to
both parties; there would be a painful obsequiousness, or else an insolent familiarity on the one
side, constraint on the other. In this case there
was nothing of that sort. We walked together
6




20        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
and ate together. He had all the independence
of a man, but he knew the courtesy which was
due to a stranger; and when we parted for the
night, he took his leave with a politeness and
dignity which would have done no discredit to
the most finished gentleman. The reason, as it
seemed to me, was that his character had been
moulded by the sublimities of the forms of the
outward nature amidst which he lived. It was
impossible to see the clouds wreathing themselves
in that strange wild way of theirs round the
mountain crests, till the hills seemed to become
awful things, instinct with life-it was impossible
to walk, as we did sometimes, an hour or two
before sunrise, and see the morning beams gilding with their pure light the grand, old peaks on
the opposite side of the valley, while we ourselves
were still in deepest shade, and look on that man
with his rifle on his shoulder and his curling
feather in his high green hat, his very exterior in
harmony with all around him, and his'calm eye
resting on all that wondrous spectacle, without
feeling that these things had had their part in
making him what he was, and that you were in a
country in which men were bound to be polished,
bound to be more refined, almost bound to be
better men than elsewhere.
Mr. Wordsworth, one of the great teachers of




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         21
our nation's feeling, has explained to us in many
a passage how all these forms of God's outward
world of beauty are intended to perform an office
in the refinement of the heart.  He has painted
his country girl educated by the sky above her,
the colours of the hills, the sound of the waterfalls"Till beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Shall pass into her face."
Now there are two things in your Institution
which might educate taste of this kind: works of
poetry and works of fiction. -By poetry, we do
not mean, simply, verse or rhyme. In a hundred
thousand verses there might be not one thought
of poetry. Neither does poetry mean something
which is fanciful and unreal.  By poetry we
mean invisible truth as distinct from that which
is visible. Not every invisible truth; not, for example, the invisible truths which are perceivable
by the understanding, as mathematics; but the
invisible realities which are recognized by the imagination. We will take an illustration.  You
look at this England, intersected with its railways, and say it is becoming a dull, prosaic thing.
The sentimentalist will tell you it has broken up
all the poetry of the scene, because it has run
through our pleasure-grounds, sadly cut up our




22         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
old retreats and solitudes, and destroyed all classical associations. So it may have done. It has
destroyed that which was associated with the
poetry of the past; but it has left us the real
poetry of the present.  Let men look upon that
railroad, and one will see nothing but the machine that conveys the travellers to their destination. This is a truth, but only a visible one.
The engineer comes and sees in it another class
of truths.  It suggests to his mind the idea of
broad and narrow  gauge, he talks of gradients,
&c.  Another truth; that which is appreciable
by the understanding.  Then let the poet come
with that eye of his " glancing from heaven to
earth, from earth to heaven," and his imagination
creates another class of truths; the suggested
meaning of it to him is the triumph of mind over
matter; the gradual annihilation'of time and
space.  He  sees in these railroads stretched
throughout the country the approaching times of
peace and human union; and so he bursts out
into his high prophetic song of the timeWhen the war drum throbs no more, and the battle flags
are furled,
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world."
All this is truth; neither seen, nor reasoned truth,
but truth to the imagination.  Truth just as real




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.          23
in its way, as the others are in theirs. And this
is poetry. For this reason is poetry a thing needful for the working man.  His whole life, if he
could be taught to feel it, is full of deep, true
poetry.  The poet teaches him by suggestive inspiration the hidden meaning of common things,
transfiguring life, as it were, by shedding a glory
on it; and if you will force the poor man to see
nothing but the wretched reality that is around
him, if you will not let his mind be enlightened
by the invisible truth of things, if you will not
let him learn from the master thinkers of the past
how in his work, in his smoky cabin, in his home
affections, there is a deep significance concealed,
connecting him, when he once has felt it, with
the highest truths of the invisible world, you condemn the worker to a desolate lot indeed.
You have a second class of means in your Institution for refining taste,-works of fiction.  It
is in vain to rail at these with indiscriminate censure. Read they will be, and read they must be;
and if we are asked the reason why works of
fiction are matters of importance, the best reply
which has been suggested is, that they enlarge
the heart, enabling us to sympathize with the
hearts of a larger circle of the human race than
that into which our own experience admits us.
You are all familiar with the works of Dickens.
U,




24         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
The effect of that man's writings upon English
feelings and English sympathies is quite incalculable. The peculiar feature of his works is, that
their scenes are always placed in the ordinary
walks of life.  It is the character of all fiction
now. The Clarissas and Grandisons of past ages
have disappeared, and the life exhibited to us
now is that of the lower classes of society. Men,
who by reading the works of Cooper, had learned
to feel that there was a real human life in the
heart of the red Indian of the prairie, and who,
by reading the works of Scott, learned that beneath the helmets and mail of iron which rust in
our armouries, human passions and affections
once beat warm, were insensibly taught by the
works of Dickens to feel that in this country, close
to their own homes, there was a truth of human
life, the existence of which they had not suspected. We all remember the immense sensation
those works made at first. If you asked the lady
who was getting out of her coroneted carriage
at the bookseller's shop what it was she wanted,
you were told she had come to inquire if the new
number of Dickens's last work were out yet. If
you saw a soldier on the turnpike road with his
knapsack on his back, reading as he went, and
stepped up behind him, and looked over his
shoulder, hoping perhaps to see that it was a




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       25
tract, you saw it was the same everlasting Dickens.  From the throne to the cottage this was
true. What was the result of this? Imperceptibly, one which all the pulpits of the country
would have been glad to combine in producing.
The hearts of the rich and poor were felt to throb
together. Men came to find that the rustic altar
binds together two human hearts of man and
woman with exactly the same feelings and anxieties and loves, as the marriage performed in the
drawing-room, which united peers and peeresses.
They discovered that when death enters into the
poor man's hovel, it is just as much a rending
asunder of a soul and body as if a spirit had been
breathed away beneath a coverlet of silk. They
came to find, too, that the lower classes have not
a monopoly of all the simplicities of life, nor the
upper classes the monopoly of all its absurd pride.
People who lived in the highest ranks of life
were startled to find that their own foolish jealousies had their exact repetition in the life which
was going on beneath them.  The ridiculous
scorn with which the ancient family looks down
upon the newly ennobled, and the newly ennobled looks down on the newly rich, has its exact
counterpart in the sovereign contempt with which
the small shopkeeper in his shop six feet square
looks down on the poor apple-woman who has




26         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
dared to bring her barrow too near the sacred
neighbourhood of his aristocratic board.  This
was the achievement of these works of fiction.
It was a lesson to us all, of humbleness, and
sympathy, and mutual toleration; one step towards expanded love. And we can see no reason why such works should be injurious to the
workman.  We believe it is a narrow religion
which scowls upon them all without discrimination.  And the man of labour is free from one
injury which arises to the man of leisure, from
reading works of fiction.  Works of fiction have
in them an excitement for the feelings, in which
one of their dangers lies. Every man has experienced how feelings which end in themselves, and
do not express themselves in action, leave the
heart debilitated. We get feeble and sickly in
character when we feel keenly, and cannot do the
things we feel.  This is a great danger for the
unoccupied and idle in the upper classes; but
it is not possible that it should be so great a
danger to the workman; his labour keeps him
safe from it; so that it is perfectly possible for
him, by reading works of fiction, to have his
heart purified and refined by sympathy, at the
same time that he gets something which is
healthy and invigorating to counteract it in his
hourly familiarity with the realities of toil and
acting.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       27
We come next to the moral improvement
which you are anxious to effect.  You explain
this moral improvement to be "the elevation of
the habits of the working man."  You have,
surely, begun at the right end. There are two
ways of improving a nation's state; the one is
by altering the institutions of the country, the
other is by the reformation of its people's character. The one begins from things outward, and
expects to effect a change in things inward; the
other takes this line: from things inward to things
outward. The latter is the right plan, and you
have adopted it.
I believe I am addressing men of every shade
of political opinion. There may be amongst us
Tories, many of them men, of whom, whether
they be right or wrong, this country has reason
to be proud, for few other soils could produce
them; men who felt that law is but an expression
of a divine will, that the sovereign is the symbol
of that will, and therefore in their way talked too
about the divine right of kings, and believed most
religiously that the happiness of this country depended on the connection of Church and State.
I know that I address Whigs here to-night, of
that party who gave the most distinct expression
to their doctrines when, by our glorious Revolution, they stamped for ever on the constitution




28         LECTURJES AND ADDRESSES
that great cardinal truth, that law is not the creature of the ruler, but that the ruler is the creature
of, and owes his continuance to, the law. It is
probable that I speak to Conservatives to-night,
who, if we let them give their own account of
their opinions, have seen in the teaching of all
past history, that nations have had their seasons,
infancy, manhood, and old age; and believing
that England has reached the zenith of her manhood, are consistently opposed to all progress,
because every step of progress seems to them a
step towards decay. I may be speaking to Radicals to-night, who, if asked for the definition of
their principles, would say, " Radicalism means
root-work,-the uprooting of all falsehoods and
abuses," and who would not hesitate in all solemnity of feeling to sanction their feelings by a
divine principle, and take this text for their motto,
-" Every plant which my heavenly Father hath
not planted, shall be rooted up."
Lastly, I address men of another class altogether; who have felt burdens which crush the
millions of the working classes with intolerable
agony; and believing that only by throwing
power into the hands of the majority, England's
happiness can be secured, do therefore honourably
and conscientiously build all their hopes on the
People's Charter as the first step to be secured.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         29
And whether I agree with their political views
or not, I will never shrink from saying, in any
society, that I am personally acquainted with
Chartists, the integrity of whose purpose, the
unselfishness of whose character, the firmness of
whose principle is such, that if all resembled
them, if all base men, whether high or low, could
only be removed from the land, then the brightest
day that England ever saw would be the day on
which she got her universal suffrage; for universal
suffrage would mean then only the united voices
of all good men.
Now whichever of these views may be right,
and I am  not going to venture an opinion on
that subject this evening,-whichever of these
opinions may be right, there is a quackery in
every one of them that pretends by the realization of itself, to give to this country all she needs.
For instance, if a Tory gets what he wishes, a
perfect loyalty, and his pattern kingdom should
be only this, a tyrant sovereign, and a nation of
slaves, I think he would say himself his toryism
would do us no good. If the Conservative were
to.obtain his wish, "things as they are," and
this were to leave us nothing but stagnation,
moral, political, and intellectual, I think conservatism would do us no more good than toryism.  If the Whig and the Radical were to




30         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
realize their scheme, the entire overthrow of all
abuses, the triumph of the sovereignty of law,
and yet with that we got, as we might easily
get, only a nation without reverence, and the
abolition of old sacred associations, the heart
of the country being left morally diseased and
sick, whiggism would be as ineffectual as toryism or conservatism. Lastly, if the Chartist got
all he wanted, universal suffrage, vote by ballot,
equal electoral districts, annual parliaments, paid
representatives, and  no property qualification,
and he should succeed in transferring all power
into the people's hands, and yet it were to turn
out that the majority were just as corrupt and
depraved as the minority had been before them,
every honest Chartist will tell us that his chartism would have been a failure, and was not
worth the having.
Now the plan that you have adopted in this
Institution seems to me to exactly reverse that
order of procedure.  You have said, " We will
reform ourselves, and then the institutions will
reform  themselves."  And in doing this you
have surely proceeded in the rightful order; for
if the heart of a nation be wise and right, you
may depend upon it the laws of that nation
will never long remain radically wrong. Free
institutions will never of themselves make free




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        31
men out of men who are themselves the slaves
to vice; but free men will inevitably express
their inward character in their outward institutions. The spirit of every kingdom must begin first " within you."
I now proceed to offer you two or three cautions with respect to your Institution.  First,
we must not expect too much from it. There
is no magic, no enchantment, in a library and
reading-room.  They will not make a man wise
or good in spite of himself, or without effort of
nis own. They will leave each man what he
was before, except that they will put into his
hands means of amelioration. The man who
was the mere lounger in the streets will become the lounger in the Institute; the man
who was the mere miserable politician there
will remain the mere politician in the readingroom.  The man who got excitement from
drinking will now  get excitement from  the
newspaper.
The next suggestion is, that we must be prepared for a great deal of evil.  It is utterly
impossible to look on this great movement without seeing clearly in the distance a large possibility of evil. The motto on one of your papers
is, " Knowledge is power."  It is a truth that is
glorious, but at the same time terrible. Knowl7




32         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
edge is power, power for good and evil. It is
a power that may elevate a man by degrees
up to an affinity with his Maker; it is a power
that may bring him by degrees down to the level
even of Satanic evil.  Increased mental power
will be the result of this plan-possibly that
power will be devoted to bad purposes in many
instances; it may become what it is not meant
to be, the engine of some political party. Grant
this. But are we to abstain from the granting of
this power because of the possibility of its being
turned to evil? Why, on that principle no good
could be done at all. Good in this world cannot
be done without evil. Evil is but the shadow that
inseparably accompanies good. You may have
a world without shadow; but it must be a world
without light, a mere dim, twilight world. If
you would deepen the intensity of the light, you
must be content to bring into deeper blackness
and more distinct and definite outline, the shade
that accompanies it. He that feels timid at the
spectral form of evil, is not the man to spread
light. There is but one distinct rule that we can
lay down for ourselves, and that is, to do the
good that lies before us, and to leave the evil
which is beyond our control, to take care of itself.
In this world the tares and the wheat grow together, and all we have to do is to sow the wheat.




BY itEV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        83
If you will increase the rate of travelling, the
result will be an increase in the number of accidents and deaths; if you will have the printing
press, you must give to wickedness an illimitable
power of multiplying itself. If you will give
Christianity to the world, He who knew what
his own religion was, distinctly foresaw, and yet
foreseeing, did not hesitate to do his work, that
in giving to the world inward peace, it would
bring with it the outward sword, and pour into
the cup of human hatred, already brimming over,
fresh elements of discord, religious bitterness, and
theological asperity. Our path is clear. Possibilities of bad consequences must not stand in
the way of this work. I see one thing clearly,the labouring men in this town have a right to
their reading-room  and library just as much as
the higher classes have a right to their clubs, and
the middle classes to their Athenaeums. Let no
cowardly suspicion deter from generous sympathy. Give them their rights. Let the future take
care of itself.
The other suggestion is this. Let not a public benefit become a domestic evil. In the upper
classes it has been complained that the club has
been the destruction of domestic comfort. It is
easy for a man who has a few hundreds a year,
by means of combination, to live at the rate of




34         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
thousands. He may have his liveried servants,
his splendid hall, his sumptuous entertainments,
-and for this he may desert his home.  The
same may be one of the results of this plan of
yours. But if a man wants an excuse to stay
away from home, he will find it, whether this Institute exist or not. Moreover, it is not a comfortable, happy home that men will leave, but a
home made wretched by a wife's slatternly conduct, the absence of cleanliness, the want of that
cheerful, affectionate greeting which a man has
a right to expect when he returns harassed and
half maddened from the exhaustion of his daily
work. Therefore, let there be a generous rivalry
between your wives and daughters and this Institute. I tell them they have got now a rival. Let
them try which has most attractions-a comfortable reading-room or a happy home.
I turn next to the spirit in which your undertaking has been carried on. I find in it two
things, independence and generous reliance. You
might have had an institution on a different principle. It is conceivable that some wealthy philanthropist might have provided you all this, at
his own cost.  You might have had a finer room,
more brilliant lights, a better furnished library;
but every man who entered that room would
have felt his independence destroyed. He would




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        35
have felt a kind of mental pauperism, getting
his intellectual food at another's expense; and
there is nothing that destroys all manhood so
effectually as dependence upon the patronage of
others. Now you have been independent. You
have said, " We are men; we are not children;
we will educate ourselves-it is our own duty."
You have brought to bear the principle of combination. The subscription of one penny a week
would go a very little way for one man. But a
penny a week from 1,000 men amounts to more
than 2001. at the end of a year. Enough, with
a little assistance, for all you want. You have
cleansed the building, washed it, papered it, furnished it, all with your own hands. Every man
among you by this will in the first place feel
independent; in the second place, he will have
that elevation of character which arises from the
feeling of property. Property calls out all the
virtues of forethought, care, respect. The books,
the furniture, all are yours. The sense of honest
property in them will ensure that they shall be
taken care of. Long may this spirit be characteristic of English working men. We can understand and honour the feelings of that man who
stands before us with a modest feeling of his
own dignity in his countenance, which seems to
say, " The shoes that I wear are clouted, but I
7 *




36         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
paid for the mending of them myself; the house
that I live in is small, but every sixpence of the
rent is paid for with my own money. It may be
that my clothes are shabby and threadbare; but
no man can say that the begging petition, except
in case of the direst necessity, ever went round
the town in my name."  The greatest on earth
has no right to look down on that man.
But not content with this, you have manifested the spirit of reliance upon others for their
good will. There is one kind of independence
which is akin fto high excellence; another which
is akin to restless, jealous pride. The former has
been yours.  Guarding yourselves against the
idea of receiving charity, you have said to those
who are better off than yourselves, " We will
accept gratefully the books you choose to give us,
we will thank you for your sympathy."  Now let
me say, with all the conviction of my heart, I
believe that you have the sympathy of the upper
classes. I stand not here to be the special pleader
for the rich, or the defender of the vices of those
around me. In other places I have spoken, I
trust I ever shall speak, in their presence, in no
sycophantic tone in the discharge of my duty.
But now, in your presence, not for them, but for
you to hear, it is but plain truth to say there is a
deep feeling for you amongst them.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         37
In these latter times a convulsion has shaken
Europe, before which many a strong man's house
built upon the sand has gone down. There has
been a sifting of the nations; and every thing
that had not the basis of reality to rest on has
been shattered into shivers.  Through all that
terrible trial our own country has stood secure.
The waves of revolution that thundered on distant shores, were only a feeble murmur here.
The reason, politically speaking, of the difference
is, that the upper classes in this country have
hitherto been the leaders in reform. There are
two ways in which alteration may be effected.
If it be done gradually from above, it is a reformation; if suddenly from below, it is a revolution. If the higher do the work God has given
them to do, of elevating those below, you have
a country working out her own national life securely; if, on the other hand, those below either
tear down wantonly, or by the selfishness and
blindness of those above are compelled to tear
down such as are socially their superiors, then
there comes a crisis which no country ever yet
has passed through without verging upon ruin.
England's reforms hitherto have begun from
above.  There was a time when the barons of
this country, sword in hand, wrung from the most
profligate of our nionarchs the Great Charter of




38        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
English liberties. That charter imparted a portion of the freedom it won to the I.oroughs and
the tenants, mediately and immediately holding
from the Crown. When the insincere Charles I.
came to the throne, who stood foremost in the
resistance to the exaction of ship-money? An
English gentleman by the side of an English
peer. When his infatuated successor, with the
blind arbitrariness of his race, untaught by all
experience, began that system which ended in
the expulsion of his family, the blood of freedom
which flowed upon the scaffold, was the blood of
an English nobleman. When that great measure
passed which gave so large an extension of the
franchise, it was proposed by a nobleman in his
place, with a voice choked with emotion, produced by the magnitude of the change he was
effecting. Come down to our own times. Who
have busied themselves in insuring for the labouring man better ventilation, personal and domestic cleanliness? Who are they that, session after
session, fought the battle of the working man to
abridge his hours of labour?  Who, after long
and patient investigation, brought before the
country the hideous particulars of women labouring harnessed in the mines, and children young
in years but gray-headed in depravity? A band
of English gentlemen, at the head of whom was




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       39
one who has surrounded the name of Ashley
with a glory, in comparison with which the concentrated lustre of all the coronets and crowns in
Europe is a tinselled gewgaw, and which will burn
brightly when they have passed into nothingness.
Another instance still. Suffer me to remind
you of the history of your own Institute. At
the beginning of this year a person of this town,
afflicted with a severe malady, fixed his thoughts
on this question, how he should do good to the
working classes of Brighton. You may understand much of a man's real interest in a subject
by observing the direction that his thoughts take
when they are left to act spontaneously.  A man
who forces himself to think upon a generous
topic does well; but a man whose thoughts turn
to it of their own accord, when all coercion is
taken off, loves that cause in reality. It was my
privilege to visit this person during his illness, in
my pastoral capacity, as a member of my own
congregation. I found one thought uppermost in
his mind, "1 How shall I do good to the working
classes?"  And that which was at first merely
dim and vague, took form and,shape at last. It
grew, till it became a living thing; and whatever
interest there maybe in the crowded room now
before us, whatever may be the result of this
movement in your own intellectual elevation,




40         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
whatever may be the future effects of it upon the
minds of the men of Brighton, is all owing to
the energy of one Christian philanthropist, who
excogitated his idea in the midst of solitude, and
matured it in torture. And that man is of a class
above your own.
You have asked for sympathy. I say that you
have it. I say not that the higher classes of this
country have altogether understood the high destinies which they are called on to fulfil. I say not
that they all, or any of them, do what they might.
To say that would be to say what has been true
of no country. There are nobles who see in their
rank nothing of a higher call than that which
gives them a miserable leadership in the world of
fashion.  There are land-owners who see in the
possession of their land nothing more divine than
the means of wringing rents from their tenants,
and furnishing covert for their game. There are
wealthy persons who speak of the workman as if
he were of a different order of beings from themselves.  The day is fast coming when they will
find that their whole life has been a lie. After
that the longer night is near, which will shroud
all such in the darkness of all good men's scorn.
But it is false to history-false to experiencefalse to fact, to give this as the general description
of the upper classes of this country.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       41
We pass to the last thing on which I have to
speak to you. There is an expression in this
paper of a hope "bright in the hearts of the
labouring men that better times are coming."
The heart of every one responds to that. Who
can look on this entangled web of human affairs
in which evil struggles with good, good gradually
and slowly disengaging itself, without having a
hope within him that there are better times to
come? Who can see this evil world full of envy
and injustice, and be content to believe that
things will remain as they are, even to the end?
Who can see the brilliancy of character already
attained by individuals of our race, without feeling that there is a pledge in this that what has
been done already in the individual will yet be
accomplished in the nation and in the race?
If I did not respond with all my soul to that, I
would close the Bible to-morrow. For from first
to last the Bible tells of better times. It came to
our first parents and spoke of the serpent Evil
crushed, not without suffering, under the foot of
man. It came to the Israelite, mourning under
political degradation, and consoled him by the
vision of a time in which kings shall reign in
righteousness and princes shall rule in judgment.
It came to true, brave men, who groaned over the
hollowness and hypocrisy of all around them, the




42         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
false glare and brilliancy which surrounded the
great bad man, and told of the day when the vile
man should be no longer called liberal, nor the
churl bounteous. It spoke in the clearer language
of New Testament promise of this actual world
becoming a kingdom of peace and purity, of justice, brotherhood, and liberty. It irradiated the
last moments of the first martyr with a vision of
the Just One at the right hand of power.
Now suffer me to interpret for you the expression of " better times." If I understand you, you
do not mean by "better times," times in which
there shall be a general scramble for property;
you do not mean the time when there shall be
obliteration of all distinctions, no degradations
for the worthless, no prizes for the best. You do
not expect a time in which government shall so
interfere to regulate labour that the idle and the
industrious workman shall be placed upon a par,
and that the man who is able to think out by his
brain the thought which is true and beautiful,
shall not be able to rise above the man who is
scarcely above the level of the brute. Those
would not be better times. They would be the
return of the bad, old times of false coercion, and
brute force.
But if I understand you aright, you expect a
time when merit shall find its level; when all




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        43
falsehoods and hypocrisies shall be consigned to
contempt, and all imbecility degraded and deposed; when worth shall receive its true meaning,
when it shall be interpreted by what a man is and
not by what he has, nor by what his relations have
been. You want the restitution of all things to
reality. Those are better times.
Now, then, let us look at our England. Has
she any part in these better times?  They tell us
that England's day is past. I have heard foreign
philosophers dissect our political state, and, with
cold-blooded triumph, by all the precedents of the
past, anticipate our approaching fall. It may be
so. In the history of the past, in the relics and
ruins around us, there are the solemn monuments
of nations once great that are now nothing. The
land of the Pharaohs is in decay; its population
is now diminishing, and the sand of the desert
daily silting up the temples of her former magnificence; Rome is broken into fragments; Jerusalem's last sob is hushed. Spain once had an
empire on which the sun never set, because the
moment he set on her possessions in the east, he
rose on her possessions in the west. Spain lies
now in her hopeless struggle like the blackened
hull of a vessel that has been lightning-struck,
rolling and heaving helplessly as the ocean wills;
Genoa, Venice, Holland, once had an eastern
8




44         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
traffic. Upon them the same law of decay has
passed, and the weed rots on the side of palaces
that are now the abode of paupers.
It may be that such a destiny is in store for
England. But one thing is certain, that the decay of morals in all'these cases preceded the
decay of institutions. The inward ruin preceded
the political. So long as there was inward
strength of constitution, so long intestine commotions were thrown off easily to the surface;
so long as the nation was united in itself, so long
were the attacks of enemies thrown off like
the waves from the rock. To borrow a Scripture
metaphor, if there were heard in the political
heavens of a devoted nation or a devoted city
the shrill shriek of the judgment eagles plunging
for their prey, it was not till moral corruption
had reduced the body of the nation to a carcase.
Where the body was the eagles were gathered
together. Looking to our beloved country, we
see nothing of that kind. Her moral character
seems yet sound. Healthy feeling is among us.
A few weeks ago I stood in the lower room of
this building, anxious to be a witness of the
spirit in which you were conducting your undertaking. The speakers that evening, with one or
two exceptions, were all working men. I heard,
not eloquence, but something far better —straight



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         45
forward, honest, English, manly common sense.
A high moral tone pervaded all that was said. I
heard vice decried. I heard lounging, drinking,
smoking, all the evils that ruin the health and
character of the artizan, sternly condemned. 1
trust that it did my heart good. And I hesitate
not to say that I left that room with feelings
enlarged in sympathy. I trod through the dark
streets that evening with a more elastic step, and
a lighter heart; I felt a distincter hope for this
country —  felt proud of belonging to a nation
whose labouring men could hold such a tone as
that.  Through all England we see the same
thing; increasing moral earnestness, a deeper
purpose, a more fixed resolve. Even in our justice do we see the same healthy tone. Justice is
no longer the weak, passionate outbreak of vindictive feeling against a criminal for the injury
he has done; in the very moment of her worst
insult England can hold the sword suspended,
and refuse to  strike until she has. maturely
weighed not only what is due to the majesty
of offended law, but besides, how much to the
frailty of an erring judgment.
A striking exhibition of that same tone we
have in the character of our press. On the whole,
the press is on the side of rectitude. There is a
paper familiar to us all, which is the represent



46         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
ative of English humour.  It is dedicated to
mirth and jollity; but it is a significant feature
of our times, and I believe a new one, that the
comic satire of a country, expressed in a periodical, which tests a country's feeling because of its
universal circulation, should be, on the whole, on
the side of right.  It takes the side of the oppressed; it is never bitter except against what at
least seems unjust and insincere.  It is rigidly
correct in purity, distinctly saying in all this that
England even in her hour of mirth is resolved to
permit no encroachment on her moral tone.
Looking at all this, and seeing in the upper
classes and the lower one strong feeling, one conviction that we have been too long two nations,
one determination to become one, to burst the
barriers that have kept us apart so long; looking
at the exhibitions of high self-forgetfulness and
sworn devotedness to duty, which from time to
time are rising even out of the most luxurious
and most voluptuous ranks, we have a right to
hope that that which is working among us is not
death, but life.  Our national character is showing itself again in its ancient form, that strange
character, so calm, so cold, so reserved outwardly,
rising once again in its silent strength. The heart
of England is waking to her work, that mighty
heart which is so hard to rouse to strong emotion,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.          47
but the pulses of which, when once roused, are
like the ocean in its strength, sweeping all before
it. This is not death. This is not decay. The
sun of England's glory has not set. There is a
bright, long day before her yet. There are better
times coming.
8W




SECOND ADDRESS.
PREFACE.
As this pamphlet may fall into the hands of
some who are unacquainted with the circumstances which gave rise to its publication, and as
some principles are involved in it which have a
wider range than belongs to a local Institution, it
may be well to preface it with so much information as may render it intelligible.
The Working Man's Institute was established
in October, 1848. It was the belief of those who
originated it, that a large class of persons were
almost entirely destitute of any means of selfeducation by access to a library or periodical
publications,-a class still more limited in means
than those for whom Athenaeums and Mechanics'
Institutes had been long established.  A very
small subscription, one penny a week, if only
sufficient numbers would combine, was found to
be large enough to provide such an Association




LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.   49
with the materials of mental and moral improvement; and it was confidently hoped that subscriptions from the wealthier classes would enable
them by degrees to accumulate a valuable library.
Great eagerness was manifested by the working
classes when this project was made  known.
About 1,300 members enrolled themselves at
once.  The peculiar feature of the Association
was, that the whole management virtually devolved upon this class alone, with the exception
of one of a rank above them, the late Mr. Holtham, who gave up a large portion of his time to
assisting in the organization of the Society; the
object of this being to break down, if possible,
that feeling of suspicion which exists in the minds
of so many of the working class, of a desire for
interference and coercion on the part of those who
come forward as their benefactors.
It was, of course, foreseen that the rock on
which such a plan might be wrecked, would be
any successful effort to divert the funds and
machinery of the Institute from its original intention to the purposes of a political party.
But in this case, the withdrawal of all wecl-disposed persons would leave the Association to
dwindle till it became extinct. For its very existence depended upon numbers.  The experiment,
therefore, appeared to be a perfectly safe one,




50         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
inasmuch as perversion of its purposes must
inevitably be followed quickly by annihilation.
One fatal oversight (such at least it appears to
the Author of these pages) in the constitution of
the Society realized the foreseen danger. It had
been justly held that the working men ought to
have in their own hands the management of their
own Society, lest the smallest suspicion should
arise that there was any desire in those who
were their benefactors to coerce or trammel them.
Every attempt at interference was scrupulously
avoided. All this was wise and just. But beyond this, not only was the domination of the
upper classes made impossible, but even their
assistance and advice excluded, by making honorary members incompetent to vote or act on
committee; a mistake which originated in an
over scrupulous generosity on the part of one
who suggested it; but fatal, because false in principle.
To have vested the power of unlimited control
or rule in the richer classes, would have been a
surrender of the very principle on which the plan
rested. But to reject all cooperation and assistance from  them, to receive their, contributions
and refuse their advice, was to create and foster
a spirit, not of manly, but of jealous independence, and to produce in a new form that vicious




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         51
state of relationship between class and class,
which is at this day the worst evil in our social
life-the repulsion of the classes of society from
each other at all points except one, so as to leave
them touching at the single point of pecuniary
interest. And thus the cementing principle of
society is declared to be the spirit of selfishnessthe only spirit which is essentially destructive.
A fatal blunder!
When it is reckoned the duty of one class to
give money, and the duty of another to suspect
motives, the cordial sympathy of classes which
really depend on another, cannot long continue.
Not by mutual independence, but by mutual and
trustful dependence, can men live together and
society exist.  As might have been expected,
contributions fell off, and the more active and
turbulent, unbalanced by a salutary check, became leaders in the Society.
An attempt was made by a numerous minority
to introduce into the library works of skeptical
and socialist principles. The secretary resisted
the attempt. A general meeting of the members
was dissolved without coming to a decision. In
this emergency the following Address was made,
with the intention of meeting that attempt, if
possible, by a candid and pacific examination of
the principles of the question.




52         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
An Address delivered to the ]Members of the
Working Mlan's Institute, at the Town IHal,
Brighton, on Thursday, April 18, 1850, on the
Question of the Introduction of Skeptical Publications into their Library.
BROTHER  MEN, MEMBERS OF THE WORKING
MAN'S INSTITUTE.
Two years have passed since I addressed you
in this place. On that occasion' I was here by
your invitation; on the present, you are here by
mine. I have to explain the unprecedented step
of summoning you to meet me here this evening. My account of it is this: I am personally
compromised before the public by your proceedings. Unexpectedly on my part, you honoured
me with a request that I would deliver the opening address to your society. It was at a period
when events which had recently taken place upon
the Continent, caused every large movement to
be looked upon with suspicious eyes; yet I did
not think it right to hesitate for one moment in
complying with your request.  Such influence




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        53
as my name could command, I gladly gave you.
I have not the vanity to say that that influence
was great, or that my name had weight with
many: but it did weigh with some; and support
was given you by them in reliance upon my representations.  To them, and to the-public generally, I stand pledged for the character of your
society. For good or evil, my name is inseparably linked with yours. Your success is my success, and your failure is my shame.  This is my
claim to be heard, or rather the ground on which
rests my duty to address you; and I ask your
calm attention, not promising that every word I
say will be acceptable to all; but I think I may
promise, that not a word shall drop from me,
which on mature reflection you will be able justly
to call illiberal.
It may require, too, to be explained why this
address is a public one, instead of being confined
to the members of the Institute. Great publicity
has been given to your late meetings by your
own hand-bills, and by the press. I cannot disguise from you the fact, that much pain has been
felt in Brighton in consequence of those proceedings. I cannot hide from you that much attention has been directed towards you, and that our
meeting of this evening is looked to with great
anxiety. I cannot conceal from you, that sym



54         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
pathy has been much chilled, that the cause of
the education of the working classes has received
a shock, and that the question of the desirableness of free institutions has become a matter
with many of serious doubt. Therefore, as the
scandal was public, I felt that the vindication
must be public too.  You asked me to stand
by you at the hopeful beginning of your institution-I could not desert you in the moment of
danger, and the hour of your unpopularity. I
am here once more to say publicly, that whatever
errors there may have been in the working out of
the details, I remain unaltered in the conviction
that the broad principle on which your society
commenced, was a true one. I am here to identify myself in public again with you-to say that
your cause is my cause, and your failure my failure. I am here to profess my unabated trust in
the sound-heartedness and right feeling of the
great majority of the working men of the Brighton
Institute.
One more thing remains to be accounted for.
You will ask me why this meeting differs in form
so evidently from  your usual meetings.  The
chairman is not your president, not your vicepresident, not even a member of your society.
This is my reason. I am here to-night in a position quite peculiar; a position of peculiar delicacy,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.          55
difficulty, and independence. I am not the organ
or spokesman of any party. I do not mix myself
with any of the personalities of the question. I
have taken counsel of no one of either party; nor,
indeed, have I asked any one's advice upon the
matter. I am anxious that neither the president,
nor any section of the Institute, should be pledged
to my views. I asked no one to share the responsibility of summoning this meeting, or that of its
result.  Let all the blame, if blame there be, rest
on me.  On my single responsibility, all is done.
To make this evident to the public, with the entire
and friendly concurrence of your president, Mr.
Ricardo, I asked one to preside over us to-night,
whose firmness, impartiality, and uprightness, are
so well known to his fellow townsmen, as to determine beforehand what the tone and character of
this meeting are to be., This is not a lecture, but
an address.
It is painful to be obliged to say any thing of
self; yet, for several reasons, I feel compelled to
say a few words respecting the spirit in which I
desire to address you.
I do not pretend to dictate, nor shall I assume
the tone of insulting condescension. I know that
many whom  I address to-night, have minds of
a strength and hardness originally greater than
mine, though my advantages of education may
9




56         LECTURES AND- ADDRESSES
have been superior. I am not about to try the
power of priestcraft, nor to cajole or flatter you
into the reception of my views. Let the working
men dismiss from their minds the. idea, if it exists,
of any assumption of a liberal tone for the purpose of winning them. If I speak sentiments free
and liberal, it is not because they are adopted as
opinions, but because they are bound up with
every fibre of my being. I could as soon part
with my nature and being, as cease to think and
speak freely.  Let them  not fancy that such
language is assumed, as fit for a platform before
which they stand. There are those of your own
number who will tell you that, in another place,
from  my own pulpit, not before workmen, but
before their masters, before the rich and titled of
this country, I have held and hold this same tone,
and taught Christianity as the perfect Law of
Liberty. They can tell you that it has cost me
something, and that I have brought upon myself
in consequence no small share of suspicion, misrepresentation, and personal dislike. I do not
say this in bitterness; I hold it to be a duty to be
liberal and generous, even to the illiberal and
narrow-minded; and it seems to me a pitiful thing
for any man to aspire to be true and to speak
truth, and then to complain in astonishment, that
truth has not crowns to give, but thorns; but I




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        57
say it in order that you and I may understand
each other. Let the men of this association rest
assured that they shall hear no cant from me. I
am not before them even to preach the Gospel,
but to meet them on broad common ground, to
speak to them  as a man addressing his brother
men.
Again, my purpose to-night is not denunciation. If any man has come expecting to hear
Socialism  and Infidelity denounced, he will be
disappointed. My firm  conviction is, that denunciation does no good. Anathemas, whether
thundered from church courts, from pulpits, or
from platforms, are foolish and impotent. It is
the principle of that Book, the spirit of which I
desire for my guide throughout life, that the
wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of
God.
Let me explain why I refuse to denounce
Infidelity.
I refuse to do so to-night, because it would be
ungenerous. You have heard of a place called
" Coward's Castle."  Coward's Castle is that
pulpit or that platform from which a man, surrounded by his friends, in the absence of his
opponents, secure of applause and safe from a
reply, denounces those who differ from him. I
mean to invite no discussion to-night; and just




58         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES.
because there can be no reply, if there were no
better reason than that, there shall be no denunciation.
Your chairman  has already told  you that
there is to be no debate; and I will explain to
you why I have resolved on this. All topics are
the fit subjects of free inquiry; but all are not
the fit subjects of public discussion. And this,
not because of any weakness in them, or uncertainty respecting their truth; but because of the
very delicacy of the matter in question. There
are some things too delicate and too sacred to be
handled rudely without injury to truth. Nothing
is more certain than the duty of filial love; but
if it were made a question for discussion in a
school debating club, I fancy the arrival at truth
would be somewhat questionable. Exactly in
proportion as a boy was good, tender, and affectionate, would he feel it difficult, rhetorically or
logically, to defend his feelings; he would be conscious of a stammering tongue, and a crimsoned
cheek, and perhaps be overwhelmed with confusion. Nor would it require much talent or wit to
make his position seem  absurd-it would only
require a copious flow of ribaldry. For you know
the old proverb, that between the sublime and the
ridiculous there is but a single step; and the more
sacred a subject is, the more easy is it to give it




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         59
an absurd aspect. It would be in the power of
any bad boy to raise a laugh at the expense of
one better and more manly than himself, by representing him as under the guidance of his mother's apron string. In the very same way it would
be easy enough to reduce the position of a religious man to one exquisitely ludicrous; loud, rude
taunts of spiritual subjection, timidity, support by
leading strings, pointed with blasphemy and unscrupulous effrontery, would not demand much
superiority of talent, but would effectually cover
all chance of arriving at the truth with a cloud
of dust. Therefore do I refuse to permit discussion this evening respecting the love which a
Christian man bears to his Redeemer, a love more
delicate far than the love which was ever borne to
sister, or the adoration with which he regards his
God, a reverence more sacred than man ever bore
to mother.  Therefore do I reject the infinite absurdity of a trial of such truth as the existence
of a God by a show of hands.
Again, there shall be no denunciation, because
infidelity is the vaguest of all charges.  None is
more freely, or more wantonly, or more cruelly
hurled by man against man. Infidelity is often
only the unmeaning accusation brought by timid
persons, half conscious of the instability of their
own belief, and furious against every one whose
9*




GO         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
words make them tremble at their own insecurity.
It is sometimes the cry of narrowness against an
old truth under a new and more spiritual form.
Sometimes it is the charge caught up at secondhand, and repeated as a kind of religious hue and
cry, in profoundest ignorance of the opinions that
are so characterized. Nothing is more melancholy
than to listen to the wild, indiscriminate charges
of Skepticism, Mysticism, Pantheism, Rationalism, Atheism, which are made by some of the
weakest of mankind, who scarcely know the difference between Mesmerism and Mysticism. I
hold it a Christian duty, to abstain from this
foolish and wicked system of labelling men with
names; to stand aloof from every mob, religious
or irreligious in name, which resembles that mob
at Ephesus, who shouted for two long hours, the
more part knowing not wherefore they were come
together.
When the most spiritual minds of the sixteenth
century protested against Rome, Protestantism
was called infidelity. Eighteen centuries ago, the
Christians were burned at the stake under the
name of Atheists. The Athenians poisoned their
noblest man as an Atheist. Only a few weeks
ago, I saw one of the most precious works of
one of the wisest of the Christian philosophers of
England-Samuel Taylor Coleridge-denounced




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        61
as the most pestilential work of our day, by
one of those miserable publications, miscalled
religious newspapers, whose unhallowed work it
seems to be on earth to point out to its votaries
whom they ought to suspect instead of whom
they ought to love, and to sow the seeds of dissension, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness.
Nay, I cannot but remember that, in bygone
years, One whose whole life was one continued
prayer, the sum and substance of whose teaching
was love to God and love to man, was crucified
by the bigots of his day as a Sabbath-breaker, a
Blasphemer, and a Revolutionist. Therefore I
refuse to thunder out indiscriminate anathemas
to-night. Real infidelity is a fearful thing, but I
have learned to hold the mere charge of infidelity
very cheap. And I earnestly would impress on
all, the duty of being cautious in the use of these
charges. Give a man the name of Atheist, hint
that he is verging upon infidelity, and the man is
doomed; doomed as surely as the wretched animal which is pursued by the hue and cry of bad
boys, and which, driven from  street to street,
maddened by the ceaseless rattle of the tin appended to him, expires at last, gasping, furious,
amidst the shrieks of old women, and the stones
of terrified passengers, who are all the more savage in proportion to their terror. For cowardice
is always cruel.




62         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Again, I abstain from  denunciation, because,
not unfrequently, even that which professes to
be infidelity, is disbelief, not of God, but of the
character which men have given of God; opposition to the name of Christ, but not to the Spirit
of Christ; hatred rather of the portrait by which
his followers have represented him.  I believe
we should never forget, that if infidelity be rife
in this country, we who profess to be servants of
God, have much to answer for.  Our bitterness
and superstition, and rancour, have been the representations of the spirit of Christianity from
which men have recoiled. Dare we brand infidelity with hard names, as if we were guiltless?
Ever the lesson of history has been this-the
recoil from formalism is skepticism; the reaction
from superstition is infidelity. In the days of the
Pharisees, the natural and inevitable recoil was
Sadduceeism.  In the 15th and 16th centuries,
when Christianity itself had become form  and
magic, the result was the polished infidelity of
the Papal Court of the tenth Leo.  When Puritanism had bound men's consciences by a strictness more intolerable than that of Popery itself,
substituted a Pharisaism  of words for a Pharisaism of ceremonies, regulated the simplicities of
human life by a rigorous proscription of all freehearted mirth, and even restricted the dishes on




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        63
the table to a religious number,-the reaction was
the light, skeptical licentiousness of the reign of
Charles II. It is a fact worthy of deep pondering, to me a singularly startling one, that at the
moment when we, the priests of England, were
debating, as a matter of life and death, the precise amount of miracle said to be performed in a
Christian sacrament, and excommunicating one
another with reciprocated charges of heresy,-the
working men of this country, who are not to be
put off with transcendental hypotheses, and mysterious phraseology, on whom the burdens of this
existence press as fearful realities, were actually
debating in their societies, here beneath this very
roof, a far more awful question, whether there be
indeed a God or not. It might suggest to one
who thinks, a question not altogether calming in
these days, what connection there is between
these two things.
There is a special reason for saying all this.
Among the list of books proposed by one party
amongst you, and rejected by the other, I find
" Queen Mab," by Shelley. Now Shelley's works,
if objectionable, are objectionable on a very different ground from that on which many similar
works should be condemned.  In  one sense,
Shelley was an infidel; in another sense, he was
not an infidel. I could read you passages from




64          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
" Queen Mab," which every right-minded man,
would indignantly condemn; and I could read
you others breathing a spirit of benevolence, and
aspiration, and trust, and purity, which are as
sublime as poetically beautiful. Of the first class,
I need scarcely say that I shall produce none;
and of the second class, I will only quote one"For when the power of imparting good
Is equal to the will, the human soul
Requires no other heaven."
I do not ask for a more spirited or a more just
idea of heaven. Compare it with words infallible
-" If we love one another, God dwelleth in us; "
It is more blessed to give than to receive."  I
would that the anticipated heaven of many who
are called Christians, were half as much purged
of the idea of arbitrary rewards, and happified
selfishness.
I could adduce numbers of such passages. The
poem is full of them, steeped in a flood of earnest
desire to see this earth regenerated, and purified,
and the spirit of man mingling with the Infinite
Spirit of Good.
How  comes it, then, that one whose works
breathe so much of the spirit of Christianity,
could blaspheme Christ?  Alas! Christ had been
miserably shown to Shelley. Poor, poor Shelley!




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        65
All that he knew of Christianity, was as a system
of exclusion and bitterness, which was to drive
him from his country; all that he knew of the
God of the Bible, was the picture of a bloody
tyrant, gloating in blood, and making his horrible
decree the measure of right and wrong, instead
of right and wrong the ground of his decree. I
say God had been so represented to Shelley; and
if it be replied, " Shelley might have read his
Bible to find that this was false," I reply, that
chapter and verse were quoted by those who were
supposed to know their Bible, in corroboration of
their theories, and Shelley could not have read
those passages but with preconceptions of their
meaning. I grieve that I cannot call Shelley a'Christian. There are frantic ravings in this book
which no Christian can justify; wild, vague
music, as of an JEolian harp, inarticulate and
unmeaning, breathed as a hymn to the Spirit of
Nature, Intellectual Beauty, and so forth; maddest schemes and fastidious sensitivenesses respecting marriage, and man's granivorous nature;
H fibre of insanity in his brain; yet I cannot help
feeling that there was a spirit in poor Shelley's
mind, which might have assimilated with the
Spirit of his Redeemer,-nay which I will dare
to say, was kindred with that Spirit, if only his
Redeemer had been differently imaged to him.




66         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Let who will denounce Shelley, I will not. I
will not brand with Atheism the name of one
whose- life was one dream of enthusiastic however impracticable, philanthropy. I will not say
that a man who, by his opposition to God, means
opposition to a demon, to whom  the name of
God in his mind is appended, is an enemy of
God. To such a man I only reply, you are
blaspheming a devil. That is not the God I
adore. You are not my enemy. Change the
name, and I will bid that character defiance with
you.
Once more, I do not denounce, because the
state of Atheism is too miserable for me to curse
it.  There is an infidelity with which no good
man should have any sympathy. There are infidels who are such, knowing what they oppose.
There are men who, in no mistake, know the
difference between good and evil, and distinctly
knowing it, choose the evil and reject the good.
But there is a state called infidelity, which deserves compassion rather than indignation-the
dreadful state of one who craves light and carnot find it. I do think the way we treat that
state, is most unpardonably cruel. It is an awful
moment when the soul begins to find that the
props on which it has blindly rested so long,
are, many of them, rotten, and begins to suspect




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        67
them all; when it begins to feel the nothingness
of many of the traditionary opinions which have
been received with implicit confidence, and in
that horrible insecurity begins also to doubt
whether there be any thing to believe at all. It
is an awful hour —let him  who has passed
through it say how awful-when this life has lost
its meaning, and seems shrivelled into a span;
when the grave appears to be the end of all,
human goodness nothing but a name, and the
sky. above this universe a dead expanse, black
with the void from which God himself has disappeared.  In that fearful loneliness of spirit,
when those who should have been his friends
and counsellors only frown upon his misgivings,
and profanely bid him stifle doubts, which for
aught he knows may arise from the fountain of
truth itself, to extinguish, as a glare from hell,
that which for aught he knows may be light from
Heaven, and every thing seem wrapped in hideous uncertainty, I know but one way in which a
man may come forth from his Agony scathless;
it is by holding fast to those things which are
certain still-the grand, simple landmarks of
morality. In the darkest hour through which a
human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful,
this at least is certain. If there be no God and
no future state, yet, even then, it is better to be
10




68         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
generous than selfish, better to be chaste than
licentious, better to be true than false, better to be
brave than to be a coward. Blessed beyond all
earthly blessedness is the man who, in the tempestuous darkness of the soul, has dared to hold
fast to these venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed
is he, who, when all is drear and cheerless within
and without, when his teachers terrify him, and
his friends shrink from him, has obstinately clung
to moral good. Thrice blessed, because his night
shall pass into clear, bright day.
I appeal to the recollection of any man who
has passed through that hour of agony, and stood
upon the rock at last, the surges stilled below
him, and the last cloud drifted from  the sky
above, with a faith, and hope, and trust, no longer
traditional, but of his own, a trust which neither
earth nor hell shall shake thenceforth for ever.
But it is not in this way generally that men act
who are tempted by doubt.  Generally, the step
from doubt is a reckless plunge into sensuality.
Then comes the darkening of the moral being;
and then from uncertainty and skepticism it may
be that the path lies unobstructed, sheer down
into Atheism. But if there be one on earth who
deserves compassion, it is the sincere, earnest,
and-may I say it without risk of being misunderstood?-honest doubter. Let who will de



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         69
nounce him, I will not. I would stand by his
side, and say, Courage, my brother! You are
darkening your own soul; you are contradicting
the meaning of your own existence. But God
is your Father, and an Infinite Spirit seeks to
mingle itself with yours.
I pass to the immediate question which has
brought us together this evening.
The history of recent events is briefly this.
About a fortnight ago certain books were introduced, or attempted to be introduced into this
Institution.  They were objected to  I must say,
rightly objected to, by a large majority of the
members of the Institution. Out of a society of
800 or 900 members, only 138 could be found
to publicly advocate their reception.  Now, in
order to treat this matter fairly, I believe that
the best way will be to endeavour to consider,
what are the principles on which their introduction is urged. Looking over these papers which
have come before the public, I think I discern
three grounds on which their proposal is defended; the Rights of Free Inquiry; the Rights
of Liberty; and the Rights of Democracy.  I
am content to argue the question on those three
grounds.
Let us first consider the Rights of Free Inquiry. It is said, and with some degree of truth,




70          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
that the reason of man is the supreme judge of
all things, and that God's existence cannot be
demonstrated to reason.  I am  quite ready to
admit that, provided that we can first agree respecting the word " Reason."  Very often a dispute arises from a mistake concerning words. In
English, the word " Reason " has two meanings,
and I do not know  that I can find any two
words that are exactly adapted to express those
two meanings, which are included in one and
the same word.  But we will express them  in
this way.  There is a Soul and there is a Mind;
the Soul or Heart is different from  the Mind,
and the Reason is different from the Understanding.*  The understanding is that by which a
man becomes a mere logician and a mere rhetorician; it is simply that by which he reasons
from the impressions received through the senses.
There is an understanding in the beaver, and
there is an understanding in the bee, by which
it builds its habitation. The fox has it as well,
and there we call it cunning. They can and do
reason; but they have not Reason.  There you
see the ambiguity, the two meanings of the
* It is scarcely needful to remark, that this use of the
two words in a special and technical sense, to denote a
most important distinction between two things essentially
different, is borrowed from Mr. Coleridge.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        71
word. It is by this Understanding that man
knows what is'profitable and what is unprofitable for him, by which he can shape his life with
prudence. If you mean, in using the word Reason, to say that Understanding cannot find out
God, I am ready to agree with you.
There is an expression imputed to one of the
members of the Working Man's Institute, which
has been since denied; but it matters little
whether it was rightly or mistakenly denied by
the committee; it is this-that "if a man undertakes to prove the being of a God, he undertakes
to prove too much." I know not whether he said
it or not. If he did not say it, I will say it for
him. I cannot prove the being of a God; if by
proof, I mean that addressed to the Understanding. If I said I could, I should be guilty of the
vilest Rationalism. I cannot prove any one of
the highest truths, except to the Heart, the Soul,
the Reason. I cannot prove to any man that
sweet is better than sour. I cannot prove that
good is better than evil to any man, unless there
is a correspondence in his own being to the eternal difference between them. I cannot prove to
any man that there is a sun, unless he has an eye
to see it. I cannot prove that he is in a waking
state, if he is in an illusion that he is in a dream.
For even the proof I give, the impression my hand
10 *




72         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
makes on his, is not that disputable?  May not
that proof be part of his dream?  Has he not
before now dreamed that he was awake?  The
fact is, that there are truths of sense addressed to
the Understanding; there are others, and they the
highest, which are addressed to the Reason. I
will undertake to convict a man of idiocy, if he
cannot see the proof that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. I will undertake
to prove him fit for a lunatic asylum, if he refuses
to receive the evidence that the earth goes round
the sun. But if I place before a man an argument resting on miracles or on prophecy, or the
proof from design, or any of the proofs addressed
to the understanding, he may be neither an idiot
nor insane, and yet unable to feel its force. An
old French proverb says, that "grand thoughts
come from the heart."  God must be felt by the
Heart, intuitively perceived by the Reason, before
he can be demonstrated to the Understanding. If
a man does not feel in every fibre of his heart a
Divine Presence, I cannot prove that it is there,
or anywhere else. For the evidence of the Senses
can never be more certain than the convictions of
the Soul or Reason.
There are men always talking of rights, and
never of duties; I do not expect that they should
believe in God, nor could I prove God to such.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         78
But let a man once feel the law of duty in his
soul let him feel within him as with the articulate distinctness of a living Voice, the Absolute
Imperative, " Thou shalt," and "Thou shalt not,"
-let him feel that the only hell is the hell of
doing wrong, and if that man does not believe
a God, all history is false. Brother men, the man
who tries to discover a God outside of him
instead of within, is doing just like him who
endeavours to find out the place of the rainbow
by hunting for it.  The place of the rainbow depends upon your standing-point; and I say that
the conviction of the being and character of a
God, depends upon your moral standing-point.
To believe in God, is simply the most difficult
thing in the world.  You must be pure before
you can believe in purity; generous, before you
can believe in unselfishness. In all moral truth,
what you are, that is the condition of your belief.
Only to him in whom infinite aspirations stir, can
an Infinite One be proved.
Now once more we will try this on the principle of Free Inquiry. I find, on reading over the
papers issued by the committee and their opponents, that one party objects to the refusal to
admit these books, on the ground that it is an
attempt to crush freeinquiry.  Well, let there be
free inquiry; let there be no attempt to stop fiee




74          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
inquiry.  There is no censorship of the press.
We desire none.  I would not, for 100,0001. an
hour, that there should be any restrictions placed
on the publishing of books.  I would far rather
that there was much less of censorship of opinion.  I know that millions of books, infidel and
bad books, swarm  out of the press; and yet I
would not wish to see them  stopped by force,
except, of course, such as are shocking to public
decency.  Great as are the evils of unchecked
license in publishing and reading, the evil of permitting any person or persons to restrict either
authoritatively, would be immeasurably greater.
It is a part of the liberty of the country, part of
the freedom we enjoy, part of the very peace and
purity we have, that all these things are permitted
to be matters of free inquiry.  It is part of our
moral discipline.  I would not have that exotic
virtue which is kept from the chill blast, hidden
from evil,-without any permission to be exposed
to temptation.  That alone is virtue which has
good placed before it and evil, and/ seeing the evil,
chooses the good.*
But now, this loud cry about the bigotry of
stopping free inquiry, let us consider it.  What
* See the well-known passage in Milton's noble work, the
"Areopagitica," which was unconsciously in the mind when
these words were spoken.




BY REV. F. W.  ROBERTSON.        75
do the objectors to these books say?  Inquire if
you will; only inquire at home. If you will read
books of socialism  or infidelity, read them  at
home, do not bring them  into our institution.
Do not compel the Working Man's Institute to
indorse these books of yours with its approbation. Is this bigotry? Is this an attempt to stop
free inquiry?
Now let us try the matter on the principle of
Freedom.  It seems to me that false notions
respecting liberty are strangely common. People
talk of liberty as if it meant the liberty of doing
what a man likes.  The only liberty that a man,
worthy the name of a man, ought to ask for, is
to have all restrictions, inward and outward,
removed which prevent his doing what he ought.
I call that man free, who is master of his lower
appetites, who is able to rule himself. I call him
free, who has his flesh in subjection to his spirit;
who fears doing wrong, but who fears neither
man nor devil besides. I think that man free,
who has learnt the most blessed of all truths, that
liberty consists in obedience to the power and to
the will and to the law that his higher soul reverences and approves.  He is not free because
he does what he likes, for in his better moments
his soul protests against the act, and rejects the
authority of the passion which commanded him,




76          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
as an usurping force, and tyranny.  He feels that
he is a slave to his own unhallowed passions.
But he is free when he does what he ought, because there is no protest in his soul against that
submission.
Some people seem  to think that there is no
liberty in obedience. I tell you there is no liberty
except in loyal obedience-the obedience of the
unconstrained affections. Did you never see a
mother kept at home, a kind of prisoner, by her
sick child, obeying its every wish and caprice,
passing the night sleepless?  Will you call the
mother a slave?  Or is this obedience the obedience of slavery?  I call it obedience of the
highest liberty, the liberty of love.
We hear in these days a great deal respecting
Rights: the rights of private judgment, the rights
of labour, the rights of property, and the rights
of man. Rights are grand things, divine things
in this world of God's; but the way in which
we expound those rights, alas! seems to me to
be the very incarnation of selfishness. I can see
nothing very noble in a man who is for ever
going about calling for his own rights.  Alas 
alas! for the man who feels nothing more grand
in this wondrous, divine world than his own
rights!
Let me tell you a story respecting rights.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       77
Three thousand years ago, history tells us of two
men, the one a poor man, the other a rich man.
The name of the poor man was David, the name
of the rich man was Nabal. David had been
expelled from his country unjustly, and in that
emergency there was nothing left for him but to
secure his independence by becoming chieftain
over a band of disaffected men, who lived in
those rude times irregularly enough, but whose
wild proceedings he contrived partially to restrain.
There was a custom in that country which gave
to every such chieftain a right to levy a kind of
compulsory wages, tax, or black mail, upon those
shepherds and farmers whose property he had
respected and defended from others more unscrupulous. It had grown up by a kind of tacit
understanding; not precisely defined, and liable
therefore to considerable abuse and uncertainty.
David had made such a claim on Nabal, and
Nabal considered it unreasonable, refused to accede to it, and added, besides, words of taunt,
those bitter, contemptuous words, which the arrogant vulgar can use, who fancy that wealth and
birth have entitled them to scorn plebeian claims;
words which make the blood boil in men's veins;
whereupon David girded on his sword in fury,
and nothing but an abject apology from Nabal's
wife could have prevented an appeal to arms, or,




78         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
as you call it in these days, an appeal to physical
force.
Brother men, these were the Rights of Labour
opposed to the Rights of Property. I cannot see
any thing noble in that. I cannot see any thing
manly in that ferocious struggle between rich
and poor; the one striving to take as much, and
the other to keep as much as he can. The cry
of "My rights, your duties! " I think we might
change to something nobler. If we could learn
to say, " My duties, your rights," we should come
to the same thing in the end; but the spirit would
be different. That not very dignified feud between Nabal and David is only a picture of that
which, hidden under fine names, men are calling
now patriotism, public spirit, political martyrdom,
protection, free trade-miserable enough in my
mind.
All we are gaining by this cry of Rights, is the
life of the wild beast and of the wild man of the
desert, whose hand is against every man, and
every man's hand against him. Nay, the very
brutes, unless they had an instinct which respects
Rights even more strongly than it claims them,
could never form  anything like a community.
Did you never observe in a heronry or rookery,
that the new-made nest is left in perfect confidence by the birds that build it? If the others




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         79
had not learned to respect those private and
sacred Rights, but began to assert each his right
to the sticks which are woven together there, I
fancy it would be some time before you could get
a heronry or a rookery!
Two thousand years ago, there was One here
on this earth who lived the grandest life that ever
has been lived yet, a life that every thinking man,
with deeper or shallower meaning, has agreed to
call Divine.  I read little respecting his Rights
or of his claims of Rights; but I have read a
great deal respecting his Duties.  Every act He
did he called a Duty. I read very little in that
life respecting his Rights; but I hear a vast deal
respecting his Wrongs-wrongs infinite-wrongs
borne with a majestic, Godlike silence.   His
reward? "His reward was the reward that God
gives to all his true and noble ones-to be cast
out in his day and generation, and a life-conferring death at last.  Those were HIS Rights!
This, then, is the way in which we desire to
expound Rights: my Rights are, in truth, my
Duties; my Rights are limited by another man's
Rights.  For example, I have a perfect right to
build a wall on my own estate. The language
of the law is, that to whomsoever the soil belongs,
is his all up to the skies. But within three yards
of my wall is my neighbour's window.  What
11




80         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
becomes of the Right that I was talking of? My
Right is limited; it is my duty, because limited
by his Right.
You have a right to read your books and to
inquire and to examine for yourselves; but I put
it to you, brother men, have you a right to force
into an institution shared by others, books which
are to them disgusting? Is that liberty?
There is one other principle on which the present arrangement of your affairs is defended.  It
is the rights of Democracy.  I will now define
Democracy. I know not whether the definition
will be taken; but I will give it in the fair, and
generous, and candid sense.  I believe that in
everything held with earnestness by large bodies
of men, there is a certain amount of truth. Whether I hold democratic views or not, is not the
question. I merely endeavour to expound the fair
meaning of them. Now, Democracy, if it means
anything, means government by the people. It
has for its very watchword, Equality of all men.
Now let us not endeavour to make it ridiculous.
I suppose that a sensible democrat does not mean
that all individual men are equal in intelligence
and worth. He does not mean that the Bushman
or the Australian is equal to the Englishman.
But he means this-that the original stuff of
which all men are made, is equal; that there is




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        81
no reason why the Hottentot and the Australian
may not be cultivated, so that in the lapse of
centuries they may be equal to Englishmen. I
suppose the democrat would say, there is no
reason why the son of a cobbler should not by
education become fit to be the prime minister of
the land, or take his place on the bench of judges.
And I suppose that all free institutions mean
this. I suppose they are meant to assert-Let the
people be educated; let there be a fair field and
no favour; let every man have a fair chance, and
then the happiest condition of a nation would be,
that when every man had been educated morally
and intellectually to his very highest capacity,
there should then be selected out of men so
trained a Government of the "Wisest and the
Best.
This is the principle of Democracy. I suppose
no man will quarrel with this definition. It appears to me that you have departed from that
principle.  The principle of Democracy is thisthat there is no essential difference between man
and man; no reason why one class should be
selected for privileges as, in its nature, necessarily
superior to another class. I find in your book of
rules, a rule which entirely contradicts that; and
it seems to me that it is a suicidal rule. It is
this. You have a rule which prevents any one ot




82         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
your honorary, that is richer members, from having a vote or acting in committee.  That is to
say, you will neither have a Democracy nor an
Aristocracy, but an Oligarchy. Not an open field
for worth, nor a government by the best and wisest; but a government by a specified class. You
will not permit the intelligence of others to guide
or assist you.  You cut yourselves off from all
more highly educated minds.  You not only say
that the working man, intellectually and originally, is on a level with others, but that he is absolutely superior. You deny Equality. You will
not permit a free, fair chance for a government
of the wisest and best. You say the most ignorant must be the best and wisest. Is that Democracy? Brother men, I hesitate not to say, that
unless that rule be rescinded, and the whole thing
be put on a different footing, this institution is
lost. I know that this was done with the concurrence of your late lamented treasurer. It was not
a rule which I felt could ever succeed or prosper;
but, however, so long as his influence was with
you, which you respected and revered, the injury
was not felt, because he supplied the place of that
intelligence from which you have cut yourselves
off. But let that rule remain, live in the spirit of
jealousy and suspicion, believe that the upper
classes mean you ill, that in the great town of




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         83
Brighton no man of any rank or wealth above
your own can assist you with advice but he must
do so from interested motives, and I can not see
how this institution is to last at all.
I now wish to put before you two or three
reasons why it seems to me that, on grounds of
fairness, these books ought to be rejected. The
first reason is, that they are contrary to the very
objects of your institution. I find in the address
put forth by the committee to the members, these
words: " We are only carrying out the objects of
our institution and the wishes of its members, by
affording mental amusement for all tastes of our
supporters." I will not severely criticize that sentence, though it lies open to much criticism. I
have a much more important work before me
than the criticism of sentences.  I am willing to
admit that it is loosely expressed, and I do not
wish to take advantage of an incorrect expression.
There are members of this institution little above
twelve or thirteen years of age; and if I wanted
to turn it into ridicule, I might ask the committee
whether they meant to say, in stating that principle, that they consider themselves bound to furnish books level to the capacity of children of
thirteen years of age? There are persons among
you, I fear it must be said, of licentious feelings;
I am sure the members of the committee will not
11 *




84         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
say they are bound to furnish mental amusement
fitted to the taste of such persons. Yet if they
mean any thing, they must mean this,-that if
there be in the society a large body of working
men who hold certain views and opinions, it is
their bounden duty to provide intellectual food
suited to each of such classes.  For example:
take the books objected to, and if there be a man
who has a taste for socialism, it is then their duty
to provide such books as Robert Owen's works;
or, if there be a taste for infidelity, it is their
bounden duty to furnish the works of Tom Paine;
or, if a man descends in taste to a lower depth
still, if he can revel in such works as the " Mysteries of London," it is the bounden duty of the
committee to furnish him  with books of that
character.  Admit that principle, and your society is shattered into fragments.
Let there be a change of expression. The true
way of stating the principle, is this; not that it is
their bounden duty to furnish mental food for all
tastes, but that it is their duty to furnish books
adapted for the tastes of all their supporters.
There is an immense difference. If you lay down
this principle, that they are bound to furnish
books adapted to all tastes of supporters, then
every taste must be represented.  But if you say
they are to furnish books for the tastes of all




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         85
supporters, then they are bound to furnish those
which shall meet the wishes of all, and be disagreeable to none, such as shall be suited to those
tastes which are common to all. Let me give
you a parallel case. In the higher classes of society, men of different ranks and attainments, and
very various tastes, unite to form a society similar
to yours.  The clergyman, the medical man, and
the lawyer, ladies and antiquaries, all join and
form a lending library, book society, or whatsoever it may be called. Now it is plainly the duty
of their committee to provide works which they
may all read in common. There are certain tastes
and principles in which they all agree. There is
a large variety of books which meet all their
tastes.  This is the very principle  of their
union in a society. It is for this they have
met and clubbed their money together.  They
perceive that they have certain tastes in common, and they combine, in order that they may
be able to read more books than they could by
buying them singly and separately.  This is the
principle.
Now suppose, instead of that, the committee
were to resolve that there must be a shelf of
divinity and a shelf of chemistry, for clergymen
and medical men, and another shelf of blackletter books for antiquarians, and you will at




86         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
once observe that the whole meaning of a society
such as this is lost. The medical man and the
clergyman join the general society to read books
of general and not of special interest.  If the
clergyman wishes for his book of theology, and
the medical man his medical authority, the one
must form a clerical library, and the other must
form  his medical society.  But in that case he
must be content with limited numbers and limited means, exactly in proportion as the object of
association becomes limited and definite. Precisely so with this Society. I do not say that
the members of this Institute have not a perfect
right to form  unions amongst themselves; but
once give utterance to this principle,-that it
is the duty of the committee to furnish food
for all tastes, then  you will have, not a society but societies, not an institution, but a knot
of clubs.
I call your attention to another point.  In this
paper, your committee hold it to be their duty to
afford mental amusement for all tastes.  Again I
say, I will not rigorously press the exact meaning
of words.  It is a duty always to endeavour to
ascertain what men mean, instead of ungenerously binding them  by their words, which are
often inexact. And, indeed, on looking at the
titles of these books " of amusement," I find that




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         87
some are any thing but amusing, but are books
which require great exercise of intellectual faculties. But still some remark must be made on
this idea of works of amusement. It is the duty
of the committee, in part, to furnish books of
amusement. I said so in my opening address. I
was greatly sneered at for saying so. Many wellmeaning and religious persons said I had forgotien my place as a clergyman in speaking of works
of fiction as fit for labouring men. They were
shocked and startled that I dared to reckon it a
matter of rejoicing that there is a moral tone in
that well-known publication which is dedicated
to wit and humour, or that I even named it.
They were scandalized that I could find any
thing of moral significance in the works of Dickens. I stand to what I said. I do not like to
characterize that kind  of language severely;
otherwise I should call it cant. It exhibits a
marvellous ignorance of the realities and the
manifoldness of human life.  I am prepared to
say that works of fiction and amusement must
and will be read, and that they ought to be read.
There is a deal of religion in an earnest, hearty
laugh that comes ringing from the heart. That
man is a bad man who has not within him the
power of a hearty laugh. Therefore it cannot be
denied that it is part of the duty of the commit



88         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
tee to furnish works of amusement; but I cannot
but acknowledge that it is a matter of surprise
and regret, that, even by an oversight, the committee should have represented it as their duty
chiefly to furnish works of mere mental amusement.  Your Rule declares that " The objects of
this Institution are to provide means for the moral and intellectual improvement of its members."
W7hat has become of that high moral tone which
characterized your first addresses to the public?
Where are the men from whom  I have heard, in
the room below, language which did my heart
good, and made me feel proud of my country,
which made me compare it triumphantly with
the language that men of the working classes
were holding on the other side of the water?
Men of the Brighton Working Man's Institute!
how comes it that the language of your publications now is so immeasurably inferior in moral
tone?
Once more, you owe it to the cause in which
your society is enlisted, to reject peremptorily
these infidel publications.
Every man, if he is not deterred by feeling for
his own character, is deterred by feeling for his
cause. There are many things that a soldier will
do in his plain clothes which he scorns to do in
his uniform. You have a cause, and I must




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         89
acknowledge that the cause has received a severe
blow by the proceedings of your last public medting. I must admit, as I said before, that free
institutions are looked upon now with eyes of
jealousy and suspicion by many who lately felt
towards them  very favourably.  I have heard
again and again this taunt,-" These are your
friends, the working men; this comes of your
philanthropy."  And others, in a less bitter spirit,
have said, "I fear you will be disappointed in
your hopes of these working men."  My friends,
the working men! Would to God they were
my friends. Would to God I were more their
friend. I look back once more two thousand
years, and dare not forget Who it was that was
bdrn into this world the Son of a poor woman,
and probably laboured for thirty years in a carpenter's shop, a t orking  lan!
In reply to that sarcasm, I observe, it is to be
remembered that the first use a man makes of
every power and talent given to him, is a bad use.
The first time a man ever uses a flail, it is to the
injury of his own head and of those who stand
around him. The first time a child has a sharpedged tool in his hand, he cuts his finger. But
this is no reason why he should not be ever
taught to use a knife. The first use a man
makes of his affections, is to sensualize his spirit.




90         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Yet he cannot be ennobled, except through those
very affections.  The first time a kingdom is put
in possession of liberty, the result is anarchy.
The first time a man is put in possession of intellectual knowledge, he is conscious of the
approaches of skeptical feeling.  But that is
no proof that liberty is bad, or that instruction
should not be given. There is a moment in the
ripening of the fruit when it is more austere and
acid than in any other. It is not the moment of
greenness, the moment when it is becoming red,
the transition state, when it is passing from sourness into sweetness. It is a law of our humanity,
that man must know both good and evil; he
must know good through evil. There never was
a principle but what triumphed through much
evil; no man ever progressed to greatness and
goodness but through great mistakes.
There have been great mistakes made in this
society, and there are many difficulties; but you
will weather the difficulties yet. The mistakes
will become your experience. Nay, I believe that
the discipline of character which many of you
will have gained by this struggle with an evil
principle, and the practical insight which it has
given you into the true bearing of many social
questions, in which I personally know that wild
and captivating theories have been modified in




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        91
your minds by this recent experience, will be invaluable. If only this had been gained, I believe
the institution would not have been established in
vain. But if men say that all these difficulties
tell against inquiry and education, I can only say
that it proves we want more education.  If I
wanted a proof of that, I should find it in this,that the working men of Brighton have not yet
got beyond Tom Paine.
This, then, brother men, is the reply to the
taunts that have been made use of. But still I
am bound to acknowledge this,-and I do it with
shame and sorrow,-that there has been a handle
put, by some of yourselves, into the hand of the
bigot and the timid man. What then, is all that
the tyrants of the past have said, true; and all
that the philanthropists have said, false? Were
all their gloomy predictions sagaciously prophetic?  What have the tyrant, the bigot, and
the timid said?  That it is impossible to give
power to the people without making them revolutionary, or to give themn instruction without making them infidel. You owe it to yourselves and
to your cause to cast the imputation from you.
And if Infidelity presumes to lay her hand upon
the ark of your magnificent and awful cause, the
cause of the people's liberty, and men say that it
is part and parcel of the system, give that slander
12




92   LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.
to the winds, and prove, men of Brighton, by the
rejection of these books, and by the reorganization of your society, that the cause of instruction
and the cause of freedom are not the cause of
infidelity.




TWO LECTURES
ON
THE INFLUENCE OF POETRY
ON THE
WORKING CLASSES.








LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.   95
Two Lectures on the Influence of Poetry on the
Working Classes, delivered before the Members
of the Mechanics' Institution, February, 1852.
LECTURE I.*
THE selection of the subject of this evening's
Lecture, " The Influence of Poetry on the Working Classes," requires some explanation., What
has Poetry to  do with the Working  Classes?
What has it, in fact, to do with this age at all?
Does it not belong to the ages past, so that the
mere mention of it now  is an  anachronismsomething out of date?  Now, there is a large
class of persons, to whom all that belongs to our
political and social existence seems of such ab* As some of the topics contained in the following Lectures might seem out of place, as addressed to the members
of a Mechanics' Institution, it may be well to state that they
were delivered before a mixed audience. They are printed,
with some additions, from the corrected notes of a short-hand
reporter.
12 




96         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
sorbing interest, that they look with impatience
on any thing which does not bear directly on it.
A great political authority of the present day has
counselled the young men of this country, and
especially of the Working Classes, not to waste
their time on literature, but to read the newspapers, which, he says, will give them all the
education that is essential. Persons of this class
seem to fancy that the all-in-all of man is "to
get on;" according to them, to elevate men
means, chiefly, to improve their circumstances;
and, no doubt, they would look with infinite
contempt on any effort such as this, to interest
men on subjects which, most assuredly, will not
give them cheaper food or higher wages. " Lecture them," they will say, "on the principles of
political economy, in order to stem, if possible,
the torrent of those dangerous opinions that
threatens the whole fabric of society. Give them,
if you will, lectures on science, on chemistry, on
mechanics, on any subject which bears on real
and actual life; but, really, in this work-day age,
rhyming is out of place and out of date. We
have no time for Poetry and prettiness." If, indeed, to have enough to eat and enough to
drink were the whole of man-if the highest life
consisted in what our American brethren call
"going a-head"- if the highest ambition for




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.             97
Working Men were the triumph of some political faction, then, assuredly, the discussion  of
our present subject would be waste of breath
and time.
But it appears to  me, that in this age of
Mechanics and Political Economy, when every
heart seems "dry as summer dust," what we
want is, not so much, not half so much-light
for the intellect, as dew upon the heart; time
and leisure to cultivate the spirit that is within
us.  The author of " Philip Van Artevelde," in
his last published volume, " The Eve of the Conquest," has well described this our state of high
physical civilization and refinement, in which
knowledge is mistaken for wisdom, and all that
belongs to man's physical comfort and temporal
happiness is sedulously cared for, while much
that belongs to our finer and purer being is neglected-an age of grim  earnestness-  not the
noble earnestness of stern Puritanism for high
principles, but one which is terrible only when
the purse is touched.
"Oh, England!'Merry England,' styled of yore!
Where is thy mirth? Thy jocund laughter where?
The sweat of labour on the brow of care
Makes a mute answer: driven from every door.
The May-pole cheers the village-green no more,
Nor harvest-home, nor Christmas mummers rare,




98          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
The tired mechanic at his lecture sighs,
And of the learned, which, with all his lore,
Has leisure to be wise?"
Whatever objection may deservedly belong to
this Lecture, I hope that no "tired mechanic"
will sigh over its tediousness or solemnity.  I
believe that recreation is a holy necessity of
man's nature; and it seems to me by no means
unworthy of a sacred calling to bestow an hour
on the attempt to impart not uninstructive recreation to Working Men.
There are some other objections, however, connected with the subject, which must be noticed.
Poetry may be a fitting study for men of leisure,
but it seems out of the question for Working
Men;-a luxury for the rich, but to attempt to
interest the poor in it, is as much out of place as
to introduce them into a cabinet of curiosities, or
a gallery of pictures. I believe such a feeling
has arisen partly from this cause-that the Poetry of the last age was eminently artificial, unnatural, and aristocratic; it reflected the outer
life of modern society and its manners, which are
conventional, uniform, polished, and therefore unnatural, and not of general human interest. I will
read to you a description of that which one of the
poets of that age thought to be the legitimate
call and mission of the poet. Thus writes Pope:



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.              99
"Poetry and criticism  are by no means the universal
concern of the world, but only the affair of idle men who
write in their closets, and of idle men who read there....
"All the advantages I can think of, accruing from a genius
for Poetry, are the agreeable power of self-amusement, when
a man is idle or alone; the privilege of being admitted into
the best company, and the freedom of saying as many care-'less things as other people without being so severely remarked on."
You will scarcely wonder that when a poet
could thus write of his art, working  men  and
real men, who have no time for prettinesses, and
have not the privilege of being " admitted into
the best company," should be indifferent to Poetry, and that it should have come to be reckoned  among  the  luxuries of the wealthy and
idle; nor will you be surprised that one who
thought so meanly of his high work and duty,
should never, with all his splendid talents, have
attained to any thing in Poetry beyond the second rank, that in which  thought and memory
predominate over imagination, and in which the
heart is second to the head; for much of Pope's
Poetry  is  nothing more than  ethical thoughts
tersely and beautifully expressed in rhyme.
There is another reason, however, for this misconception.  The Poetry of the present age is,
to a great extent, touched, tainted if you will,
with mysticism.  Let us trace the history of this.




100        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
A vigorous protest was made at last against
the formalism of the Poetry of the last century.
The reaction began with Wordsworth, Scott,
and Byron, and the age of conventional Poetry
was succeeded by the Poetry of sentiment and
passion. But, by degrees, this wave also spent
itself; and another came. Wordsworth was the
poet of the few; the border minstrelsy of Scott
exhausted itself even during his own lif6; and
when that long, passionate wail of Byronism
had died away,-a phase of tempestuous feeling
through which every man, I suppose, passes in
one portion or other of his existence-men began to feel that this life of ours was meant for
something higher than for a man to sit down to
rave and curse his destiny; that it is at least
manlier, if it be bad, to make the best of it, and
do what may be done.  Next came, therefore,
an age whose motto was "Work."  But now,
by degrees, we are beginning to feel that even
work is not all our being needs; and, therefore,
has been born what I have called the Poetry of
Mysticism.  For just as the reaction from  the
age of Formalism was the Poetry of Passion, so
the reaction from the age of Science, is, and I
suppose ever will be, the Poetry of Mysticism.
For men who have felt a want which work cannot altogether satisfy, and have become con



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       101
scious that the clear formulas and accurate technicalities of science have not expressed, nor ever
can, the truths of the Soul, find a refuge in that
vagueness and undefined sense of mystery which
broods over the shapeless borders of the illimitable.  And thus the very mystic obscurity of
thought and expression which belongs to Browning, Tennyson, and even Wordsworth, is a necessary phase in the history of Poetry, and is but
a protest and witness for the infinite in the soul
of man.
For these two reasons, that the Poetry of the
past age was conventional and that of the present
mystical, it was very natural that Poetry should
have come to be reckoned merely an amusement,
suited to men of leisure. But it was not always
so: Poetry began, not in the most highly civilized,
but in the half-civilized stages of society. The
Drama, for example, was first acted in wagons
drawn through the Grecian villages, and performed by men who only half-concealed their
personality by the rude expedient of smearing
the face with the lees of wine. And, before that,
the poems of Homer had been recited with enthusiasm in the villages and cities of Ionia, by
the people. The poems of Burns, himself a peasant, are the darling favourites of the Scottish
peasant, and lie with his Bible, on the same shelf.




102        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
And where did our own English Poetry begin,
but in those popular ballads of which you have a
notable example in the epic ballad of" Chevy
Chase?" Poetry is essentially of the people, and
for the people.
However, it will be granted, perhaps, that the
love of Poetry is compatible with an incomplete
education; but hardly with a want of leisure, or
with hard work. To this I reply, first, by a matter of fact: the works of Poetry in this Institution, since the loss of its first large library, are
few; but those few are largely read. Upon the
librarian, constant demands are made for the
works of Shakspeare and Sir Walter Scott.
I reply, secondly: I know something myself of
hard work; I know what it is to have had to toil
when the brain was throbbing, the mind incapable of originating a thought, and the body worn
and sore with exhaustion; and I know what it is
in such an hour, instead of having recourse to
those gross stimulants to which all worn men,
both of the higher and lower classes, are tempted,
to take down my Sophocles or my Plato (for
Plato was a poet), my Goethe, or my Dante,
Shakspeare, Shelley, Wordsworth, or Tennyson;
and I know what it is to feel the jar of nerve
gradually cease, and the darkness in which all life
had robed itself to the imagination become light,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.           103
discord pass into harmony, and physical exhaustion rise by degrees into a consciousness of power.
I cannot, and I will not, believe that this is a luxury, or rather a blessed privilege, reserved for me,
or my class, or caste, alone. If I know from per.
sonal experience-and I do know-that feelings
such as these, call them romantic if you will, can
keep a man all his youth through, before a higher
Faith has been called into being, from every species of vicious and  low  indulgence, in every
shape and every form,-if I believe that there
are thousands,
" Whose hearts the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure,"
I am compelled also to believe that, as that which
is human belongs to all humanity, so there is
power in this pursuit to enable the man of labour
to rise sometimes out of his dull, dry, hard toil,
and dreary routine of daily life, into forgetfulness
of his state, to breathe a higher and serener, and
purer atmosphere. I will believe that for him,
too, there is an
"Appeal to that imaginative power,
Which can commute a sentence of sore pain
For one of softer sadness."
Some years ago, an Irishman, scarcely above a
peasant in rank, was employed on the Ordnance
13




104        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Survey, under an officer of Engineers, in Suffolk,
where I then was. I remember the description he
gave me of the state of the Irish peasantry, and
the scenes of wretchedness I had not then witnessed: " Their cabins, your honour," said he,
"are in such a state sometimes, that the poor
craturs could count the stars as they lay on their
beds."
I am not prepared to dispute that it might have
been better for the Irish peasant if, instead of
lying on his bed counting the stars and cursing
the Saxon, he had got up and mended his roof;
nor will I enter into the question whether seven
hundred years of English misrule have darkened
all hope in the nation's breast, and left them
neither heart nor spirit to mend and patch a
hopeless lot; but I think you will agree with me,
that a hard-working man, to whose imagination
the thought which spontaneously presented itself
on the sight of a roofless hut, was, not that of
dripping rain or driving winds, but of poor creatures lying on their beds to count the stars, who
could get away from discomfort to expatiate in
the skies, was, to some extent, through his imagination and his poetry, independent of external
circumstances.
By the title of this Lecture I am bound to
define, in the first place, what is meant by




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        105
"Poetry;" and, in the second, to endeavour to
sustain the assertion "that it has a powerful
influence on the Working Classes."
The former of these is' the subject of this first
Lecture.  Our first definition of Poetry is-the
natural language of excited feeling.  When a
man is under the influence of some strong emotion, his language, words, demeanour,.become
more elevated; he is twice the man he was.
And not only his words, and posture, and looks,
but the whole character and complexion of his
thoughts are changed.  They belong to a higher
order of imagination, and are more full of symbolism, and imagery; the reason of which isthat all the passions deal not with the limitations
of time and space, but belong to a world which
is infinite. The strong passions, whether good
or bad, never calculate. Anger, for example, does
not ask for satisfaction in gold and silver; it
feels and resents a wrong that is infinite; Love
demands the eternal blessedness of the thing
loved-it feels, and delights to feel that it is itself
infinite, and can never end; Revenge is not satisfied with temporary pain, but imprecates the
perdition of the offender.
And so, these passions of ours, uncalculating,
and outlaws of time and space, disdaining the
bounds of the universe,




106        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
"Glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,"
never argue, but reach at a single bound the
eternal truth, discover unexpected analogies hidden before through all the universe, and subordinate each special case to some great and
universal law.
Hence, the language of strong emotion is always figurative, symbolical, and rich in metaphors.  For the metaphors of Poetry are not
mere ornaments stuck on, and capable of being
taken off without detriment to the essence of the
thought. They are not what the clothes are to
the body, but what the body is to the life-born
with it; the form in which the life has been
clothed, without which the life would have been
impossible; just as Minerva is fabled by the ancients to have risen in full panoply out of the
brain of Jupiter.
Poetry, I have said, is the natural language of
excited feeling. It is not something invented or
artificial, but that in which excited feeling naturally clothes itself.  Now  take an example.
When the Pragmatic Sanction was violated on
all sides in Europe, when Silesia had been wrested
away by the young King of Prussia, and, with
the assistance and sanction of the French, the
Elector of Bavaria was aiming at the Crown of
the Empire, the Empress Maria Theresa threw




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       107
herself on her Hungarian subjects. We are told
that when, robed in black, she appeared in the
Diet, with her child in her arms, and asked their
assistance, the Hungarian nobles rose, and with
one voice, exclaimed, " Let us die for our King,
Maria Theresa!"  Observe the poetry of the expression, " our King Maria Theresa."  No calculation in that moment; no mercenary sordidness,
balancing the question whether a nation could
afford to defend weakness and honour at the expense of a costly war, or not. They had risen in
one moment of strong emotion to the highest
truth of human existence, the Law of Sacrifice;
they had penetrated into that region in which
kingly qualities had blended together the two
sexes, and broken down the whole barrier of distinction between man and woman; that region
in which tenderness and loyalty are not two, but
one: " Let us die for our KING, Maria Theresa! "
You will perceive from this that there is an
element of poetry in us all. Whatever wakes up
intense sensibilities, puts you for a moment into
a poetic state; if not the creative state, that in
which we can make poetry, at least the receptive
state in which we feel poetry. Therefore, let no
man think that, because he cannot appreciate the
verse of Milton or Wordsworth, there is no poetry.
in his soul; let him be assured that there is some13 -




108          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
thing within  him  which may any day awake,
break through the crust of his selfishness, and
redeem  him  from  a low, mercenary, or sensual
existence.
Any man who has for a single moment felt
those emotions which are uncalculating, who has
ever risked his life for the safety of another, or
met some great emergency with unwavering courage, or felt his whole being shaken with mighty
and unutterable indignation against some base
cruelty or cowardly scoundrelism, knows what I
mean when I say that there is something in him
which is infinite, and which can transport him in
a moment into the same atmosphere which the
poet breathes.
"High instincts," Wordsworth calls them,
" Before which our mortal nature
Did tremble, like a guilty thing surprised:...... those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the Fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet the master-light of all our seeing:
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the Eternal Silence. Truths that wake,
To perish never."
Shakspeare, who knew  all that man can feel,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        109
and the times when he feels it, is here, as usual,
true to nature. You must have observed that he
never puts language highly imaginative, what we
call Poetry, into the lips of any except exalted
characters, who may be supposed to live in Poetry,
or persons who, for the time, are under some exciting influence. If you will compare the manner
and expression of Timon of Athens, through the
earlier acts, with his language in the latter part of
the Play, you will see how he becomes another
man under the influence of a powerful passion.
At first, you have the high-born, high-bred gentleman, magnificent in his liberality, and princely in
his tastes, bestowing a fortune on a dependent
whose poverty is the sole bar to a happy marriage, giving away the bay courser to his guest
because he admired it; the munificent patron of
the arts, using the conventional language and the
flat, dead politeness of polished society, with no
strong feeling of life, because nothing has broken
the smoothness of its current.  But the shock
comes. In temporary reverses he begins to feel
the hollowness of friendship, suspects that men
and women are not what they seem; and then,
with  that passionate  scorn which henceforth
marks his character, the real poetry of Timon's
existence begins.  And this is made the more
remarkable by the relief in which his character




110          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
stands out from the contrast between two misanthropes in the same Play.  One is the generous
Timon, who has despaired of men because he
has not found them  what he expected them  to
be; the other, the self-enclosed Apemantus, who
believes in the meanness of all human natures
because he is mean himself. Even when the two
reciprocate abuse, the distinction is preserved.
Apemantus is merely scurrilous-" beast" and
"toad" are the epithets of his vocabulary.  One
pregnant word, alive with meaning, falls from
Tiron's lips —" Slave."  And then, disappointed
in his best and highest affections, the whole universe appears to his disordered imagination overspread with the guilt of his wrongs: earth and
skies and sea are robbers; yet his scorn is lofty
still; even gold, the general seducer, he does not
curse with the low invective of the conventicle.
Listen to the impassioned scorner:" Thou ever young, fresh, lov'd, and delicate wooer,
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
That lies on Dian's lap! Thou visible god,
That solder'st close impossibilities,
And mak'st them kiss! That speak'st with every tongue
To every purpose! O, thou touch of hearts!"
It is poetry throughout-passion rendered imaginative; scorn, as contrasted with mere spite.
In saying, however, that Poetry is the language




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       111
of excited feeling, by excitement is not to be
understood mere violence or vehemence; but intensity. It is with accurate knowledge of human
nature that Philip Van Artevelde says to Sir
Fleureant, who is imploring forgiveness with
vehement self-reproach: " Thou art a weak, inconstant, violent man."  Weakness and violence
often go together. Passion may be violent; as
in the case of Othello, Lear, and Northumberland; it does not follow that it must; vehemence
is simply dependent on physical organization, a
mere matter of brain and nerve.  Indeed, the
most intense feeling is generally the most subdued and calm; for it is necessarily condensed
by repression. A notable example you have in
Wordsworth, the calmest of poets; so much so,
that I have heard him characterized as a Quaker
among poets. And yet he is the author of the
sublimest ode in the English language, the Intimations of immortality from the recollections of
childhood. And for his intensity, I only appeal
to those who have understood his poetry, felt,
and loved it.
Yet even in this apparent exception we have a
corroboration of the rule. Intense as Wordsworth is, there is in him something wanting for
the very highest poetry. He is too calm. There
is a want of passion; and hence an entire ab



112        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
sence of epic as well as dramatic power; he
reflects when he ought to describe, and describes
feeling when he ought to exhibit its manifestation. He sings of our nature as some philosophic
spirit might sing of it in passionless realms of
contemplation, far away from  the discords of
actual existence, of a humanity purged and purified, separate from the fierce feelings and wild
gusts of passion which agitate real human life.
And therefore Wordsworth never can be popular
in the true sense of the word. His works will be
bought and bound richly, and a few of his poems
will be familiar words; but still he will remain
the poet of the few; acknowledged by the many,
only because he is reverenced by the few; those
discerning few whose verdict slowly, but surely,
leads the world at last.
I have said that Poetry is the natural language
of intense feeling. It is in perfect accordance
with this that the great master of all criticism,
Aristotle, divides Poetry into two orders. He
says a poet must be one of two things-a "frenzied man," or an " accomplished man; " in which
single sentence are contained whole volumes.
There are two kinds of poets; the one inspired,
and the other skilful; the one borne away by his
own feelings, of which he is scarcely master; the
other able rather to conceive feelings and simulate




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         113
their expression, than possessed by, or possessing
them.
Hence it is almost proverbial that the poetic
temperament, except in a few cases of felicitously
organized constitution, and rare equilibrium of
powers, is one of singular irritability of brain and
nerve.
Even the placid Wordsworth says" We poets in our youth begin with gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness."
And by this, too, we can understand, and compassionate, I do not say excuse, the force of that
temptation of stimulants to which so many gifted
natures have fallen a sacrifice. Poetry is the language of excited feeling; properly of pure excitement.  But stimulants, like wine, opium, and
worse, can produce, or rather simulate, that state
of rapturous and ecstatic feeling in which the seer
should live; in which emotions succeed each other
swiftly, and imagination works with preternatural
power. Hence their seductive power.
Our higher feelings move our animal nature;
and our animal nature, irritated, can call back a
semblance'of those emotions; but the whole difference between nobleness and baseness lies in
the question whether feeling begins from below
or above.  The degradation of genius, like the




114        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
sensualizing of passion, takes place when men
hope to reproduce, through stimulus of the lower
nature, those glorious sensations which it once
experienced when vivified from  above. Imagination ennobles appetites which in themselves
are low, and spiritualizes acts which are else only
animal.  But the pleasures which begin in the
senses only sensualize.
Burns and Coleridge are the awful beacons to
all who feel intensely, and are tempted to rekindle
the vestal flames of genius, when they burn low,
with earthly fire.
I give another definition of Poetry. I think I
have seen it defined-I am  not sure whether I
have confounded my own thoughts with what I
have a dim  recollection of having somewhere
read-as " the indirect expression of feelings that
cannot be expressed directly." We all have feelings which we cannot express. There is a world
into which the poet introduces us, of which the
senses are not the organs; there is a beauty
which the eye has never seen, and a music which
the ear has never heard. There are truths, eternally, essentially, and necessarily true, which we
have never yet seen embodied. And there is,
besides, from our human sympathies, a strong
necessity for giving utterance to these cravings in
us. For language has been given, not merely to




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        115
make known our own selfish wants, but to impart
ourselves to our fellow men. Now, if these intense feelings could be expressed directly, so that
when you expressed them, you felt yourself understood as adequately as when you say " I thirst,"
or " I am hungry," then there would be no Poetry
at all; but, because this is impossible, the soul
clothes her intuitions, her aspirations, and forebodings, in those indirect images which she borrows from the material world.
For this reason the earliest language of all
nations is Poetry.  Language has been truly
called fossil Poetry; and just as we apply to
domestic use slabs of marble, unconscious almost
that they contain the petrifactions of innumerable
former lives, so in our every-day language we use
the living Poetry of the past, unconscious that
our simplest expressions are the fossil forms of
feeling which once was vague, and laboured to
express itself in the indirect analogies of materialism. Only think from whence came such words
as " attention," "understanding," "imagination."
As language becomes more forcible and adequate, and our feelings are conveyed, or supposed
to be conveyed, entirely, Poetry in words becomes
more rare. It is then only the deeper and rarer
feelings, as yet unexpressed, which occupy the
poet. Science destroys Poetry; until the heart
4




116        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
bursts into mysticism, and out of science brings
Poetry again; asserting a wonder and a vague
mystery of life and feeling, beneath and beyond
all science, and proclaiming the wonderfulness
and mystery of that which we seem most familiarly to understand.
I proceed to give you illustrations of this position, that " Poetry is the indirect expression of
that which cannot be expressed directly."  An
American writer tells us that in a certain town in
America there is a statue of a sleeping boy,
which is said to produce a singular feeling of repose in all who gaze on it; and the history of
that statue, he says, is this: The sculptor gazed
upon the skies on a summer's morning, which
had arisen as serene and calm as the blue eternity
out of which it came; he went about haunted
with the memory of that repose-it was a necessity to him to express it. Had he been a poet, he
would have thrown it into words; a painter, it
would have found expression on the canvas; had
he been an architect, he would have given us his
feelings embodied as the builders of the Middle
Ages embodied their aspirations, in a Gothic
architecture; but being a sculptor, his pen was
the chisel, his words stone, and so he threw his
thoughts into the marble. Now observe, first, this
was intense feeling longing to express itself;




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       117
next, it was intense feeling expressing itself indirectly, direct utterance being denied it. It was
not enough to say, "I feel repose;" infinitely
more was to be said; more than any words could
exhaust: the only material through which he
could shape it, and give to airy nothing a body
and a form, was the imperfectly expressive material of stone.
From this anecdote we may understand in what
sense all the high arts, such as Sculpture, Painting, and Poetry, have been called imitative arts.
There was no resemblance between the sleeping
boy and a calm morning; but there was a resemblance between the feeling produced by the morning, and that produced by gazing on the statue.
And it is in this resemblance between the feeling
conceived by the artist, and the feeling produced
by his work, that the imitation of Poetry or Art
lies. The fruit which we are told was painted by
the ancient artist so well that the birds came and
pecked at it, and the curtain painted by his rival
so like reality that he himself was deceived by it,
were imitative so far as clever deception imitates;
but it was not high art, any more than the statue
which many of you saw in the Exhibition last
year was high art, which at a distance seemed
covered with a veil, but on nearer approach turned
out to be mere deceptive resemblance of the text



118        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
ure, cleverly executed in stone.  This is not the
poetry of Art; it is only the imitation of one
species of material in another species; whereas
Poetry is the imitating, by suggestion through
material and form, of feelings which are immaterial and formless.
Another instance.  At Blenheim, the seat of
the Duke of Marlborough, there is a Madonna,
into which the old Catholic painter has tried to
cast the religious conceptions of the Middle Ages,
virgin purity and infinite repose. The look is
upwards, the predominant colour of the picture
blue, which we know has in itself a strange power
to lull and soothe. It is impossible to gaze on
this picture without being conscious of a calming
influence. During that period of the year in
which the friends of the young men of Oxford
come to visit their brothers and sons, and Blenheim becomes a place of favourite resort, I have
stood aside near that picture, to watch its effect
on the different gazers, and I have seen group
after group of young undergraduates and ladies,
full of life and noisy spirits, unconsciously stilled
before it; the countenance relaxing into calmness,
and the voice sinking to a whisper. The painter
had spoken his message, and human beings, ages
after, feel what he meant to say.
You may perhaps have seen in this town, some




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        119
years ago, an engraving in the windows of the
printsellers, called the " Camel of the Desert."  I
cannot say it was well executed. The engraving
was coarse, and the drawing, in some points,
false; yet it was full of Poetry. The story tells
itself. A caravan has passed through the desert;
one of the number has been seized with dangerous illness, and as time is precious, he has been
left to die, but as there is a chance of his recovery, his camel has been left beside him, and in
order that it may not escape, the knee of the animal has been forcibly bent, the upper and lower
bones tied together, and the camel couched on the
ground incapable of rising. The sequel is that
the man has died, and the camel is left to its
inevitable doom. There is nothing to break the
deep deathfulness of the scene. The desert extends to the horizon, without interruption, the
glowing heat being shown by the reflection of the
sun from the sands in a broad band of light, just
as it glows on the sea on a burning summer day.
Nothing, I said, breaks the deathfulness of the
scene; there is only one thing that adds to it. A
long line of vultures is seen in the distance, and
one of these loathsome birds is hovering above
the dead and the doomed; the camel bends back
his neck to watch it, with an expression of terror
and anguish almost human, and anticipates its
14 




120        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
doom.  You cannot look at the print without a
vivid sense and conception of Despair.  You go
through street after street before the impression
ceases to haunt you.  Had the plate been better
executed, it is quite possible it might not have
been so poetical. The very rudeness and vagueness of it leave much to the imagination. Had
the plumage of the vulture, or the hair of the
camel more accurately copied the living texture, or the face of the corpse been more deathlike, so as, instead of kindling the imagination
with the leading idea, to have drawn away the
attention to the fidelity with which the accessories
had been painted, the Poetry would have been
lessened. It is the effort to express a feeling, and
the obstacles in the way of the expression, which
together constitute the poetical.
Most of us visited the Exhibition in Hyde
Park, last year.  Some may have seen between
the central fountain and the  Colebrook  Dale
gates several cases of stuffed birds, and probably
passed on after a cursory glance. If so, it was a
pity, for there was much Poetry in those cases.
They contained a series illustrative of falconry.*
In the first case was a gyr-falcon, hooded; in the
second, the falcon has struck his quarry, and the
* Contributed to the Exhibition by Mr. Hancock, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        121
heron lies below with ruffled crest, and open beak,
and writhing, serpentine neck, the falcon meanwhile fixing his talons deep, and throwing himself
backwards with open wings to avoid the formidable beak. In the third, the falcon sits gorged
upon its perch.
I have visited the finest museums in Europe,
and spent many a long day in watching the habits of birds in the woods, hidden and unseen by
them; but I never saw the reproduction of life
till I saw these. It was not merely the exquisite
arrangement of the feathers, nor merely that the
parts which are usually dry and shrunk in preserved specimens, the beak and the orbits, the
tongue and the legs, were preserved with a marvellous freshness; it was not the mere softness
of every swell, and the graceful rise and bend
wherever rise and bend should be, but it was the
life and feeling thrown into the whole, that dignified these works as real Art. IThey were vitalized
by the feeling, not of the mere bird-stuffer, but of
the poet, who had sympathized with nature, felt
the life in birds as something kindred with his
own; and  inspired with  this sympathy, and
labouring to utter it, had thus re-created life as it
were within the very grasp of death.
And while on this subject, I may give you
another illustration, by which you will perceive




122        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
the difference between Science and Poetry, in the
works, if you have ever time to read them, published in a cheap form, of Wilson, the American
ornithologist. Wilson was born at Paisley; his
first poetic inspiration came from the perusal of
the works of his countryman, Burns. He emigrated to America, and there devoted his life to
ornithology.  He studied the life of birds in their
native haunts, and the result was a work which
stands amongst the foremost in its own department, and which one of the greatest ornithologists of the day, Prince Lucien Bonaparte, has
felt it an honour to arrange scientifically. Wilson's enthusiasm  and imaginative temperament
are manifested in the singular wish that when he
died he might be buried in the woods, where the
birds would sing above his grave. And all his
writing is full of this living sympathy with life,
and poetic power of perceiving analogies: as
when he calls the Arctic Owl " that great northern Hunter," or describes the Goat-sucker's discovery of the robbery of her nest. Whoever has
read his works, or Waterton's Wanderings, or
that sweet, observing description given by Banquo, in Macbeth, of the swallow's haunts and
dispositions, and will compare the  aspect in
which life appeared to them with that in which
it presents itself to the mind of the scientific




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        123
nomenclator, will understand the different ways
in which Intellect and Feeling represent the same
objects, and how it is that largeness of sympathy
distinguishes poetic sensibility from scientific
capacity. Poetry creates life; Science dissects
death.
Our present definition will help to explain why
all the scenes of nature are poetic and dear to us.
They express what is in us, and what we cannot
express for ourselves. I love those passages in
the Bible which speak of this universe as created
by the WORD of God. For the Word is the expression of the thought; and the visible universe
is the Thought of the Eternal, uttered in a word
or form in order that it might be intelligible to
man.  And for an open heart and a seeing eye
it is impossible to gaze on this creation without
feeling that there is a Spirit at work, a living
WORD endeavouring to make himself intelligible, labouring to express himself through symbolism  and indirect expression, because direct
utterance is impossible; partly on account of the
inadequacy of the materials, and partly in consequence of the dulness of the heart, to which the
infinite Love is speaking.  And thus the word
poet obtains its literal significance of maker, and
all visible things become to us the chaunted
poem of the universe.




124        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
These feelings, of course, come upon us most
vividly in what we call the sublime scenes of
nature. I wish I could give to the Working Men
in this room one conception of what I have seen
and witnessed, or bring the emotions of those
glorious spots to the hearts of those who cannot
afford to see them. I wish I could describe one
scene, which is passing before my memory this
moment, when I found myself alone in a solitary valley of the Alps, without a guide, and a
thunder-storm coming on; I wish I could explain
how every circumstance combined to produce the
same feeling, and ministered to unity of impression: the slow, wild wreathing of the vapours
round the peaks, concealing their summits, and
imparting in semblance their own motion, till
each dark mountain form seemed to be mysterious and alive; the eagle-like plunge of the
Lammer-geier, the bearded vulture of the Alps;
the rising of the flock of choughs, which I had
surprised at their feast on carrion, with their red
beaks and legs, and their wild shrill cries, startling the solitude and silence,-till the blue lightning streamed at last, and the shattering thunder
crashed as if the mountains must give way: and
then came the feelings, which in their fulness
man can feel but once in life; mingled sensations
of awe and triumph, and defiance of danger,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        125
pride, rapture, contempt of pain, humbleness and
intense, repose, as if all the strife and struggle
of the elements were only uttering the unrest of
man's bosom; so that in all such scenes there is
a feeling of relief, and he is tempted to cry out
exultingly, There! there! all this was in my heart,
and it was never said out till now!
But do not fancy that Poetry belongs to the
grander scenes of nature only. The poets have
taught us that throughout the whole world there
is a significance as deep as that which belongs to
the more startling forms, through which Power
speaks.
Burns will show you the Poetry of the daisy,
"Wee, modest, crimson-tippit flower,"
which the plough turns up unmarked; and Tennyson will tell you the significance, and feeling,
and meaning there are in the black ash-bud, and
the crumpled poppy, and the twinkling laurels,
and the lights which glitter on the panes of the
gardener's greenhouse, and the, moated grange,
and the long, gray flats of "unpoetic" Lincolnshire.  Read Wordsworth's " Nutting," and his
fine analysis of the remorse experienced in early
youth at the wanton tearing down of branches,
as if the desolation on which the blue sky looks
reproachfully through the open space where foli



126        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
age was before, were a crime against life, and
you will feel the intuitive truth of his admonition
that " there is a Spirit in the woods."
Nay, even round this Brighton of ours, treeless
and prosaic as people call it, there are materials
enough for Poetry, for the heart that is not
petrified in conventional maxims about beauty.
Enough in its free downs, which are ever changing their distance and their shape, as the lights
and cloud-shadows sail over them, and over the
graceful forms of whose endless variety of slopes
the eye wanders, unarrested by abruptness, with
an entrancing feeling of fulness, and a restful
satisfaction to the pure sense of Form. And
enough upon our own sea-shore and in our rare
sunsets. A man might have watched with delight, beyond all words, last night, the long, deep
purple lines of cloud, edged with intolerable radiance, passing into orange, yellow, pale green,
and leaden blue, and reflected below in warm,
purple shadows, and cold, green lights, upon the
sea-and then, the dying of it all away?  And
then he might have remembered those lines of
Shakspeare; and often quoted as they are, the
poet would have interpreted the sunset, and the
sunset what the poet meant by the exclamation
which follows the disappearance of a similar
aerial vision



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.            127
" We are such stuff
As dreams are made of: and our narrow life
Is rounded with a sleep."
No  one has taught us this so earnestly as
Wordsworth; for it was part of his great message to this century to remind us that the sphere
of the poet is not only in the extraordinary, but
in the ordinary and common.
"The common things of sky and earth,
And hill and valley, he has viewed:
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.
From common things, that round us lie,
Some random truths he can impart:
The harvest of a quiet eye,
That sleeps and broods on its own heart."
But, of course, if you lead a sensual life, or a
mercenary or artificial life, you will not read these
truths in nature. The faculty of discerning them
is not learnt either in the gin-palace or the ballroom.  A  pure heart, and a simple, manly life
alone can reveal to you all that which seer and
poet saw.
This Lecture will be appropriately closed by a
brief notice of the last work of our chief living
poet, Alfred Tennyson.   And  I shall also endeavour to confute certain cavils raised against
it:, for after laying down what appear to be true
15




128        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
canons of criticism, they may be further substantiated by the exposure of criticism which is false.
The poem entitled " In Memoriam " is a monument erected by friendship to the memory of a
gifted son of the historian Hallam. It is divided
into a number of cabinet-like compartments,
which, with fine and delicate shades of difference, exhibit the various phases through which
the bereaved spirit passes from the first shock of
despair, dull, hopeless misery and rebellion, up to
the dawn of hope, acquiescent trust, and even
calm happiness again. In the meanwhile many
a question has been solved, which can only suggest itself when suffering forces the soul to front
the realities of our mysterious existence; such
as: Is there indeed a life to come?  And if there
is, will it be a conscious life? Shall I know that
myself?  VWill there be mutual recognition? continuance of attachments?  Shall friend meet
friend, and brother brother, as friends and brothers?  Or, again: How  comes it that one so
gifted was taken away so early, in the maturity
of his powers, just at the moment when they
seemed about to become available to mankind?
What means all this, and is there not something
wrong?  Is the law of Creation Love indeed?
By slow degrees, all these doubts, and worse,
are answered; not as a philosopher would answer




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.          129
them, nor as a theologian, or a metaphysician,
but as it is the duty of a poet to reply, by intuitive faculty, in strains in which Imagination predominates over Thought and Memory.  And one
of the manifold beauties of this exquisite poem,
and which is another characteristic of true Poetry,
is that, piercing through all the sophistries and
over-refinements of speculation, and the lifeless
skepticism of science, it falls back upon the
grand, primary, simple truths of our humanity;
those first principles which underlie all creeds,
which belong to our earliest childhood, and on
which the wisest and best have rested through all
ages; that all is right; that darkness shall be
clear; that God and Time are the only interpreters  that Love is king: that the Immortal is in
us: that-which is the key-note of the whole"all is well, though Faith and Form
Be sundered in the night of fear."
This is an essential quality of the highest
Poetry, whose characteristic is simplicity; not in
the sense of being intelligible, like a novel, to
every careless reader, without pain or effort; for
the best Poetry demands study as severe  as
mathematics require; and to any one who thinks
that it can be treated as a mere relaxation and
amusement for an idle hour, this Lecture does




130        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
not address itself; but simplicity, in the sense of
dealing with truths which do not belong to a few
fastidious and refined intellects, but are the heritage of the many. The deepest truths are the
simplest and the most common.
It is wonderful how  generally the formalists
have missed their way to the interpretation of this
poem. It is sometimes declared with oracular
decisiveness, that, if this be. Poetry, all they have
been accustomed to call Poetry must change its
name.  As if it were not a law  that every
original poet must be in a sense new; as if
2Eschylus were not a poet because he did not
write an epic like Homer: or as if the Romantic
poets were not poets because they departed from
every rule of classical Poetry. And as if, indeed,
this very objection had not been brought against
the Romantic school, and Shakspeare himself
pronounced by French critics a " buffoon:" till
Schlegel showed that all life makes to itself its
own form, and that Shakspeare's form  had its
living laws. So spoke the " Edinburgh Review"
of Byron; but it could not arrest his career. So
spoke Byron himself of Wordsworth; but he
would be a bold man, or a very flipp~ant one,. who
would dare to say now that Wordsworth is not a
great poet. And the day will come when the
slow, sure judgment of Time shall give to Ten



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        131
nyson his undisputed place among the English
poets as a true one, of rare merit and originality.
To a coarser class of minds " In Memoriam"
appears too melancholy; one long monotone of
grief. It is simply one of the most victorious
songs that ever poet chaunted; with the mysterious undertone, no doubt, of sadness which belongs to all human joy, in front of the mysteries
of death and sorrow; but that belongs to " Paradise Regained" as well as to " Paradise Lost; "
to every true note, indeed, of human triumph
except a Bacchanalian drinking song.  And that
it should predominate in a monumental record is
not particularly unnatural.  But readers who
never dream of mastering the plan of a work before they pretend to criticize details, can scarcely
be expected to perceive that the wail passes into
a hymn of solemn and peaceful beauty before it
closes.
Another objection, proceeding from the religious periodicals, is, that the subject being a
religious one, is not treated religiously; by which
they mean theologically. It certainly is neither
saturated with Evangelicalism  nor Tractarianism; nor does it abound in the routine phrases
which, when missed, raise a suspicion of heterodoxy; nor does it seize the happy opportunity
afforded for a pious denunciation of the errors of
15 *




132        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Purgatory and Mariolatry. But the objection to
its want of definite theology-an objection, by
the way, brought frequently against Wordsworth
by writers of the same school-is, in fact, in
favour of the presumption of its poetic merit;
for it may be the office of the priest to teach
upon authority-of the philosopher according to
induction-but the province of the poet is neither
to teach by induction nor by authority, but-to
appeal to those primal intuitions of our being
which are eternally and necessarily true.
With one of those criticisms I mean to occupy
your time at somewhat further length. Some
months ago, a leading journal devoted three or
four columns to the work of depreciating Tennyson.  I will answer that critique now, as
concisely as I can; not because it can do any
permanent harm to Tennyson's reputation, but
because it may do a great deal of harm to the
taste of the readers.
Now, in any pretension to criticize a poetic
work of internal unity, the first duty, plainly, is
to comprehend the structure of it as a whole, and
master the leading idea. It is to be regretted
that this is precisely what English critics gener-"
ally do not. Even with our own Shakspeare,
admiration or blame is usually confined to the
beauties and blemishes of detached passages.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         133
For the significance of each play, as a whole, we
had to look, in the first instance, to such foreigners as Augustus Schlegel to teach us.
Let us inquire what conception the critic in
question has formed of this beautiful poem.
"Let the acknowledgment be made at once
that the writer dedicated his thoughts to a most
difficult task.  He has written 200 pages upon
one person-in other words, he has painted 120
miniatures of the same individual."
Mr. Tennyson has not painted 120 portraits of
the same individual. He has written a poem in
120 divisions, illustrative of the manifold phases
through which the soul passes from doubt through
grief to faith.  With so entire and radical a misconception of the scope of the poem, it is not
wonderful if the whole examination of the details should be a failure.
The first general charge is one of irreverence.
The special case selected is these verses, which
are called blasphemous"But brooding on the dear one dead,
And all he said of things divine,
(And dear as sacramental wine
To dying lips is all he said.)"
One would have thought that the holy tenderness
of this passage would have made this charge impossible. However, as notions of reverence and




134       LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
irreverence in some minds are singularly vague,
we will give the flippant objection rather more
attention than it merits.! By a sacrament we understand a means of
grace; an outward something through which
pure and holy feelings are communicated to the
soul. In the Church of Christ there are two sacraments-the material of one is the commonest
of all elements, water; the form of the other the
commonest of all acts, a meal. Now there are
two ways in which reverence may be manifested
towards any thing or person; one, by exalting
that thing or person by means of the depreciation
of all others; another, by exalting all others
through it. To some minds it appears an honouring of the sacraments to represent them as
solitary things in their own kind, like nothing
else, and all other things and acts profane in
comparison of them. It is my own deep conviction that no greater dishonour can be done to
them  than by this conception, which degrades
them to the rank of charms. The sacraments
are honoured when they consecrate all the things
and acts of life. The commonest of all materials was sanctified to us in order to vindicate the
sacredness of all materialism, in protest against
the false spiritualism which affects to despise the
body, and the world whose impressions are made




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       135
upon the senses; and in order to declare that visible world God's, and the organ of his manifestation. The simplest of all acts is sacramental,
in order to vindicate God's claim to all acts, and
to proclaim  our common life sacred, in protest
against the conception which cleaves so obstinately to the mind, that religion is the performance of certain stated acts, not necessarily of
moral import, on certain days and in certain
places. If there be any thing in this life sacred,
any remembrance filled with sanctifying power,
any voice which' symbolizes to us the voice of
God, it is the recollection of the pure and holy
ones that have been taken from us, and of their
examples and sacred words" dear as sacramental wine
To dying lips."
In those lines Tennyson has deeply, no doubt
unconsciously, that is, without dogmatic intention, entered into the power of the sacraments to
diffuse their meaning beyond themselves. There
is no irreverence in them; no blasphemy; nothing but delicate Christian truth.
The next definite charge is more difficult to
deal with before a mixed society, because the
shades of the feeling in question blend into each
other with exceeding fine graduation. The language of the friend towards the departed friend




136        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
is represented as unfitted for any but amatory
tenderness. In this blame the critic is compelled
to include Shakspeare; for we all know that his
sonnets, dedicated either to the Earl of Southampton or the Earl of Pembroke, contain expressions which have left it a point of controversy
whether they were addressed to a lady or a friend.
Now in a matter which concerns the truthfulness
of a human feeling, when an anonymous critic
is on one side and Shakspeare on the other, there
are some who might be presumptuous enough
to suppose d priori that the modest critic is
possibly not the one in the right. However, let
us examine the matter. There are two kinds of
friendship:  One is the affection of the greater
for the less, the other that of the less for the
greater. The greater and the less may be differences of rank, or intellect, or character, or power.
These are the two opposites of feeling which respectively characterize the masculine and the
feminine natures, the familiar symbols of which
relationship are the oak and the ivy with its
clinging tendrils., But though they are the masculine and feminine types, they are not confined
to male and female. Most of us have gone
through both these phases of friendship. Whoever remembers an attachment at school to a
boy feebler than himself, will recollect the exult



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         137
ing pride of guardianship with which he shielded
his friend from the oppression of some young
tyrant of the playground. And whoever, at least
in boyhood or youth, loved a man, to whose
mental oir moral qualities he looked up with
young reverence, will recollect the devotion and
the jealousies, and the almost passionate tenderness, and the costly gifts, and the desire of personal sacrifices, which characterize boyish friendship, and which certainly belong to the feminine,
and not the masculine type of affection. Doubtless the language of " In Memoriam " is tender
in the extreme, such as a sister might use to a
brother deeply loved. But it is to be remembered that it expresses the affection of the spirit
which rejoices to confess itself the feebler; and
besides, that, the man has passed into a spirit,
and that time and distance have thrown a hallowing haze of tenderness over the lineaments
of the friend of the past.  It may be well also
to recollect that there is a precedent for this
woman-like tenderness, against whose authority
one who condemns so severely the most distant
approach to irreverence will scarcely venture to
appeal. "I am  distressed for thee, my brother
Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been to me.
Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love
of women."




138        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Again, the praise and the grief of the poem
are enormously " exaggerated;" and as an instance of the manner in which the "poet may
underline the moralist" and delicately omit the
defects without hyperbolical praise, Dr. Johnson's
lines on Levett are cited with much fervour of
admiration. Good, excellent Dr. Johnson! sincerely pious; very bigoted and very superstitious;
yet one, withal, who fought the battle of life
bravely out, in the teeth of disease and poverty;
a great lexicographer; of massive learning; the
author of innumerable prudential aphorisms, much
quoted by persons who season their conversation
with proverbs and old saws; the inditer of'several
thousand ponderous verses; a man worthy of all
respect. But it is indeed a surprising apparition
when the shade of Dr. Johnson descends upon
the Nineteenth Century as the spirit of a poet,
and we are asked to identify the rugged portrait
which Boswell painted, with a model of delicate
forbearance.
After these general observations, the writer
proceeds to criticize in detail; he awards some
praise, and much blame. You shall have a specimen of each. Let us test the value of his praise.
He selects for approbation, among others, these
lines:




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         139
" Or is it that the Past will win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not when we moved therein!"
The question has suggested itself as a misgiving to the poet's mind, whether his past affection was really as full of blessedness as memory
painted it, or whether it be not the perspective
of distance which conceals its imperfections, and
throws purer hues upon it than it possessed while
actual. In the rapid reading of the last two lines
I may not have at once conveyed to you the
meaning.  So long as we remain upon  any
planet, this earth for instance, it would wear a
common-place, earthly look; but if we could
ascend from it into space, in proportion to the
distance, it would assume a heavenly aspect, and
orb or round itself into a star. This is a very simple and graceful illustration. Now hear the critic
condescending to be an analyst of its beauties:
" There is indeed something striking and suggestive in comparing the gone-by time to some
luminous body rising like a red harvest moon
behind us, lighting our path homeward."
So that this beautiful simile of Tennyson's, of
a distant star receding into pale and perfect loveliness, in the hands of the critic becomes a great
red harvest moon!
16




140         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
So much for the praise.  Now for the blame.
The following passage is selected:"Oh, if indeed that eye foresee,
Or see (in Him is no before)
In more of life true love no more,
And love the indifference to be,
" So might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To cloak me from my proper scorn."
That is, as you will see at once, after the
thought of the transitoriness of human affection
has occurred to him, the possibility is also suggested with it, that he himself may change; but
he prays that before that day can come, he may
find the Shadow waiting with the keys to cloak
him  from  his own scorn.  Now  I will read the
commentary:"Lately we have heard much of keys, both
from the Flaminian Gate and Piccadilly, but we
back this verse against Hobbs.  We dare him to
pick it.  Mr. Moxon may hang it up in his window, with a 2001. prize attached, more safely
than a Brahmah.  That a shadow  should hold
keys at all, is a noticeable circumstance; but
that it should wait with a cloak, ready to be
thrown over a gentleman in difficulties, is absolutely amazing."




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.          141
The lock may be picked without any exertion
of unfair force.
A few pages before he has spoken of the breaking up of a happy friendship" There sat the Shadow, feared by man,
Who broke our fair companionship."
Afterward he calls it:"The Shadow, cloaked from head to foot,
Who keeps the key of all the creeds."
Take, at a venture, any charity-school boy, of
ordinary intelligence; read to him these lines;
and he will tell you that the Shadow feared by
man is death; that it is cloaked from  head to
foot because death is mysterious, and its form not
distinguishable; and that he keeps the keys of all
the creeds, because he alone can unlock the secret
of the grave, and show which of all conflicting
human creeds is true.
" It is a noticeable thing," we are told, " that
a shadow should hold keys at all." It is a very
noticeable thing that a skeleton should hold a
scythe and an hour-glass; very noticeable that a
young lady should hold scales when she is blindfold; yet it is not a particularly uncommon rule
of symbolism so to represent Time and Justice.
Probably the writer in the criticism, if he should




142        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
chance to read of "riding on the wings of the
wind," would consider it a very noticeable method
of locomotion; perhaps would inquire, with dull
facetiousness, what was the precise length of the
primary, secondary, and tertiary quills of the said
wings; and if told of a spirit clothing itself in
light, he might triumphantly demand in what
loom light could be woven into a great coat.
Finally.  The critique complains that a vast
deal of poetic feeling has been wasted on a lawyer; and much wit is spent upon the tenderness
which is given to " Amaryllis of the Chancery
bar.' A barrister, it seems, is beyond the pale
of excusable, because political sensibilities. So
that, if my friend be a soldier, I may love him,
and celebrate him in poetry, because the profession of arms is by all conventional associations
heroic; or if he bears on his escutcheon the red
hand of knighthood, or wears a ducal coronet, or
even be a shepherd, still there are poetic precedents for romance; but if he be a member of the
Chancery bar, or only a cotton lord, then, because
these are not yet grades accredited as heroic in
song, worth is not worth, and honour is not honour, and nobleness is not nobility. 0, if we wanted poets for nothing else, it would be for this,
that they are the grand levellers, vindicating the
sacredness of our common humanity, and in pro



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        143
test against such downright vulgarity of heart as
this, reminding us that"For a' that, and a' that,
A man's a man for a' that."
So much then for this critic; wrong when he
praises and wrong when he blames; who finds
Shakspeare false to the facts of human nature,
and quotes Dr. Johnson as a model poet; who
cannot believe in the Poetry of any expression
unless it bear the mint-stamp of a precedent, and
cannot understand either the exaggerations or the
infinitude of genuine grief.
Let it serve to the members of this Institution
as a comment on the opinion quoted at the outset, that it is sufficient education for Working
Men to read the newspapers. If they form no
more living conception of what Poetry is than
such as they get from the flippant criticism of a
slashing article, they may learn satire, but not
enthusiasm. If they limit their politics to the
knowledge they may pick up from daily newspapers (which, with a few honourable exceptions,
seem bound to pander to all the passions and
prejudices of their respective factions) they will
settle down into miserable partizans.  And if
Working Men are to gain their notions of Christianity from the sneering, snarling gossip of the
religious newspapers, I for one, do not marvel
16E




144   LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.
that indignant infidelity is so common amongst
them.
And let it be to us all a warning against that
detracting, depreciating spirit which is the curse
and bane both of the religion and the literature
of our day-that spirit which has no sympathy
with aught that is great beyond the pale of customary formalities, and sheds its blighting influence over all that is enthusiastic, and generous,
and high-minded.  It is possible for a sneer or a
cavil to strike sometimes a superficial fact; I
never knew the one or the other reach the deep
heart and blessedness of truth.




LECTURE  II.
IN the former Lecture I endeavoured to answer
the question-What is Poetry? Two replies were
given: It is the natural language of excited feeling; and-A work of imagination wrought into
form by art. We said that it arises out of the
necessity of expression, and the impossibility of
adequate expression of any of the deeper feelings
in direct terms. Hence the soul clothes those
feelings in symbolic and sensuous imagery, in
order to suggest them.
And thus our definitions agree with two of
Milton's requirements for Poetry-that it be
" simple, sensuous, passionate." Sensuous, that
is, suggestive to the imagination of truth through
images which make their impression  on the
senses. Passionate, that is, as opposed to scientific; for the province of Poetry is not the intellect, but the feelings.
And thus, too, they coincide with the character




146         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
given to Poetry by the great critic of antiquity,
as an imitative art; for it is the art of suggesting and thus imitating through form, the feelings
that have been suggested by another form, or
perhaps have arisen without form at all. So it
takes its place with all art, whose office is not to
copy form by form, but to express and hint spiritual truths.
It is plain, from what has been said, that Poetry may be spoken of in two  senses.  In the
specific or technical sense, by Poetry we mean
the expression in words, most appropriately metrical words, of the truths of imagination and
feeling.  But in the generic and larger sense,
Poetry is the expression of imaginative truth in
any form, provided only that it be symbolic, suggestive, and indirect. Hence we said that there
is a Poetry of sculpture, architecture, painting;
and hence all nature is poetical, because it is the
form in which the eternal Feeling has clothed itself with infinite suggestiveness: and hence Lord
Byron calls the stars " the Poetry of heaven;"
and tells us that to him " high mountains were a
feeling;" and that mountain and wood and sky
spake
"A mutual language, clearer than the tome
Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake
For Nature's pages, glassed by sunbeams on the lake."




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         147
And hence Wordsworth tells us that Liberty has
two voices:
"One is of the sea,
And one is of the mountains."
And hence a greater than either has said that the
Heavens speak, and that " There is neither speech
nor language where their voices are not heard."
And hence, too, Woman has been called the
Poetry of life, because her presence in this lower
world expresses for us, as well as calls out, those
infinite feelings of purity, tenderness, and devotion, whose real existence is in our own bosoms.
And hence, again, there is a Poetry in music;
not in that in which sound imitates sound, as
when the roaring of the sea, or the pattering of
the rain, or church bells, or bugles, or the groans
of the dying are produced, for in such cases there
is only a mimicry, more or less ingenious; but
that in which we can almost fancy that there is
something analogous to the inner history of the
human heart,-an expression of resolve or moral
victory, or aspiration, or other feelings far more
shadowy, infinite, and intangible; or that in which
the feelings of a nation have found for themselves
an indirect and almost unconscious utterance, as
it is said of the Irish melody, that through it,
long centuries of depression have breathed themselves out in cadences of a wild, low wail.




148        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
We divided poets into two orders: those in
whom the vision and the faculty divine of imagination exists; and those in whom  the plastic
power of shaping predominates;-the men of
poetic inspiration, and the men of poetic taste.
In the first order I placed Tennyson; in the
second, Pope.
Considerable discussion, I am told, has been
excited among the men of this Institution by
both these positions,-some warmly defending
them, and others as warmly impugning. For
myself, it is an abundant reward to find that
Working Men can be interested in such questions;-that they can debate the question whether
Pope was a poet, and be induced to read Tennyson. For the true aim  of every one who aspires to be a teacher is, or ought to be, not to
impart his own opinions, but to kindle other
minds. I care very little, comparatively, whether
you adopt my views or not; but I do care much
to know that I can be the humble instrument, in
this or higher matters, of leading any man to stir
up the power within him, and to form a creed
and faith which are in a living way, and not on
mere authority, his own.
However, I will explain to you on what
grounds I made these two assertions. And, first,
as respects Pope-if any one approved of what




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       149
I said, under the impression that I denied to
Pope the name of poet, I must disclaim his approbation; I did not say so. Pope is a true
poet; in his own order he stands amongst the
foremost; only, that order is the second, not the
first. In the mastery of his materials, which are
words, in the plastic power of expression, he is
scarcely surpassed.  His melody-I do not say
his harmony, which is a much higher thing-is
unquestionable. There is no writer from whom
so many of those sparkling, epigrammatic sentences, which are the staple commodities of
quotation, are introduced into conversation; none
who can be read with more pleasure, and even
profit. He has always a masculine fancy; more
rarely, imagination. But you look in vain for
the truths which come from a large heart and
a seeing eye; in vain for the "thoughts that
breathe and the words that burn;" in vain for
those flashes of truth, which, like the lightning in
a dark night, make all luminous, open out unsuspected glories of tree and sky and building, interpret us to ourselves, and "body forth the shapes
of things unknown;" truths which are almost
prophetic. Who has not read his Essay on Man,
again and again?  And yet it is but the philosophy of Bolingbroke, melodiously expressed in
rhyme; whereas the office of Poetry is not to




150         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
make us think accurately, but feel truly.  And
his Rape of the Lock, which seems to me the
one of all his works that most deserves the name
of Poetry, the nearest approach to a creation of
the fancy, describes aristocratic society, which is
uniform, polished, artificial, and out of which
a mightier master of the art than Pope could
scarcely have struck the notes of true passion.
Moreover, its machinery, the Rosicrucian fancies
of sylphs and gnomes, is but machinery, lifeless.
If you compare Shakspeare's Ariel or Puck, things
alive, preternatural, and yet how natural! with
these automatons, you will feel the difference
between a living creation and cleverly moved
puppet work.  Throughout you  have thought,
not imagination; intellect, not intuition.
I read you last time Pope's estimate of his own
art; now, contrast it with the conceptions formed
of Poetry by men whom I would place in the first
order.
First, let Burns speak. The spirit of Scottish
poesy has appeared to him, and given him his
commission.  She says"I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar;
Or when the North his fleecy store
Drove through the sky,I saw grim Nature's visage hoar,
Struck thy young eye.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.           151
"Or when the deep, green-mantled earth,
Warm-cherished ev'ry flow'ret's birth,
And joy and music pouring forth
In every grove,I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth,
With boundless love."
Observe that exquisite account of the true
poetic or creative power, which comes from love,
the power of sympathy with the happiness of all
kinds of being-" I saw  thee eye the general
mirth with boundless love! "
Wordsworth  shall speak next.  I select his
Sonnet to Haydon.  You remember poor Haydon's tragic end.  He died by his own hand, disappointed because the world had not appreciated
nor understood his paintings. It had been well
for Haydon had he taken to heart the lesson of
these lines, pregnant with manly strength for
every one, poet or teacher, who is striving to express deep truths for which the men of his generation are not prepared.
And remark, merely by the way, in this sonnet,
Wordsworth's corroboration of the view  I have
placed before you, that Poetry is a something to
which words are the accidental, not by any means
the essential form.
" High is our calling, friend! Creative Art,
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
117




152          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned-to infuse
Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindednessGreat is the glory, for the strife is hard  "
We will next listen to the account given us by
Milton, of the conditions under which Poetry is
possible,-lofty and majestic, as we should expect
from  him:" This is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that
Eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his
altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. To
this must be added industrious and select reading, steady
observation, and insight into all seemly and generous acts and
affairs."
Tennyson shall close this brief list, with what
he thinks the poet's calling:
"The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love."




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.              1,53
That is,-the Prophet of Truth receives for his
dower the scorn of men in whose breasts scorn
dwells; hatred from  men who hate; while his
reward is in the gratitude and affection of men
who seek the truth which they love, more eagerly
than the faults which their acuteness can blame.
"He saw through life and death, through good and ill,
He saw through his own soul,
The marvel of the everlasting will,
An open scroll,
"Before him lay."
And again:
"Thus truth was multiplied on truth: the world
Like one great garden show'd,
And thro' the wreaths of floating dark upcurled
Rare sunrise flow'd.
"And Freedom rear'd iri that august sunrise,
Her beautiful, bold brow,
When rites and forms before his burning eyes
Melted like snow."
Rare gifts of nature: power to read the "open
secret of the universe;" the apostleship of light,
truth, liberty; the faculty of discerning the life
and meaning which underlie all forms: this is
Tennyson's notion of a poet.  You have heard
the master-spirits discoursing of their art. Now
if after these, you  turn  to  Pope's conception
again, you will feel there is a descent as into




154        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
another region. A mighty gulf lies between. It
is impossible to place these men in the same
order. No man is higher than his own ideal of
excellence; it is well if he attains that. Pope
reached all he aimed at; he reached no more.
I placed Tennyson in the first order. And this
not from any bigoted blindness to his deficiencies
and faults, which are many; nor from any Quixotic desire to compare him with the very highest;
but because, if the division be a true one which
separates poets into the men of genuine passion
and men of skill, it is impossible to hesitate in
which Tennyson is to be placed. I ranked him
with the first order, because with great mastery
over his material; words, great plastic power of
versification and a rare gift of harmony, he has
also Vision or Insight; and because, feeling intensely the great questions of his day, not as a
mere man of letters, but as a man, he is to some
extent the interpreter of his age, not only in its
mysticism, which I tried to show you is the necessary reaction from the rigid formulas of science
and the earthliness of an age of work, into the
vagueness which belongs to infinitude, but also
in his poetic and almost prophetic solution of
some of its great questions.
Thus in his Princess, which he calls a "medley," the former half of which is sportive, and




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        155
the plot almost too fantastic and impossible for
criticism, while the latter portion seems too serious for a story so slight and flimsy, he has with
exquisite taste disposed of the question which
has its burlesque and comic as well as its tragic
side, of woman's present place and future destinies. And if any one wishes to see this subject
treated with a masterly and delicate hand, in protest alike against the theories which would make
her as the man, which she could only be by becoming masculine, not manly, and those which
would have her to remain the toy, or the slave,
or the slight thing of sentimental and frivolous
accomplishment which education  has hitherto
aimed at making her, I would recommend him
to study the few last pages of the Princess,
where the poet brings the question back, as a
poet should, to nature; developes the ideal out
of the actual woman, and reads out of what she
is, on the one hand, what her Creator intended
her to be, and, on the other, what she never can
nor ought to be.
And again, in his "In Memoriam," he has
grappled with the skepticism of his age; not like
the school-divine, but like a poet; not as a priest,
with the thunder of the pulpit, or the ban of the
conventicle, but as a man; a man of large, human heart, who feels that not doubt, but faith is
17 




156        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
greatness and blessedness, yet that doubt must
not be put down by force or terror, nor silenced
by logic, but pass into belief through sorrow, and
by appeal to the intuitions of the Soul.
The severity with which an article written
against this poem was criticized in the previous
lecture, may have seemed to you more than
adequate. Let me explain. Three things only in
this world should receive no quarter: Hypocrisy,
Pharisaism, and Tyranny. Hypocrisy, of course,
is out of the question here. But by Pharisaism
in religion, we mean, not attachment to forms,
but an incapacity of seeing or believing in goodness separate from some particular form, either
of words or ritual. The incipient stage of Pharisaism is that in which men are blind to excellence which does not belong to their own faction;
the final and completed stage is that in which
goodness seems actually evil. Plainly, there can
be no remedy for that; when good is taken for
evil, and evil for good, the heart has reached its
last rottenness. By Pharisaism in art we mean,
not an attachment to particular schools, but an
inability of recognizing beauty, except in accordance with conventional rules and established
maxims; its incipient stage is when beauty in
aberrant types is not felt; its final and hopeless
stage is reached when such beauty appears deformity.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         157
Now  it was the Pharisaism  of that article
which appeared to me to deserve no common
severity.
Tyranny merits the same treatment.  Had it
been from a feeble antagonist that this criticism
proceeded, it might have been left unnoticed.
Who "breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?"  Or
had it been vulgar, personal slander, it had been
met, as all such things are best met, in silence.
But the journal in which this critique appeared
is no vulgar slanderer; scarcely ever is an article
in its columns deficient in talent at least; few
would like to writhe beneath its lash. It wields
a gigantic power. Well, it is excellent
" To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant."
And because that article was written with merciless severity, weighted with all the authority of a
powerful journal, and hidden behind the shelter
of an anonymous incognito, therefore it seemed
to me a bounden duty to show to Working Men
that a giant can be crushed, and that they are not
to be led blindfold by the press; inasmuch as
even an article in the " leading journal of Europe" may be flippant, clev'er, arrogant, and
shallow.
We proceed to the more direct business of this




158        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
evening: the influence of Poetry on the Working
Classes. But first, I disclaim the notion of treating this subject as if Poetry had a different sort
of influence on them from tfat which it has on
other classes. Very false is that mode of thought
which recognizes the souls of the classes who are
not compelled to work as composed of porcelain,
and of those who are doomed to work as made
of clay. They feel, weep, laugh, alike; alike
have their aspiring and their degraded moods;
that which tells on one human spirit, tells also
upon another. Much, therefore, of what is to be
said will belong to men of work; not specially,
but only as human beings. If Poetry influences
men, it must influence Working Men.
The influence of Poetry depends partly on the
form; and partly on the spirit which animates the
form. I will consider the influence of form first.
We have defined Poetry to be a work of imagination wrought into form by art. Poetry is
not imagination, but imagination shaped. Not
feeling; but feeling expressed symbolically; the
formless  suggested  indirectly through  form.
Hence the form is an essential element of Poetry; and it becomes necessary to trace its
influence.
The form in which poetical fueling expresses
itself is infinitely varied. There may be a poet



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.          159
ical act, or a poetical picture, or a poetical aspect
of scenery, or poetical words; to which last form
we technically give the name of Poetry.
Take an example from an expression of countenance, which may be poetical. There are feelings
which cannot be spoken out in words; therefore
the Creator has so constituted the human countenance that it is expressive, and you only catch the
meaning sympathetically by the symbolism of the
features.  We have all seen such Poetry.  We
have seen looks inspired.  We have seen whole
worlds of feeling in a glance; scorn, hatred, devotion, infinite tenderness. This is what, in portraits, we call expression, as distinguished from
similarity of feature. Innumerable touches perfect the one.; sometimes one masterly stroke will
suggest the other, so that nothing can add to it.
This is Poetry. To such a look the addition of a
word would have spoilt all"For words are weak, and most to seek,
When wanted fifty-fold:
And then, if silence will not speak,
And trembling lip, and changing cheek,
There's nothing told."
The form of Poetry, again, may be that of a
symbolical action. The Eastern nations express
themselves abundantly in this way; and if the
subject were not too sacred, I might adduce.




160        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
many examples from the significant actions of the
Hebrew prophets.  But I will, instead, instance
a case of modern history. Perhaps you have read
the anecdote (I do not know on what historical
authority it rests) of the Earl of Warwick, in one
of his last battles, probably that of Barnet, when
he found the day going against him, dismounting
from his favourite charger, and before all his army
plunging his sword into his heart, thereby cutting
off the possibility of escape, and expressing his
resolve there to win or fall.  Conceive Warwick
putting that into direct words.  Conceive his
attempting to express all that was implied in that
act; the energy of despair, the resolve, the infinite
defiance, the untold worlds of force that must be
in a man who could do an act the whole terribleness of which none but a soldier could appreciate,
slaying with his own hand the horse and friend
that had borne him through death and perils. And
conceive the influence upon the troops-how it
must have said to any recreant waverer in the
ranks, " Stand like a man, and dare to die!"
The next instance is a less dignified one; but
I select it that we may discern the manifold
shapes and degrees of poetic form. History tells
us of a prince of France who asked permission
to offer a present to one much loved. The permission was given; the gift chosen, a portrait;




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       161
but with a stipulation annexed, in order to prevent extravagance, that it should not be larger
than could be worn as a ring upon the finger,
and that it should not be set in jewels.  The
portrait was completed as agreed on; but, instead
of a glass, it was covered with a single plate,
cut out of the centre of an enormous diamond,
which, of course, was sacrificed in the cutting.  When the ingenious treachery was discovered, the picture was returned: whereupon
the royal lover ground the diamond to powder,
and dusted with it, instead of sand, his letter of
reply. The use of this?  It was useless. Had
it been a matter of utility, it had not been one
of Poetry. It was modified by French feeling,
doubtless. Yet beneath it you will discern something that was not merely French, but human,
and which constitutes the Poetry of the whole
system of present giving.  That which in the
polite Frenchman was something more than gallantry, would have been in another, and in him,
too, under more earnest or less successful circumstances, the chivalrous feeling which desires
to express itself in its true essence, as devotion
to the weaker, through a sacrifice which shall be
costly, (the costlier the more grateful, as the relief of feeling to the giver,) and which shall be
quite immeasurable by, and independent of, the




162        LECTURES AND ADIRESSES
question of utility.  The love of the base and
plebeian spirit is the desire to take all it can.
The love of the nobler spirit is the desire to give
all it can. Sacrifice is its only true expression;
and every form of sacrifice in which the soul tries
to express and relieve itself, whether it be in the
lavish magnificence in which self and life can be
freely spent, or the vulgar magnificence called
princely, with which gold and jewels can be
squandered, is a form  of Poetry, more or less
dignified.
It will now be clear, that in the large sense of
the word Poetry, its proper form is always symbolism.  The poet derives his power from  the
ardour of mankind to adopt symbols, and catch
enthusiasm from  them. Poetry is the language
of symbolism.
Therefore we all are susceptible of its influences. Many a man who thinks he has no
taste for Poetry, because he does not chance to
feel it in one of its forms, rhythmic words, is
yet no stranger to its power.  What is religious
formalism, but an exaggeration or petrifaction of
a true conviction-that outward forms and material symbols have a language of their own,
fraught with a deeper, because infinite, religious
significance to the heart than ever came from the
poor rhetoric of the pulpit?  Why is it that on




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.      163
the battlefield there is ever one spot where the
sabres glitter faster, and the pistol's flash is more
frequent, and men and officers crowd together in
denser masses? They are struggling for a flag,
or an eagle, or a standard. Strip it of its symbolism-take from it the meaning with which the
imagination has invested it, and it is nothing but
a bit of silk rag, torn with shot and blackened with
powder. Now go with your common sense and
tell the soldier he is madly striving about a bit of
rag. See if your common sense is as true to him
as his Poetry, or able to quench it for a moment.
Take a case. Among the exploits of marvellous and almost legendary valour performed by
that great Chieftain, to whom  not many years
ago, when disaster after disaster left it uncertain
whether the next mail would bring us news that
we possessed any Indian Empire at all, the voice
of England, with one unanimous impulse, cried,
" There is one man in Britain who has the right
of wisdom  as well as courage to command in
chief,"-that daring warrior who, when the hour
of danger was past, and the hour of safety had
come, was forgotten by his country; to whom in
the hour of fresh danger the people of England
will look again, and his generous spirit will
forget neglect; who has been laid aside uncoroneted and almost unhonoured, because he would
18




164       LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
promote and distinguish the men of work in preference to the men of rank, and wealth, and titled
idleness-amongst his achievements not the least
wondrous was his subjugation of the robber tribes
of the Cutchee hills, in the North of Scinde.
Those warriors had been unsubdued for six hundred years. They dwelt in a crater-like valley,
surrounded by mountains, through which there
were but two or three narrow entrances, and up
which there was no access but by goat-paths, so
precipitous that brave men grew dizzy and could
not proceed. So rude and wild was the fastness
of Trukkee, that the entrances themselves could
scarcely be discovered amidst the labyrinth-like
confusion of rocks and mountains. It was part
of the masterly plan by which Sir Charles Napier
had resolved to storm the stronghold of the robbers, to cause a detachment of his army to scale
the mountain side. A service so perilous could
scarcely be commanded. Volunteers were called
for. There was a regiment, the 64th Bengal
Infantry, which had been recently disgraced, in
consequence of mutiny at Shikarpoor, their colonel cashiered, and their colours taken from them
-a hundred of these men volunteered. " Soldiers
of the 64th," said the commander, who knew the
way to the soldier's heart, " your colours are on
the top of yonder hill!" I should like to have




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       165
seen the precipice that would have deterred the
64th regiment, after words like those from the
lips of the conqueror of Scinde!
And now, suppose that you had gone with
common-sense and economic science, and proved
to them that the colours they were risking their
lives to win back, were worth but so many shillings sterling value-tell me, which would the
stern workers of the 64th regiment have found it
easiest to understand, common-sense or Poetry?
Which would they have believed, Science, which
said, " It is manufactured silk; " or Imagination,
whose kingly voice had made it " colours"?
It is in this sense that the poet has been called
as the name imports, creator, namer, maker. He
stamps his own feeling on a form or symbol;
names it, and makes it what it was not before;
giving to feeling a local habitation and a name,
by associating it with form. Before, it was silk
-so many square feet; now, it is a thing for
which men will die.
And here we get at two distinctionsFirst, between the poet and the rhymester. A
poet is one who creates or names; who interprets old or new thoughts by fresh symbolism.
The rhymester repeats the accredited forms and
phrases; and because he has got the knack of
using metaphors and diction, which have been




166         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
the living language of the makers of them, he
is mistaken for a poet. Smooth writing, and
facility of versification, and expertness in piecing
together poetical words and images, do not constitute Poetry.' Next, a distinction between the poet and the
mystic. The poet uses symbols, knowing that
they are symbols. The mystic mistakes them for
realities.  Thus to  Swedenborg a cloud, or a
vine, or a cedar, correspond throughout Scripture
with one mystic spiritual truth; mean one thing,
and but one. And thus to the mystical formalist,
a sign or symbol is confused with the truth which
it symbolizes; that symbol is the symbol of that
truth; and to treat the symbol as Hezekiah
treated the brazen serpent is sacrilege. Now, the
poet remains sane upon this point; his " fine
frenzy   never reaches the insanity which mistakes its own creations for fixed realities.  To
him a cloud or flower may express at different
times a thousand truths; material things are
types to him, in a certain mood, of this truth or
that; but he knows that to another person, or to
himself in another mood, they are types of something else.
Tennyson has said this well —
" But any man who walks the mead,
In bud, or blade, or bloom may find,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.           167
According as his humours lead,
A meaning suited to his mind.
For liberal applications lie
In Art as Nature, dearest friend? 
So'twere to cramp its use, if I
Should hook it to some useful en(t.
And this will help us to discern how far there is
truth in the opinion that Poetry belongs to the
earlier ages, and declines with the advance of
civilization. Symbols perish-Poetry never dies.
There was a time when the Trojan war, before
Homer sang it, was what Milton says of the unsung wars of the Saxon Heptarchy, a conflict of
kites and crows; the martyr's stake, a gibbet;
Olympus and  Parnassus, and a hill more holy
still, common hills.  The time may come when,
as they were once without poetical associations,
most of them  shall be unpoetical again.  And
because of such a dying of the glory from the
past, people begin to fancy that Poetry has perished. But is human courage lost, fidelity, imagination, honourable aims?  Is the necessity of
utterance gone, or the sufficiency of finite words
for illimitable feeling greater?   When the old
colours of a regiment are worn out, it is sometimes the custom  to burn them, and drink the
ashes in wine, with solemn silence, before the
consecration of new colours. Well, that is all we
s1 *




168        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
want. Let old forms and time-honoured words
perish with due honour, and give us fresh symbols
and new forms of speech to express, not what our
fathers felt, but what we feel.  Goethe says,
" The spirit-world is not foreclosed. Thy senses
are dulled; thy heart is dead. Arise, become a
learner; and bathe that earthly breast of thine,
unwearied, in the dew of a fresh morning."
And this alone would be enough to show that
the Poetry of the coming age must come from
the Working Classes. In the upper ranks, Poetry,
so far at least as it represents their life, has long
been worn out, sickly, and sentimental. Its manhood is effete.  Feudal aristocracy with its associations, the castle and the tournament, has
passed away. Its last healthy tones came from
the harp of Scott. Byron sang its funeral dirge.
But tenderness, and heroism, and endurance still
want their voice, and it must come from  the
classes whose observation is at first hand, and
who speak fresh from Nature's heart. What has
Poetry to do with the Working Classes?  Men
of work! we want our Poetry from you-from
men who will dare to live a brave and true life;
not like poor Burns, who was fevered with flattery, manful as he was, and dazzled by the vulgar splendours of the life of the great, which
he despised  and  still longed for; but rather




BY BEV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        169
like Ebenezer Elliot, author of the Corn Law
Rhymes.  Our soldier ancestors told you the
significance of high devotion and loyalty which
lay beneath the smoke of battle-fields. Now rise
and tell us the living meaning there may be in
the smoke of manufactories, and the heroism of
perseverance, and the poetry of invention, and the
patience of uncomplaining resignation. Remember the stirring words of one of your own poets:
"There's a light about to break,
There's a day about to dawn:
Men of thought, and men of action!
Clear the way!"
Consider, next, the influence of the spirit of
Poetry as distinguished from the particular form
in which it may be manifested.
The poets of the higher order are susceptible
of a still further subdivision.  There are those
who project themselves out of their own particular being, and become by imagination one
with that on which they meditate; and those
who inform all they gaze on with their own individuality. Those, that is, who sympathize with
all that is created; and those whose imagination
makes all to sympathize with them. I need not
say which of these two classes is the domain of
the higher Poetry.  Wherever egoism  enters,
whether it be into life or into art, it degrades




170         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
and  narrows; he through whom  the universe
speaks what God intended it to speak, is, as a
poet, greater than he who through all the universe
still only speaks out himself.
Now  remark the different influence of these
classes.
First, we have those whose imagination represents all nature as sympathizing with them; and
just as through a coloured glass a landscape
looks red, blue, or yellow, as the glass may be
tinted, so does one feeling modify all others, and
colour all things with its own hue.  In some
measure this is true of us all.
" I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live:
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud! "*
We all possess this tendency when the imagination has been intensified by one single passion,
or narrowed by one absorbing pursuit. Let me
give you a very homely illustration. I was once
passing through the finest street in England on
the outside of a mail coach. A young woman
who sat near me, when we had reached the end
of the street, suddenly exclaimed, " I never saw
* Coleridge-" Ode to Dejection."




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        171
so many narrow doors in all my life!"  When
the first surprise, produced by an exclamation so
much in discord with my own thoughts, had subsided, I began to make inquiries, and discovered
that her father was a builder.  The builder's
daughter had cast the hue of her daily associations over every thing. To her the buildings gray
with the hoar of ages were as if they were not;
historical interest, architectural beauty, solemn
associations did not exist.  To her there was
nothing there but stones, graven by the stonemason's chisel, and doors, measurable by the rule
of the carpenter.  And in the same way do we
all colour nature with our own pursuits.  To a
sportsman, a rich field is covert for game; to a
farmer, the result of guano; to a geologist, indication of a certain character of subjacent rock.
It is very instructive to observe how superstition can thus summon all nature to be the minister of our human history, especially when it is
rendered more imperious in its demands by pride.
There is scarcely an ancient family which has
not the tradition of preternatural appearances preceding the death or connected with the destinies
of the chief members of the race. Shakspeare, as
usual, gives us this. Lear's anguish sheds the
hue of ingratitude over the heavens. To Timon,
sun, and moon, and stars are tinctured with his




172           LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
misanthropy.  To  Macbeth, meditating  murder,
all nature is preternatural, sounds of simple instinct ominous, and all things conscious of his
secret.
" Now o'er the one half-world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murther,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it."
"Come, sealing night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;
And, with thy bloody and invisible hand,
Cancel, and tear to pieces, that great bond
Which keeps me pale! Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood;
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night's black agents to their prey do rouse  "
Observe, again, how   Casca's conscience, already half-burdened, distorts the simplest phenomena: —
"Against the capitol I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by




BIY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.             173
Without annoying me; and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women
Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday, the bird of night did sit
Even at noonday, upon the market place,
Hooting and shrieking."
Of all this apparent supernaturalism, Cicero gives
the true account, in reply: —
Indeed, it is a strange disposed time;
But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves."
And Calphurnia, with a presentiment of her husband's doom:"There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets:
And graves have yawned and yielded up their dead:
Fierce, fiery warriors fight upon the clouds
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the capitol:
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses do neigh, and dying men did groan:
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets."
Mark, too, how, as I said, pride has its share in
giving shape to this superstition. Caesar replies,
the valour of the conqueror defying omens, and




174         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
the large heart of the man recognizing his sub.
jection to the laws of a common humanity:
" Yet Caesar shall go forth: for these predictions
Are to the world in general, as to Csesar."
But Calphurnia, with that worship of high birth
which is peculiar to the feminine nature, answers:
" When beggars die there are no comets seen:
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."
So wonderful is that egoism  of man which can
thus overspread the heavens with its woes, and
read in the planets only prophecies of himself!
Now that which belongs to us all in some moods,
is characteristic of some poets through all their
nature, and pervades their work. The influence,
therefore, of this class of Poetry, depends upon
the man.  The self which is thrown upon nature
may be the lower or the higher self, and the influence will be correspondingly of the lower or
the higher kind.
Among the former divisions of the egoistic
class of first-rate poets, severe justice compels
me with pain to place Lord Byron. Brought up
under the baleful influences of Calvinism, which
makes sovereign Will the measure of Right, instead of Right the cause and law  of Will, a
system which he all his life hated and believed



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.      175
fancying himself the mark of an inexorable decree, and bidding a terrible defiance to the unjust
One who had fixed his doom-no wonder that,
as in that strange phenomenon the spectre of the
Brocken, the traveller sees a gigantic form cast
upon the mists, which he discovers at last to be
but his own shadow; so, the noble poet went
through life haunted, turn which way he would,
with the gigantic shadow of himself, which obscured the heavens and turned the light into thick
darkness.
Foremost among those in whom a higher self
informs all objects, stands Milton. We are comr
pelled to place him with those in whom egoism
is not wholly absorbed in nature. Shakspeare is
a   voice." Read Shakspeare through, and, except
from some of his sonnets, you could not guess
who or what manner of man he was. But you
could not read Milton long without discovering
the man through the poet. His domestic miseries
are reflected in his " Samson Agonistes."  In his
" Comus," that majestic psalm to Chastity, are
blended the antique heroism of his Pagan studies,
and the Christian sanctities of his rare manhood.
His very angels reason upon Puritan questions;
and it was the taunt of Pope, that in the Eternal
lips themselves, redemption is a contrivance or
scheme according to the systematic theology of a
19




176        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
school divine. And yet the egoism with which
all his Poetry is impregnated is the egoism of a
glorious nature. If we were asked who in the
eighteen Christian centuries stands before us
as the highest approximation to what we conceive as Christian manhood, in which are rarely
blended the opposites of purity and passion,
gracefulness and strength, sanctity and manifold
fitness for all the worldly duties of the man and
the citizen, we should scarcely hesitate to answer
— John Milton. The poet is overshadowed by
the individual man: but the influence of the man
is all for good.
Now compare with these the poets who see in
Nature not themselves, but Nature; who are her
voice, not she theirs. Of this class, likewise,
there are two divisions: the first represented by
Shakspeare, the second by Wordsworth.
Shakspeare is an universal poet, because he
utters all that is in men; Wordsworth, because
he speaks that which is in all men.  There
is much difference between  these two statements.
The perfection of Shakspeare, like all the
highest perfection, consists, not in the predominance of a single quality, or feeling, but in the
just balance and perfect harmony of all. You
cannot say whether the tragic element of our




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.            177
nature, or the comic, predominates; whether he
has more sympathy with its broad laugh, or its
secret sigh; with the contemplativeness of Hamlet, which lets the moment of action pass, or the
promptitude of Hotspur; with the aristocratic
pride of Coriolanus, which cannot deign to canvass the mob for votes, or the coarse wit and
human instincts of the serving-men.
Wordsworth, on  the  contrary, gives  to  us
humanity stripped of its peculiarities; the feelings which do not belong to this man or that,
this or that age, but are the heritage of our common nature. " That," says he in a private letter,
" which will distinguish my poems hereafter from
those of other poets, is this: that while other
poets laboured to exhibit that which distinguishes
one man from  another, especially the dramatic
poets, I have made it my concern to exhibit that
which is common to all men."
As a specimen of this, take that well-known
poem:
"She was a phantom of delight,
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time's brightest, loveliest dawn;




178          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, lksses, tears, and smiles
" And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright,
With something of an angel light."
You will observe that it is not a portrait like
one of Shakspeare's, in which, gradually, a particular female character unfolds a personality which
belongs to Miranda or to Juliet, and could not
belong to Cleopatra or to Lady  Macbeth; nor
a description like Tennyson's, which, if true of
Isabel or Lilian, must be false  of Adeline  or




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         179
Eleanore: nor, again, this or that woman, coloured in the false hues which passion or fancy
have thrown on her for a time: but womanhood
in its essence, and divested of its peculiarities of
nation or century; such as her Creator meant her
to be; such as every woman is potentially if not
actually; such as she appears successively to the
lover, the husband, and the friend, separating
from such lover, husband, and friend, the accidents of an English, Spanish, or French temperament.  And yet, remark that this womanhood, so painted, is not a mere thin, unsubstantial
abstraction of the intellect; but a living, tangible
image, appreciable by the senses, a single, total
impression, "sensuous," as Milton says of Poetry:
else it would not be Poetry, but a scientific definition. You have before you an ideal clothed
in flesh and blood, without the limitations of any
particular idiosyncrasy.
This is the sense in which poets like Wordsworth are universal poets and free from egoism;
very different from the sense in which Shakspeare
is universal.
Now to compare the various influences of these
poets. And, first, to compare class with class.
The poet in whom  individuality predominates
will have a more definite influence; he of whom
universality is the characteristic, a more wide
19 *




180        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
and lasting one. The influence of Cowper, Milton, or Byron, on individuals is distinct and appreciable; that of Homer and Shakspeare, almost
imperceptible on single minds, is spread silently
over ages, and determines the character of the
world's literature and the world's feeling.
Comparing each class with itself, and taking
first that which we have characterized as the
more egoistic, the more popular will be almost
always the less pure, because the passionate
enthusiasm for what is great and good is shared
by few, comparatively with the power of comprehending the might and force of what we commonly call the passions. Milton is placed with
honour on our shelves. We read Byron through
and through.
Next, of the poets of nature, Shakspeare, and
the very few who can be ranked with him, will
be more popular than such as Wordsworth; not
because he is greater, though he is, of course,
immeasurably, but because his greatness, like that
of nature's self, is broken into fragments, and all
can find in him  something corresponding with
their humour. Only a few, like Herschel and
Humboldt, can comprehend with something like
adequateness the Cosmos, or Order of the Universe; there is no one who cannot read a page
of it. And so, very few of those who talk of




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       181
Shakspeare's greatness, know how great he is;
but all can mark with pencil dashes certain lines
and detached acts; and if you examined the copy
so dashed and marked, you would probably discover what in Shakspeare bears, or was supposed
to bear, reference to the reader's own character,
or- more properly, illustrated his or her private
prejudices, peculiarities, and personal history;
but, unless a hand as free from egoism as Shakspeare's own had drawn the lines of approval, you
would gain from the book of extracts made up of
all such passages, not the nature of Man, but the
idiosyncrasy of a man. Tell us, therefore, that a
man's favourite poet is such as Wordsworth, and
we know something about his character; but tell
us that he delights in Shakspeare, and we know
as yet no more of him than if it had been said
that life has joys for him. He may be a Marlborough, or he may be a clown.
Permit me to offer you two pieces of advice,
resulting from what has been said.
First, Cultivate universality of taste. There is
no surer mark of a half-educated mind than the
incapacity of admiring various forms of excellence. Men who cannot praise Dryden without
dispraising Coleridge; nor feel the stern, earthly
truthfulness of Crabbe without disparaging the
wild, ethereal, imnalpable music of Shellev: nor




182         ^ CTURES AND ADDRESSES
exalt Spenser except by sneering at Tennyson,
are precisely the persons to whom it should in
consistency seem strange that in God's world
there is a place for the eagle and the wren, a
separate grace to the swan and the hummingbird, their own fragrance to the cedar and the
violet.  Enlarge your tastes, that you may enlarge your hearts as well as your pleasures; feel
all that is beautiful-love all that is good. The
first maxim in religion and in art is-sever yourself from all sectarianism; pledge yourself to no
school; cut your life adrift from all party; be a
slave to no maxims; stand forth, unfettered and
free, servant only to the truth. And if you say,
" But this will force each of us to stand alone;"
I reply —Yes, grandly alone! untrammelled by
the prejudices of any, and free to admire the
beauty, and love the goodness of them all.
Secondly, of the writers whom we called egoistic, in whom, that is, the man predominates over
the poet, choose such only as are the unfeigned
servants of goodness-I do not mean goodliness
-to be your special favourites.  In early life it
is, I believe, from this class solely that our favourites are selected; and a man's character and mind
are moulded for good or evil far more by the
forms of imagination which surround his childhood than by any subsequent scientific training.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       183
We can recollect how a couplet from the frontispiece of a hymn-book struck deeper roots into
our being, and has borne more manifest fruits,
than all the formal training we ever got. Or we
can trace, as unerringly as an Indian on the trail,
the several influences of each poet through our
lives: the sense of unjust destiny which was
created by Byron; the taint of Moore's voluptuousness; the hearty, healthful life of Scott; the
calming power of Wordsworth; the masculine
vigour of Dryden. For it is only in after years
that the real taste for the very highest Poetry is
acquired. Life, and experience, as well as mental
cultivation, are indispensable. In earlier life the
influence of the man is mightier than that of the
poet. Therefore, let every young man especially
guard his heart and imagination against the
mastery of those writers who sap his vigour and
taint his purity.
We proceed to name a few of the modes in
which Poetry does actually influence men:
First. In the way of giving relief to feeling.
It is a law of our nature that strong feeling, unexpressed either in words or action, becomes
morbid.  You need not dread the passionate
man, whose wrath vents itself in words; dread
the man who grows pale, and suppresses the
language of his resentment. There is something




184         LrCTURES AND ADDRESSES
in him  yet to come out.  This is the secret of
England's freedom  from  revolution and conspiracies; she has free discussion. Wrongs do not
smoulder silently, to burst forth unexpectedly.
Every grievance may have a hearing, and not
being pent up, spends itself before it is dangerous.
" The land where, girt by friend or foe,
A man may speak the thing he will." *
Now, there  are  feelings which, unuttered,
would make a man dangerous-or morbid-or
mad;-utterance relieves, and, weakening  the
feeling, makes the man strong.
"To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong."
For such feelings the poets find us suitable
expression. In an artificial state of society, perhaps some young, warlike spirit pines for a more
dangerous life than our quiet days give.  Well,
he reads Scott's border raids, or " Scots wha hae
wi' Wallace bled," or " Hohen Linden," and the
vivid forms of imagination receive, as it were, his
superfluous energies, and the chafing subsides in
unreal battle-fields: or some diseased germ of
misanthropy is enlarging in his heart-secret discontent with life; disagreement with the world;
* Tennyson.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         185
conflict between his nature and civil regulations;
let him read Byron-a dangerous cure-but in
the end a certain one. Byron has said all that
can be said upon the subject.  What more can
be added?  There is no restless feeling left behind of something unsaid. Exhaustion followsthen health. For it is a mistake to think that
Poetry is only good to nurse feeling. It is good
for enabling us to get rid of feeling for which
there is no available field of action. It is the
safety-valve to the heart.
It has, besides, an  elevating influence.  It
breaks the monotonous flatness of existence by
excitement. Its very essence is that it exalts us,
and puts us in a higher mood than that in which
we live habitually.  And this is peculiarly true
of modern Poetry. A great critic * has said that
the distinction between ancient and modern Poetry is, that the characteristic of the former is
satisfaction, that of the latter aspiration. To the
ancients this time-world was all.  To round it
with completeness, and hold all powers in harmonious balance, was their whole aim. Whereas,
Christianity has dwarfed this life in comparison
with the thought of an endless existence which it
has revealed. To them the thought of death only
came as a stimulus to increased enjoyment of
* Schlegel.




186        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
that which must soon pass. To us that thought
comes moderating and calming all pleasure. And
hence the sad, dark character of Christian, espec.
ially northern Poetry; as the utterance of a heart
which is conscious of eternal discord rather than
of perfection of powers; and through it all there
vibrates an undertone of melancholy, adding
even to mirth a peculiar pathos. Is it not better
that it should be so?  Does not such Poetry
therefore more peculiarly belong to Working
Men, whose life is desire, not enjoyment; aspiration, not contentment?
Whoever will go into any Gothic cathedral in
the evening, knowing nothing of the connoisseurship of architecture, and watch the effect produced
on his mind by the lines which wander away, bewildering the eye with the feeling of endlessness,
and losing themselves in the dark distances, and
will then compare the total impression with that
produced by the voluptuous, earthly beauty of a
temple like the Madeleine in Paris, will understand, without the help of any scientific jargon,
the difference between the ancient idea of satisfaction and the modern one of aspiration.
But when we say Poetry elevates, let it not be
understood of the improvement of physical comr
forts. Poetry will not'place a man in better circumstances; but it may raise him  above his




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.           187
circumstances, and fortify him with inward independence; as Lovelace, the cavalier poet, has
very gracefully expressed, in lines written in confinement:"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.
" If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty."
And yet, as there are some persons who cannot
conceive of human elevation except as connected
with circumstantial condition, I must tell you an
anecdote to satisfy even them.  A  lady, with
whose friendship I am  honoured, was travelling
last summer in the Lake district of Cumberland
and Westmoreland.  Being interested in education, she visited many of the National Schools in
that country.  For the most part the result was
uninteresting enough. The heavy looks and stolid
intellects, which characterize our English agricultural population, disappointed her. But in one
place there was a striking difference. The children were sprightly, alert, and answered with intelligence all the questions proposed; traced riv20




188        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
ers from their sources to the sea, explaining why
the towns along their course were of such and
such a character, and how the soil had modified
the habits and lives of the inhabitants-with much
of similar information. The schoolmaster had
been educated at one of our great training seminaries. He was invited by the tourist to spend
an hour at the hotel; and when, after a long conversation, she expressed her surprise that one so
highly educated should bury himself in a retired,
unknown spot, with small stipend, teaching only
a few rustics, he replied, after some hesitation" Why, Madam, when this situation was first
offered me, I was on the point of marriage; and
I calculated that it would be worth more to me
to live on a small salary, with domestic peace, in
the midst of this beautiful scenery, than on a
much larger sum in a less glorious spot."
Now, there are people who can only estimate
the worth of a thing by what it will bring. What
is the use of Poetry?  Well, perhaps they may
answer that question for themselves, if I have
shown that refined taste may be an equivalent for
half an income, and a sense of what is beautiful
in God's world may make a poor man
" passing rich with forty pounds a-year."
The tendency, again, of Poetry is to unite




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.          189
men  together.  And  this both indirectly and
directly.
It has been already said thaz the highest Poetry
is that which represents the most universal feeling, not the most rare. It is in this sense that
Milton's definition makes Poetry " simple; " that,
is, it deals with the feelings which we have in
common, as men, and not with those which we
possess as a particular sort or class of men; with
the natural rather than the trained, artificial, or
acquired feelings; just as the botanist is simple
in contrast with the horticulturist. The one seeks
what is natural; and to him  nothing in nature
is a weed.  The other seeks rarities and hotbed
monstrosities.
The Germans say that the world has produced
only three poets of firstrate genius: —Homer,
Shakspeare, and Goethe.  This, I suppose, is an
exaggeration; nevertheless, it is true that the
highest poets have been, like them, not.a class
or caste, but of humanity.  Take, almost at a
venture, the first familiar names that present
themselves.
Milton, by all the associations of education and
refined tastes, belonged to the royalists and the
Church; but he threw himself, in spite of the
vulgarities which repelled him personally from its
worship, and  left him  at last without visible




190        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
worship, on the side of the conventicle, because
in the days of the Stuarts the cause of the conventicle was the cause of liberty and truth.
Dante was a Romanist; but no slave was he
of popery. His world-wide conception represents
the heathens and the Christians of all ages as the
subjects of one moral government, responsible to
the laws impressed upon humanity rather than
those written by the Church; and his severe justice does not scruple to consign a long list of bishops and popes to the eternal penalty of crimes.
Or, again, Byron and Shelley-aristocrats both
by birth, yet no minions of a caste, nor champions
of hereditary privilege-they were men; and their
power lay in this, that they were the champions
of human rights, as well as utterers of the passion
that is in men. So far as they are great, they are
universal; so far as they are small or bad, they
are narrow and egotistical. And as time rolls
on, that which is of self, limited and evil, will
become obsolete, and wither, as the mortal warp
and woof shrivelled on the arm of Halbert Glendinning, when he plunged it into the sacred flame
to grasp the Volume of Truth at the bidding of
the White Lady of Avenel; and that of their
works which will remain unconsumed will be the
living flesh of the humanity that never dies-so
much as is true to universal nature and to fact.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         191
It is thus that the poets universalize and unite.
" One touch of nature makes the whole world
kin." And, hence, Poetry has been silently doing
a work for the poorer classes when they were not
aware of it; for even that Poetry which does
not interest them, may be opening the hearts of
the richer classes towards them. Did Burns teach
the nobles no sympathy with the cares, and the
loves, and the trials of the cotter's life?  And
when poor Hood wrote the " Song of the Shirt,"
so touchingly expressive of the sorrows of an
unknown class, the over-worked needlewoman,
and all England, thrilled to the appeal:
" O men, with sisters dear!
O men, with mothers and wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives-"
and when, in consequence, plan after plan was
tried, and investigations instituted, and a kindlier
interest evoked to ameliorate their condition, tell
us-Had Poetry done nothing for the Working
Classes?
But it has a more direct influence than this
in the way of uniting. Chiefly from that power
with which the poetic nature is peculiarly gifted
of discovering what Shakspeare calls the "soul
of goodness in things evil." Every great poet is
a "double natured man;"  with the feminine
20 




192         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
and manly powers in harmonious union; having
the tact, and the sympathy, and the intuition, and
the tenderness of woman, with the breadth and
massiveness of the manly intellect, besides the
calm justice which is almost exclusively masculine. For this reason a poet, seeing into the life
of things, is not one-sided; can see the truth
which lies at the root of error; can blame evil
without hysterically raving against every doer of
it; distinguishes between frailty and villany;
judges leniently, because by sympathy he can
look upon faults as they appear to those who
committed them; judges justly, because, so far
as he is an artist, he can regard the feeling with
which he sympathizes from without; in a double
way-realizing it, but not surrendered to it.
I must quote two passages explanatory of the
world of meaning contained in those few words
of Shakspeare: the " soul of goodness in things
evil."
Wordsworth means the same when he says:-'Tis Nature's law
That none, the meanest of created things,
Of forms created the most vile and brute,
The dullest or most noxious, should exist,
Divorced from good-a spirit and pulse of good,
A life and soul, to every mode of being
Inseparably linked. Then be assured
That least of all can aught-that ever owned




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.              193
The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime
Which man is born to, sink, howe'ver depressed,
So low as to be scorned without a sin;
Without offence to God cast out of view."
And again:" He who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
That he hath never used: and Thought with him
Is in its infancy."
One of the best illustrations I can remember
of this prerogative of the poet to fasten the attention on what is human and loveable, rather than
on what is evil, is Hood's " Bridge of Sighs."
This little poem  is suggested by the sight of a
poor suicide, who has cast herself from one of the
London bridges. Prudery, male or female, would
turn from such a spectacle with disgust; the disciple of some school of cold divinity would see
in it only a text for a discourse on hell. The poet
discerns something in it of a deeper mystery, not
so flippantly to be solved. He bids you
" Touch her not scornfully,
Think of her mournfully,
Gently and humanly;
Not of the stains of her;
All that remains of her
Now is pure womanly.
Make no deep scrutiny
Into her mutiny




194         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Rash and undutiful;
Past all dishonour,
Death has left on her
Only the beautiful."
And observe how, with exquisite truthfulness,
he fixes your attention, not upon that in which
the poor outcast differs from you, but on that in
which her sisterhood to the human family consisted-and, for aught you may dare to say, still
consists" Wonderment guesses
Where was her home?
Who was her father?
Who was her mother?
Had she a sister?
Had she a brother?
Or was there a nearer one
Still, and a dearer one
Yet, than all other? "
And mark how-without any feeble sentimentalism, without once confusing the boundaries of
right and wrong, without hinting a suspicion that
vice is not vice, and wrong not wrong-he simply
reminds you that judgment does not belong to
you, a fellow-creature and a sinner; and bids you
place her in the attitude in which alone you have
a right to regard her now" Cross her hands humbly,
As if praying dumbly,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        195
Over her breast;
Owning her weakness,
Her evil behaviour,
And leaving in meekness
Her sins to her Saviour."
I should not like to be the woman who could
read that poem  without something more than
sentimental tears, an enlarged humanity, and a
deeper justice; nor should I like to be the man
who could rise from the perusal of it without
a mighty throb added to the conviction that
libertinism is a thing of damnable and selfish
cowardice.
Again, Poetry discovers good in men who differ
from us, and so teaches us that we are one with
them.  For the poet belongs to the world rather
than to his party; speaks his party's feelings,
which are human; not their watchwords and
formulas, which, being forms of the intellect,
are transitory, often false, always limited. Thus,
Romanism  and Puritanism, and their modern
feeble descendants, as dogmatic systems, are forbidding enough. But listen to Dante, and you
will feel that purgatory, false as a dogma, is true
as the symbolism  of an everlasting fact of the
human soul. Hear Milton sing, and the heart of
Puritanism is recognized as a noble and a manly
thing. And, however repelled you may be by the




196        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
false metaphysics, the pretensions to infallible interpretations, the cant phrases, and the impotent
intolerance which characterize the dwarfed and
dwindled Puritanism  of our own days, out of
which all pith and manhood appear to have departed, who does not feel disposed to be tender to
it for Cowper's gentle sake?  However out of
date the effort of the Tractarian may seem to
you, to reproduce the piety of the past through
the forms of the past, instead of striving, like a
true prophet, to interpret the aspirations of the
present in forms which shall truly represent and
foster them, what man is there to whose heart
Keble has not shown that in Tractarianism, too,
there is a " soul of goodness," a life and a meaning which mere negations cannot destroy?
Lastly, I name the refining influence of Poetry.
We shall confine our proofs to that which it has
already done in making men and life less savage,
carnal, and mercenary; and this especially in the
three departments which were the peculiar sphere
of the Poetry which is called romantic. Beneath
its influence, passion became love; selfishness,
honour; and war, chivalry.
The first of these, as a high sentiment, can
only be said to have come into existence with
the Christianity of the Middle Ages. All who are
familiar with the Greek and Roman Poetry, know




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       197
that the sentiment which now bears the name,
was unknown to the ancients. It became what
it is when passion had been hallowed by imagination. Then, and not till then, it became loyalty
to female worth, consecrated by religion. For
the sacred thought of a Virgin Mother spread its
sanctity over the whole idea of the sex. Christianity had given to the world a new object for
its imagination; and the idolatry into which it
passed in the Church of Rome, was but the inevitable result of the effort of rude minds struggling
to express in form the new idea of a divine sacredness belonging to feminine qualities of meekness and purity, which the ages before had overlooked. That this influence of the religious element of the imagination on the earthlier feeling
is not fanciful but historical, might be shown in
the single case of Ignatius Loyola, on whose ardent temperament the influences of his age worked
strongly. Hence it was that there seemed nothing profane when the chivalrous gallantry of the
soldier transformed itself by, to him, a most natural transition, into a loyal dedication of all his
powers to One who was " not a countess, nor a
duchess, but much greater." But only think how
he must have shrunk from this transference of
homage, as blasphemous, if his former earthlier
feelings had not been elevated by a religious




198         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
imagination; if, in short, his affections had been
like those of the Greeks and Romans!
And while on the subject of the influence of
all the higher feelings in elevating passion into
that which is unselfish and pure, and even sublime, I will remind you of those glorious lines
of Lovelace in reply to a reproach on account
of absence caused by duty:
" Yet this inconstancy is such
As you, too, shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more."
Under the influence of imagination, selfishness
became honour.  Doubtless, the law  of honour
is only half Christian. Yet it did this: it proclaimed the invisible truth above the visible comfort.  It consecrated certain acts as right, uncalculatingly, and independently of consequences.
It did not say-it will be better for you in the
end if you do honourably.  It said-you must do
honourably, though it be not better for you to do
it, but worse, and deathful. It was not religion;
but it was better than the popular, merely prudential, mercenary religion, which says, " Honesty
is the best policy; godliness is gain; do right
and you will not lose by it."  Honour said, Perhaps you will lose-all-life; lose then, like a




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        199
man; for there is something higher than  life,
dearer than even your eternal gain. It was not
purely religious; for it retained the selfish element.  But it was a more refined selfishness
which permitted a man to take another's life in
defence of his honour, than that which requires
him to do it in defence of his purse.
Finally, through poetic imagination war became chivalry. The practice of arms ceased to
be " a conflict of kites and crows;"  it was
guarded by a refined courtesy from every rude
and ungenerous abuse of superior strength.
Upon this poirt there is much sophistry prevalent; therefore it is worth while to see how the
matter really stands. A truly great man-the
American  Channing —has said, I remember,
somewhere in his works, that if armies were
dressed in a hangman's or a butcher's garb, the
false glare of military enthusiasm  would be destroyed, and war would, be seen in its true aspect
as butchery.
It is wonderful how the generous enthusiasm
of Dr. Channing has led him into such a sophism. Take away honour, and imagination, and
Poetry from war, and it becomes carnage. Doubtless. And take away public spirit and invisible
principles from resistance to a tax, and Hampden becomes a noisy demagogue.  Take away
21




200        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
the grandeur of his cause, and Washington is a
rebel, instead of the purest of patriots.  Take
away imagination from love, and what remains?
Let a people treat with scorn the defenders of
its liberties, and invest them with the symbols
of degradation, and it will soon have no one to
defend it. This is but a truism.
But it is a falsity if it implies that the mere
change of symbolic dress, unless the dress truly
represented a previous change of public feeling,
would reverse the feeling with which the profession of arms is regarded. So long as people
found it impossible to confound the warrior with
the hangman, all that a change of garb could do
would be to invest the sign with new dignity.
Things mean become noble by association; the
Thistle-the Leek-the Broom  of the Plantagenets the Garter-and the Death's Head and
Cross Bones on the front of the Black Brunswickers, typical of the stern resolve to avenge
their Chief —methinks those symbols did not exactly change the soldier into a sexton!
But the truth is that here, as elsewhere, Poetry
has reached the truth, while science-and commonsense have missed it. It has distinguished-as,
in spite of all mercenary and feeble sophistry,
men ever will distinguish-war from mere bloodshed..It has discerned the higher feelings which




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        201
lie beneath its revolting features. Carnage is
terrible. The conversion of producers into destroyers is a calamity.  Death, and insults to
woman worse than death-and human features
obliterated beneath the hoof of the war-horseand reeking hospitals, and ruined commerce, and
violated homes, and broken hearts-they are all
awful. But there is something worse than death.
Cowardice is worse. And the decay of enthusiasm  and manliness is worse.  And it is worse
than death, aye, worse than a hundred thousand
deaths, when a people has gravitated down into
the creed that the " wealth of nations " consists,
not in generous hearts-" Fire in each breast,
and freedom on each brow "-in national virtues,
and primitive simplicity, and heroic endurance,
and preference of duty to life;-not in MEN, but
in silk, and cotton, and something that they call
" capital." Peace is blessed. Peace, arising out
of charity. But peace, springing out of the calculations of selfishness, is not blessed.  If the
price to be paid for peace is this, that wealth
accumulate and men decay, better far that every
street in every town of our once noble country
should run blood!
Through the physical horrors of warfare, Poetry
discerned the redeeming nobleness. For in truth,
when war is not prolonged, the kindling of all




202        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
the higher passions prevents the access of the
baser ones. A nation split and severed by mean
religious and political dissensions, suddenly feels
its unity, and men's hearts beat together, at the
mere possibility of invasion. And even woman,
as the author of the " History of the Peninsular
War" has well remarked, sufferer as she is by
war, yet gains; in the more chivalrous respect
paid to her, in the elevation of the feelings excited
towards her, in the attitude of protection assumed
by men, and in the high calls to duty which
arouse her from the frivolousness and feebleness
into which her existence is apt to sink.
I will illustrate this by one more anecdote from
the same campaign to which allusion has been
already made - Sir Charles Napier's campaign
against the robber tribes of Upper Scinde.
A detachment of troops was marching along a
valley, the cliffs overhanging which were crested
by the enemy.  A  sergeant, with eleven men,
chanced to become separated from  the rest by
taking the wrong side of a ravine, which they
expected soon to terminate, but which suddenly
deepened into an impassable chasm. The officer
in command signalled to the party an order to
return. They mistook the signal for a command
to charge; the brave fellows answered with a
cheer, and charged. At the summit of the steep




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        203
mountain was a triangular platform, defended by
a breastwork, behind which were seventy of the
foe.  On they went, charging up one of those
fearful paths, eleven against seventy. The contest could not long be doubtful with such odds.
One after another they fell; six upon the spot,
the remainder hurled backwards; but not until
they had slain nearly twice their own number.
There is a custom, we are told, amongst the
hillsmen, that when a great chieftain of their own
falls in battle, his wrist is bound with a thread
either of red or green, the red denoting the highest
rank.  According to custom, they stripped the
dead, and threw their bodies over the precipice.
When their comrades came, they found their
corpses stark and gashed; but round both wrists
of every British hero was twined the red thread! *
I think you will perceive how Poetry, expressing in this rude symbolism unutterable admiration of heroic daring, had given another aspect to
war than that of butchery; and you will understand how, with such a foe, and such a general
as the English commander, who more than once
refused battle because the wives and children of
the enemy were in the hostile camp, and he feared
for their lives, carnage changed its character, and
* "History of the Administration of Sci-nde," by Lieut.
Gen. Sir William Napier.
213




204        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
became chivalry; and how it was that the British
troops learned to treat their captive women with
respect; and the chieftains of the Cutchee hills
offered their swords and services with enthusiasm
to their conqueror; and the wild hill-tribes, transplanted to the plains, became as persevering in
agriculture as they had been before in war.
And now  to conclude.  They tell us that
scenes such as this may be called for in this our
England. I do not pretend to judge. We only
know that a military nation is at our doors with
450,000 gallant soldiers under arms, every man
burning to wipe out the memory of past defeats,
with one at their head the prestige of whose
name recalls an era of unparalleled brilliancy,
many of them  trained in a school of warfare
where the razzias of Africa have not taught
either scrupulosity or mercifulness. We know
that a chieftain who is to rule France with any
hope of imperial influence, can best secure enthusiasm by giving victory to her armies; and that
French generals have already specified the way
in which-I quote the words of Paixham-a
lesson might be taught to England which she
should not soon forget.
No one who loves his country,-no one who
knows what is meant by the sack of a town, especially by French soldiers,-can contemplate the




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       205
possibility of such an event, without a fervent
hope that that day may never come. Nor does
it become us to boast; the enthusiasm  of the
platform is easy, and costs little; and we may be
called upon, before very long, to show by something more than words, whether there be steel in
our hearts and hands, or not.
But thus much I will dare to say. If a foreign
foot be planted on our sacred soil-if the ring of
the rifle of the Chasseurs de Vincennes be heard
upon these shores, terrible as the first reverses
might be, when discipline could be met only by
raw enthusiasm-thanks to gentlemen who have
taught us the sublime mysteries of " capital" in
lieu of the old English superstitions of Honour
and Religion-they may yet chance to learn that
British Chivalry did not breathe her last at Moodkee or Ferozeshah, or Sobraon, or Goojerat, or
Meeanee, or Hyderabad. They may yet be
taught that there is something beyond the raw
hysterics of a transient excitement in the spirit
of self-sacrifice which we have learned from our
Master's cross. They may yet discover that
amongst the artisans, and peasants, and working
men of England, there are a thousand thousand
worthy to be brothers of those heroic eleven who
sleep beneath the rocks of Trukkee, with the red
thread of Honour round their wrists.








LECTURE ON WORDSWORTH








LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON. 209
Lecture on Wordsworth, delivered to the Members
of the Brighton Athenweum, on February 10th,
1853.
IN order to treat fully the subject which I have
to bring before you this evening, I believe there
are three points to which I ought principally to
direct your attention. The first is, the qualifications necessary for appreciating poetry in general,
and for appreciating the poetry of Wordsworth in
particular. The second is the character and life
of Wordsworth, so far as they bear upon his
poetry, and so far as they may have been supposed to have formed or modified his peculiar
poetical theories and principles. The third point
is, the theories and poetical principles of Wordsworth, and how far they are true, how far they
have been exaggerated, and how far Wordsworth
has himself worked out the principles he has laid
down.
Now, it will be plain that the last of these is
the most important point of all; it is, in fact,
the subject of our consideration; but so many




210         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
preliminary subjects have presented themselves
which must be gone into before we enter upon
this, that I have found it necessary to reserve this
third topic for a succeeding lecture,* confining
myself on the present occasion merely to the
two first points that I have already named.
I have undertaken to lecture this evening upon
Wordsworth.  To some persons this will appear
presumption; to others, it will appear superfluous.
To all the admirers of Wordsworth's genius, it
will appear presumption.  To these I simply
reply, I know well the difficulty of the subject, I
know how impossible it is to treat it adequately;
I am aware that presumption is implied in the
thought, that before it is possible to criticize a
man one must sympathize with him, and that to
sympathize with a man implies that there is, to a
certain extent, a power of breathing the same
atmosphere. Nevertheless, I reply that it is with
me, at least, a work and labour of love; nor
can I believe, that any one who has for years
studied Wordsworth and loved him, and year
by year felt his appreciation and comprehension
of Wordsworth grow, and has during all those
years endeavoured to make Wordsworth's principles the guiding principles of his own inner life
* This lecture was never delivered, owing to Mr. Robert.
son's ill-health.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       211
-I cannot believe that such a man can have
nothing to say which it can be desirable should
be heard by his fellow men.
There is another class, however, to whom such
a subject will seem superfluous; for the general
opinion about Wordsworth is exceedingly superficial. To the mass of the public all that is
known of Wordsworth is a conception something
like this: They have heard of an old man who
lived somewhere in the Lake districts, who
raved considerably of Lake scenery, who wrote
a large number of small poems, all of them innocent, many of them puerile and much laughed
at, at the time they appeared, by clever men;
that they were lashed in the reviews, and annihio
lated by Lord Byron, as, for instance, in those
well-known lines —  
"A drowsy, frowsy poem, called the Excursion,
Writ in a manner which is my aversion;"
and that he was guilty of a vast mass of other
verses, all exceedingly innocent, and at the same
time exceedingly dull and heavy. It is this class
of persons whom I ask on the present occasion to
listen quietly to the first subject I have to bring
before them —the qualifications necessary for appreciating poetry in general and Wordsworth's
poetry in particular.
Now, the first qualification I shall speak of as
22




212        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
necessary for appreciating poetry is unworldliness.
Let us understand the term employed. Byworld.
liness, I mean entanglement in the temporal and
visible.  It is the spirit of worldliness which
makes a man love show, splendour, rank, title,
and sensual enjoyments; and occupies his attention, chiefly or entirely, with conversations respecting merely passing events, and passing acquaintances.  I know not that I could give a more
distinct idea of what I mean by unworldliness,
than by relating an anecdote of a boy of rare
genius, inheriting genius from both parents, who,
when he began the study of mathematics, was
impressed with so strange and solemn a sense of
awe, that never before, he said, had he been able
to comprehend the existence of the Eternal. It is
not difficult to understand what the boy meant.
Mathematics contain truths entirely independent
of Time and Space; they tell of relations which
have no connection, necessarily, with weight or
quality; they deal with the eternal principles and
laws of the mind; and it is certain, that these
laws are more real and eternal than any thing
which can be seen or felt. This is what I mean
by unworldliness: I am not speaking of it as a
theologian, or as a religionist, but I am speaking
of unworldliness in that sense, of which it is true
of all science and high art, as well as of Nature.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.           213
For all high art is essentially unworldliness, and
the highest artists have been unworldly in aim,
and unworldly in life.
Let us compare the life of Benvenuto Cellini.
I name him, because there has been given recently
to the public a life of him in a popular form.
Let uscompare his life with the life of Raphael,
or Michael Angelo, or Beethoven, or Canova.
You will be struck with this difference, that in
Benvenuto Cellini there was an entire absence of
any thing like aspiration beyond the Visible and
the Seen; but in the life of the others there was
the strong  and  perpetual conviction that the
things seen were the things unreal, and that the
things unseen were the things real; there was the
perpetual desire to realize in a visible form, that
beauty which the eye had not seen nor the ear
heard, nor which it had ever entered into the heart
of man to conceive. I will here quote one single
passage in illustration of this; it is a translation
by Wordsworth himself, from  one of the sonnets
of Michael Angelo: it is simply an illustration
of what I have said:"Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold;
Beyond the visible world she soars to seek
(For what delights the sense is false and weak)
Ideal form, the universal mould.
The wise man, I affirm, can find no rest




214          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
In that which perishes; nor will he lend
His heart to aught which doth on time depend."
This is a view of high art: and in this respect
poetry, like high art, and like religion, introduces
its votaries into a world of which the senses take
no cognizance; therefore I now  maintain that
until a man's eyes have been clarified by that
power which  enables him  to look  beyond the
visible; until"He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eyeball pour the day,"
poetry-high poetry, like Wordsworth's-is simply and merely unintelligible.
I will give two or three illustrations of the way
in which Wordsworth himself looked on this subject.  The first is in reference to the power which
there is in splendour and in riches to unfit the
mind for the contemplation of invisible and spiritual truths.  The sonnet I am  about to read was
written in  September, 1802, the period  during
which the chief part of the poems I shall read
this evening were written. I believe it was-written to Coleridge.
"Oh! friend, I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest
To think that now our life is only drest
For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.              215
Or groom!-We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest:
The wealthiest man among us is the best:
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us."
The connection of these two things is what I
wish to fasten your attention upon"The wealthiest man among us is the best,"
that being the spirit of society, then" No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us."
The second illustration is in reference to what is
called scandal or gossip.  According to Wordsworth, this is the  highest manifestation  of a
worldly spirit. What is it but conversations respecting passing events or passing acquaintances,
unappreciated and unelevated by high principle?
Wordsworth has written four sonnets, worthy of
deep  study, on  this subject.  After stating the
matter in the first of these, in the second he supposes a possible defence against this habit of
general conversation respecting others, derisively.
"' Yet life,' you say,'is life; we have seen and see
And with a lively pleasure we describe;
And fits of sprightly malice do but bribe
The languid mind into activity.
Sound sense, and love itself, and mirth and glee,
Are fostered by the comment and the gibe.'"
22 




216          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Then comes Wordsworth's comment:" Even be it so; yet still among your tribe,
Our daily world's true worldings, rank not me!
Children are blest and powerful; their world lies
More justly balanced; partly at their feet
And part far from them: sweetest melodies
Are those that are by distance made more sweet.
Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes,
He is a slave; the meanest we can meet!"
To understand this, you must carry in your recollection  what Wordsworth's views of childhood
and infancy are, as given in the sublime " Ode
to Immortality." A child, according to Wordsworth, is a being haunted for ever by eternal
mind.  He tells us that " Heaven lies about us
in our infancy "-that the child moves perpetually
in two worlds: the world that is seen right before
him, and that terminated  in another world-a
world invisible, the glory of which is as from
a  palace-" That imperial palace  whence  he
came; " and that high philosophy and poetry are
nothing but this coming back to the simple state
of childhood, in which we see not merely the
thing before us, but the thing before us transfigured and irradiated by the perception of that
higher life:" Children are blest and powerful; their world lies
More justly balanced; partly at their feet,
And part afar from them."




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.            217
Then Wordsworth goes on to show  how poetry
supplies the place which scandal and gossip had
occupied.
"Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
There find I personal themes, a plenteous store,
Matter wherein right voluble I am,
To which I listen with a ready ear;
Two shall be named, preeminently dear,The gentle lady married to the Moor;
And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb."
In other words, scandal is nothing  more than
inverted love of humanity.  An absolute necessity, Wordsworth tells us, exists within us for
personal themes of conversation that have reference to human beings, and not to abstract principles; but when that necessity is gratified upon
the concerns and occupations of those immediately around us, which necessarily become mixed
with envy and evil feelings, then that necessity is
inverted and perverted. So the place of detraction or scandal is by the poet occupied in personal themes; as, for example, when a man has
made the object of his household thoughts such
characters as Desdemona and  Spenser's Una,
then he has something which may carry his mind




218          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
to high and true principles, beyond the present.
Then Wordsworth goes on to say," Nor can I not believe but that hereby
Great gains are mine; for thus I live remote
From evil speaking; rancour, never sought,
Comes to me not, malignant truth, nor lie.
Hence have I genial seasons, hence have I
Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought:
And thus, from day to day my little boat
Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably.
Blessings be with them-and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler caresThe Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays."
I shall now read you a passage from a letter
written by Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont, in
which he answers the objection that his poems
were not popular, and explains the reason why in
one sense his poetry never could be popular with
the world of fashion.
" It is impossible that any expectations can be
lower than mine concerning the immediate effect
of this little work upon what is called the public.
I do not here take into consideration the envy
and malevolence, and all the bad passions, which
always stand in the way of a work of any merit
from a living poet; but merely think of the pure,
absolute, honest ignorance in which all worldlings
of every rank and situation must be enveloped,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       219
with respect to the thoughts, feelings, and images,
on which the life of my poems depends. The
things which I have taken, whether from within
or without —what have they to do with routs,
dinners, morning calls, hurry from door to door,
from street to street, on foot or in carriage; with
Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox, Mr. Paul or Sir Francis
Burdett, the Westminster election or the borough
of Honiton?  In a word-for I cannot stop to
make my way through the hurry of images that
present themselves to me-what have they to do
with endless talking about things nobody cares
anything for, except as far as their own vanity
is concerned, and this with persons they care
nothing for, but as their vanity or selfishness is
concerned?  What have they to do (to-say all at
once) with a life without love? In such a life
there can be no thought; for we have no
thoughts (save thoughts of pain,) but as far as
we have love and admiration.
" It is an awful truth that there neither is, nor
can be, any genuine enjoyment of poetry among
nineteen out of twenty of those persons who live,
or wish to live, in the broad light of the worldamong those who either are, or are striving to
make themselves, people of consideration in society. This is a truth, and an awful one; because to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in




220        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
my sense of the word, is to be without love of
human nature and reverence for God.
" Upon this I shall insist elsewhere; at present,
let me confine myself to my object, which is to
make you, my dear friend, as easy-hearted as
myself with respect to these poems. Trouble
not yourself upon their present reception: of
what moment is that, compared with what I
trust is their destiny?-to console the afflicted;
to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy
happier; to teach the young and the gracious of
every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore
to become more actively and securely virtuousthis is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we (that is, all that is
mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves."
And then, after some striking criticisms and
analyses of his own poetry, he continues:" Be assured that the decision of these persons
has nothing to do with the question; they are
altogether incompetent judges. These people, in
the senseless hurry of their idle lives, do not read
books; they merely snatch a glance at them that
they may talk about them. And even if this
were not so, never forget what, I believe, was
observed to you by Coleridge-that every great
and original writer, in proportion as he is great or
original, must himself create the taste by which




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       221
he is to be relished; he must teach the art by
which he is to be seen; this, in a certain degree,
even to all persons, however wise and pure may
be their lives, and however unvitiated their taste.
But for those who dip into books in order to
give an opinion of them, or talk about them to
take up an opinion-for this multitude of unhappy, and misguided, and misguiding beings,
an entire regeneration must be produced; and if
this be possible, it must be a work of time. To
conclude, my ears are stone-dead to this idle
buzz, and my flesh as insensible as iron to these
petty stings; and, after what I have said, I am
sure yours will be the same. I doubt not that
you will share with me an invincible confidence
that my writings (and among them  these little
poems) will co-operate with the benign tendencies
in human nature and society, wherever found;
and that they will, in, their degree, be efficacious
in making men wiser, better, and happier."
In a subsequent letter to Sir George Beaumont, he says, "Let the poet first consult his
own heart, as I have done, and leave the rest to
posterity-to, I hope, an improving posterity..
I have not written down to the level of superficial observers, and unthinking minds.  Every
great poet is a teacher; I wish either to be considered as a teacher, or nothing."




222        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
So far have I tried to prove my point. If my
allegations are true, then it follows that a man
whose life is choked up by splendour and by
riches-a man whose sympathies are perverted
by detraction and by gossip-a man whose object is in life to have for himself merely a position in what is called fashionable life-such a
a man is simply incapable of understanding the
highest poetry.
The second qualification I shall name for the
appreciation of poetry is, feelings trained and
disciplined by the truth of Nature. Let us understand this matter. Poetry represents things, not
as they are, but as they seem; and herein it coincides with all high art, for the difference between science and poetry is this-that science
and philosophy endeavour to give to us things as
they are, art and poetry represent to us things as
they seem.  Let us take a simple illustration.
The painter represents his distant mountains
blue, he gives us the distant circle in the oval
of perspective, not because they are so, but because they seem so.
Now, in the same way, just as there are perverted senses to which all things seem unreal,
and diseased or morbid senses to which, for example, there is no difference between green and
scarlet, and as a man who has represented the




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       223
glaring and glittering as beautiful, would yet find
many who admired him, so, in the same way, in
a matter of taste or poetry, there will be found
minds perverted by convention, or injured by
mere position, to whom Humanity and the Universe will not appear in their true colours, but
rather falsely. Mere poets of fashion will have
their admirers, just so far as there are those
who are found like them, and just so far as
their powers are great. For it must be remembered that if a thing seems such to a man, and
he has the art of representing it as it seems,
he is a great poet in the first instance, and if
a man has that power to an eminent degree,
he is a greater poet; but the question whether
he is a true poet or not depends not upon how
what he represented appeared to him, but upon
the question whether it oug'ht so to have appeared to him, or whether it does so appear
to human nature in its most unsophisticated
and purest mood.  Then comes the difficulty;
what shall be the test?  If things seem to one
man thus, and if they seem  to another man
thus, who shall tell us which is true and which
is false poetry, and bring us back to a standard by which we may determine what is the
judgment of human nature in  its most unsophisticated mood?  The tests are two.  The
23




224        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
first is feelings disciplined by Nature, the second is feelings disciplined through the minds
of the acknowledged great masters and poets.
The first test I have named is feelings disciplined by Nature; for as in matters of art, there
are a variety of tastes; it does not necessarily
follow that there is no real test or standard
of taste.
And just as the real standard is not the standard of the mass-is not judged by the majority
of votes, but is decided by the few-so, in matters
of poetry, it is not by the mass or by the majority
of votes that-these things can be tested; but they
are to be tested by the pure, and simple, and true
in heart-by those who, all their life long, have
been occupied in the discipline of feeling; for in
early life poetry is a love, a passion; we care not
for quality, we care only for quantity; the majesty
and pomp of diction delight us; we love the mere
mellifluous flow of the rhyme; and this any one
will understand who has heard the boy in the
playground spouting, in schoolboy phraseology,
his sonorous verses. And so, as life goes on, this
passion passes; the love for poetry wanes, the
mystic joy dies with our childhood, and other and
more real objects in life and business occupy our
attention.  After twenty a man no longer loves
poetry passionately, and at fifty or sixty, if you




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        225
apply to a man for his judgment, you will find it
to be that which was his when a boy. The thirty
years that have intervened have been spent in undisciplined feeling, and the taste of the boy is
still that of the man-imperfect and undisciplined.
The other test to which I will refer is the judgment of the mind that has been formed on the
highest models. The first test I have spoken of
is, of course, Nature seen and felt at first hand;
the second test is Nature seen through the eyes
of those who by universal consent are reckoned to
have seen Nature best; and without these it is
utterly impossible that a man can judge well.
" These two things, contradictory as they seem,
must go together-manly dependence and manly
independence, manly reliance and manly self-reliance. Nor can there be given to a thinking man
any higher or wiser rule than this-to trust to
the judgment of those who from all ages have
been reckoned great; and if he finds that any
disparity or difference exists between his judgment and theirs, let him, in all modesty, take it
for granted that the fault lies in him and not in
them; for, as a great poet interprets himself to
us, he is himself necessary to himself, and we
must love him ere to us he will seem  worthy
of our love."  These lines are Wordsworth's, and




226        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
of no man are they more true than of himself. If
you come to Wordsworth in order to find fault,
and criticize, and discover passages that can be
turned into ridicule or parodied, you will find
abundant materials for your mood; but if, on the
other hand, in reliance on the judgment of some
of the best and wisest of this age, you will take
it for granted that there is something there to
learn, and that he can and will teach you how to
think and how to feel, I answer for it you will
not go away disappointed.
And here lies the great difficulty, the peculiar
difficulty of our age; that it is an age of cant
without love, of criticism without reverence. You
read the magazines, and the quarterlies, and the
daily newspapers, you see some slashing article,
and after you have perused that article, in which
the claims of some great writer have been discussed cursorily and superficially, you take it for
granted that you understand, and can form a
judgment upon the matter; and yet, all the while,
very likely that article has been written by some
clever, flippant young man, to whom, for his own
misfortune, and for the misfortune of the public,
the literary department has been committed.
What we want is the old spirit of our forefathers;
the firm conviction that not by criticism, but by
sympathy, we must understand; what we want




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        227
is more reverence, more love, more humanity,
more depth.
The third qualification I shall name for an
appreciation of poetry is, a certain delicacy and
depth of feeling.  I do not say that this is necessary for all poets,-nay, even for some of the
highest it is not necessary; for the epic poet
appeals to all minds, he describes things which
are applicable to all; the dramatic poet appeals
to all, because, although unquestionably some of
his characters move in an atmosphere that is unintelligible to the mass, yet in the multiplicity of
characters he produces there must be a majqrity
that are intelligible to all; the poet of passion
appeals to all, because passions are common to us
all. It does not require, for example, much delicacy or profoundness to understand and feel the
writings of Anacreon Moore; but there are poets
who give us truths which none can appreciate but
those who have been engaged in watching faithfully the order in which feelings succeed each
other, the successions of our inner life, the way in
which things appear in this world when presented
to our mind in our highest state. No man needs
this discipline and preparation more than the
student of Wordsworth, for he gives to us the
subtle and pure and delicate and refined succession of human feelings, of which the mind is
23 *




228         LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
scarcely conscious, except at the moment when
the figure is before us, and we are listening with
stilled breath to the mysterious march of our
inner life.
I will now proceed to give you a few examples
of this; but you will observe that I labour under
peculiar disadvantages in doing so; for just in
proportion as thoughts are delicate, and refined,
and subtle, exactly in the same proportion are
they unfit for public exposition; they may be
fitted for the closet, the study, and for private
reading, but they are not fitted for a public room;
therefore, the  most exquisite  productions  of
Wordsworth I shall not bring before you now;
all I shall read to you will be some that will
give you a conception  of what I have  stated.
For example, I quote one passage in which the
poet describes the consecrating effects of early
dawn:
" What soul was his when from the naked top
Of some bold headland he beheld the sun
Rise up and bathe the world in light! He look'dOcean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touch'd,
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle; sensation, soul, and form




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.            229
All melted into him; They swallowed up
His animal being; In them did he live,
And by them did he live; They were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the Living God.
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired;
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power
That made him; it was blessedness and love!"
There is nothing in these lines except we have
the heart to feel them.  No man can understand
or feel those lines who has led a slothful life, or
who has not at one time or other loved to rise
early,-no man who, in his early walks, has not
mingled with a love of poetry a deep religious
sense, who has not felt the consecrating effects of
early dawn, or who has not at one time  or
another, in his early days, in a moment of deep
enthusiasm, knelt down amidst the glories of
Nature, as the ancient patriarch knelt, canopied
only by the sky above him, and feeling that none
were awake but the Creator and himself,-bowed
down to consecrate and offer up the whole of his
life, experiencing also a strange, and awful, and
mysterious feeling, as if a Hand, invisible was
laid upon his brow, accepting the consecration
and the sacrifice.




230        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
In order to understand the next passage I shall
quote, I must remind you of the way in which
the ancient Pagans represented the same feeling
Most persons here, either through the originals,
if they are acquainted with them, or through the
translations, which in these times have multiplied, will remember how  the ancient Pagan
poets loved to represent some anecdote of a
huntsman or shepherd, who, in passing through
a wood and plucking some herb, or cutting down
some branch, has started to see drops of human
blood issue from it, or at hearing a human voice
proclaiming that he had done injury to some imprisoned human life in that tree. It was so that
the ancients expressed their feelings of the deep
sacredness of that life that there is in Nature.
Now, let us see how Wordsworth expresses this.
As usual, and as we might have expected, he
brings it before us by a simple anecdote of his
childhood, when he went out nutting. He tells
us how, in early boyhood, he went out to seek
for nuts, and came to a hazel-tree set far in the
thicket of a wood, which never had been entered
by the profane steps of boyhood before-as he
expresses it, " A virgin scene."  He describes
how he eyed with delight the clusters of white
nuts hanging from the branches, and with exquisite fidelity to nature,-he tells us how he sat




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.          231
upon a bank and dallied with the promised feast,
as we dally with a letter long expected, and containing correspondence much loved, because we
know it is our own.  At last the boy rose, tore
down the boughs, and on seeing all the ravage
and desolation he had caused by his intrusion,
there came over him a feeling of deep remorse.
"And unless I now
Confound my present feelings with the past;
Ere from the mutilated bower I turned
Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,
I felt a sense of pain when I beheld
The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky.Then, dearest maiden, move along these shades
In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand
Touch-for there is a spirit in the wood."
I preface the third illustration that I shall offer,
by a remark reminding you that these scenes of
Nature become, as it were, a possession of the
memory.  The value of having felt Nature in her
loveliness or in her grandeur is not in the pleasure  and intense  enjoyment that was then and
there experienced, but in this fact, that we have
thenceforward gained something that will not be
put aside; a remembrance that will form a great
part of our future life. Now, all of us,-any
man who has seen the Alps, or who has seen an
American hurricane, can understand this so far




232          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
as Nature's grandeur is concerned; but Wordsworth, as usual, shows us how our daily life and
most ordinary being is made up of such recollections; and, as usual, he selects a very simple
anecdote to illustrate this. It is taken from a
circumstance that occurred to  him  when on a
journey with his sister on the lake of Ullswater,
they came upon a scene which, perhaps, few but
himself would have observed. The margin of the
lake was fringed for a long distance with golden
daffodils,
"Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
And then, after describing this in very simple
language, these lines occur:-' The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company;
I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
" For oft, when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."
Now, I will give you a specimen of shallow crit



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        233
icism. In a well-known " Review " for the current
quarter there is a review of Wordsworth; and
among other passages there is one in which the
reviewer, with a flippancy which characterizes the
whole of the article, remarks that the passage
which has just been read is nothing more than a
versified version of a certain entry in Miss Wordsworth's journal.  How  stands the fact?  It is
unquestionably true that there was an entry in
Miss Wordsworth's journal, written in very striking prose, of the same sight which her brother
and herself had seen; it is quite true that the
first two stanzas and the greater part of the third
were nothing more than Miss Wordsworth's very
beautiful prose put into very beautiful verse. So
far then, if you strike off the last stanza and the
two lines of the stanza preceding it, you have
nothing more than a versified version of the entry
in Miss Wordsworth's journal; but then, the last
stanza contains the very idea of all, towards which
all tended, and without which the piece would
not have been poetry at all. What would you
think of a man who denied to Shakspeare the
praise of originality, on the ground that his plays
were chiefly constructed from some ancient chronicler, Holingshed, for example, or taken from the
plot of some old play, and that in every play he
had incorporated some hundred lines of the old




234        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
play?  What has Shakspeare added?  Only the
genius; he has only added the breath and life
which made the dry bones of the skeleton live.
What has Wordsworth added?  He has- added
nothing except the poetry; nothing but the
thought, the one lovely thought, which redeems
the whole.
Now, I have quoted the passages you have
heard, in order to call your attention to the subtle
perception and the exquisite delicacy which is in
them. I have reminded you of the difficulty I
encounter in bringing them before a public audience. In reading Wordsworth the sensation is as
the sensation of the pure water drinker, whose
palate is so refined that he can distinguish between
rill and rill, river and river, fountain and fountain,
as compared with the obtuser sensation of him
who has destroyed the delicacy of his palate by
grosser libations, and who can distinguish no difference between water and water, because to him
all pure things are equally insipid. It is like listening to the mysterious music in the conch sea
shell, which is so delicate and refined that we are
uncertain whether it is the music and sound of the
shell, or merely the pulses throbbing in our own
ear; it is like watching the quivering rays of
fleeting light that shoot up to heaven as we are
looking at the sunset; so fine, so exquisitely




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         235
touching is the sense of feeling, that we doubt
whether it is reality we are gazing upon at all,
or whether it is not merely an image created by
the power and the trembling of our own inner
imagination.
I will pass on, now, in the second place, to consider the life of Wordsworth, so far as it may be
considered to have affected his poetry. We all
know that Wordsworth was remarkable for certain theories of poetry, which, in his time, when
they first appeared, were considered new, heterodox, heretical. On a future occasion I hope to
examine these; at present, I am bound to endeavour to investigate the question, how far Wordsworth's life and Wordsworth's character may be
supposed to have formed, or, at all events, modified, these conclusions.
Now, first of all, I will remark that Wordsworth's was a life of contemplation, not of action,
and therein differed from  Arnold's of Rugby.
Arnold of Rugby is the type of English action;
Wordsworth is the type of English thought.  If
you look at the portraits of the two men, you will
distinguish this difference. In one there is concentrativeness, energy, proclaimed; in the eye of
the other there is vacancy, dreaminess. The life
of Wordsworth was the life of a recluse.  In
these days it is the fashion to talk of the dignity
24




236        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
of work as the one sole aim and end of human
life, and foremost in proclaiming this as a great
truth we find Thomas Carlyle. Every man who
pretends in any degree to have studied the manifold tendencies of this age will be familiar with
the writings of Carlyle, and there can be no man
who has studied them who does not recollect the
vivid and eloquent passage in which Carlyle
speaks of the sacredness of work. Now, it appears to me, that this word is passing almost into
cant among the disciples of Carlyle; and even
with Carlyle himself in these Latter-day'pamphlets, in which he speaks of every thing and
every one not engaged in present work, as if the
sooner they were out of this work-a-day world
the better. In opposition to this, I believe that as
the vocation of some is naturally work, so the
vocation, the heaven-born vocation of others, is
naturally contemplation.
In very early times human life was divided into
seven parts, whereof six were given to work and
one to rest, and both of these were maintained
equally sacred-sacred work and sacred rest; and
it is not uprooting that great principle, but carrying it out in its spirit, to say —that as of the
seven parts of human life the majority belonged
to work, so should a fraction be dedicated to rest;
that though it is true of the majority that the life



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       237
law is work, yet it is also true that there is a
fraction to whom  by nature the life-law is the
law of contemplation. But let no one suppose
that contemplation, in the Wordsworthian sense
of the word, is listlessness or inaction.  There
is a sweat of the brain, and a sweat of the heart,
be well assured-working-men especially —as
much as there is a sweat of the brow; and contemplation, in Wordsworth's sense of the word,
is the dedicating a life to the hard and severe
inner work of brain; it is the retiring from the
world, in order to fit the spirit to do its work.
Let us understand what this work was which
Wordsworth proposed to himself. At the period
when Wordsworth came upon the stage, there
were two great tendencies-and, in some respects,
evil tendencies-which civilization and modern
society were beginning to develope. The first of
these was the accumulation of wealth; the second was the division of labour.
I am not going to speak of the accumulation
of wealth as a fanatic. I know some who say
with reference to wealth and capital, that wealth
is a necessary ingredient in the production of
things, of which labour is the other ingredient,
and without which labour will be altogether
useless.  I know that no nation has ever risen
to greatness without accumulated capital; and




238        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
yet, notwithstanding this, there is a crisis in the
history of nations-and a dangerous crisis it is
-when the aristocracy of birth has been succeeded by the aristocracy of wealth; and a great
historian tells us, that no nation has ever yet
reached that crisis, without having already begun its downward progress towards deterioration.
There are chiefly, I believe, three influences
counteractive of that great danger, accumulated'
wealth.  The first is religion, the second is herei ditary rank, and the third is the influence of
i men of contemplative lives. The first is religion,
of which, as belonging to another place, for the
sake of reverence, I will not speak here. The
second counteracting influence to accumulated
wealth is hereditary rank.  It is not generally
the fashion in the present day to speak highly
of rank, much less before the members of an
Athenaeum or of a Working Man's Institute; it
is the fashion, rather, to speak of our common
Humanity, and to deprecate Rank; and good
and right it is that common Humanity should
be dignified, and elevated far above the distinction of convention and all the arbitrary and artificial differences of class; and yet, after all this,
in an age when it certainly is not the fashion to
speak well of hereditary rank, it is well for us
all to remember the advantages that have accrued




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       239
to us in the past, from that hereditary rank. I
will say that Rank is a power in itself more
spiritual, because less tangible, than the power of
wealth. The man who commands others by the
extent of his broad acres, or by the number of
his bales of cotton, rules them by a power more
degrading and more earthly than he who rules
them simply by the prestige of long hereditary
claims.
You all remember how well Sir Walter Scott
has described this power as existing more strongly
among the Highlanders of Scotland than in any
other nation. In the " Fair Maid of Perth," for
example, in the contest between the clans, you
will remember how  every clansman dedicated
himself to certain death for the sake of his chieftain, and how a young man, with no wealth, unknown before, nay, having in himself no intrinsic
worth or goodness, obtained a loyalty and devotion that royalty itself could scarcely win; a
devotion and love that all the wealth of the
burghers of Perth never could have purchased;
and you feel that so long as there was such a
power in Scotland it was impossible that the
burghers of Perth, with all their wealth, could
obtain undisputed predominancy.  So long as
this power exists, the power of wealth has something to be thrown in the scale against it; and
24 4




240        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
therefore it is that, with feelings strong on the
side of human progress, and with but little reverence for mushroom  rank, I am  yet free to
acknowledge that I feel sometimes a pang, when
I hear or read of the extinction of great names,
gray with the hoar of innumerable ages-sorrow,
when I read in paper after paper of the passing
of great ancestral estates under the hammer of
the auctioneer; and for this reason, that in every
such case I feel that there is one more sword
gone that would have helped us in the battle
which we must all fight against the superstitious
idolatry of Wealth.
The third counteracting influence is the existence of men of contemplative minds-men of
science and philosophy. You may call them useless; but they are men whose vocation elevates
them above the existing world, and makes them
indifferent to show and -splendour, and therefore
they can throw their influence and weight in the
scale against the aristocracy of wealth.  The
other evil I have spoken of, I called the division
of labour; and here, again, I speak not as a
fanatic. Political economists, Adam  Smith, for
example, tell us that in the fabrication of a pin,
from  ten to eighteen men are required.  One
cuts the wire, another draws it, a third points it,
three are required to make the head, another to




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.      241
polish it, and it is a separate work even to put
the pin into the paper. And now, we know the
advantage of all this.
The political economist tells us, that ten such
men working together can make in a single day
forty or fifty thousand pins, whereas, had they
worked separately, they could scarcely have made
ten. We all know the advantage of this; we
know that a man becomes more expert by directing his whole attention to one particular branch
of a trade than by wasting it on many; we know
that time is thus saved, which would otherwise
be spent in going from one work to another; we
know that the inventive faculty is consequently
quickened, because a man who is for ever considering one subject only, is also enabled to occupy his attention with the thought as to how the
operation can be most simplified. These are great
advantages; yet no man can persuade me that
with these advantages there are not also great
disadvantages to the inner life of the man so
engaged. We get a perfect pin, but we get most
imperfect men, for while one man is engaged in
polishing the pin, and another is engaged in
sharpening it, what have we? We have nothing
more in the man than a pin-polisher; we have
sacrificed the man to the pin.
In some of the States of Western America, we




242        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
are told of men who, by the very facts of their
position, are compelled to clear their own ground,
to sow and reap it with their own hands, to
thatch and build their own cottages, and to break
and shoe their own horses, and who give a great
deal of attention, notwithstanding, to the consideration of great questions, commercial and
political. This is, no doubt, an imperfect society,
for every thing is incomplete; and yet travellers tell us that there are nowhere such specimens of Humanity; that the men have not only
large brains and large muscles, but both these
joined together.  On the one hand, then, we
have a more complete society and a less complete
individual; on the other hand, we have a more
complete individual and a less complete society.
This is the disadvantage, this is the high price
we must pay for all civilization and progress; in
the words of Tennyson, " The individual withers,
and the world is more and more."  And, then,
life is so divided; we have the dentist and the
oculist, but they are only the dentist and the
oculist; we have the clergyman and the farmer,
but the farmer knows nothing of the clergyman;
and is it not a charge brought against the clergy
at this very moment, that they are clergymen
and nothing more?
No man felt these two dangers more than




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       243
Wordsworth felt them; he felt himself called
upon to do battle against the evils of his age; he
acknowledged that he had received a commission
and consecration; he was, as we have already
heard, " a consecrated spirit;" and yet he took a
fair and just measure of his own powers; he
knew well that his work was not to be done on
the platform, in the pulpit, or in the senate. He
retired to his own mountains, and there, amidst
the regenerating influences of nature, where all
was real, he tried to discipline his own heart in
order that he might be enabled to look calmly
and truly on the manifold aspects of human life.
And from that solitude there came from time to
time a calm clear voice, calling his countrymen
back to simplicity and truth, proclaiming the
dignity and the simplicity in feeling of our primitive nature; in opposition to the superstitious
idolatry of wealth, proclaiming from time to time
that a man's life consists not in the abundance
of the things he possesses; in opposition to the
danger arising from  divided employment and
occupations, proclaiming the sanctity of each
separate human soul, and asserting; in defiance
of the manufacturer, who called men " hands,"
that every man was not a " hand," but a living
soul.
It was in this way that Wordsworth advocated




244          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
the truth of poetry.  He did a great, and high,
and holy work, the value of which must not be
calculated nor measured by his success, but by
its truth.  The work Wordsworth did, and I say
it in  all reverence, was  the work  which  the
Baptist did when he came to the pleasure-laden
citizens of Jerusalem  to work a reformation; it
was the work which Milton tried to do, when he
raised that clear, calm voice of his to call back
his  countrymen  to  simpler  manners  and  to
simpler laws.  That was what Wordsworth did,
or tried to do; and the language in which he had
described Milton might with great truth be applied to Wordsworth himself —
" Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again 3
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay."
I will now read to you one or two passages in




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       -245
which Wordsworth shows the power of this life
of contemplation. The first I shall read is one
written by Wordsworth soon after the Convention of Cintra.  According to  Wordsworth's
view, England had been guilty in that Convention of great selfishness.  It appeared to
Wordsworth that, instead of using the opportunity given her to ransom Portugal and Spain,
she had consulted her own selfishness, and
allowed her enemy, the French, to escape with a
retreat almost equal to victory. In consequence
of this, Wordsworth wrote a tract, in one passage of which he defended himself for pretending
to judge of such matters:-He says, "The evidence to which I have made appeal, in order to
establish the truth, is not locked up in cabinets,
but is accessible to all; as it exists in the bosoms
of men-in the appearances and intercourse of
daily life-in the details of passing events-and
in general history.  And more especially in its
right import within the reach of him who, taking
no part in public measures, and having no concern in the changes of things but as they affect
what is most precious in his country and humanity, will doubtless be more alive to those genuine
sensations which are the materials of sound judgment. Nor is it to be overlooked, that such a
man may have more leisure (and probably will




246          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
have a stronger inclination) to communicate with
the records of past ages."
I will take one other passage, in which, judging of the affairs of Spain with almost perfect
nicety, Wordsworth again appealed to the power
and right given  to  him, by  contemplation, to
judge of such a subject:" Not mid the world's vain objects, that enslave
The free-born soul-that world whose vaunted skill
In selfish interest perverts the will,
Whose factions lead astray the wise and braveNot there; but in dark wood, and rocky cave,
And hollow vale, which foaming torrents fill
With omnipresent murmur as they rave
Down their steep beds, that never shall be still:
Here, mighty nature X in this school sublime,
I weigh the hopes and fears of suffering Spain,
For her consult the auguries of time;
And through the human heart explore my way,
And look and listen-gathering, whence I may,
Triumph and thoughts no bondage can restrain."
The second great feature in Wordsworth's life
and history was his fidelity to himself. Early in
life he felt himself a consecrated spirit, bound to
be such, else sinning greatly. He said that he
made no vows, but that, unknown to him, vows
were made for him.  Wordsworth  felt that he
had what we call in modern times a vocation or
a mission, and no man was ever more true to his




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       247
vocation than Wordsworth; he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision; he recognized the
voice within him and obeyed it; and no wish for
popularity, no dazzling invitations to a brighter
life, could ever make him break his vows or leave
his solitude.  The generosity of a few private
friends,-Calvert, Beaumont, Lord Lonsdale,enabled him to live in retirement; but when he,
was afterwards invited to leave his seclusion for
a town life he refused, because he felt that that
would destroy the simplicity he was cultivating.
Wordsworth was no copyist; upon himself
he formed himself. He took no model; he took
the powers and light which were in him, and
worked them out.  This will account for what
some writers called the fanatical egotism of the
Lake writers. Egotism, if you will; but there
is many a man who is wasting his energies who
has, nevertheless, the power within him to be
something, if he will only not try to be something which he cannot be —if he will only be
content to be what he is within himself, instead
of aiming at some model it is impossible for him
ever to realize. Abstractedly, no doubt, the armour of the warrior was better than the sling of
the shepherd; but for the shepherd the shepherd's
sling was best. And so Wordsworth worked out
his history, destiny, and life; and, after all, when
25




248        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
you look at it, in his case, it was not egotism.
Wordsworth said that he made no vows; vows
were made for him. And here is the difference
between the egotist and the humility of the great
man; the egotist is ever speaking and thinking
of that which belongs to himself alone and
comes from himself; but the great man, when
speaking of himself, or thinking of himself, is
convinced that which is in him is not his own,
but a Voice to which he must listen, and to
which, at his peril, he must yield obedience.
There has ever been to me something exceedingly sublime in the spectacle of Wordsworth,
through obloquy, through long years, through
contempt, still persevering in his calm, consistent
course-something sublime in those expressions
which afterwards turned out to be a prophecy, in
which, indifferent to present popularity, he looked
towards the future. His friends, who loved him,
his brothers, who adored him, were unsatisfied
with the public opinion.  "Make yourselves at
rest respecting me," said Wordsworth; " I speak
the truths the world must feel at last." There
are not many passages in Wordsworth's Works
that bear upon his feelings during this time, and
there is only one passage I will read to you now
It is that ode he wrote to Haydon:



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.              249
" High is our calling, friend!-Creative art
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned-to infuse
Faith in the whispers of the lonely muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness 
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard! "
This brings me to consider Wordsworth  in his
success as a poet.  The cause of Wordsworth,
which was desperate once, is triumphant now;
and yet it is well to look back to fifty years ago,
and  to  remember how  it was with  him'then.
Wordsworth's  biographer informs  us  that between 1807 and 1815 there was not one edition
of his works called for.  The different reviews
sneered at him, Jeffrey lashed him, Byron tried
to  annihilate him; and  it was in  reference to
some such attempt of Byron that; Southey said,
" He crush the Excursion! he might as well attempt to crush Mount Skiddaw! "  It was about
that time that Fox  returned a calm, cold, unsympathizing answer to the enclosure of a volume




250        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
of Wordsworth's poems which Wordsworth had
sent; and then also occurred one circumstance
which was full of signification. Cottle, the bookseller, of Bristol, made over his stock and effects
to the Messrs. Longman, and it was necessary to
take an inventory of the stock, and in that inventory was found one volume noted down as
worth "nil."  That volume contained the lyric
poems of Wordsworth; and it may be well, also,
to say that it contained first of all Coleridge's
poem  of the "Ancient Mariner," and afterwards
those exquisite lines of Wordsworth on c" Revisiting Tintern Abbey."
Thirty years after this, the then Prime Minister
of England, Sir Robert Peel, in a letter full of
dignified, and touching, and graceful feeling, proffered to Wordsworth the Laureateship of England; acknowledging, in addition, that though
he had mentioned the subject not to few, but
to many persons, and not to men of small, but
to men of great reputation, there was but one
unanimous opinion, that the selection was the
only one that could be made.
I remember myself one of the most public exhibitions of this change in public feeling. It was
my lot, during a short university career, to witness a transition and a reaction, or revulsion, of
public feeling, with respect to two great men




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.      251
whom I have already mentioned and contrasted.
The first of these was one who was every inch a
man-Arnold of Rugby. You will all recollect
how in his earlier life Arnold was covered with
suspicion and obloquy; how the wise men of his
day charged him with latitudinarianism, and I
know not with how many other heresies. But the
public opinion altered, and he came to Oxford
and read lectures on Modern History. Such a
scene had not been seen in Oxford before. The
lecture-room was too small; all adjourned to the
Oxford theatre; and all that was most brilliant,
all that was most wise and most distinguished,
gathered together there;  He walked up to the
rostrum  with a quiet step and manly dignity.
Those who had loved him when all the world
despised him, felt that, at last, the hour of their
triumph had come.  But there was something
deeper than any personal triumph they could
enjoy; and those who saw him then will not
soon forget the lesson read to them by his calm,
dignified, simple step,-a lesson teaching them
the utter worthlessness of unpopularity, or of
popularity, as a test of manhood's worth.
The second occasion was when, in the same
theatre, Wordsworth came forward to receive his
honorary degree.  Scarcely had his name been
pronounced, than from three thousand voices at
25 




252        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
once, there broke forth a burst of applause, echoed
and taken up again and again when it seemed
about to die away, and that thrice repeated-a
cry in which
" Old England's heart and voice unite,
Whether she hail the wine cup or the fight,
Or bid each hand be strong, or bid each heart be light."
There were young eyes there, filled with an
emotion of which they had  no  need  to  be
ashamed; there were hearts beating with  the
proud feeling of triumph, that, at last, the world
had recognized the merit of the man they had
loved so long, and acknowledged as their teacher;
and yet, when that noise was protracted, there
came a reaction in their feelings, and they began
to perceive that that was not, after all, the true
reward and recompense for all that Wordsworth
had done for England; it seemed as if all that
noise was vulgarizing the poet; it seemed more
natural and desirable, to think of him afar off in
his simple dales and mountains, the high priest
of Nature, weaving in honoured poverty his songs
to liberty and truth, than to see him there clad
in a scarlet robe and bespattered with applause.
Two young men went home together, part of the
way in silence, and one only gave expression to
the feelings of the other when he quoted those




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.          253
well-known, trite, and often-quoted lines,-lines
full of deepest truth"The self-approving hour whole worlds outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels
Than Caesar with a senate at his heels."
The last thing  I shall remark  on respecting
Wordsworth's life was Wordsworth's consistency. I shall here quote a passage in which he
alludes to the charge brought against him  of
having deserted his former opinions.  " I should
think that I had lived to little purpose if my
notions on the subject of government had undergone no modification: my youth must, in that
case, have been without enthusiasm, and my
manhood endued with small capability of profiting by reflection. If I were addressing those who
have dealt so liberally with the words renegade,
apostate, &c. I should retort the charge upon
them, and say, you have been deluded by places
and persons, while I have stuck to principles."
It may appear to many persons a desperate thing
to defend Wordsworth's consistency in the very
teeth of facts; for it is unquestionable that in his
early life Wordsworth was a Republican, and
sympathized with the French  Revolution, and
that in his later life he wrote lines of stern con



254          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
demnation for its excesses. It is unquestionable,
moreover, that in early life Wordsworth rebelled
against any thing like ecclesiastical discipline;
that he  could  not even bear the morning and
evening prayers at chapel, and yet that in later
life he wrote a  large number of Ecclesiastical
sonnets, of which I will at present only quote one
on Archbishop Laud"Prejudged by foes determined not to spare
An old weak man for vengeance thrown aside,
Laud,'in the painful art of dying' tried,
(Like a poor bird entangled in a snare,
Whose heart still flutters, though his wings forbear
To stir in useless struggle,) hath relied
On hope that conscious innocence supplied,
And in his prison breathes celestial air.
Why tarries then thy chariot? wherefore stay,
O Death! the ensanguined yet triumphant wheels,
Which thou preparest, full often to convey
(What time a state with maddening faction reels)
The saint or patriot to the world that heals
All wounds, all perturbations doth allay." *
* Wordsworth appended to this sonnet the following note,
which is given entire to show the strength of his opinion on
this subject:" In this age a word cannot be said in praise of Laud, or
even in compassion for his fate, without incurring a charge of
bigotry; but fearless of such imputation, I concur with Hume,'that it is sufficient for his vindication to observe that his
errors were the most excusable of all those which prevailed




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.             255
So that Wordsworth began as a Republican and
ended as a Tory; he began in defiance of every
thing ecclesiastical, and ended as a High Churchman.  This change has been viewed by persons
of different parties with different sentiments. To
some, as to the poet Shelley, it appeared an
apostasy from the purity of his earlier principles;
to others, as if the sacredness of his earlier principles  had  been  ripened  with  the  mellowed
strength of manly life. Among these last is his
biographer, Dr. Wordsworth; and it is curious to
see what pains he has taken to point to some
passage by which the evil of another might be
modified-aiming at one great and chief object,
namely, to prove that Wordsworth died a Tory
during that zealous period.' A key to the right understanding
of those parts of his conduct that brought the most odium upon
him in his own time, may be found in the following passage
of his speech before the bar of the House of Peers:'Ever
since I came in place, I have laboured nothing more than that
the external publick worship of God, so much slighted in
divers parts of this kingdom, might be preserved, and that
with as much decency and uniformity as might be. For I
evidently saw, that the publick neglect of God's service in the
outward face of it, and the nasty lying of many places dedicated to that service, had almost cast a damp upon the true
and inward worship of God, which, while we live in the body,
needs external helps, and all little enough to keep it in any
vigour.'"




2 6        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
and a High Churchman. Be it so; I am pre.
pared to say that the inner life of Wordsworth
was consistent.  In order to prove this, let us
bear in mind that there are two kinds of truththe one is the truth of fact, the other is ideal
truth; and these are not one, they are often
opposite to each other. For example, when the
agriculturist sees a small white almond-like thing
rising from the ground, he calls that an oak; but
that is not a truth of fact, it is an ideal truth.
The oak is a large tree, with spreading branches,
and leaves, and acorns; but that is only a thing
an inch long, and imperceptible in all its development; yet the agriculturist sees in it the idea of
what it shall be, and, if I may borrow a scriptural
phrase, he imputes to it the majesty, and excellence, and glory, that is to be hereafter.
Let us carry this principle into the change of
Wordsworth's principles. In early life Wordsworth was a democrat; an admirer of the French
Revolution; he sympathized deeply, manfully,
with the cause of the poor; he loved them, and
desired their elevation. But he sympathized with
them as the stately nobles of nature; he saw in
them, not what they were, but what they might
be; and in all Wordsworth's peddlers, and broomgatherers, and gypsies, and wanderers, we have
not bad men, defiled by crime;- but there is,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.      257
speaking though them all, the high, pure mind
of Wordsworth.  He simply exhibited his own
humanity, which he felt and knew  to be in
them  also. This is an ideal truth and not a
truth of fact, and the idea is not what they
were, but what they ought to be, and what they
yet should be.
Let us, again, on the other hand, come to
the question of Wordsworth's change into High
Churchism and Toryism. And first, by the way,
I would remark that there is another side of the
truth Wordsworth put forward, which you will
find in a poem familiar to most of you, in which
Canning has given us the history of the " Needy
Knife Grinder." A republican, in all the warmth
of republican spirit, with his lips full of liberty,
fraternity, and equality, sees approaching, a man
in rags-a poor wretched looking being; and he
instantly imagines that here is some victim to the
oppression of the Poor Laws, the Game Laws,
or of Tithes, or Taxation; but it turns out, upon
inquiry, that he has before him a man of bad
life, of indolent and intemperate habits, who, in
a fit of intoxication, has got into the wretched
state in which he beholds him; and the indignation and confusion of our good republican
are completed when the Needy Knife Grinder
entreats that he would give him some small coin,




258        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
in order that he might become drunk again.
This is the other side of truth-the truth of fact
-a low, and base, and vulgar truth. And, after
all, when we come to examine these, which is
the higher truth?-is it higher to state things as
they really are, or to state them as they ought to
be?-to say that the lower classes are degraded,
and evil, and base; or to say that there yet slumbers in them  the, aristocratic and the godlike,
and that that, by the grace of God, shall one day
be drawn forth?  In early life, then, in all his
most democratic feelings, Wordsworth was an
aristocrat at heart.
And now we come to the other side of the
question. And first, in reference to the term
" High Churchism," I do not use it in an offensive sense. If there are any persons here holding
High Church views, I implore them to believe
that, although I am not a High Churchman myself-far from it — I can yet sympathize with
them in all their manliness and high-mindedness;
and recognize much in them that is pure and
aspiring. If, therefore, I now give my own definition of High Churchism, let them not be offended. There are, then, two things opposite to
each other; the, one is Pantheism, the other is
High Churchism.  Pantheism  is a tendency to
see the godlike everywhere, the personal God




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.           209
nowhere.  The other, is the tendency to localize
the personal Deity in certain places, certain times,
and certain acts; certain places called  conse.
crated churches; certain times called fast-days,
and so forth; certain acts, called acts of ecclesi-.
astical life, in certain persons, called consecrated
priests. These two things, you will observe, are
opposed to each other  diametrically opposed.
Now, it is a strange and remarkable fact, that
Wordsworth  has been charged with both these
things; by some he has been charged with Pantheism, and by others with what we call High
Churchism.  In reference to Pantheism, in order
that those who are not familiar with the word
may understand it, I will quote one or two passages from Wordsworth.  The first, which occurs
in the sonnets, I have read. In that it will be
seen that Wordsworth  speaks of the force of
Nature as if that were the only living Soul of
the world.  I will take another passage which
occurs in the well-known lines on  Revisiting
Tintern Abbey:"And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
26




260        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A Motion and a Spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
In these words, grand and magnificent as they
are, we have the very germ of Pantheism. But
now, in looking at one of these classes of passages, we must ever remember to modify it by
the other. When Wordsworth spoke as a High
Churchman, we must remember that he was the
very same man who spoke of the Living Being
that created the universe, as "A  Motion and a
Spirit that impels all thinking things;" and when,
on the other hand, I use language which seems
to pass almost into Pantheism, we must remember that he was the same man who wrote the
Ecclesiastical sonnets, and who spoke of a personal and localized Deity.
And what if it be true,-and true it is,-that
the earlier part of Wordsworth's life was characterized by the predominancy of one of these
feelings, and the later part by the other-is there
any thing there that is unnatural or inconsistent?
Is it unnatural if the mind of a man progresses
from the vague transcendental down towards the
personal? Is there any thing inconsistent in the
great truth, that the mind of man, after having
wandered in the outer confines of the circum



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.           261
ference of this universe, should at last seek its
home and find its blessedness in the rest of a
personal centre?  Now, with respect to the other
point, namely, Wordsworth's Toryism, or Conservatism    call it what you will; it does not
matter whether I am  now  addressing Tories or
Radicals; since we are speaking of great principles we will have done with names. I will read
you a passage in which Wordsworth speaks of
England:" Hail to the crown by freedom shaped-to gird
An English sovereign's brow! and to the throne
Whereon he sits. Whose deep foundations lie
In veneration and the people's love;
Whose steps are equity, whose seal is law."
Now, the veriest democrat can only object to
this as a matter of fact, and will probably say,
"If this be England I would desire to preserve
her as she is; but because I do not believe it,
I desire to alter her; in heart and in idea we
are one, the only point on which we differ is
the point of historical fact." I say, therefore, that
in Wordsworth's most democratic days he was
aristocratic in heart; and in his most aristocratic
days he had all that was most generous, and all
that was most aspiring in the democratic mind.
I now come rapidly towards the conclusion; but




262          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
having said what I have, it is necessary that I
should complete the picture by giving you  an
idea of the patriotism  in WTordsworth; that intense and deep love for England, in which aristocrat and democrat are blended in the formation
of one high-minded man.  I will read a passage
showing Wordsworth's love for his country:"When I have borne in memory what has tamed
Great nations, how ennobling thoughts depart
When men change swords for legers, and desert
The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my country!-am I to be blamed,
Now, when I think of thee, and what thou art,
Verily in the bottom of my heart;
Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.
For dearly must we prize thee; we who find
In thee a bulwark for the cause of men;
And I by my affection was beguiled:
What wonder if a poet now and then,
Among the many movements of his mind,
Felt for thee as a lover or a child? "
I must preface the next sonnet I have to read,
by reminding you, that it was written at a period
when a French invasion was expected.  It is a
very hard and difficult thing for us in the present
day, broken as we are into so many factions, to
conceive the united enthusiasm which stirred the
heart of England  in  those  days, when  every
moment the invasion of the great conqueror of




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.      263
Europe was possible.  The fleets of England
swept the seas; on every hill the signal beacons
blazed; 420,000 men were in arms; the service
of the church was liable to be interrupted by the
clang of arms upon the pavement; every village
churchyard was converted into a parade-ground;
every boy felt as if there were strength, even in
his puny arm, to strike a blow in defence of the
cause of his country; every man, excepting when
he thought of the women of his country, was longing for the time to come, when it should be seen
with what a strength, with what a majesty a soldier fought, when he was fighting in the magnificent and awful cause of his altar and his hearth.
The moment was like that of the deep silence
which precedes a thunder-storm, when every
breath is hushed, and every separate dried leaf,
as it falls through the boughs, is heard tinkling,
tinkling down through the branches, from branch
to branch; when men's breath was held; when
men's blood beat thick in their hearts, as if they
were waiting in solemn and grand, but not in
painful-rather in triumphant-expectation for
the moment when the storm should break, and
the French cry of " Glory" should be thundered
back again by England's sublimer battle-cry of
" Duty! "  It was at this time that Wordsworth's
sonnet appeared:26 




264          LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
"It is not to be thought of that the flood
Of British freedom, which to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed, with'pomp of waters unwithstood,'
Roused though it be full often to a.mood
Which spurns the check of salutary bands,
That this most famous stream in bogs and sands
Should perish! and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung
Armoury of the invincible Knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakspeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung
Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold."
In the next passage I have to bring before you,
I will remind  you  of some  other facts.  The
sonnet is addressed to the men of Kent. Now,
there is a difference between the Kentish men
and the men of Kent.   The Kentish men are
simply the inhabitants of the county of Kent.
The " Men of Kent" is a technical expression
applied to the inhabitants of that part of Kent
who were never subdued in the Norman invasion,
and who obtained glorious terms for themselves,
on capitulation, receiving the confirmation of
their own charters; so that until very recentlyif not at present-they were still in possession
of the custom  called  Gavelkind, by which the
sons inherited, not unequally, the eldest taking




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.             265
precedence, but they all taking share and share
alike.  It was to the " Men of Kent," the inhabitants of that part of the county nearest to the
neighbouring land of France, that Wordsworth
addressed this sonnet:Vanguard of Liberty, ye Men of Kent,
Ye children of a soil that doth advance
Her haughty brow against the coast of France,
Now is the time to prove your hardiment!
To France be words of invitation sent!
They from their fields can see the countenance
Of your fierce war, may ken the glittering lance,
And hear you shouting forth your brave intent.
Left single, in bold parley, ye, of yore,
Did from the Norman win a gallant wreath;
Confirmed the charters that were yours before;No parleying now! In Britain is one breath,
We all are with you now from shore to shore:
Ye men of Kent,'tis victory or death! "
In this age of cosmopolitanism, when we are,
forsooth, too much philanthropists to be patriots;
when any deep and strong emotion of love to our
country is reckoned as nothing more than the
sacredness of the schoolboy's affection; when our
young  people who  have travelled can find no
words more capable of expressing their contempt
than these-" It is so English;" it does the heart
good to read these firm and pure, and true and
manly words, issuing from the lips of one who




266 LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.
was not ashamed to love his country with all his
heart, and with all his soul, and with all his
mind, and with all his strength; a man whose
every word, and every thought, and every act,
were the words, and thoughts, and acts, of a
manly, true-spirited, high-minded Englishman!




NOTES OF A LECTURE,
&c., &c.








NOTES OF A LECTURE
Delivered at Hurstper-point, in 1851, to the Members of a Working Man's Reading Room.
I AM here to-night through the invitation of
your kind friends, with no right but that of unfeigned interest in every institution like yours.
The subject I had proposed was the Progress
of Society. I changed it for that of the Working Classes. But even this is too full of pretension.
Nevertheless, the mere fact of my standing
here to-night is full of significance.
More so than railways or electric telegraphs.
That so many of the Working Classes should
come here after a hard day's work is very significant.
It proves the growing victory of the spirit over
the animal: That the lower life of toil and
animal indulgence is getting to be reckoned as
not the all of man.




270        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
It shows, too, that the Working Classes are
becoming conscious of their own destinies.
Any Society is in an advanced state when it
begins to contemplate itself, and asks, "Whither
do we tend?"
Three thousand years ago, the centre of the
World's civilization was in Eastern Africa.
The monuments of this civilization still remain. The Pyramids.    They are the wonder
of travellers, whose report of their measurements excites, in turn, our astonishment and
surprise.
But to one considering the progress of the race,
these Pyramids tell a different tale. They were
built by the Working Classes, under coercion.
They were built for Royal ostentation.
Herodotus speaks of hundreds of thousands
degraded into serfs.
In the Metropolis of the World's present civilization, a structure stood this year almost as
marvellous as these pyramids.
Remarkable not for gigantic massiveness.But for punctuality and order.
Built, too, under Royal auspices, and built by
the Labouring Classes.
But not built, like the pyramids, for Royal
splendour. It was built for the exhibition of the
works of Labouring Men.




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       271
You could not go through that building without feeling that Royalty itself was second there,
not first.
One feeling I had was-There is nothing here
that I can make. I belong to the non-producing
classes.
New era.   The dignity of Labour.- The
sinking of the Individual in the Society.
Another truth typified by that bearing on the
destinies of the Working Classes. The approach
of an age of Peace.~-Falaise. -Guizot.
Assume, then, the fact of the growing importance of the Working Classes.
There are two ways of treating this fact, just
as there are two ways of treating an heir just
entering on a noble patrimony. One is, that of
the sycophant, to tell him how great he is.
Another way is, that of wise friends, who tell
him that as he has become great, therefore he
has duties; because he has become rich, therefore he has responsibilities.
There are two ways of treating the Working
Classes. One, to tell them how enlightened they
are.-  How powerful.   That Vox populi vox
Dei, &c.
Another, that of reminding them that because
free, they should fit themselves for freedom; because destined to play a great part on the stage




272        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
of the world's history, therefore it behooves them
to cast off their ignorance-their vices.
Value of these Institutions. First, Habits of
self-government.  Secondly, They expand the
sympathies.
I hold it as a principle that a man is great and
good in proportion to the extent of his sympathies.-The man whose eye is ever fixed on
himself is the smallest of human beings.-The
next step is love of Relations. —The next, love
of Country.-The next, sympathy with all that
belongs to Man.
And this is God's method of gradual education, through the Family, the Nation, the Race.
One means given for this is public newspapers, which tell of other countries.- A wise
man gets out of the paltry events of his own
village-election of churchwardens, &c.-to think
of great questions.   Further still, the social
state of other countries.
Observe on our English narrowness, the idea
that one Englishman is equal to two Frenchmen.
We are apt to think that English manners,
English literature, &c. is the only good thing in
God's World..
Recent case of an illustrious foreigner, formerly
Dictator of Hungary. Received with enthusiasm
by the Working Classes. I pronounce no opin



BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       273
ion in this place about him. Some say great,
good, noble, others call him a charlatan and revolutionist. This matters not. The question is not
so much what a man worships, admires, but as
what. Kossuth may be no hero, if you will; but
to see those hard-handed sons of toil in Manchester and Birmingham  honouring one whom
they thought good and noble, when in exile and
oppressed; he has little heart indeed who is not
touched by it.
Now this kind of Institution fits men for Work.
-~Foolish objection that it incapacitates them
for business. —The labourer who knows something of chemistry-on what principle soils are
composed; why such manures are employed in
one case and not in another; according to what
laws decomposition takes place-is a better labourer than one who knows nothing of all this.
The mechanic who understands the laws of
motion, is a better mechanic than the Chinese
sort, who can merely follow a copy.
The domestic servant is improved when she
understands the reason why certain things are
done, and why certain results follow.
There is a foolish prejudice against educating
the poor, lest we should fail to get servants or
apprentices.
Putting aside the diabolical character of the




274       LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
objection, think of the sacrifice of a human being,
that your work may be done or your food made!
Progress means-1. Not to be free from work;
envy of ladies and gentlemen false and foolish, if
by that is meant persons who have nothing to do
but to amuse themselves.-Laws of Humanity.
-Greatness.- Goodness.   Only through
toil is muscular strength and health gained.
Mental force is got by struggle with difficulty.
2. Not the obliteration of differences in rank.
There can be no doubt that the growth in importance of the labouring classes will alter ranks,
making them less exclusive, less bitter to otherswill raise some who are now degraded, &c.
But it betrays an ignorance of human nature
to suppose that ranks will ever be obliterated,
Superior tastes, capacities, &c. will unite some
into a class, and distinguish them from others.
Gradation of ranks bring out various manifestations of our Humanity., Gratitude. —
Aspiration. —Dignity. —-Respect.
3. Not the obliteration of difference in condition.
Of the many errors entertained by those who
have advocated the cause of the Working Man,




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.          275
there are few to be more regretted than the exaggerated importance attached to inequality of condition.
Inequality of condition, so far as it stints the
faculties, or cuts off from opportunities of information, it is well to desire should be removed,
but in itself it is a trifle.  And all this foolish
exaggeration fixes the attention on what is external in the condition, as if the equality to be
arrived at were the superficial external equality.
It is not this that makes real inequality.  False
vulgar thoughts that because you cannot keep a
horse or drive a carriage, therefore you have not
your rights.
4. But progress means increased opportunities
of developing the heart, the conscience, and the
intellect.  It is not each man's born right to be
as rich as his neighbour, or to possess the soil.
But it is his inalienable right to be permitted
to develope all the powers that God gave.
If the labourer live so that the death of a child
is welcomed by the thought that there is one
mouth the less to feed, he cannot develope his
heart-affections.
If he lives in a cottage where brothers and
sisters sleep in one room, he cannot develope his
conscience.
27 *




276 LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.
If he comes home overworn, so that he has no
time to read, then he cannot develope his intellect.
Clearly, therefore, define such a social position
for the labouring man as shall give him scope
enough to be in every sense of the word a MAN.
A  Man whose respect is not servility; whose
religion is not superstition; and whose obedience
is not the drudgery of dumb driven cattle.
Until that time come, the Working Classes are
not free.




A SPEECH
Delivered at the Town Hall, Brighton, April 24,
1849, at a Meeting of the Inhabitants, called by
the Early Closing Association, presided over by
the Bishop of Chichester.
THE Resolution which has been put into my
hands is,-" That this meeting, believing that an
earlier and more uniform hour of suspension of
business would give time to all engaged therein
for moral and intellectual improvement, would
recommend to all tradesmen the hour of eight
o'clock as the hour of closing throughout the
year; and pledges itself to make purchases before
eight o'clock in the evenings, and to request their
servants to do the same."
There is a vast difference between that which
is theoretically desirable, and that which is practically possible.  Our enthusiasm  is frequently
corrected by experience. It throws too wild, too
sanguine, a hope on the future. But difficulties




278        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
arise; and that which at first seemed easy, turns
out to be at last an impossibility. It is in almost
every undertaking as it if in life. The lesson we
have to learn in life is the same lesson which we
have to learn in travelling through a mountainous
country.  The first lesson is, to estimate distances. The traveller sees the mountain summit
sparkling in the evening sun, apparently close
above his head; and he resolves that the next
morning he will ascend that mountain, and come
down again before breakfast. But he finds next
day a long three miles between himself and the
mountain foot; and that when he has arrived
there it takes five or six hours to ascend, and half
that time to come back again; and it is well if
he returns before nightfall.  It is precisely the
same with every human undertaking. Our first
idea is very different from that which attainment
teaches us. We set out with brilliant expectations; we find them very slow in realizing themselves. And so life assumes, by degrees, a soberer and a sadder hue. We find that between
our ideal and its attainment there is an immense
interval. That which seemed to be the work
of days we find to be the work of months; that
which seemed to be the work of years turns out
to be the work of centuries. And so, step by
step, man is disenchanted-led on by hopes of a




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       279
bright future which is never realized here.  I
believe that the lesson of all experience and of all
life is this:-to expect very little, for there is but
little of human expectation to be attained; to
sow abundantly, and to be satisfied with a very
small harvest. Happy is the man not thoroughly
broken by disappointment! Happy is that man!
for the object of this training is, not to discourage
him, but that he may work more calmly, with
less of fitful enthusiasm-with steady gaze fixed
on the Hereafter!  I make these observations,
because they are peculiarly applicable to the subject in hand. This subject of Early Closing has
been taken up by many people very warmly at
first, who have cooled down, and have afterwards
let it drop. Two or three years ago there was a
large meeting in this town for the same purpose
as this one.  Some of those who were then
enthusiastic and earnest have by degrees become
lukewarm  and despondent. Their expectations
have not been realized; much that was hoped for
has not been attained; there have been many
difficulties which were not anticipated. And so
the result has been, that they have fallen back
into coldness and indifference.  It is for this
reason that I think the tone we should adopt this
evening should be calm and sober.
It is exceedingly easy to paint this subject in




I8'0       LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
most glowing colours. It is the easiest thing in
the world to represent the young men as craving
for intellectual knowledge, as suffering under
physical difficulties, as eager for, and requiring
moral improvement.  It is exceedingly easy to
do all this, because there is a great deal of truth
in it. It is exceedingly easy, moreover, because
it is popular. But I am  not here to say that
which is popular; but that which is true. I am
not here to say that which shall win a cheer; but
to say that which shall be practical and useful.
We are met here to-night for two purposes.  To
resolve that " an earlier and' more uniform  hour
of suspension of business would give- time to all
engaged therein for moral and intellectual improvement; " and that the meeting " recommend
to all tradesmen the hour of eight o'clock as the
hour of closing throughout the year, and pledges
itself to make purchases accordingly."  The subJect is complicated with difficulties; and although
it would be exceedingly easy to speak in denunciation of those opposed to this movement of
Early Closing, I feel there is something to be said
on both sides of the question; and therefore I ask
the meeting to listen to me dispassionately.
In considering this question, we discern three
things: the desirable, the difficult, the possible.
With regard to the desirable, I believe it will




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        281
be generally admitted that it is desirable for business to be carried on within fewer hours. There
is a great difference between the way in which
this question is to be looked at, as a manufacturing, and as a trading question.  The question
touching hours in the factory does not hold good
as to the shop. The object of the factory is to
produce; and it may be argued that the work
done in twelve hours cannot be done in ten. It
is not true that this argument can- hold with
respect to trade. In trade the object is, not to
produce materials, but to serve customers; and
if you take the shops in which most work is
done, there is not one in which there cannot be
found five minutes, ten minutes, half hours, hours,
in which all employed are not waiting for customers. Let those five minutes and half hours
be added up, and they will more than cover the
time taken in serving after any given hour, say
seven or eight o'clock. If those customers had
come in before nine or ten, there is not one in
this meeting who will not acknowledge there
were people and time enough to serve them.
Then all of us will agree in the possibility that
the work may be done in less time.  That, if it
can be done in less time, it should be done, I
think will also be agreed; and the resolution
furnishes us with the reasons-" that an earlier




282        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
and more uniform hour of suspension of business
would give time to all engaged therein for moral
and intellectual improvement."
Into the physical necessity for this early closing
I shall not enter. It is a medical question, and I
believe that members of the medical profession,
who will address you, will touch on this with
more effect than I could do. I ask no further
proof of the physical necessity which exists, than
to see the working man and the assistant in the
shop, in their Sunday walk. There is in their
gait a languor and an effeminacy which should
not belong to Englishmen. In the second place,
this matter is necessary for the sake of intellectual improvement. This age has been often
called the age of the aristocracy of wealth. The
aristocracy of birth is now much passed by. We
are living in an age in which gold is worshipped.
In former ages, "virtue" was "valour."  In
Italy, in the present day, the word "vertu,"
applied to a man, means "taste in amassing
curiosities." In England we speak of the worth
of a man as proportioned by the amount of gold
which he has been enabled to gather round him
as a kind of accretion. And, therefore, it is a
matter of rejoicing for me to see a meeting which
protests against a principle such as this. This
meeting proclaims, in the face of the day, that




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.      283
there is something more sublime in man than the
worship of gold. It maintains that there is in
the nature of man, that which requires and demands intellectual and moral improvement.
Now, with regard to the intellectual improvemerkt, I shall not press it too much. It is perfectly possible that it may be exaggerated. I will
not say that all these young men are craving intellectual knowledge. The young men in the
trading classes are like the young men in the
upper classes; and I suppose that if one out of
twenty in either class is earnestly desirous of this
intellectual knowledge, it is a large average. I
will grant there is not a difficulty in the way of
obtaining this knowledge that may not be surmounted. Men borne down by defects of position and education have achieved for themselves
intellectual emancipation. Ferguson, Watt, and
Franklin, are noble examples of this. There are
men who seem to be born intellectual heroes;
men born to cut their way through any obstacles,
men who only require to meet difficulties in their
way, and those difficulties will be surmounted.
They are like the trees on the mountain, that
require no more than a bare covering of soil
on the rock to strike their roots firmly down;
nothing more than the clear, serene, thin air of
heaven to throw abroad their branches in. These
28




284        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
are intellectual giants; and they would acquire
knowledge under any circumstances; it is impossible to crush them. But it is not for men like
these that I have to plead. The mass of men
are not the intellectual giants; they are rather
the humble and the feeble; the exotic, that requires care and culture.  They require to be
fostered, to be placed on the sunny side of the
hill. Give them opportunities, give them time;
and then it will be found, not that they will
attain grand intellectual dimensions, but they
will achieve something like intellectual respectability. And I desire to mention one circumstance, which seems to be a strong corroboration
of this fact. Some time ago, the drapers of this
town resolved on closing at an earlier hour; and
about the same time the Brighton ATHENAEIJM
was established, in order that the young men
might have an opportunity of intellectual cultivation; many young men availed themselves of
those opportunities. From causes into which I
will not now enter, the rule of Early Closing was
obliged to be infringed. Ask you the result?
At this time, the Athenaeum  contained something like 600 or 700 members. There are about
200 assistants, I am told, engaged in the Drapery
trade in this town; and of these, 60 were members of the AthenEeum; all but ten withdrew. I




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       285
will not press too much on this; I know in some
cases there were rooms provided by employers,
and libraries furnished, and that these withdrew
them from the Athenaeum; but I hold the case
indisputably to be this, that if there be a time
allowed for cultivation of the mind, there is on
the part of the young men a real wish to avail
themselves of it.
In the next place, this resolution maintains that
Early Closing is necessary for " moral improvement."  Early closing is necessary for leisure.
Man was not made to divide his time between
Study and Work. Besides that, there must be
Recreation. He who made the eye, spread around
us this world of beauty, and caused the contemplation of it to be accompanied by the feeling of
intense enjoyment; —He who threw  into the
heart the power of domestic affection, gave it
delight in domestic sympathy;-He who led his
disciples into the desert to   rest awhile," made
man for recreation. And, therefore, I am prepared to take it on the lowest ground. The
young men require, not merely mental instruction, but time for pleasure, for social enjoyment,
for recreation. It is partly for this purpose the
Sabbath is necessary for man. It is necessary,
in the first place, to nurse the Human; and, in
the second, to nurse the Divine within him. In




286        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
the first to give to man recreation, and in that he
shares with the lowest animals; in the second,
the cultivation which should nurse the Divine
within him. You have, in the first, necessity for
Rest; in the second, necessity for Worship. It
is the result of the late closing to make the
Sabbath day simply and solely a day of rest, and
not of holiness. It may be well to speak of the
desecration of the Sabbath day. To say the
trains shall not run on Sundays; to say the
citizens of London shall not leave their homes,
nor the artisan go out of Brighton into the
country; —it is easy to say this. But we have
no right to say that if a man has not time for
rest in the week, he shall not take it on the
Sabbath.
Once more. This Early Closing is wanted for
moral improvement. For the sake of " work," I
draw a distinction between it and " occupation."
"Occupation" is not "work."  The object, the
intention, of occupation is a blessed one. It
saves the mind from corrupting and wearing out
itself. The man who has nothing to do is a
most wretched character. Hle rises in the morning, with fifteen hours before him, in which he
makes society wretched and himself wretched
also. There is something else implied in 4' work."
"Work  is productive. It produces something;




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON..       287
it gives to a man's character self-dependence and
inward strength. Boswell, with his singular simplicity, tells us of an occasion in which he was
overtaken by a storm; and he relates that he
went about asking question after question of the
sailors, interrupting every man in his duty, till at
last a sailor put a rope in his hand, and said,
" We are in danger, and the safety of the vessel
depends on this being held with great force."
Occupied in this way, he forgot his fears; and
the storm  passed over. He had all the while
been pulling a useless rope. His was "occupation;" the sailor's "work" was productive. The
artizan is a man engaged in work; he is a man
who either cultivates the soil and produces food
for man to live upon; or, he takes the raw material, and makes furniture and all things necessary for life. The shopkeeper has not " work,"
but "occupation;" for no man will tell us that
the men engaged all day long in folding and
unfolding ribbons, showing them in proper lights,
and putting them  across the counter-no one
will tell us he has been engaged in " work;" he
has in " occupation." It has saved himself and
society from the wretchedness cast upon idleness.
Therefore we claim these hours, that young men
may exchange "occupation" for "work." Young
men! For what purpose do you ask early hours?
28 *




288        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Is it for leisure only?-is it to escape from occupation? If that be all, Brighton is being stirred
for a very small cause; whereas the young men
who came to me as a deputation, spoke of something far higher. They asked for time; not to
give it to leisure only, not to give it to social
enjoyment only, but to work, to discipline their
minds, to do the great duty God has given them
to do on earth, that their soul, and body, and
spirit might be presented perfect before their
Maker.
And now I come to the second part of what I
have to say. Having spoken of the " desirable,"
I pass on to the " difficult."  And the first difficulty arises from the peculiar circumstance of
Brighton.  Brighton is not a manufacturing
town, neither is it a commercial town. Brighton
is a place of enjoyment for strangers. Something
like one third or one fourth will be found not to
be residents, but extraneous of the population.
Every Saturday, London pours out thousands to
take advantage of the sea air. Let any man go
to the railway station, and he will be astonished
to see the mass of human beings flocking into the
town.  What is the result?  Numbers come
down by the last train. They go to the hotels
and lodging-houses, and there are articles of consumption wanted. They send out-they must




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         289
send out-for their provisions; and then, if a
tradesman refuses to sell, one difficulty is, that he
may have lost a customer for life.  There is
another difficulty. They go through the place,through the principal streets of the town; and
then, every tradesman knows that during the last
two hours of the day, sauntering about there,
there are numbers of people who will be induced
to go into the shops and purchase the goods which
are seen in the brilliantly-lighted windows; and it
requires a strong amount of principle for the master tradesman to say he will sacrifice a profit,
which, if he does, he will never have in any other
way.
Again.  The town is the resort of the wealthy
-of the aristocracy.  There is a difference between this town and manufacturing towns on that
account.  I have inquired, and I find that, in
Sheffield, and Birmingham, and Liverpool, and
most places of that kind, the early closing is easily
carried out, and carried out at even earlier hours
than seven; for in manufacturing towns, life is of
a different description.  There all men play into
each other's hands-all understand each other's
necessities.  But, at Brighton and Cheltenham,
there is a peculiar difficulty; and the difficulty
arises partly from this-that the inhabitants are
the wealthy. Here, much is different; few under29




290        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
stand one another; and when we come to inquire, we find that it is not the purchases of the
rich themselves that form the great staple in the
occupation of these late hours, but it is the servants of the rich classes.  And here I would say
a word to mistresses on a subject of which they
can necessarily know  nothing.  I made it my
business to make inquiries of the police, and the
information given to me by them was of the most
appalling character, because it told a sad tale of
the result of that which is done in perfect ignorance. When the female servant is sent out at
night, the mistress knows not the consequences,
nor the sin and misery which often comes from
female servants going out at late hours to purchase. I do not say this in a spirit of indignation
against those mistresses and employers.  It is
simply ignorance on their part, not hard-heartedness. But it is a thing to impress upon ourselves
and others, that there is
"An evil wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart."
I pass on to another difficulty; and that arises
from the deterioration of the character of the
young men themselves.  Those who are present
now are not the master-tradesmen; or I would
take a different course.  Those present now are
most anxious that the masters should concede this




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         291
baon of early closing; and therefore I will say,
not that which may be popular, but that which
may be calculated to do good. In the first place,
there is a feeling widely existing, that the use
made of this privilege is not what it ought to
have been.  All the returns of your libraries show
how  few works of information are read-how
many of fiction.  More than that, the police tell
us that the cigar-shop reaps a terrible harvest out
of the wages of the young men; that the billiardtable is at work; that the public-houses, and
houses worse than they, are full. I therefore press
this matter urgently on the young men. Better
far that the hours of business should even be extended, than that extra hours should be gained for
licentiousness (so falsely called pleasure), or for
mere idleness, which is the grave of a living man.
Better, far! for your whole being, physical, moral,
and intellectual. Beware, too, of eye-service, for
I have it from the master of some of the men, that
he has lost confidence in them in respect of their
attention to business when not overlooked. The
way in which your leaders have acted, and the
sentiments they have expressed on this subject,
do them  great honour.  And if the young men
used the privilege of early closing on the principle set forth by their leaders, the last difficulty
will vanish away.




292        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
There is, however, a difficulty in this respect,
that it is hardly possible to legislate in an artificial manner.  We desire that the shops should
be closed at eight. This law, like other laws,
will be of advantage, if it be in accordance with
the feeling produced already in society; but, if it
be superimposed on society, it must fail.  Every
thing of legislation coercive, and not expressive
of the mind and desire of Society, must fail.
When England tried to force her Episcopacy on
Scotland, the result was, that the Episcopacy was
thrown off, never probably to be placed in power
there again.  When England tried to force Prot.
estantism on Ireland, compulsorily, the result was,
that Roman Catholicism  became the religion
of the land. So with private individuals. The
law  can never be compulsorily enforced.  We
must proceed from that which is within to that
which is without; and not from  that which is
without to that which is within. A man of disorderly habits tries to regulate himself by an outward rule; and he sits down and maps out his
time and proposes a plan of action, and he has it
on his paper beautifully arranged, the books he
will read and the acts he will do. Go to him in
three months, and ask him the result. It is not
reality. It is Law, not Spirit; therefore the thing
has failed. Therefore do I protest most earnestly




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       293
against any attempt to carry this early closing
movement by coercion.  I protest against any
thing like dictation to the master-tradesmen.  I
protest against any thing like an attempt at compulsion. It was said to me a few days ago, that
this was a conspiracy against the masters. We
repel that, in the name of the young men; we protest against it; we protest against every thing by
which the masters may be held up to ridicule;
and, with just as much indignation as I should
protest against carrying the point by breaking
windows in the street, I protest against any attempt to carry out the principle of exclusive dealing. I hold in my hands the report of a recent
meeting in favour of exclusive dealing. It was
with much regret that I read it.
I protest most strongly against this principle.
In the first place, because it makes that prominent
which ought to be subordinate.  It is quite sufficient ground for dealing with a tradesman, that
he is moral, that his wares are good; but when
we take a ground such as this, that though he be
a moral and good man, and sells goods better
than his neighbours, because he does not choose
to do what we do, we will not deal with him, we
make that prominent which ought to be subordinate. Again, I protest against it because it is
illiberal.  There are men who hold-I believe
29*




294        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
mistakenly-that such a measure as this of Early
Closing would be injurious to the young men and
to society. We believe they are wrong, but it is
their opinion; and I ask on what possible ground
men can come forward and demand of us that
we should deal exclusively, because a man does
not hold our views on the subject, and then complain of us if we deal exclusively with those who
hold our own political, or our own ecclesiastical
views?
And now, to pass briefly to the remainder of
what I have to say. All at present shows a difficulty; but nothing which is impracticable. Let
it be clearly understood that in all those difficulties there is not one that ought to stand in the
way of Early Closing; and I have a pleasure in
proposing this resolution, because the language it
uses is the language, not of coercion, nor of dictation, but of recommendation. It pledges us to
recommend to all tradesmen the adoption of eight
o'clock as the hour of closing. There are master
tradesmen who do their duty by their assistants.
There are some who look on their young men as
objects committed by God to their charge, and
desire to treat them as their children. And there
are master tradesmen, who open for their young
men rooms, and have lectures, and all kinds of
instruction.  Let us have but a hundred such




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.      295
masters, and the whole question of Early Closing
is safe.
It is possible and practicable to force this question on the attention of the community.  We
pledge ourselves in this resolution to do all we
can to promote so desirable an object, by making
all purchases before the evening, and requesting
the heads of establishments to do the same. Let
us not pledge ourselves in a moment of enthusiasm. When the blood burns, we know how prodigally the tongue vows. It is easy in enthusiastic
moments to make a pledge; but let us pledge
ourselves, to endeavour to understand the immense
importance of this subject, and to act out our convictions fully and completely. Let us understand
that there are higher aims than merely obtaining
Early Closing. What we want is, not to get a
stringent law to carry out our own principles, but
to promote a pervading spirit of good feeling
through all classes; in one word, to feel that " we
are members one of another."




A SPEECH
Delivered at a Meeting of the Brighton District
Association for-Improving the Dwellings of the
Industrious Classes, held at the Pavilion, Brighton, November 25, 1852.
THE Rev. F. W. ROBERTSON moved, — " That
this meeting hears with satisfaction the success
which has attended the establishment of the
Brighton Branch of the Metropolitan Association
for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious
Classes, and is of opinion that the extension of
the undertaking will be the means of conferring
more extensively essential benefit on the social
and moral condition of the working classes of the
town of Brighton; and that such extension will
be more effectually promoted by obtaining an
increase in the number of shares, which it pledges
itself to use its best exertions to effect."
It is to one sentence, alone, of this resolution
that I shall direct a few observations: that in
which we say that "this will be the means of




LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.  297
conferring more extensively essential benefit on
the social and moral condition of the working
classes of the town of Brighton."  The great object for which institutions, such as this, are established, is to procure for the working classes a
"Home."  To explain the meaning of this word
is unnecessary; before an English audience it is
superfluous. There is not one present to-day who
has not been, even from childhood, familiar with
all those sacred associations which God has
thrown in such profusion around the precincts of
Home; but to the great majority of the poor in
this country, there is no such thing as Home.
We dare not, cannot say, that those two small
rooms in which a whole family are huddled up
together; those two rooms which serve for kitchen,
sleeping-room, parlour, and for every thing; in
which there are no conveniences and no comforts,
and in which, when a man or a child may be
dying, he would be disturbed by the necessary
noise and bustle of the family,-we dare not,
except in mockery, call that, in a Christian land,
a " Home."
Yet we too often ignore this condition of the
poor man's dwelling, and hence arise many practical fallacies. I will mention but one: the mistake with respect to the possibility of the poor
man spending the Lord's-day as he should. This




298        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
subject has occupied much attention in this
country.  There has been a project recently set
on foot by a large number of philanthropists, and
a large number of speculators, in different parts
of the country, to establish edifices or buildings
in which the poor shall have recreation, pleasure,
and instruction; and some of these, one especially,
the importance of which overrides all the others, it
has been proposed to open on the Lord's-day, and
that too with the sanction of the Government.
This has been met by a very large proportion of
the religious inhabitants of this country with great
dismay and indignation. It has appeared to them
that this is a desecration of the Lord's-day, a
breaking of the covenant between God and his
people. They have drawn most touching pictures of the poor man spending his Sabbath
evenings surrounded by his family, and with the
Bible open before him. I am not about to pronounce any opinion with respect to the view
entertained among religious people on this subject.
There are two views entertained on this question,
and both these ought, in all Christian consistency,
to be allowed to those who hold them. Some believe that the Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, if not
in its integrity and strictness, at all events with a
certain degree of modified strictness, accordant
with the superior genius of Christianity, should




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        299
be observed.  Some, on the other hand, believe
that the Jewish Sabbath is altogether abrogated;
that the Lord's-day is not the same thing; that
it did not arise out of it, nor was it a transfer of
one day to another, but that what has succeeded
the Jewish Sabbath is not what we call the Lord'sday; that it is not one day alone that the Christian is to observe, but a grander, larger, more
spiritual day, the day of the whole life, the sanctification of the whole life of man, to be yielded to
God, as purchased by Christ.  With respect to
the truth of these two conflicting opinions, we
have nothing, at present, to do. All we have to
consider is, how far we can with any consistency
agree upon this point. We are all agreed on this,
that the most blessed institution which has descended to us from our forefathers is the Christian
Lord's-day. All, I believe, are agreed in this:
that it is deeply rooted as an institution in the
necessities of our human nature; and that to give
up the Lord's-day, merely to the physical or intellectual needs of man will be utterly insufficient,
and that the higher and truer half of man, that
which makes him a spiritual creature, being uncared for, the Sabbath will be but a very imperfect
day of rest. We are all agreed also, in an earnest
resolve to set our faces against those views, now so
common, which identify the Christianizing of the




800        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
population with the humanizing of the pbpulation.
We believe that to humanize is one thing; that to
Christianize is another thing.  We believe that
pictures, statues, music, esthetics, tropical plants,
and all the other contents and adjuncts of these
places, valuable as they are in humanizing, are
utterly insufficient to produce the Christianity of
the Cross. We are all agreed in believing that
there is a distinction between esthetics and religious worship, between the worship of the Beautiful and the worship of Holiness. We are, therefore, all agreed in an earnest desire that, among
all classes of the country, there should be a more
religious, pure, and holy observance of the Lord'sday. But now, let me ask the question, With
what consistency can we demand of the poor man
that he shall have no recreation of an out-doors
kind, if we have done nothing to provide for him
a home within doors, wherein to spend the Christian Sabbath?
It was only yesterday that I conversed.with an
intelligent working man in this town, and the man
expressed in very striking language the bitter indignation which was felt by his class towards
those who were, as he said, in a bigoted way
endeavouring to rob them  of their Sabbath. I
trust that I convinced him, I tried at all events
with all my heart to convince him, that it was not




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        301
bigotry in those who tried to take from the working men their Sabbath; but I am not sure that I
convinced the man that there was not great ignorance on the part of those persons, with regard to
the necessities of the poor. It seems, therefore,
that the only true and proper answer we can make
to the poor man, when he expresses indignation at
being robbed of his out-door Sabbath, is by an
institution such as this, which would give him
a home wherein to spend an in-door Sabbath.
Every institution of this kind seems to tell of a
new era in the Human Race and of the progress
of civilization. What is the true characteristic of
the present age? It is a disposition to acknowledge the importance and the value of that which
appears to be small and insignificant. When Mr.
Wordsworth announced this as the great truth
and the great principle of all the poetry of life, he
was met with a universal shout of laughter; but
the spirit of the remark has since permeated all
society, and all our literature. It is the characteristic of the age-it is the characteristic of its
literature. The most popular and the most vigorous of the writers of this day arose first to eminence by drawing the attention of the cpuntry
to the modes of thinking, the feeling, the living,
and even the slang of the lower classes; and
that book which has occupied, and is still occu30




302        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
pying the attention both of Europe and America, —to what is owing its singular power, but
to the thrilling interest it has thrown around
the thought, that in the negro himself there is a
common humanity with our own-in the lowest
of the species something that agrees even with
the highest! It must be an era marking a changed
state of things, when princes and nobles, instead
of occupying their time with battles and tournaments, are occupied with subjects such as Improving the Dwellings of the Poor, and the construction
of Baths and Wash-houses. This, I think, must
prove that we have arrived at a state of things in
which the smallest, the minutest atoms of the
species become of importance; when members of
the Government are absolutely not ashamed to
give lectures, and to enlighten the people on the
necessity of drainage and sanitary regulationssurely this is significant. And in all this, we have,
I think, the very genius and spirit of Christianity;
we have that which, 1800 years ago, was declared
when an Apostle told us," Nay, more, those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are
necessary; and those members of the body which
we think to be less honourable, upon these we
bestow more abundant honour."
In that book to which I have already adverted,
* " Uncle Tom's Cabin."




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       303
there is an incident related which struck me as it
were with a flush of surprise, because it brought
a well-known and little thought-of passage of
Scripture under notice with new associations. It
is that in which two adults are represented as
gazing on the play of two young children. One
of the children was a female slave; the other, the
daughter of the lady of the mansion.  Of the
adults, one was a man whose feelings, as is but
too commonly the case, were far beyond his
attainments, his aspirations beyond his will. He
had consequently sunk down into that state of
mere sentimentalism, which is inseparably connected with thinking well and not doing well, and
he is represented as contented with, from time to
time, an indignant and sarcastic expression on the
inconsistency of those around him.  The other
was a lady whose whole life had been spent in
the acquisition of maxims, but who had not been
able to live deeply in the spirit of those maxims.
These children were at play, and one was seen to
throw her arms around the other; and that other,
who had evaded all attempts to soften, or to tame,
was melted by the tenderness of her white sister;
and an expression burst from the lips of the lady
to the effect, that now she understood the deep
meaning and spirit there was in the passage of
Scripture, "H-e laid his hands upon them, and




S04        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
healed them."  She had up to this time been
uttering rmaxims with regard to the equality of
the human race; but she had not 6 laid her hands 
upon the negroes. I do not say but that this is
fanciful; yet it strikes at the deep root of it all,
for the great difference between His love of the
human race and ours, the great difference in the
way He stated the Brotherhood of the Race is this,
that His was real, and true, and deep, and full of
kindly sympathy. It was not standing apart from
them; but mixing with them, and being one with
them; and therefore it is, that what we are now
to do is, to put our hands on our fellow-men, and
touch the littleness and vulgarities of their daily
life. It is just that which this institution desires
to do, in building for them a Home. It has long
appeared to me that Christianity is a true medium
between those two opposite extremes, Spiritualism
and Socialism.  The spiritualist maintains that
man may make his circumstances, and so it takes
no account whatsoever of the circumstances by
which the man may be surrounded; it believes that
the Spirit, which is of God, may rise above those
circumstances. On the other hand, it is a great
maxim of Socialism that circumstances make the
man.  And so, the very author of Socialism tells
us that, if we have efficient laws and altered
Social regulations, we shall have true and right




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.      305
men; and if we will but take away all the temp.
tations to vice, we shall have no vice. These are
the two extreme systems; Christianity does not
steer the via media between these two extremesno truth does. Christianity states the truth, by
stating both extremes. It is the spirit of Christianity, that man makes his circumstances, and,
besides, that the circumstances make the man.
The Scriptures, interested principally with our
spiritual nature, are also interested with our physical nature; and the Redeemer of the soul is
declared to be the Saviour also of the body. It
appears to me that the grand consummation, for
which all are waiting, the Kingdom of Christ set
up on earth, never can be established till we have
reached this conviction; and all the outer and
inner life must work together, until we have done
all that in us lies, not only to preach and teach
the truth, but to take away the hindrances which
stand in the way of truth. And what is the life
of the poor man in his cottage?
Before a mixed audience, I cannot go deeply
into the details of this. I have seen a family of
nine, father and mother, grown-up sons and
daughters, with but one sleeping-room, and in
that sleeping-room only two beds. I will not go
into the result; before a Christian assembly they
are not to be named. But what is Purity, what
80 *




806        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
is Modesty, what is the Christian Gospel preached
to such a family as that?  It may appear to
some, that to have gone into all these large principles is something like magniloquence; for, after
all, when we speak of what we have done, we
have only built apartments for ten families and
seven single persons. But the rest is to come;
and it is a great thing to have established a standard, to have set up before our poorer brethren a
specimen of a higher and better mode of living.
Political economists say, the evil of the country
is over-population consequent on improvident
marriages. This is partly true, but their remedy is
insufficient.  There is no difficulty in preventing
improvident marriages among the upper classes;
and for this reason —they know what comfort is
-and they will not, except there is very small
self-control, marry and sink in the scale of society.
But the poor man often feels that he can sink no
lower. Why then, he might ask himself, should
I not marry?  And when this morning I saw the
Building in Church Street, with every window
curtained, and the whole aspect so different from
the buildings around, the thought suggested itself
to my mind, and it must also have suggested
itself to the minds of those who accompanied
me,-It is impossible that those who live in this
locality, and look at this building, should be




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.         307
satisfied with the state in which they are now
living.  They will aspire to higher things.  We
are bound, every one of us, to pledge ourselves
to use our best exertions to effect the prosperity
of such an Institution as this Society for improving the Dwellings of the Labouring Classes.




A SPEECH
In reply to an Address presented, to him by One,
Hundred Youngl Men of his Congregation, at
the Town Hall, Brighton, April 20, 1852.
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,-I should be
guilty of affectation if I were to disguise the satisfaction and deep gratefulness which I feel for
the Address which you have just presented me.
No one can feel more deeply than I do, the deficiencies, the faults, the worthlessness of the ministry of which you have spoken so kindly and
so warmly. Whatever eyes have scanned those
deficiencies, I will answer for it that none have
scanned them so severely as my own. Others
may have detected its faults more keenly, no one
has felt them as bitterly as I have. And yet, for
all this, I shall not for one moment disguise my
belief that much of what has been said to-night
is true. We have not come here to bandy compliments with one another. You have not come




LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON. 309
to flatter me; and I have not come, with any
affected coyness, to pretend to disclaim your flattery, in order that it may be repeated. You have
told me, in the frank spirit of Englishmen, that
my ministry has done you good. Frankly, as an
Englishman, I tell you with all my heart, I do
believe it. I know that there are men who once
wandered in darkness and doubt, and could find
no light, who have now found an anchor, and a
rock, and resting-place. I know that there are
men who were feeling bitterly and angrily, what
seemed to them the unfair differences of society,
who now regard them in a gentler, more humble,
and more tender spirit. I know that there are
rich who have been led to feel more generously
towards the poor. I know that there are poor
who have been taught to feel more truly, and
more fairly towards the rich. I believe-for on
such a point God can only know-that there are
men who have been induced to place before
themselves a higher standard, and perhaps I may
venture to add, have conformed their lives more
truly to that standard. I dare not hide my belief
in this. I am deeply grateful in being able to
say that, if my ministry were to close to-morrow
it would not have been, in this town at least, altogether a failure. There is no vanity in saying
this. A man must be strangely constituted in



310        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
deed if he can say such things, and not feel
deeply humbled in remembering what that instrument is, how weak, how frail, how feeble, by
which the work is done.  I desire to feel this
evening far less the honour that may have been
done to myself, than the opportunity that is given
to us for meeting together in Christian union and
brotherhood. We are met here to-night, a minister of the Church of England, a minister of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ, invited by young men,
of that age at which it is generally supposed that
the hot blood of youth incapacitates, or indisposes them towards religion. We are met here,
many of those around me of the richer classes of
society, invited by those who are in a humbler
and far poorer class, and is it possible for me to
see in a picture such as this, merely the prominent object of myself?  Is it possible for me, as
a Christian, to see any thing in this-almost any
thing-except a foretaste of better and happier
times?  A pledge of a coming time, when that
shall be realized, of which that which we now see
is but the representation; like the ancient agapce,
or feasts of charity, in which the Corinthian
churches, and many other churches, exhibited
before the world the blessed fact of a Church,
and of a Brotherhood existing here on earth.
These signatures, which are appended to this




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.      311
Address you have given me, will be to me, I
trust, in future times, in many a dark hour, a
consolation and encouragement. For if I have
been liable-and what public man has not-to
have at times, and in certain quarters, my words
misrepresented, my motives misconstrued, the
whole aim and object of my teaching utterly perverted-unintentionally, I am sure-yet surelysurely-there is a rich recompense in the warm
and affectionate professions of respect which you
have made to me this night. Surely there is
abundant overpayment, in the affectionate regard
with which I have been met in Brighton, in so
many personal attachments, some of the kindest
and warmest of those friends being now around
me, for whose presence here this evening, I have
to thank your graceful and touching courtesy.
My young friends-my dear brethren-I had
meant to say more-I had intended to briefly
sketch the principles of my public teaching; but
I would far rather leave what Mr. Evans has said
of it, knowing it as he does, to speak for itself.
Far rather than that I should speak of my own
principles, I would have the decisive testimony
of that young man to reply to all the misconceptions and perversions that have been uttered of
my work. His words shall answer for it, whether
there is Rationalism or Socialism in my teaching.




A SPEECH
Delivered at the Town Hall, Brighton, November
14, 1850, at a Meeting held for the Purpose of
Addressing the Queen in reference to the Attempt of the Pope of-Rome to parcel England
out into Ecclesiastical Dioceses under Cardinal
Wiseman.
WHEN I entered th s room, I had not the
smallest intention of addressing the Meeting;
but certain expressions which have been used
since my arrival seem  to make it necessary.
However that may be, if this were simply a
question between the Church of England and
th6 Church of Rome-if it were merely a question of precedence between the Archbishop of'Canterbury and  Cardinal Wiseman, I should
hold it purely superfluous to attend this meeting. As a member of the Church of England,
certainly consistently, as every dissenter will acknowledge, I hold that the Bishop of Rome has




LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON. 313
been guilty of an act of schism. It was a principle of the early Church, that every church,
every kingdom, is supreme in spiritual matters
within itself, and that every bishop is vested with
authority in his own diocese. So far as this
goes we, the members, and especially the clergy,
of the Church of England, have reason to con.
sider ourselves aggrieved; but all that would be
necessary for us to do in such a case is to do
what we have done,-address our Bishop. We
should be by no means justified in calling so
large a meeting, of our fellow countrymen and
fellow townsmen, a large mass of whom are not
members of the Church of England, to address
the Sovereign.
If this were merely a matter between Protestant and Roman Catholic in point of doctrine, I
should feel that nothing more than a protest was
necessary. I confess that it seems to me that to
say " We are right and the Roman Catholics are
wrong, and therefore the Roman Catholics may
not proselytize because they are wrong, and we
may because we are right;" is a petitio principil,
a begging of the question, an assumption of the
very thing in dispute. I acknowledge that I have
but very small sympathy with those intolerant
controversialists who imitate the Church of Rome
in thundering out anathemas against their brother
31




314        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
Christians. I have small sympathy with those
persons who are trying to arouse popular indignation against Romanism, by endeavouring to
prove that the Pope of Rome is' The Man of
Sin," and the Church of Rome a " Synagogue
of Satan."  Let there be proselytism  by fair
argument; let there be a fair field and no favour.
Let them do what they can; and, in the name of
God, we will do what we can. We do not fear
Rome. Let them  have fair play; we ask no
more. For such questions as these, we do not
require such meetings.
The ground on which I stand here, the reason
on which I protest against this Papal Act, is the
assumption of Infallibility which it contains. It
is a claim by an individual man, or by a body of
men, of a right to press on the consciences of
mankind, authoritatively, opinions of their own.
Whether that view be thundered from the Vatican, or be thundered from Exeter Hall, or come
from the assumed infallibility of a private pulpit,
be it Dissenting or Church of England, I believe
it to be our bounden duty, as Protestants, to protest against it.
I stand forward on behalf of the right of private judgment. I would almost rather retract
that expression; for the words "private judgment" have a proud sound. It seems to assume




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.       315
that private judgment must be right; that every
man may judge what he will, and that, forsooth,
having judged it, he, in the omnipotence of his
individual judgment, must be right. I do not so
understand it. A man has not a right to judge
what he will; he may judge what is right; the
right of private judgment is the right of judging
the right. I retract the expression I used just
now, and stand up on behalf of the Rights of
Conscience,-not the right of man to have what
conscience he will, but the right of conscience to
control the man and demand allegiance to its
decrees. I protest against the Popish claim for
this reason,-that it is an assumption of man to
dictate, in the forum of conscience, to his brother
man.
There is something besides which I would
rather not have said; and for that reason I entered this room intending not to say one word.
There is an expression in that Address to which
in committee I raised an objection. It is that
where we call for the remedy which justice demands for the act that has been done. I know
my brother ministers meant that they demand no
pains and penalties, but merely require and wish
that the titles should be ignored; and yet the expression is one from which, in all freedom, I felt
myself shrink. I do not like to ask the inter



316        LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
ference of the Law; I do not like to ask or protection in such a matter; I do not like to seem
to stand forward and demand that the titles of
the Church of England should be preserved by
forms of law-those of the Church of Rome
ignored. There is something in this which appears to speak of fear and apprehension. In my
heart of hearts, I have no apprehension of the
progress of the Church of Rome. Let men say
what they will; let them number up the chapels
that have increased-I grant that there has been
an increase; but what if it be that a few hundred
ladies have been embroidering altar-cloths, and a
few hundred of the aristocracy, unable to keep
their own consciences, and not daring to go into
the awful question, "What is truth?" have
chosen, like children afraid of the dark, to go
back to their mother's aprons, and throw themselves on Papal infallibility? What if a few,
soft, sentimental clergymen have gone to Rome?
What then, has that touched the great, clear,
sturdy English heart? When once this question
of Romanism, or Tractarianism, or semi-Romanism has been placed before the mass of the country, there has never been a moment of hesitation;
it has been met by stern rejection. And, therefore, Mr. Chairman, acknowledging the rightful
meaning of the words, and perfectly prepared to




BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.        317
sign that memorial, I should rather have rejoiced
if we had been contented with a simple protest.
A few words on the matter with which the last
speaker concluded and I have done. It seems to
me that he is under some misapprehension with
respect to that expression —" spiritual supremacy."
He objects to it, if I understand him, on the supposition that it gives to the Sovereign spiritual
jurisdiction,-the right of doing spiritual acts.
The Sovereign of England does no spiritual act
whatsoever.  She does not ordain ministers; she
does nothing with regard to the administration
of the sacraments; she does not create one single
doctrine. There seems to be a certain misapprehension in respect of the very meaning of the
ground on which this was originally proposed.
The speaker dwelt much on the authority and
rights of the people,-the supremacy of the people.
He spoke of the people as the fountain source of
all power, spiritually probably, as well as temporally. Is that gentleman aware that the great
defender of this doctrine of royal supremacy in
matters ecclesiastical-for that is the real meaning, here, of spiritual-did uphold that the people
are the rightful sources of all spiritual authority?
God has delegated to his church, to the mass of
believers, a right to govern themselves according
to Scripture and Truth, but as a matter of order,
31 *




318  LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.
not in heaven, but here on earth, it became necessary for the country, that is, the Christian community at large,-for in those days the church
was the country and the country the church,that the country should delegate to one individual
all its sovereignty; and the Sovereign now speaks
spiritually, speaks ecclesiastically, only as the delegate and voice of the sovereign community of the
Church of Christ.