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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ISAAC FOOT
 
 THE FEIENDSHIP OF BOOKS 
 
 AND OTHER LECTURES
 
 Ji^
 
 THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS 
 
 AND OTHER LECTURES 
 
 REV. F. D. MAURICE 
 
 ii < 
 
 EDITED, 11777/ .1 PREFACE, BY 
 
 T. HUGHES, Q.C. 
 
 ILonlian 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 
 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved
 
 
 a. 
 
 First Edition, 1873 ; Second Edition, 1874 ; 
 
 Third Edition, 1880 ; Fourtk Edition, 1889. 
 
 Re-issued, 1893.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Many of those who were most intimately associated 
 with the late Mr. Maurice, in the untiring and many- 
 sided work upon which he so freely spent himself for 
 his country and his fellow-men, were inclined, while 
 he lived, to feel indignant and discouraged that so 
 utterly noble and brave a life was not better appre- 
 ciated. That the first theologian of their time, who 
 had done more than any other man to widen and 
 deepen English thought, should be entirely ignored by 
 the dispensers of Church patronage, might not indeed 
 have surprised them. He was not of the stuff of 
 which dignitaries are made. It is a rare chance in 
 Church government which lands prophets or apostles 
 in stalls or thrones. But he had claims on the reading 
 and working classes of the nation such as no other 
 man had, and which also seemed to be ignored except 
 by a small minority. His " History of Moral and 
 Metaphysical Philosophy" (to mention one only of 
 his greater works) was a mine of learning made living 
 and human, and of original thought made useful for 
 the humblest student, such as no other living man 
 had produced. In all the higher departments of
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 thought they saw writers borrowing from this and 
 other of his works, much in the same way as American 
 writers do from Mr. Emerson, of whose intellectual 
 orchard the author of " The Fable for Critics " writes : — 
 
 " They might strip every tree and he never would catch 'em, 
 His Hesperides have no fierce dragon to -n'atch 'era ; 
 When they send him a dishful and ask him to try 'em, 
 He never suspects how the sly rogues came by 'era, 
 He wonders why 'tis there are none such his trees on, 
 And thinks 'em the best he has tasted this season." 
 
 The plunder was never acknowledged, while the 
 reading public was assured by many of its instructors, 
 who owed the best part of their own thought to Mr. 
 Maurice, that he was confused, mystical, a beater of 
 the air. On the other hand, though he went quietly 
 on bearing the chief burthen of some of the most 
 important social movements of the time, as President, 
 for instance, of the Society for Promoting Working 
 Men's Associations, and Principal of the Working 
 Men's College and of Queen's College, his name was 
 not in men's mouths, and he got none of the helj) for 
 his well-considered and far-seeing efforts which has 
 been poured in our day ijlencl -maiub on all kinds of 
 empirical and mischievous charities. That he should 
 have looked upon this apparent neglect as a matter of 
 course, and have attributed it to his own shortcomings, 
 was a part of his nature and character. His fault 
 as a leader lay in his readiness to stand aside on the 
 least provocation, to over-estimate other men, and to 
 doubt his own judgment and capacity for practical 
 work. But those who from long experience had
 
 PEEFACE. vii 
 
 found him almost always right, even upon such ques- 
 tions as the best method of conducting the business 
 of manufacturing stout shoes by associated labour, 
 were not unnaturally jealous of this want of appre- 
 ciation, and impatient at this apparent indifference of 
 his countrymen to the life's battle of one of their best 
 and wisest. 
 
 All such jealousies and doubts were indeed in great 
 measure set at rest by the outburst last year — from 
 pulpits of all shades in the Church and of all the 
 Nonconformist bodies, in periodicals and newspa^pers 
 representing every political section and every class in 
 the nation — which followed the tidings of his death 
 It was a most remarkable and significant phenomenon, 
 this voice, as it were, of a whole nation testifying, 
 " Well done, good and faithful servant ; " and a witness 
 to the depth and penetrating nature of Mr. Maurice's 
 spiritual influence. While rejoicing in so pregTiant 
 a proof that England can still recognize her prophets, 
 at any rate when they are gone from her, one may 
 be pardoned perhaps for a regret that one so sensitive 
 to spnpathy should never, while he lived, have known 
 how much he was to the country he loved so deeply, 
 and served so faithfully. 
 
 But, through most of the testimony to the influence 
 of his life and writings which was thus called forth, 
 there still ran a singular misunderstanding of the man 
 and his message. It was assumed in the critical part 
 of most of these obituary notices, as a matter of fact 
 which scarcely needed stating, that, with all his ear-
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 nestness, learning, and knowledge, he was never a 
 clear thinker ; and, by some intellectual fault, or short- 
 coming, was either not able, or not courageous enough 
 mentally (no one ever doubted his perfect moral 
 courage) to follow out his own premises to their 
 legitimate conclusions. To those to whom his memory 
 must always remain amongst their most precious pos- 
 sessions, and for whom he has scattered more mists 
 and slain more hobgoblins than all his contemporaries 
 put together, these accusations of incompleteness, want 
 of clearness, mysticism, have their comic side. They 
 might be well content to let them alone, leaving 
 his works to speak for themselves, if they could only 
 be sure that the persons addressed would go to those 
 works. But as criticisms of this kind may hinder 
 students, and above all young students, from going to 
 the fountain head, and, as in their judgment it is of 
 quite unspeakable importance, to England's religion 
 and England's thought, that such students slimdd do 
 this, they cannot and ought not to keep silence. 
 
 A casual expression in one of the ablest and most 
 remarkable books published since his death on the 
 subjects to which he was specially devoted, is a fair 
 specimen of the tone which some of our foremost 
 thinkers on such subjects have allowed themselves 
 in speaking of him, and will serve as well as any to 
 test the worth of such criticism, and the value of Mr. 
 Maurice's teaching. In his "Literature and Dogma," 
 Mr. Arnold speaks of Maurice as "that pure and 
 devout spirit— of whom, however, the truth must at
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 last be said, that in theology he passed his life 
 beating the bush with deep emotion, and never 
 starting the hare." The criticism is, it will be seen, 
 limited to Mr. Maurice's theology ; but, as he was 
 always careful to remind his readers and hearers 
 that he " felt as a theologian, thought as a theologian, 
 and wrote as a theologian ; " and, as in his last pub- 
 lished work he again declares — " all other subjects are 
 to my mind connected with theology, and subordinate 
 to it," the limitation is of no practical value. As a 
 theologian, then, must he be judged; and if in his 
 theology he is vague or timorous, or uses words in a 
 non-natural sense, it is vain to defend him, and he 
 would not have desired to be defended. Let us see, 
 then, to what the criticism amounts, and what is 
 the quarry which Mr. Maurice was in vain straining 
 all his life to start, but which we presume Mr. Arnold 
 supposes himself to have not only started but run 
 down. 
 
 Mr. Arnold gathers into six words his purpose in 
 this remarkable book ; " the thing," he says, " is to 
 recast relioion." Recognizing' the chaotic state of 
 modern thought on the most momentous of all sub- 
 jects, in the presence of the new forces of criticism 
 and scientific discovery which are being brought to 
 bear upon it, he asks, " is there a substratum, or veri- 
 fiable basis," of truth which may be made plain to 
 the humblest seeker, and upon which he may found 
 himself and stand firmly " in the revolution which is 
 befalling the religion in which he has been brought
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 up ? " It is not necessary to follow the masterly state- 
 ment, exposition, and argument by which Mr. Arnold 
 arrives at his conclusion that such a verifiable basis 
 exists for himself, or to anticipate what that basis is ; 
 but let us note the positions of most value which he 
 successively seizes as he marches triumphantly towards 
 his goal, and makes sure ground not only under his 
 own feet, but under those of the ordinary Englishman, 
 bewildered by this " revolution befalling the religion 
 in which he has been brought up." 
 
 Mr. Arnold holds that the attempt to reduce Christi- 
 anity to a philosophical system, a metaphysical con- 
 ception, has brought our English people to the point of 
 rejecting the Bible altogether ; and that the " pseudo- 
 science of dogmatic theology " which has resulted from 
 that attempt must be destroyed if the Bible is to 
 regain its power. The perplexed English student will 
 get his first foothold here under Mr. Arnold's guid- 
 ance ; and will never again be troubled with the 
 notion that a right knowledge of God depends on 
 ability to reason accurately from terms such as " sub- 
 stance," " identity," " causation," " design," &c. For 
 Mr. Arnold's readers the "metaphysical apparatus," as 
 he calls it, will probably have fallen to pieces finally. 
 
 Neither will they require further proof that the 
 revelation contained in the Bible is not dependent 
 on, and cannot be made " solidary " with, the evidence 
 of miracles, or of the fulfilment of prophecy, or even 
 with the reports of Evangelists and Apostles as to 
 the words and deeds of their Master.
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 More valuable still is Mr, Arnold's exposure of the 
 false antithesis between " natural " and " revealed " 
 religion, which has been current in England, at any 
 rate since Butler's time. The difference between the 
 two, he holds, is not one of kind, but only of degree; 
 the real antithesis, to " natural " and " revealed " alike 
 being " invented," " artificial." " A system of theo- 
 logical notions about personality, essence, existence, 
 consubstantiality, is artificial religion, and the proper 
 opposite to ' revealed.' " 
 
 Had these negative results been all that we get 
 from Mr. Arnold's book, their value would have been 
 very great, coming from such a quarter : but he not 
 only clears the ground of large heaps of tangle and 
 litter, but builds upon his clearance. " Conduct or 
 righteousness is three-fourths or more of life," and is 
 " a simple and easy matter so far as knowledge is 
 concerned ; the whole difficulty lying, not in seeing 
 true and verifying what righteousness is, but in 
 caring for and attending to it." The religion of Israel 
 as we have it in the Old Testament, is the declara- 
 tion or revelation for all time of what righteousness 
 is, and that God is the author of it : the religion of 
 the New Testament reveals to us the method and 
 secret by which alone righteousness is possible for 
 men, that is to say, the " method of Jesus," or 
 inwardness and sincerity; the "secret of Jesus," or 
 " self-renunciation." Now, men will no longer accept 
 as true what they cannot verify by experience ; but, 
 Mr. Arnold insists, thus much they have verified,
 
 in PREFACE. 
 
 thus miicli each man can verify for himself. " Try 
 and you will find it to be so," Mr. Arnold sums up ; 
 " try all the ways to righteousness you can think of, 
 and you will find that no way brings you to it except 
 the way of Jesus ; but that this way does bring you 
 to it. And, therefore, as Ave found we could say to 
 the masses, ' Attempt to do without Israel's God, 
 that makes for righteousness, and you will find out 
 your mistake ! ' so we find we can now go on further, 
 and say, ' Attempt to reach righteousness by any 
 way except that of Jesus, and you will find out 
 your mistake ! ' This is a thing that can prove 
 itself if it is so ; and it will prove itself, because it 
 is so." 
 
 Of course it is not pretended for a moment that 
 this is an exhaustive statement of the scope of 
 " Literature and Dogma " — (there are a number of 
 other points brought out with, exquisite clearness and 
 keenness, such as the historical method of the Bible 
 revelation ; the one strain that runs through it all 
 showing that " whoever of nations or men is ship- 
 wrecked, is shipwrecked on conduct ; " that the faith 
 which saves is attached to the sa-vdng doctrines of 
 the Bible, which are very simple, not to its literary 
 and scientific criticism, which is very hard) — but 
 these are the main positions, apart from the central 
 one. Borrowing his own phrase, we may call them 
 " beatings of the bush," and very searching and able 
 beatings they are, beatings which were clearly neces- 
 sary before the religion in which we were brought
 
 PEEFACE. xiii 
 
 up can be recast for a scientific and critical genera- 
 tion. But then we must take leave to say, that 
 every one familiar with Mr. Maurice's works will have 
 travelled the whole ground, over and over again. 
 His first great work, " The Kingdom of Christ," was 
 the strongest attack yet made on the attempts to 
 squeeze Christianity into any system, and on the 
 " logical apparatus " of one kind or another which 
 have been used for this purpose ; and in the last 
 of his published works, the preface to his " Moral 
 and Metaphysical Philosophy," written within a year 
 of his death, he recounts, for the last time, "how 
 often I have been tempted to seek a home for my 
 spirit in some particular opinion or system of opinions 
 and by what gracious influences I have been shown 
 that the fine palace would have been a prison- 
 house." 
 
 Again, while Mr. Maurice's teaching as to miracles 
 and prophecy is no doubt very different from Mr. 
 Arnold's, it is at least as clear and emphatic in pro- 
 testing against the theory that the revelation of the 
 Bible must stand on the evidence of miracles, or the 
 fulfilment of prophecy as commonly understood. 
 
 The falseness of the antithesis between natural 
 and revealed religion had been worked out years ago 
 by Mr. Maurice, on parallel lines to Mr Arnold's, 
 but with greater fulness and clearness. All revela- 
 tion or discovery, he had taught us, even of the 
 law which is written in men's hearts (the "natural 
 religion " of Butler), must be made by God to men
 
 xiv PREFACE. 
 
 in their consciences. And so it is witli all scientific, 
 discovery. This also is a discovery or unveiling to 
 a man of that which is ; which was not called into 
 being by him ; of which he is in no sense the author. 
 It was always there. He has been sho\\Ti that it 
 was always there. He can only tell the world some- 
 thinsf which has been hidden from it, and which it 
 was intended to know. 
 
 And so with respect to the historical method of 
 the Biblical revelation, how, step by step, a man, a 
 family, a nation, all nations, are educated into ac- 
 knowledgment and worship of righteousness (which, 
 however, Mr. Maurice calls " the living God," as the 
 Old Testament writers do) ; how the only way to 
 righteousness is throuo-h the " method " and " secret " 
 of Jesus ; how each man may verify this for him- 
 self; how easy the knowledge, how hard the practice 
 of righteousness is ; all these are commonplaces in 
 Mr. Maurice's teachinsr. So that, without detracting- 
 the least from Mr. Arnold, while acknowledging and 
 feeling gi'ateful for the exquisite clearness, the varied 
 learning, and the rare courage he has brought to 
 bear on the gi'eat theme he has set himself, one 
 must protest against the tone of his comment on 
 one who had already travelled the same paths, and 
 taken many with him. 
 
 But, as has been already said, these are only the 
 beatings of the bush ; we have not yet reached the 
 centre, the cardinal point in such a discussion. No 
 one puts this more strongly than Mr. Arnold. "The
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 whole pinch of the matter is here," he says : " and 
 till we are agreed as to what we mean by God, we 
 can never, in discussing religious questions, under- 
 stand one another or discuss seriously." And so Mr. 
 Arnold spares no pains to make us see precisely 
 what he means by God, Still maintaining the value 
 as a scientific definition of his former saying that 
 God is "simply the stream of tendency by which all 
 things fulfil the law of their being," he admits its 
 inadequacy for the purposes of the deeper inquiry. 
 Then, after suggesting, by the way, that we use the 
 word God merely as " a deeply-moved way of saying 
 conduct or righteousness," he takes his stand on the 
 formula, " God is the power, not ourselves, which 
 works for righteousness." Now no one would have 
 been more ready than Mr. Maurice to admit the 
 truth of this, so far as it goes. But will not revela- 
 tion carry us further ? Does not Mr, Arnold himself 
 imply that it will, when he says, " So far we know 
 God that He is the Eternal who loveth righteousness, 
 and the further we go in righteousness the more we 
 shall know Him " ? 
 
 Surely it must be so. But it scarcely appears 
 from his work how far Mr. Arnold is conscious of 
 the difficulties which he himself has left his readers 
 in, by stopping where he does. The first question 
 that forces itself on them must be. But, after all, 
 what of Christ ? Does Mr. Arnold hold Him to be 
 one with " the power, not ourselves, which works for 
 righteousness " ? Sometimes we think he does, as
 
 xvi PREFACE. 
 
 when he says, " The kingdom of the Eternal the 
 world is already become, by its chief nations pro- 
 fessing the religion of righteousness. The kingdom 
 of Christ the world will have to become, is on its 
 way to become, because the profession of righteous- 
 ness, except as Christ interpreted righteousness, is 
 vain ; " or again, " God's evidence for His Son is 
 this, that God hath given to us eternal hfe, and 
 this life is in His Son. That is, in righteousness 
 we have the sense of being truly alive, and through 
 the method and secret and sweet reasonableness of 
 Jesus, and only through these, we get at righteous- 
 ness." At other times all is misty and vague, and 
 the sense in which Christ is the Son of God, for 
 Mr. Arnold, appears to be that in which every man 
 who follows righteousness becomes also the son of 
 God. 
 
 The same kind of difficulty must be raised in the 
 mind of the humblest reader by Mr. Arnold's dealing 
 with the Spirit of God. Forgetting his usual epieikeia, 
 or sweet reasonableness, he speaks of the popular 
 doctrine of the Trinity in a way which must have 
 given deep pain to many good Christians. But what 
 deliverance does he offer himself from the belief he 
 satizries so cruelly ? First, he tells us, we must re- 
 translate the word Trvevfia, and speak of the " holy 
 influence." The disciples would find, Jesus tells 
 them, " a new power come to their help after He 
 left them, a power of insight such as they had never 
 had before," but " which came from God, as Jesus
 
 PREFACE. xvii 
 
 did" and " said nothing of itself, but only what 
 God said, or Jesus said ; a Paraclete, or reinforcement 
 working in aid of God and Jesus, even the spirit 
 of Truth." But is this Spirit, then, one with God, 
 with " the power not themselves " ? Again, Mr. Arnold 
 gives them no help, but rather puzzles them further 
 by calling the " paraclete " in another place the 
 "intuition of reality" in yourself; in a third place, 
 "the muse of righteousness," contrasting it with 
 "the muse of art or science," which visited Hesiod 
 when he was tending his sheep on the side of 
 Helicon, and which, according to Mr. Arnold, was 
 an " equally real " influence, equally also " a spirit 
 of Truth." 
 
 And now let us turn to Mr. Maurice, of whose 
 theology ]\ir. Arnold speaks in such pitying, almost 
 contemptuous, tones. He, at any rate, has never 
 avoided the real "pinch of the matter," has indeed 
 urged, during a long life, with never-tiring insist- 
 ence, that we must at our peril know what we 
 mean by God. He has also made, as clear as words 
 can make it, what he means. God, for Mr. Maurice, 
 is a perfectly loving Father, who has revealed Himself 
 in this character, and is speaking to men by a Son. 
 That Son has been made flesh, has taken men's 
 nature, has dwelt among them, and "in Him is the 
 light of men." His Spirit is in men, speaking to 
 the conscience of each, teaching them how they may 
 be one with Him (namely, through His method. His 
 secret, and sweet reasonableness, as Mr. Arnold would 
 
 h
 
 xviii PEEFACE. 
 
 say). This Spirit will guide them into all truth ; is 
 the same Spirit who reveals artistic and scientific, 
 as well as religious truth to them — irreligious truth 
 Mr. Maurice did not recognize ; is the Spirit who 
 is leading them to search for Him in the laws 
 of His universe ; is the " Muse " of Hesiod, the 
 " dsemon " of Socrates. 
 
 Now this belief is at any rate as clear of "meta- 
 physical apparatus " as Mr, Arnold's own. Is it not 
 also infinitely clearer and simpler in itself? Does 
 it leave us in any of those mists as to the Son of 
 God, and the Spirit of God, wliich ]VIr, Arnold raises 
 but entirely fails to dissipate ? 
 
 One can understand enlightened teachers of our 
 day, to whom the very name of Christian has become 
 an offence, turning aside from such a belief in annoy- 
 ance and anger — as indeed so many of them have 
 done — when they recognize in it simply the old 
 creed, which every child in Christendom has been 
 repeating these eighteen hundred years ; but that 
 any one of them who really takes the pains to 
 read Mr. Maurice can maintain that the belief itself 
 does not stand out on the face of all his writings, in 
 white light, as plain as words can make it, is less easy 
 to understand. The only explanation (if they have 
 read him) would seem to be that they cannot take 
 his words in their plain natural sense, or believe that 
 one, whom they cannot help acknowledging to be as 
 familiar with all the philosophical systems of the 
 world, and as thorough a master of all their shibbo-
 
 PREFACE. xix 
 
 leths as themselves, can be really meaning what he 
 seems to say, when he says this. 
 
 Valuable as "Literature and Dogma" will prove 
 to many of his countrymen, the author may assure 
 himself that no one who has learnt from Mr. Maurice 
 will ever be able to think of, or believe in, righteous- 
 ness without a righteous Being (or Person, if Mr. 
 Arnold will allow us to use a word which offends 
 him more than any other in the "metaphysical appa- 
 ratus"), will ever be able to think of, or beheve in. 
 Providence or foresight, without One who provides, 
 or foresees. But they will rejoice, as their master 
 would have done, to see so cultivated a thinker as 
 Mr. Arnold bravely and earnestly contending for 
 righteousness, and for the " method," " secret," and 
 "sweet reasonableness," of Christ, though unable to 
 accept what are to them the necessary conclusions 
 from his own premises. 
 
 And now let us turn for a moment to the apostles of 
 our other modern Gospels, who have, in like manner, 
 cast pitying or angry words at Mr. Maurice and his 
 theology, or have misunderstood and misstated it in 
 ways which have pained him, while living, more than 
 any abuse would have done. 
 
 We are asked by one clever school to write humanity 
 with a big H, and then to fall down and worship it. 
 This, knowing^ what we ourselves are, and seeinof 
 what the remaining items who make up mankind 
 in our time are about, we must decline to do. But 
 learning from Mr. Maurice, we can worship with 
 
 h 2
 
 XX PREFACE. 
 
 our whole hearts, a perfect man, whom we have 
 come to know not only as made in the image of, 
 but as one with, God; and through whom we can 
 recognize and reverence the humanity in every man. 
 
 His own reply to an otherwise friendly reviewer of 
 this school cannot, at any rate, be reckoned amongst 
 sayings hard to understand. " He affirms," wrote Mr. 
 Maurice, " that I have rendered into a theological 
 dialect the conceptions of humanity which prevail in 
 our age. I have affirmed that those conceptions of 
 humanity, when separated from the old foundation, 
 which is simply, broadly, satisfactorily announced in 
 the formularies that are repeated by children and 
 peasants in all parts of Christendom, are narrow, im- 
 practical, inhuman." (Preface to " Social Morality," 
 p. xiv.) 
 
 Mr. Morley, representing, I suppose, another school of 
 the most advanced thinkers, denounced Mr. Maurice's 
 Lectures on the Conscience, as outraging I know not 
 what systems of philosophy, and lying entirely outside 
 all orthodox methods of thought on such subjects. 
 Those who have learnt from him to ask themselves 
 what they mean by " I," and have found his method 
 stand every test to which they can put it, will not 
 be troubled about systems of philosoiDhy, any more 
 than Mr. Arnold is, or than Molik'e's servant-girl was 
 troubled about the laws of carte and tierce. They 
 have come to see that neither Butler nor Paley, nor 
 any other philosopher. Christian or heathen, invented 
 the questions about a conscience, or can set them to
 
 PREFACE. xxi 
 
 rest. " They do not exist," as Mr. Maurice says, " in 
 a Volume of Sermons at the Rolls, or of Lectures on 
 Moral Philosophy. If you have not a conscience, 
 Butler will not give it you. If you have one, Paley 
 cannot take it away. They can only, between them, 
 set you on considering what it is, and what it is 
 not." 
 
 On another side " the Revolution," writ also with a 
 big R, is held up to us as the only object of faith for 
 intelligent persons in the times we live in. We glory 
 in our own time, with all its searchings, distresses, 
 perplexities, as much as they ; but prefer, with Mr. 
 Maurice, to recognize, through and in them all. One 
 who is working out the redemption of the time 
 and unveiling Himself to our age as He did to our 
 fathers' age, through these throes and strivings of 
 the nations. 
 
 We are advised on another side to believe in a 
 God who has made the world for " a prudent, steady, 
 hardy, enduring race of men, who are neither fools 
 nor cowards, and who have no particular love for 
 those who are," and are told that the business of 
 religion is to threaten or bribe the fools and cowards. 
 The chief preacher of this Gospel is another of our 
 instructors to whom Mr. Maurice's theology has been 
 a sore stumbling-block. But we should doubt whether 
 any wayfarer, conscious that the religion in which 
 he has been brought up wants recasting, will care 
 to exchange for this " Calvinism minus Christianity," 
 as it has been well called, Mr. Maurice's teaching,
 
 xxii PREFACE. 
 
 that all prudence, steadiness, hardiness, endurance, 
 are the good gifts to His children of a God of Love, 
 without whom we all, including the author in question, 
 should have been fools and cowards — even as these 
 masses. 
 
 But of all modern schools of thought, the purely- 
 scientific, represented by Mr. Darwin (who, I believe 
 returned fully the warm admiration which Mr. Maurice 
 felt for him) has most troubled the minds of simple 
 English Christians. A passage or two from Mr. 
 Maurice's writings may, perhaps, lead any such who 
 may read this book to take courage, and look the 
 " Origin of Species " squarely in the face — at any 
 rate it will show then that he could do so : — 
 
 "It has been our wont to speak of man as formed 
 in the image of God, and yet as made out of the 
 dust of the earth. I think those who have used 
 the words have been aware — if not at the same 
 moment, yet at certain moments of their lives — 
 of both the facts to which the words point, and 
 have been trying to learn how they are compat- 
 ible " 
 
 " I have myself little hope that we shall become 
 fully aware of our relation to One who is above 
 us, if from any cowardly self-glorification we shrink 
 from confessing these baser affinities. The more 
 thoroughly we accept the facts which attest our 
 humiliation, the more overwhelming will be the force 
 of the facts which attest the glory of our human 
 parentage. If Mr. Darwin has added new strength
 
 PREFACE. xxiii 
 
 to the one kind of evidence — whether he has or 
 not, as I told you before, I have no right to affirm, 
 or even to guess — I can have no doubt whence the 
 discoveries have come, or by whom that search has 
 been prompted. I perceive that in his last book he 
 speaks with much reverence of the moral elevation 
 which the belief of a one omnipotent ruler of the 
 universe is likely to produce in those who cherish 
 it. I am afraid that in me such a belief would 
 cause more depression than elevation. Mere omni- 
 potence is crushing. Whereas any one whose heart 
 confesses that every step in the apprehension of 
 nature or man, or the archetype of man, is due to 
 the education of a loving parent, must be sure that 
 no diligence, such as that of Mr. Darwin, in studying 
 the meanest insect or flower, can be wasted; but will 
 also be sure that the processes in the student himself 
 — the springs of his zeal and patience — must have 
 a far deeper interest, must carry us into another 
 region altogether." 
 
 " The Newtonian doctrine, with which Mr. Huxley 
 teaches us to compare the Darwinian, was a wonderful 
 blessing to man, inasmuch as it shook the notion that 
 the planet which contained what most concerned them 
 was the centre of the universe. The moral results of 
 that shaking, and of the belief which followed it, have 
 been invaluable. I do not think we have yet more 
 than besrun to take account of them. But there 
 was this disadvantage accompanying the blessing, 
 one which has often led the student of humanity to
 
 xxiv PKEFACE. 
 
 undervalue it. When the earth took its subordinate 
 position in the universe, it seemed as if man too 
 had been degraded. We began to talk affectedly 
 and dishonestly of ourselves as 'mere atoms in the 
 infinite regions of space/ whilst each man knew 
 that he did not count himself an atom at all ; that 
 he did not reckon sun or stars at a higher rate 
 than his own personal being. Great contradictions, 
 enormous fallacies, were engendered by this mode of 
 speaking and thinking. It seems to me that the 
 students of physics are themselves to supply the 
 counteraction to them. Let them say what they will 
 about the origin of man, it is about his origin that 
 all their faculties are chiefly exercised. Whatever 
 may have been his starting point, here he is. Show 
 what atoms he comes from, if you will, and if you 
 can; let any creature you like have been his pro- 
 genitor, still the diapason closes full on him. More 
 than ever it becomes necessary to look into his actual 
 history ; out of whatever egg he has issued, we must 
 try to acquaint ourselves, not so much with the 
 process of his incubation, as with the kind of creature 
 he has become since the shell was broken, and he 
 has acquired a distinct existence." 
 
 Is there any want of clearness here ? Are these 
 the words of one whose meaning is not plain to 
 himself, or who has any difficulty in expressing it ? 
 
 If the " religion in which we have been brought 
 up " wants recasting, as no doubt in some sense it 
 does, let us first look fairly at what has been done
 
 PREFACE. XXV 
 
 in this direction. A man has been amongst us whose 
 work in Hfe was precisely this. And while his 
 writings have exercised an enormous influence on 
 theological thought, his life has been even a greater 
 witness for the truth which he taught ; that life of 
 one " sorrowful, yet always rejoicing ; " " poor, yet 
 making many rich ; " " having nothing, and yet pos- 
 sessing all things." 
 
 Those who have lived and worked with him, cannot 
 but have learnt to know and feel something of the 
 power which transforms men if they will only let it. 
 " He was in those early days, as always," writes one 
 of his oldest friends, speaking of him when he was 
 chaplain of Guy's, " the strongest man I have ever 
 known, if it be strength to do steadily to the end 
 the work which is set before a man, undeterred by 
 any doubts or difficulties, however great and many. 
 Yet I am sure he would have said — and I believe it 
 was true — that the strength was not his own, but that 
 of a Higher will than his own working through his 
 weakness. It was the strength, not of self-assertion, 
 but of self-surrender ; the strength of Paul and Christ. 
 It was the consciousness of the prophet and the 
 apostle, that he was called to a work which he ac- 
 cepted as the business of his life, but which he could 
 only do by a strength greater than his own. It has 
 been well said that no words can more exactly describe 
 the mission of Maurice than those of St. John — ' a 
 man sent from God — the same came to bear witness 
 of the light.' With all his humility, with all his con-
 
 xxvi PREFACE. 
 
 sciousness of his weakness for the work, he never 
 doubted that he was sent from God to bear witness of 
 the Light. Here he was strong, and the source of 
 strength to others. To how many of us has that 
 saintly hfe and presence borne witness to the Light, 
 even when we were unable to see it for ourselves ! " 
 
 It is in the hope of bringing this life and teaching 
 to bear on many who have only known Mr. Maurice 
 at second-hand, and only think of him as a theologian 
 and a mystic, whom it is waste of time to endeavour 
 to understand, that the present collection of his ad- 
 dresses is published. They are taken as samples, 
 almost at hazard, from a vast number which he de- 
 livered in all parts of the country, to all kinds of 
 audiences. While they illustrate how completely his 
 theology underlay all his thoughts, they will show how 
 fresh and vigorous, above all how intensely national 
 and human, that theology is ; how it enables him, 
 always using the same method, to put men and periods 
 before us with a distinctness, a vividness, and a sym- 
 pathy which few writers have ever equalled. Any one 
 of the addresses will serve to illustrate this method. 
 Take, for instance, the one " On Words," and see how 
 entirely he does justice to the work of Johnson and 
 of Home Tooke, how heartily he recognizes the worth 
 of what each of them was asserting, while he brings 
 out the deeper truth which lies behind, — that words 
 are not mere counters, but living powers, which grow 
 and change and decay with the growth and decay of 
 the men and nations who use them. And so with
 
 PEEFACE. xxvii 
 
 all men and sects and parties who have exercised 
 any real influence in the world. His intense sym- 
 pathy enables him to see clearly the truth which each 
 was asserting, to rejoice in the strength of that asser- 
 tion, to maintain that that assertion was not and could 
 not be made too strongly, and at the same time, with 
 equal clearness and power, to mark where they become 
 deniers of the truth which others are asserting, and 
 begin to assume that their owti side of the tnith is 
 the whole. 
 
 But it is unnecessary further to dwell on what will 
 soon make itself plain to every intelligent reader ; and 
 one can only hope that some of these, when they have 
 come to feel how keen and deep Mr. Maurice's insight 
 is — how firmly he can seize on and handle literary, 
 political, and social questions — how in a few sentences 
 he sheds light on men and things, showing us, as it 
 were with a flash, the clue which we may perhaps 
 have been groping for through weary years — will take 
 courage, and make trial of the same guidance (despite 
 of Mr. Arnold, and other preachers of new religions 
 and no religions) in that deepest of all studies, which 
 the times in which they live will not suffer any man 
 who means to do his work honestly in the world, 
 to neglect or thrust aside. 
 
 Thomas Hughes. 
 
 P.S. — Since the above Preface was WTitten, Mr. 
 Mill's autobiography has been published. Among 
 other contemporaries with whom he came in contact
 
 xxviii PEEFACE. 
 
 during his remarkable intellectual life, he names and 
 gives with characteristic candour and fairness an esti- 
 mate of Frederick Maurice. In appreciation of mere 
 intellect, probably few men's judgments could be better 
 worth considering. He thus speaks : " I have so deep 
 a respect for Maurice's character and purposes, as well 
 as for his great mental gifts, that it is with some un- 
 willingness I say anything which may seem to place 
 him on a less high eminence than I would gladly be 
 able to accord to him. But I have always thought 
 that there was more intellectual power wasted in 
 Maurice than in any other of my contemporaries. 
 Few of them certainly have had so much to waste. 
 Great powers of generalization, rare ingenuity and 
 subtlety, and a wide perception of important and un- 
 obvious truths, served him not for putting something 
 better into the place of the worthless heap of received 
 opinions on the great subjects of thought, but for 
 proving to his own mind that the Church of England 
 had known everything from the first, and that all the 
 truths on the ground of which the Church and Ortho- 
 doxy have been attacked (many of which he saw as 
 clearly as any one), are not only consistent with the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, but are better understood and 
 expressed in these Articles than by any one who re- 
 jects them." 
 
 This testimony, given by an able and candid man, 
 eminent above most in the exercise of the intellect, 
 to Mr. Maurice's intellectual eminence, is not the 
 only or the main reason for quoting the passage
 
 PREFACE. xxix 
 
 here. It is surely worth considering whether the 
 method in which Mr. Maurice used his intellect, so 
 strongly condemned by Mr. Mill, is not substantially 
 the same method whereby the doctrine of Evolution 
 in the physical world has been maintained by modem 
 philosophers, but applied by Mr. Maurice to theo- 
 logical and ethical, not merely to physical matters. 
 If Mr. Maurice, in examining the " heap of received 
 opinions," which might better surely be designated 
 the mass of deep con\dctions whereby Enghshmen 
 and men of other nations had been enabled to live 
 righteous and noble lives, sought to sever what was 
 worthy from what was worthless, can that be called 
 waste, of hio^h mental gifts ? 
 
 Besides, it is not true that Mr. Maurice ever wrote 
 anything to justify the representation here given. 
 Mr. Mill had probably in his mind a pamphlet 
 published in 1835, while Mr. Maurice was a young 
 Oxford graduate — " Subscrijjtion no Bondage," which 
 was a defence of the Articles as guides to thought, 
 not as mere dogmatic formulae hampering the con- 
 science. Even this pamphlet, whether successful or 
 not in its aim, does not justify the phrase, that Mr. 
 Maurice held "that the Church of England had 
 known everything from the first." But readers of 
 " The Kingdom of Christ " or " The Eeligions of the 
 World " will know how far this is from being an 
 accurate account of how Mr. Maurice used his "great 
 mental gifts," and whether they really were " wasted." 
 It has been noticed already how he received Mr.
 
 xxs PREFACE. 
 
 Darwin's theory. The habit of mind that led him 
 to trace a unity and progress in theological and 
 ethical thought among men and churches, prepared 
 him to accept and recognize the same law in natural 
 things. If Mr. Mill had studied and followed up, in 
 his own way, the method of Mr. Maurice in these 
 respects, it might not have fallen to him to have 
 written probably one of the saddest passages ever 
 penned, where finality, not in ccmse but in result, 
 faces him as a possibility, driving him to despair, 
 from which his account of his deHverance scarcely 
 seems satisfactory — the opening of the fifth chapter 
 of his autobiography. Other students may hereafter 
 learn that some of the "unobvious truths" which 
 Mr. Maurice's mental gifts enabled him to discover 
 are worth their attention.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ON THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS 1 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 
 ON WORDS 25 
 
 LECTURE IIL 
 
 ON BOOKS 46 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 ON THE USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS .... 70 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION . • 95 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 ANCIENT HISTORY , .120
 
 xxxii CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE VI r. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY 141 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 Spenser's " faery queene " 165 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 MILTON 187 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 MILTON CONSIDERED AS A SCHOOLMASTER .... 207 
 
 LECTURE XL 
 
 EDMUND BCRKE 232 
 
 LECTURE XIL 
 
 ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION 258 
 
 LECTURE XIIL 
 
 ON CRITICS 275
 
 LECTURES. 
 
 ON THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS.i 
 
 I HAVE proposed to speak to you this evening on the 
 Friendshi}) of Books. I have some fear that an age of 
 reading is not always favourable to the cultivation of 
 this friendship. I do not mean that we are in any 
 special danger of looking upon them as enemies. 
 That is no doubt the temptation of some persons. I 
 have known both boys and men who have looked at 
 books with a kind of rage and hatred, as if they were 
 the natural foes of the human species. I am far from 
 thinking that these were bad boys or bad men; nor 
 were they stupid. Some of them I have found very 
 intelligent, and have learnt much from them. I could 
 trace the dishke in some cases to a cause which I 
 thought honourable. The dogs and horses which they 
 did care about, and were always on good terms with, 
 they regarded as living creatures, who could receive 
 affection, and in some measure could return it. Their 
 horses could carry them over hills and moors ; their 
 dogs had been out with them from morning till ni^ht, 
 and took interest in the pursuit that was interesting 
 them. Books seemed to them dead things in stiff 
 
 ^ Delivered first at EUesmere, at the request of Archdeacon 
 Allen, in the autumn of 1856 ; afterwards at Harrow. 
 
 B 
 
 01
 
 2 THE FEIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. [i. 
 
 bindings, that might be patted and caressed ever so 
 much and would take no notice, that knew nothing of 
 toil or pleasure, of hill or stubble-field, of sunrise or 
 sunsettiug, of the earnest chase or the feast after it. 
 Was it not better to leave them in the shelves which 
 seemed to be made for them ? Was it not treating 
 them most respectfully not to finger or soil them, but 
 to secure the services of a housemaid who should 
 occasionally dust them ? 
 
 I frankly own that I have great sympathy with these 
 feelings, and with those who entertain them. If books 
 are only dead things, if they do not speak to one, or 
 answer one when one speaks to them, if they have 
 nothing to do with the common things that we are 
 busy with — with the sky over our head, and the gi'ound 
 under our feet — I think that they had better stay on 
 the shelves ; I think any horse or dog, or tree or flower, 
 is a better companion for human beings than they are. 
 And therefore I say again, it is not with those who 
 count them enemies that I find fault. They have 
 much to say for themselves ; if their premises are right 
 they are right in their conclusions. What I regret is 
 that many of us spend much of our time in reading 
 books, and in talking of books — that we like nothing 
 worse than the reputation of being indifferent to them, 
 and nothing better than the reputation of knowing a 
 great deal about them ; and yet that, after all, we do 
 not know them in the same way as we know our fellow- 
 creatures, not even in the way we know any dumb 
 animal that we walk with or play with. This is a 
 gTeat misfortune, in my opinion, and one which I am 
 afraid is increasing as what we call " the taste for 
 literature" increases. I cannot enter into all the 
 different reasons which lead me to think so, nor can 
 I trace the evil to its source. But I will mention one 
 characteristic of the reading in our times, which must 
 have much to do with it. 
 
 A large part of our reading is given to Reviews, and 
 Magazines, and Newspapers. Now I am certain that
 
 I.] THE FKIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 3 
 
 these must have a very important use. We should all 
 of us be trying to find out what the use of them is, 
 because it is clear that we are born into an age in 
 which they exercise great power; and that fact must 
 bring a great responsibility, not only upon those who 
 wield the power, but upon us who have to see that it 
 does us good, and not hnrt. But whatever good efiects 
 works of this kind may have produced, we certainly 
 are not able to make them our friends. Perhaps you 
 will wonder that I should say that a newspaper or a 
 review is a much less awful thing than a quarto or a 
 folio — I mean of course to those who are not going 
 themselves to be cut up in it, but only to have the 
 pleasure of seeing their friends and neighbours cut up. 
 Moreover the wi-iter of the newspaper or magazine, or 
 review, commonly assumes an off-hand, dashing air. 
 He has a number of colloquial phrases, and stockjests, 
 which seem intended to put us at our ease. He 
 speaks in a loud, rattling tone, like one who wishes to 
 shake hands the first time you meet him. But then, 
 when you stretch out your hand, what is it you meet ? 
 Not that of a man, but of a shadow, of something that 
 calls itself " We." Be friends with a " We " ! How is 
 that -possible ? If the mist is scattered, if we discover 
 that there is an actual human being there, then the 
 case is altered altogether. If Lord Jeffrey, or Mr. 
 Macaulay, or Sir James Stephen, publishes articles 
 which he has written in a Review, with his name 
 affixed to them, or if a " Times Correspondent " whom, 
 in our superstition, we had supposed to be one of the 
 fairies or genii that descend from some other world 
 to our planet, appears with an ordinary name, and 
 dressed like a mortal, why, then we feel we are on fair 
 terms. A person is presenting himself to us, one Avho 
 may have a right to judge us, but who is willing to be 
 tried himself by his peers. That, you see, is because 
 the We has become /. All his apparent dignity is 
 dissolved ; we can recognize him as a fellow-creature. 
 Now, I do not say this the least in condemnation of 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. [i. 
 
 Reviewers, or of any person who for any reasons what- 
 ever thinks it better to call himself JFe than /. I 
 only say that there is no friendship under such con- 
 ditions as this; that we never can make any book our 
 friend until we look upon it as the work of an /. It 
 is the principle which I hope to maintain throughout 
 this lecture, and therefore I begin with stating it at 
 once. I want to speak to you about a few books 
 which exhibit very transparently, I think, what sort 
 of a person he was who wrote them, which show him 
 to us. I think we shall find that there is the charm of 
 the book, the worth of the book. He may be "writing 
 about a great many things ; but there is a man who 
 Amtes ; and when you get acquainted with that man, 
 you get acquainted with the book. It is no more a 
 collection of letters and leaves ; it is a friend. 
 
 I mean to speak entirely, or almost entirely, of 
 English books. And I shall begin with a writer who 
 seems to offer a great exception to the remark I have 
 just made. If I thought he was really an exception, I 
 should be much puzzled, or rather I should give up 
 my position altogether. For, since he is the greatest 
 and the best known of all English authors, for him to 
 be an instance against me would be a clear proof that 
 I was wrong. We continually hear this observation, 
 " William Shakespeare is not to be found in any of his 
 plays." It is his great and wonderful distinction that 
 he is not. Othello speaks his word, Hamlet his, 
 Bottom the Weaver his ; Desdemona, Imogen, Portia, 
 each her word. But Shakespeare does not intrude 
 himself into any of their places ; he does not want us 
 to know what he thought about this matter or that. 
 If you look into one comer or another for him, he is not 
 there. It would appear, then, according to my maxim, 
 as if Shakespeare could never be his reader's friend. 
 It would appear as if he were the great precedent for 
 all newspaper writers and reviewers, as if he were over- 
 looking mankind just as they do, and had the best pos- 
 sible right to describe himself as a We, and not as an /.
 
 I.] THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 5 
 
 Well, that sounds very plausible, and, like every- 
 thing that sounds plausible, there is a truth at the 
 bottom of it. But that the truth is not this, I think 
 the feeling and judgment of the people of England (I 
 might say of the continents of Europe and of America) 
 might convince you, without any arguments of mine. 
 For they have been so sure that there was a William 
 Shakespeare, they were so certain that he had a local 
 habitation and a name, that they have rummaged 
 parish registers, hunted Doctors' Commons for wills, 
 made pilgrimages to Stratford-upon-Avon, put together 
 traditions about old houses and shops, that they might 
 make, if possible, some clear image of him in their 
 minds. I do not know that they have succeeded very 
 well. The facts of his biography are few. A good 
 deal of imagination has been needed to put them 
 together, and to fill up the blanks in them. I do not 
 suppose registers, or wills, or old houses, will give 
 many more answers concerning him. But that only 
 shows, I think, how very clear a witness his own 
 works give, even when the outward information is 
 ever so scanty, of the man that he was, and of the 
 characteristics which distinguished him from his fel- 
 lows. If you ask me how I reconcile this assertion 
 with the undoubted fact that he does not put himself 
 forward as other dramatists do, and give his own 
 opinions instead of allowing the persons of his drama 
 to utter theirs, I should answer. Have you found that 
 the man who is in the greatest hurry to tell you all 
 that he thinks about all possible things, is the friend 
 that is best worth knowing? Have you found that 
 the one who talked most about himself and his own 
 doings is the most worth knowing ? Do you not 
 generally become rather exhausted with men of his 
 kind ? Do not you say sometimes, in Shakespeare's 
 own words, or rather in Falstaft's, " I do see to the 
 bottom of this same Justice Shallow; he has told me 
 all he has to tell. There is no reserve in him, nothing 
 that is worth searching after " ? On the other hand.
 
 6 THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. [i. 
 
 have you not met with some men who very rarely 
 spoke about their own impressions and thoughts, who 
 seldom laid down the law, and yet who you were sure 
 had a fund of wisdom within, and who made you 
 partakers of it by the light which they threw on the 
 earth in which they were dwelling, especially by the 
 kindly, humorous, pathetic way in which they in- 
 terested you about your fellow-men, and made you 
 acquainted with them ? I do not say that this is the 
 only class of friends which one would wish for. One 
 likes to have some who in quiet moments are more 
 directly communicative about their own sufferings 
 and struggles. But certainly you would not say that 
 men of the other class are not very pleasant, and 
 very profitable. Of this class Shakespeare is the most 
 remarkable specimen. Instead of being a Reviewer 
 who sits above the universe, and applies his own 
 narrow rules to the members of it, he throws himself 
 with the heartiest and most genial sympathy into the 
 feelings of all, he understands their position and cir- 
 cumstances, he perceives how each must have been 
 affected by them. Instead of being a big, imaginary 
 We, he is so much of a man himself that he can enter 
 into the manhood of people who are the farthest off 
 from him, and with whom he has the least to do. 
 And so, I believe, his books may become most valuable 
 friends to us — to us especially who ought to be 
 acquainted with what is going on with all kinds of 
 people. Every now and then, I think (especially 
 perhaps in the characters of Hamlet and of Prospero), 
 one discovers signs how Shakespeare as an individual 
 man had fought and suffered. I quite admit, however, 
 that his main work is not to do this, but to heljD us in 
 knowing ourselves — the past history of our land, the 
 people we are continually meeting. And any book 
 that does this is surely a friend. 
 
 Before I leave Shakespeare, I would speak of the 
 way in which he made friends with books. Perhaps 
 I can do it best by comparing his use of them with
 
 I.] THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 7 
 
 the use which was made of them by a very clever 
 and accomphshed contemporary of his. Ben Jonson, 
 though he was the son of a bricklayer, made himself 
 a thoroughly good Latin and Greek scholar. He read 
 the best Latin books, and the commentaries which 
 illustrated them ; he wrote two plays on subjects 
 taken from Roman history. Very striking subjects 
 they were. The hero of one was Catiline, who tried 
 to overthrow the social order of the Republic ; the 
 hero of the other was Sejanus, who represents, by his 
 grandeur and his fall, the very character and spirit of 
 the Empire in the days of Tiberius. In dealing with 
 these subjects, Ben Jonson had the help of two of the 
 greatest Roman authors, both of them possessing re- 
 markable powers of narration ; one of them a man 
 of earnest character, subtle insight, deep reflection. 
 Though few men in his day understood these authors, 
 and the government and circumstances of Rome, better 
 than Jonson. Though he was a skilful and expe- 
 rienced play-writer, most readers are glad when they 
 have got Catiline and Sejanus fairly done with. They 
 do not find that they have received any distinct im- 
 pressions from them of Roman life ; to learn what it 
 was they must go to the authors whom he has copied. 
 Shakespeare wrote three plays on Roman subjects, — 
 Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra. He 
 knew very little of Latin, and the materials he had 
 to work with were a tolerable translation of Livy's 
 History, and a capital one of Plutarch's Lives. With 
 no aid but these, and his knowledge of Warwickshire 
 peasants, and London citizens, he has taught us more 
 of Romans — he has made us more at home in their 
 city, and at their fireside — than the best historians who 
 lived upon the soil are able to do. Jonson studied 
 their books ; Shakespeare made friends of them. He 
 did just the same with our old Chronicles. He read 
 of King John, of Richard II., of John of Gaunt, of 
 Harry of Lancaster, of Hotspur and Owen Glendower, 
 of the good Humphrey of Gloucester and the dark
 
 8 THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS, [i. 
 
 Cardinal Beaufort, of Wolsey and of Catherine. He 
 read of them, and they stood up before him, real armed 
 men, or graceful sorrowing women. Instead of being 
 dead letters they all became living persons ; not ap- 
 pearing in solitary grandeur, but forming groups ; not 
 each with a fixed immovable nature, but acted upon 
 and educated by all the circumstances of their times ; 
 not dwelling in an imaginary world, but warmed by 
 the sun of Italy, or pinched by the chilly nights of 
 Denmark — essentially men such as are to be found in 
 all countries and in all ages, and therefore exhibiting 
 all the varieties of temperament and constitution 
 which belong to each age, and to each country. 
 
 Shakespeare's mind was formed in an age when men 
 were at work, and when they wanted books to explain 
 and illustrate their work. He lived on into another, 
 when men began to value books for their own sakes. 
 James I., who was called a Solomon (and who would 
 have deserved that name if Solomon had not considered 
 that his wisdom was given him that he might rule his 
 subjects well, and if James had not supposed that his 
 was given for every purpose except that), was the 
 great promoter of this worship of books. But they 
 did not speak to Englishmen of that which was going 
 on around them, as they had done in Ehzabeth's time. 
 Learned people drew a line about themselves, and 
 signified to common people who had business that 
 they must keep their distance. Still there were many 
 influences which counteracted this tendency. One 
 man, who was not free from it by any means, helped 
 to check it by opening to his fellows a new and real 
 world. Lord Bacon found that they knew the secrets 
 of Nature only through books, that they did not come 
 freely and directly into contact with them; he showed 
 them how they might converse with the things they 
 saw, how they might know them as they were in 
 themselves, instead of only seeing them distorted by 
 their spectacles. That was a great work to do; and 
 as I said, it was never more wanted than just at this
 
 I.] THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 9 
 
 time, when men were in danger of falling so much in 
 love with the letters in books, as to forget into what a 
 universe of mysteries God had put His creature man, 
 that he might search them out. Bacon reverenced 
 the study of Nature more than he did the study of 
 Man ; and no wonder ! For he found out what a 
 beautiful order there was in Nature ; and though I 
 believe he looked for an order in human affairs too, 
 and sometimes discerned, and always wished for it, yet 
 there is no denying that he had a keen eye for the 
 disorders and wrong-doings of his fellow-men, and 
 that he rather reconciled himself to them than sought 
 to remedy them. I refer to him, because I fancy 
 that many have a notion of his books on the Inter- 
 pretation of Nature as very valuable for scientific 
 men, and his books on Morals and Politics as very 
 wise for statesmen and men of the world, but not as 
 friends. They form this notion because they suppose, 
 that the more we know of Bacon himself, the less 
 sympathy we should have with him. I should be 
 sorry to hold this opinion, because I owe him immense 
 gratitude ; and I could not cherish it if I thought of 
 him, even as the sagest of book-makers and not as a 
 human being. I should be sorry to hold it, because if 
 I did not find in him a man who deserved reverence 
 and love, I should not feel either the indignation or 
 the sorrow which I desire to feel for his misdoings. 
 Niebuhr said of Cicero that he knew his faults as well 
 as anybody, but that he felt as much grieved when 
 people spoke of them as if he were his brother. That 
 is the right way to feel about great men who are 
 departed, and I do not think that an Englishman 
 should feel otherwise about Bacon. It is hard to 
 measure the exact criminaUty of his acts ; one of the 
 truest sentences ever passed on them was his own. 
 His words are faithful transcripts of both his strength 
 and weakness. There are some, especially of his dedi- 
 cations, which one cannot read without a sense of 
 burning shame; there are passages in the very
 
 10 THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. [r. 
 
 treatises which those dedications introduce that it 
 does one's heart good to remember, and which we are 
 inwardly sure must have come from the heart of him 
 who put them into language. He does not give us 
 at all the genial impressions of other men which 
 Shakespeare gives, but he detects very shrewd tricks 
 which we practise upon ourselves. His worldly wis- 
 dom is what we have most to dread, lest he should 
 make us contented with the wrong in ourselves, and 
 in the society about us, and should teach us to admire 
 low models. But if we apply to our moral pursuits 
 the zeal for truth, and the method of seeking it and of 
 escaping from our own conceits, which he imparts to us 
 in his physical lessons, if we consider his own errors, 
 and his punishment for tolerating and embracing the 
 base maxims of his time, we shall find him all the safer 
 as a guide because we have felt with him as a friend. 
 When we do that we can always appeal from the man 
 to himself ; we can say : " Thank you heartily for what 
 you have said to me ; but there were clouds about you 
 when you were here ; you did not always walk with 
 straight feet, and with your eyes turned to the light. 
 Now you know better, and I will make use of what 
 you tell me, as well as all that I can learn about your 
 doings, as warnings to keep me from wandering to the 
 right or to the left." 
 
 I might speak of other books in this bookish time 
 of James I., which many of us have found valuable 
 and genial friends ; as, for instance, the poems of 
 George Herbert, which nobody that ever reads them 
 can think of merely as poems ; they are so completely 
 the utterances of the heart of an affectionate, faithful, 
 earnest man, they speak so directly to whatever is best 
 in ourselves, and give us such friendly and kindly 
 admonitions about what is worst. But I must go on 
 to the next period, which was a period of action and 
 strife, when men could no more regard ^vriting books, 
 or even reading them, as an amusement ; when the 
 past must be studied for the sake of the present, or not
 
 I.] THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 11 
 
 at all. John Milton belongs to that time. He was the 
 most learned of all our poets, the one who from his 
 childhood upwards was a devourer of Greek and Latin 
 books, of the romances of the Middle Ages, of French 
 and Italian poetry, above all of the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 All these became his friends ; for all of them connected 
 themselves with the thoughts that occupied men in his 
 own time, with the deep religious and political con- 
 troversies which were about to bring on a civil war. 
 Many persons think that the side which he took in 
 that war must hinder us from making his books our 
 friends ; that we may esteem him as a gi'eat poet, but 
 that we cannot meet him cordially as a man. No one 
 is more likely to entertain that opinion than an English 
 clergyman, for Milton dealt his blows unsparingly 
 enough, and we come in for at least our full share of 
 them. I know all that, and yet I must confess that I 
 have found him a friend, and a very valuable friend, 
 even when I have differed from him most and he has 
 made me smart most. It does not strike me that on 
 the whole we profit most by the friends who flatter us. 
 We may be stirred up to the recollection of our duty 
 by those who speak stern and terrible words of us and 
 of our class. If we are persuaded that they are utterly 
 wrong in condemning the institutions to which we are 
 attached, we may often admit that they are very right 
 in condemning us for the sins which hinder men from 
 seeing the worth of those institutions. I do not know 
 any one who makes us feel more than Milton does, the 
 grandeur of the ends which we ought to keep always 
 before us, and therefore our own pettiness and want of 
 courage and nobleness in pursuing them. I believe he 
 failed to discern many of the intermediate relations 
 which God has established between Himself and us ; 
 but I know no one who teaches us more habitually, 
 that disobedience to the Divine will is the seat of all 
 misery to men. I would rather converse with him as 
 a friend than talk of him as a poet ; because then we 
 put ourselves into a position to receive the best wisdom
 
 12 THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. [i. 
 
 which he has to give us, and that wisdom helps to 
 purge away whatever dross is mingled with it ; whereas 
 if we merely contemplate him at a distance as a great 
 genius, we shall receive some powerful influence from 
 him, but we shall not be in a condition to compare one 
 thing that he says to us with another. And to say 
 the truth, I do not know what genius is, except it be 
 that which begets some life in those who come in 
 contact with it, which kindles some warmth in them. 
 If there is genius in a poem, it must have been first in 
 the poet ; and if it was in the poet, it must have been 
 because he was not a stock or a stone, but a breathing 
 and suffering man. And there is no writer whose 
 books more force upon us the thought of him as a 
 person than Milton's. There are few j)assages in his 
 prose writings, full as they are of gorgeous passages, 
 more beautiful than that in which he defends himself 
 from the charge of entering from choice or vanity into 
 controversies, by alleging the far different object and 
 kind of writing to which from his youth upwards he 
 had desired to devote himself. And in his latest poem 
 of " Samson Agonistes," where what he had learnt from 
 the play-"\vriters of Greece is wonderfully raised, and 
 mellowed, and interpreted by what he had learnt from 
 the Old Testament, he himself speaks to us in every 
 line. He transfers himself to the prison of Samson 
 in Gaza; he is the blind, downcast, broken man whom 
 God appears to have cast off. The thought of God 
 as the DeUverer gives him a consolation which nothing 
 else can give ; he looks forward to some triumph which 
 God will give to His race, as the only hope for himself. 
 I have dealt some time upon these " friends " because 
 Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton are the greatest names in 
 our literature, and therefore it was important for my 
 purpose to show you that their books do fulfil the 
 purpose which I have said all books ought to fulfil. 
 I might very fairly have gone back, and spoken to you 
 of older writers than these. I might have spoken of 
 the time of our Edward III., and have given you some
 
 I.] THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 13 
 
 proofs that our first poet, Chaucer, was a cordial, 
 genial, friendly man, who could tell us a great many 
 things which we want to know about his own time, 
 and could also break down the barrier between his 
 time and ours, and make us feel, that, though our dress 
 may be very much unlike theirs, and our houses a 
 good deal better, and our language a little less French, 
 yet that on the whole our fathers worked at much the 
 same trades as we do, fell into the same kind of sins, 
 looked up at the same skies, had the same wants in 
 their hearts, and required that they should be satisfied 
 in the same way. I might have spoken to you also of 
 some of the men who flourished at the time of the 
 Reformation — of Latimer, for instance, whose broad, 
 simple, humorous sermons address themselves to all the 
 common symjjathies of Englishmen, and are as free 
 from starch and buckram as any one could wish. 
 I might have spoken to you also of some of Shake- 
 speare's contemporaries, especially of that delightful 
 and instructive companion, Spenser's " Faery Queen," 
 which makes us feel that without stej^ping a yard from 
 our native English ground, or deserting any of our 
 common occupations, we may be, ay, and must be, 
 engaged in a great fight with invisible enemies, and 
 that we have invisible champions on our side. But 
 as I have not time to speak of many books to-night, 
 I have passed over these, and have begun at once 
 with those which, for one reason or another, people 
 are most likely to think of as having claims upon 
 their respect rather than upon their friendship. That 
 must be my reason too for not dwelling upon a book 
 belonging to Milton's time, which many people would 
 at once recognize as a delightful friend ; I mean Izaak 
 Walton's " Angler." Knowing nothing of his craft, I 
 should only betray my ignorance by entering upon it, 
 and should lessen the pleasure which some of you, I 
 dare say, have received from its quiet descriptions 
 and devout reflections. But I am glad to remember 
 that there is such a book in our libraries, even if I
 
 14 THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. [i. 
 
 understand very little of it, because it is one of the 
 links between the life of the woods and streams and 
 the life of the study, which it would be a great misfor- 
 tune for us to lose. 
 
 A link between this age and the one that follows it 
 is found in Thomas Fuller, one of the liveliest and yet, 
 in the inmost heart of him, one of the most serious 
 writers one can meet with. I speak of this writer 
 partly because there is no one who is so resolute that 
 we should treat him as a friend, and not as a solemn 
 dictator. By some unexpected jest, or comical turn 
 of exj^ression, he disappoints your purpose of receiving 
 his words as if they were fixed in print, and asserts his 
 right to talk with you, and convey his subtle wisdom 
 in his own quaint and peculiar dialect. 
 
 Fuller uses his wit to make his reader a friend. The 
 writers of Charles II.'s court used their wit to j)rove 
 that there could be no such thing as friendship with 
 either books or men, that it was altogether a ridiculous 
 obsolete sentiment. They established their point so 
 far as they themselves were concerned ; one has no 
 right to ask of them what they had not to give. But 
 their punishment is a singular one. They wished to 
 pass for men of the world, and not for vulgar book- 
 wrights. We are obliged to regard them as bookwrights 
 simply, and not as men at all. There is one exception. 
 John Dryden stands apart from the men whose vices 
 infected him, not merely because his style in prose and 
 verse was immeasurably more vigorous than theirs, but 
 because his confused life, and his evil companions, did 
 not utterly destroy his heart. I do not know that one 
 could make the writings of John Dryden friends ; so 
 many of the very cleverest of them are bitter satires, 
 containing a great deal of shrewd observation, some- 
 times just, as well as severe, but certainly not binding 
 us by any strong ties of affection to their author. Yet 
 there is such a tragedy in the history of a mind so full 
 of power as his, and so unable to guide itself amidst 
 the shoals and quicksands of his time, that I believe
 
 I.] THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 15 
 
 we need not, and that we cannot, speak of him merely 
 with the admiration which is due to his gifts ; we 
 must feel for him somewhat of the pity that is akin to 
 love. Mr. Macaulay charges Dryden with changing 
 his religion chiefly that he might get a pension from 
 James II. I do not believe that was his motive, or 
 that the lesson from his life would be worth as much 
 as it is if it had been. If we compare his " Religio 
 Laici " which he wrote in his former, with his " Hind 
 and Panther" which expressed his later opinions, I 
 think we may perceive that his mind was unhinged, 
 that he found nothing fixed or certain in heaven or 
 earth, and that he drifted naturally wherever the tide 
 of events carried him. That is the fate which may 
 befall many who have no right to be described as 
 mercenary time-servers. 
 
 However, one is glad to escape from this age, which 
 had become a very detestable one, and to find ourselves 
 in one which, though not exemplary for goodness, pro- 
 duced books of which we can very well make friends. 
 If you take up the " Spectator," or the " Guardian," 
 your first feeling is that the writers in it wish to culti- 
 vate your friendship. They have thrown off the stiff 
 manners of those who reckon it their chief business to 
 write books ; at the same time they do not affect to be 
 men of the world despising books. Their object is to 
 bring books and people of the world into a good under- 
 standing with each other; to make fine ladies and 
 gentlemen somewhat wiser and better behaved by 
 feeding them with good and wholesome literature ; 
 to show the student what things are going on about 
 him, that he may not be a mere pedant and recluse. 
 I do not mean that this was the deliberate purpose of 
 Addison and Steele. It was the natural effect of their 
 position that they took this course. They had been 
 educated as scholars; they entered into civil life, and 
 became members of Parliament. The two characters 
 were mixed in them, and when they wrote books they 
 could not help showing that they knew something of
 
 16 THE FEIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. [r. 
 
 meu. The two men were well fitted to work together. 
 Addison had the calmer and clearer intellect; he had 
 inherited a respect for English faith and morality. 
 Steele, with a more wavering conduct, had perhaps 
 even more reverence in his inmost heart for goodness. 
 Between them they appeared just formed to give a 
 turn to the mind of their age ; not presenting to society 
 a very heroical standard, but raising it far above the 
 level to which it had sunk, and is apt to sink. 
 
 The " Spectator " and the " Guardian " have some- 
 times been called the beginning of our periodical liter- 
 ature. Perhaps they are ; but they are very unlike 
 what we describe by that name in our day. There is 
 no We in them. Though the papers have letters of 
 the alphabet, and not names, put to them, and though 
 they profess to be members of a club, each writer calls 
 himself /. You can hardly conceive what a difference 
 it would make in the pleasure with which you read 
 any paper, if the singular pronoun were changed for 
 the plural. The good-humour of the writing would 
 evaporate immediately. You would no longer find 
 that you were in the presence of a kindly, friendly 
 observer, who was going about with you, and pointing 
 out to you this folly of the town, and that pleasant 
 characteristic of a country gentleman's life. All would 
 be the dry, hard criticism of some distant being, who 
 did not take you into his counsels at all, but merely 
 told you what you were to think or not to think. 
 And with the good-humour, what we call the httmour, 
 when we do not prefix the adjective to it, would also 
 disappear. Mr. Thackeray, the most competent person 
 possible for such a task, has introduced Addison and 
 Steele among the humorists of England, and has shown 
 very clearly both how the humour of the one differed 
 from that of the other, and how unlike both were to 
 Dean Swift, who is the best and most perfect specimen 
 of ill-humour, — that is to say, of a man of the keenest 
 intellect and the most exquisite clearness of expression, 
 who is utterly out of sorts with the world and with
 
 I.] THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 17 
 
 himself. Addison is on good terms with both. He 
 amuses himself with people, not because he dislikes 
 them, but because he likes them, and is not discom- 
 posed by their absurdities. He does not go very far 
 down into the hearts of them ; he never discovers any 
 of the deeper necessities which there are in human 
 beings. But everything that is upon the surface of 
 their lives, and all the little cross-currents which 
 disturb them, no one s6es so accurately, or discribes 
 so gracefully. In certain moods of our mind, there- 
 fore, we have here a inost agreeable friend, one who 
 tasks us to no great effort, who does not set us on 
 encountering any terrible evils, or carrying forward 
 any high purpose, but whom one must always admire 
 for his quietness and composure ; who can teach us to 
 observe a multitude of things that we should else pass 
 by, and reminds us that in man's life, as in nature, 
 there are days of calm and sunshine as well as of storm. 
 But though one may have a very pleasant and use- 
 ful conversation with this kind-hearted " Spectator " 
 now and then, I do not think that such conversation 
 would brace one to the hard work of life, or would 
 enable one to sympathise with those who are engaged 
 in it. We must remember that a very considerable 
 majority of the world do not ride in coaches, as nearly 
 all those we read of in the " Spectator " do ; that to 
 earn bread by the sweat of the brow is the common 
 heritage of the sons of Adam, and that it is a great 
 misfortune not to understand that necessity, even if 
 circumstances have exempted us from it. For that 
 reason some of us may welcome another friend, far less 
 happy and genial than Addison, often very rough and 
 cross-grained, with rude inward affection. Old Samuel 
 Johnson had none of Addison's soft training. He had 
 nothing to do with the House of Commons, except 
 as a contraband reporter; he had not the remotest 
 chance of being a Secretary of State even if he had not 
 been a fierce Tory, and in the reign of George H. all 
 but a Jacobite. With only booksellers for his patrons,
 
 18 THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. [i. 
 
 obliged to seek his bread from hand to mouth by writ- 
 ing for them what they prescribed, with a bad diges- 
 tion, a temper anything but serene, a faith certainly 
 as earnest as Addison's, but which contemplated its 
 objects on the dark and not on the sunny side, he offers 
 the gTeatest contrast one can conceive to the happy 
 well-conditioned man of whom I have just been speak- 
 ing. The opposition between them is all the more 
 remarkable because the "Rambler" was formed on the 
 model of the "Spectator," and because Johnson as 
 nmch as Addison belongs to what ought to be called 
 the Club Period of English literature. I do not suppose 
 anyone will be bold enough to vindicate that name, 
 be it good or evil, for our day, merely because gentle- 
 men are now able to eat solitary dinners, hear news, 
 and sleep over newspapers and magazines, in very 
 magnificent houses in Pall Mall. The genuine Chib, 
 though its locality might be in some dark alley out of 
 Fleet Street, was surely that in which men of different 
 occupations after the toil of the day met to exchange 
 thoughts. In that world Johnson flourished even more 
 than Addison. The latter is accused by Pope of giving 
 his little senate laws ; but Johnson's senate contained 
 many gToat men who yet listened to his oracles with 
 reverence. And those oracles were not delivered in 
 sentences of three clauses endinsr in a lono- word in 
 " tion," like those papers in the " Rambler " which are 
 so well parodied in the " Rejected Addresses." I think 
 that young men ought undoubtedly to be early warned 
 of these pompous sentences, not because it is worse to 
 imitate this style than any other — for we have no 
 business to imitate any (our style must be our own, or 
 it is worth nothing) — but because it is particularly 
 easy to catch this habit of waiting, and to fancy there 
 is substance when there is only wind. But I cannot 
 admit that Johnson s most inflated sentences contain 
 mere wind. He had something to put into them ; they 
 did express what he felt, and what he was, better than 
 simpler, more English, more agreeable ones would have
 
 I.] THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 19 
 
 done. He adopted them naturally; they are part of 
 himself; if we want to be acquainted with him, we 
 must not find fault with them. And when he is de- 
 scribing scenes, as in " Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," 
 he is often quite free and picturesque ; when he is writ- 
 ing about business, as in his " Falkland Island," he 
 does not let his eloquence, which in that book is often 
 very splendid, hinder him from being pointed and 
 direct in his blows. He falls into what some people 
 call King Cambyses' vein chiefly when he is morahzing 
 (Ml the condition of the world, and the disappointment 
 of all man's hopes and projects in it. In his club, no 
 one could speak with more straightness, wasting no 
 words, but bringing out the thing he wants to say in 
 the strongest and most distinct dress that could be 
 found. One may not agree in half of the opinions he 
 expresses, and may think that he dehvers them very 
 dogmatically. If one looked either at his writings or 
 at Boswell's Life of him merely as books, one would go 
 away very discontented and very angry ; but when one 
 thinks of both as exhibiting to us a man, the case be- 
 comes altogether different. We are all greatly indebted, 
 I think, to Mr. Carlyle, for having determined that we 
 should contemplate Johnson in this way, and not chiefly 
 as a critic or a lexicographer. We may judge of him 
 in those characters very differently; but in himself 
 Mr. Carlyle has shoAvn most clearly that he deserves 
 our sympathy and our reverence. 
 
 There were two members of Johnson's club to each 
 of whom he was sincerely attached, and who were 
 attached to each other, though in their habits, occupa- 
 tions, talents, modes of thinking, they were as unhke 
 him, and unlike each other, as any two men could be. 
 They had, indeed, a common origin — Oliver Goldsmith 
 and Edmund Burke were both Irishmen. But Gold- 
 smith carried his country about with him wherever he 
 went ; he was always blundering, and reckless, and 
 good-natured. Burke only showed where he had been 
 born by his zeal for the improvement of his country 
 
 C 2
 
 20 THE FEIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. [i. 
 
 whenever its affairs came under discussion. I believe 
 that these two men, vrith. tlie vast differences that 
 there are between them, may both become our friends, 
 and that we shall not thoroughly enjoy the " Deserted 
 Village," or the " Vicar of Wakefield," or the " Speeches 
 on American Taxation," or the " Reflections on the 
 French Revolution," unless they do. All Goldsmith's 
 friends were always scolding him, laughing at him, and 
 learning from him. They found that he had a fund of 
 knowledge which he had picked up he could not tell 
 how, but apparently by sjmipathizing with all the 
 people that he came into contact with, and so getting 
 to be really acquainted with them. He compiled his- 
 tories without much learning about the people he was 
 writing of ; yet he did not make them false or foolish, 
 because he had more notion than many dihgent his- 
 torians have, of what men must be like in any 
 latitudes. In his poetry he never goes out of his depth ; 
 he speaks of things which he has seen and felt himself, 
 and so it tells us of him if it does not tell us of much 
 else. In spite of all his troubles he is as good-natured 
 as Addison ; only he mixed Avith a different class of 
 people from Addison, and can tell us of country vicars 
 and their wives and daughters, though he may not 
 know much of a Sir Roger de Coverley. His books, 
 I think, must be always pleasant, as well as profitable, 
 fi-iends, pro^dded we do not expect from them, as we 
 ought not to expect from any friend, more than they 
 profess to give. 
 
 Burke is a friend of another order. Johnson said of 
 him that if you met him under a gateway in a shower 
 of rain you must perceive that he was a remarkable 
 man. I do not think we can take up the most insigni- 
 ficant fragment of the most insignificant speech or 
 pamphlet he ever put forth, vdthout aniving at the 
 same conviction. But he does what is better than 
 make us acknowledge him as a remarkable man. He 
 makes us acknowledge that we are small men, that we 
 have talked about subjects of which we had little know-
 
 I.] THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 21 
 
 ledge, and the principles of wliicli "sve had imperfectly 
 sotmded. 
 
 He told the electors of Bristol that they might reject 
 him if they pleased, but that he should maintain his 
 position as an EngKsh statesman and an honest man. 
 They did reject him, of course, but his speech remains 
 as a model for all true men to follow, as a warning to 
 all who adopt another course, that they may make 
 friends for the moment, but that they will not have a 
 friend in theii* o^sti conscience, and that their books, if 
 they leave any, will be no friends to those who read 
 them in the times to come. 
 
 Away from the club in which Johnson, Burke, and 
 Goldsmith were wont to meet, in a little villacre in 
 Buckinghamshire, dwelt another poet, who was not un- 
 interested in then- doings, and who had in his youth 
 mixed with London wits. WiUiam Cowper inspired 
 much friendship among men, and still more among 
 women, during his lifetime ; they found him the pleas- 
 antest of all companions in his bright hours, and they 
 did not desert him in his dark hours. His books have 
 been friends to a gTeat many since he left the earth, 
 because they exhibit him very faithfully in both ; some 
 of his letters and some of his poems being full of mirth 
 and quiet glatlness, some of them revealing a^vful 
 struggles and despair. Whatever estimate may be 
 formed of his poetry in comioarison with that of earher 
 or later "sviiters, ever}^ one must feel that his Enghsh 
 is that of a scholar and a gentleman — that he had the 
 purest enjoyment of domestic hfe, and of what one may 
 call the domestic or still life of nature. One is sure 
 also that he had the most earnest faith, which he 
 cherished for others when he could find no comfort in 
 it for himself. These would be sufficient explanations 
 of the interest which he has awakened in so many 
 simple and honest readers who turn to books for sym- 
 pathy and fellowship, and do not like a writer at all 
 the worse because he also demands their sympathy 
 with him. Cowper is one of the strongest instances
 
 22 THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. [i. 
 
 and proofs, liow much more qualities of this kind affect 
 Englishmen than any others. The gentleness of his 
 life might lead some to suspect him of effeminacy ; 
 but the old Westminster school-boy and cricketer comes 
 out in the midst of his Meditation on Sofas ; and the 
 deep tragedy which was at the bottom of his whole 
 life, and which grew more terrible as the shadows of 
 evening closed upon him, shows that there may be 
 unutterable struggles in those natures which seem least 
 formed for the rough work of the world. In one of his 
 later poems he spoke of himself as one 
 
 " Who, tempest-tossed, and wrecked at last, 
 Comes home to port no more." 
 
 But his nephew, who was with him on his death-bed, 
 says that there was a look of holy surprise on his 
 features after his eyes were closed, as if there were very 
 bright visions for him behind the veil that was im- 
 penetrable to him here. 
 
 I have thus given you a few hints about the way in 
 which books may be friends. I have taken my ex- 
 amples from the books which are most likely to come 
 in our way ; and I have chosen them from different 
 kinds of authors, that I may not impose my own tastes 
 upon other people. I purposely avoid saying anything 
 about more recent writers, who have lately left the 
 world or are in it still, because private notions and pre- 
 judices for or against the men are likely to mingle with 
 our thoughts of their books. I do not mean that this 
 is not the case with the older writers too. I think I 
 have shown you that I have no wish to forget the men 
 in the books — that my great desire is that we should 
 connect them together. But if we have known any- 
 thing about the writers, or our fathers have known 
 anything about them, if we have heard their acts and 
 words gossiped about, they are not such good tests of 
 the way in which we may discern the Authors in their 
 books, and learn what they are from their books. But 
 as I began this lecture with some animadversions upon
 
 I.] THE FEIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. 23 
 
 the tendency of one part of our popular literature to 
 weaken our feeling that books are our friends, I ought 
 to say that I am very far indeed from thinking that this 
 is the effect which the more eminent writers among us 
 produce. In their different ways, I believe most of 
 them have addressed themselves to our human sym- 
 pathies, and have claimed a place for their books, not 
 upon our shelves, but in our hearts. Of some, both 
 j)rose writers and poets, this is eminently true. Per- 
 haps, from feeling the depressing influence of the Wc- 
 teaching upon all our minds, they have taken even 
 overmuch pains to show that each one of them comes 
 before us as an /, and will not meet us upon any other 
 terms. Many, I hope, who have established this inter- 
 course with us will keep it with our children and our 
 children's children, and will leave books that will be 
 regarded as friends as long as the English language 
 lasts, and in whatever regions of the earth it may be 
 spoken. 
 
 It is very pleasant to think in what distant j)arts of 
 the earth it is spoken, and that in all those parts these 
 books which are friends of ours are acknowledged as 
 friends. And there is a living and productive power in 
 them. They have produced an American literature, 
 which is coming back to instruct us. They will pro- 
 duce by and by an Australian literature, which will be 
 worth all the gold that is sent to us from the diggings. 
 
 American books have of late asserted very strongly 
 their right to be reputed as our friends, and we have 
 very generally and very cordially responded to the 
 claim. I refer to one book now — Mrs. Stowe's " Dred," 
 though I did not mean to notice any contemporary 
 book at all — for the sake of certain passages in it which 
 I think that none that have read them can have 
 forgotten. They are those in which the authoress 
 describes the effects which were produced upon a very 
 simple-hearted and brave Negro — whose whole life had 
 been one of zealous self-devotion to some white chil- 
 dren, but who had had no book teaching whatsoever —
 
 24 THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS. • [i. 
 
 by the stories which were read to him out of the 
 Old and New Testaments. We are told with gi'eat 
 simplicity and with self-evident truth, how everyone 
 of these stories started to life in his mind, how every 
 person who is spoken of in them came forth before the 
 hearer as an actual living being, how his inmost soul 
 confessed the book as a reality and as a friend. No 
 lesson, I think, is more suited to our purpose. It 
 shows us what injury we do to the Book of Books 
 when we regard it as a book of letters, and not as a book 
 of life ; none can bear a stronger witness to us how it 
 may come forth as the Book of Life, to save all others 
 from sinking into dryness and death. I have detained 
 you far too long in endeavouring to show you how 
 every true book exhibits to us some man, from whose 
 mind its thoughts have issued, and with whom it 
 brings us acquainted. May I add this one word in 
 conclusion ? — that I believe all books may do that for 
 us, because there is one Book which, besides bringing 
 into clearness and distinctness a number of men of 
 different ages from the creation downwards, brings 
 before us one Friend, the chief and centre of all, who 
 is called there The Son of Man.
 
 II. 
 
 ox WORDS.i 
 
 Perhaps it may seem to you rather a waste of words 
 to speak at any length upon tlie use of words. Is not 
 the use of words to express our meaning ? When we 
 have said this, have we not said all that it is worth 
 our while to say ? I think not, for this reason : it is a 
 great thing no doubt to be able to express our meaning, 
 but it is a still more necessary thing to have a meaning. 
 The great difference between a wise man and an 
 unwise man is, that the one knows, and the other 
 does not know, what he means. Anything then that 
 will help us in the work of understanding ourselves 
 is still more valuable than that which helps us in the 
 work of expressing ourselves. I believe the study of 
 words does afford us this help : that, if we know how 
 to use them aright, they will not only supply us with 
 convenient forms for communicating our thoughts to 
 others, but they will actually teach us what our 
 thoughts are, and how to think. It is this use of them 
 of which I propose to speak in my lecture to-night. 
 Men very commonly introduce their observations on 
 this subject by saying that words are arbitrary signs 
 of ideas. I do not think I quite understand this 
 sentiment. Taking it in its largest sense, it would 
 seem to imply that anyone may use words just as he 
 likes, that I might if I pleased call black white, or 
 right wrong. But this is not a privilege which you 
 would concede to me, or to anyone; at least it is not 
 
 ' Delivered to the students of Guy's Hospital, about 1838.
 
 26 ON WORDS. [n 
 
 one of which any man in his senses would avail 
 himself. What I suppose persons in general would 
 understand by words being the arbitrary signs of 
 ideas is this, that a certain number of men have 
 agreed together to describe certain things or cer- 
 tain acts by certain names, and that we are now 
 under a tacit convention not to depart from this rule. 
 But if such an explanation as this is offered of the 
 nature of lansruao-e, those who furnish it should be 
 prepared to show where and how this convention took 
 place. What is there in history at all answering to 
 it ? Where was the assembly held in which English- 
 men determined to speak English, and Frenchmen 
 French ? Who prescribed the terms of the bargain ? 
 How did he persuade other men to acquiesce in 
 them ? The nomenclature of different sciences may 
 perhaps occur to you as something a little illus- 
 trating such a process. A certain learned man 
 calls some chemical substances, for instance, by 
 certain names borrowed from ancient lang-uages, and 
 these names become by degrees the authorized and 
 habitual designation of those substances among all who 
 belong to his school, nay, possibly among all who write 
 or converse about chemistry. But you will see in an 
 instant how idle it must be to apply this analogy to 
 the origin and growth of language itself. It is one 
 of the boasts of scientific men that such communica- 
 tions and mutual compacts as these could never take 
 place, but in the most advanced and artificial stages 
 of society. The words in scientific nomenclature are 
 expressly taken out of the ordinary stock of human 
 expressions to be put under regulations which they 
 have never obeyed, and to be safe from the habitual 
 influences which act upon them. Yet even these 
 scientific words are not arbitrary signs of ideas. 
 When they are good for anything, when they are 
 anything more than the Abracadabra of a Memoria 
 tcchnica, they are selected for some real or supposed 
 appropriateness to the nature of the thing which they
 
 II.] ON WOKDS. 27 
 
 denote. We cannot draw any inference, then, from 
 this instance in favour of the notion to which I am 
 referring. And I think the more you turn over that 
 notion in your minds, the less you will find of prac- 
 tical worth and utility in it. I do not say that there 
 is not some truth lurking under it, there must be in 
 every phrase that has gained such currency. But 
 it is not a truth which assists us materially in ex- 
 amining into the nature of words, or in turning them 
 to a good account. On the contrary, it its generally 
 used to discourage all such attempts, and, I fear, to 
 produce an impression that all speech, and even all 
 thought, is arbitrary, hollow, and insincere. There 
 can be no worse conclusion to arrive at than this. In 
 life and practice words are most real, substantial 
 things. They exercise a power which we may deny 
 if we choose, but which we feel even while we are 
 denying it. They go forth spreading good or mischief 
 through society. Surely there must be something 
 solemn and deep in their nature. 
 
 Talk of " arbitrary " and " conventional " as you 
 may, but every honest man feels that it is a sin to 
 use words at random; and every thoughtful man feels 
 when uttering them carefully and conscientiously that 
 he enters into sympathy and fellowship with men 
 who have spoken those same words generations ago. 
 He begins to feel as they felt. He learns that men 
 only create, their words as they create the breath 
 which goes forth from the lungs with which God has 
 provided them, by help of the air with which He has 
 surrounded them. He begins to feel that in words 
 are stored up facts which may enable him better to 
 understand the history of mankind, and to interpret 
 and admire the purposes of its Creator respecting it. 
 
 These remarks will clear the way for any hints 
 which I may have to offer hereafter respecting the 
 right method of investigating the force and appli- 
 cation of words. But as it would be very impertinent 
 to propose the one which I think best, without con-
 
 28 ON WORDS. [n. 
 
 sidering others which have the sanction of great 
 names attached to them : and as at the same time 
 it would be quite out of my power, and very unrea- 
 sonable in such a lecture as this if it were in my 
 power, to enter into an examination of the various 
 etymological systems which have been supported by 
 learned men here and elsewhere, I shall preface what 
 I have to say by a few observations on two schemes, 
 one or other of which is likely to find favour with 
 English students. The first I shall call, for want of 
 a better name, the Lexicographical, the second the 
 Derivative, or purely Etymological. These are longer 
 words than I like to employ, and if I did not hope 
 soon to find equivalents for them, I should not resort 
 to them. Possibly it may give a sort of personal in- 
 terest to my explanations of them, and may even con- 
 tribute something to the clearer understanding of both, 
 if I speak a little of two distinguished men who may 
 be fairly called representative of these two schemes, 
 and through whom most of us are likely to get our 
 knowledge of them. The men I allude to are, Dr. 
 Samuel Johnson and John Home Tooke. 
 
 You are aware that it would be difficult to fix upon 
 two persons so opposed in all their habits, tempers, 
 and opinions, as these two. The one an old Tory, I 
 might even say a Jacobite ; the other the very best 
 and cleverest specimen of a modern leveller. But I 
 believe it will be found that, widely as their notions 
 upon every possible subject differed, the feeling from 
 which they started was the same. Both were almost 
 equally remarkable for a keen and lively sense of the 
 disorder and perplexity in which all human pursuits, 
 studies, thoughts, systems, are involved. But this 
 feeling, strong in both, far stronger in him who de- 
 spaired of all alteration than in him who abetted all — 
 this feeling, being modified by the different characters 
 of their minds and their different circumstances, drove 
 them in completely opposite directions — all the irregu- 
 larities and disorders which Johnson saw in the world
 
 II.] ON WORDS. 29 
 
 he felt also in himself; if society seemed to him a 
 turbulent chaos, studies an interminable labyrinth, 
 there was a confusion in his own feelings just as 
 endless, there were mazes in his own thoughts to which 
 he had as httle clue. Till he could harmonize himself, 
 his discontent and his uprightness equally hindered 
 him from attempting to set anything else in order. 
 All schemes and theories which ingenious men have 
 devised for reconciling difficulties and explaining 
 anomalies, he scouted as pious frauds, and disliked, 
 because they fretted the sores in his own soul which 
 they could not heal. On the other hand, the facts and • 
 doctrines in which he believed that the real explana- 
 tion of these difficulties lay hid, and the real conso- 
 lation under the pressure of them, he would earnestly 
 fight for, though he could not see the explanation nor 
 receive the comfort. 
 
 All ancient landmarks, all existing forms and insti- 
 tutions, he clave to, because the sense of disorder in 
 his own mind told him that they were not the causes 
 of disorganization, and he believed they were the only 
 hindrances to its becoming universal. A man of this 
 spirit could be gloomy and ferocious in his outward 
 deportment, and yet possess a far greater fund of real 
 benevolence than is to be found in most good-natured 
 men. 
 
 He could also treat of every subject that came 
 within his grasp in such a manner as to leave the 
 reader utterly dissatisfied and scarcely wiser than 
 before, and yet with the strongest impression that he 
 had been in the company of a man of most vigorous 
 and herculean powers. For what we want of an 
 author is, that he would assist us in reconciling the 
 thoughts of our own minds, in bringing together and 
 uniting what had been loose and disjointed elements. 
 For this work Johnson renders us no service — he is 
 mighty in collecting, piling up, accumulating ; but 
 disposition, proportion and harmony, he first despaired 
 of attaining, and at last learned to hate. He did but
 
 30 ON WORDS. [ir. 
 
 express his most inward and habitual feeling when 
 he exclaimed one day, " How I wish that music were 
 impossible ! " 
 
 In John Home Tooke the quick perception of dis- 
 order without was attended with no correspondent 
 sense of disorder within ; a more self-complacent person 
 seems never to have existed ; the perplexities he beheld 
 in others only taught him to understand and admire 
 his own clear-sightedness and sagacity. Troubled by 
 no inward conflicts, overwhelmed by no feeling of a 
 mystery around him which he could not comprehend, 
 he had nothing to do in the world but to contemplate 
 and to criticize. Still, though as far as sympathy went, 
 the proceedings of the world were nothing more to him 
 than a game of chess, he had too much talent and energy 
 to be satisfied with the poor amusement of commenting 
 on the players, and pointing out how much better the 
 moves would have been if he had made them. He 
 aspired to something more than this, for the period in 
 which he lived was one which tempted every clever 
 man to try his hand at system making, as well as 
 system mending. And there was nothing to check his 
 ambition ; for he had no experience in his own mind 
 of the complexities of human feeling, its strong cur- 
 rents and fierce back-eddies. Of hopes and fears, dis- 
 appointed wishes, and undefinable aspirations he knew 
 nothing, and of course believed nothing ; of course, 
 also, all those high mysteries in which these termin- 
 ate and find their only satisfaction, whether verbally 
 acknowledged or not, were mere dead letters to him. 
 How to adjust the springs of a machine upon which 
 none of these disturbing forces are operating, was, for 
 a man of Home Tooke's uncommon cleverness, a very 
 easy work. Only consistently follow out the principle 
 that man is not a spiritual being, that no spiritual 
 processes go forward in his mind, or at any rate are so 
 little important that they may be quite overlooked in 
 a long calculation, and you will be surprised how very 
 quickly you can run up an edifice of morals, legis-
 
 il] ox words. 31 
 
 lation, and philosophy. Indeed, considering what 
 trouble and expense of thought are saved by this 
 simple expedient, it is a marvel, not that most of 
 our modern Babel-builders are materialists, but that a 
 single one of them is anything else — and if men pos- 
 sessing a very small capital of wit and knowledge find 
 it most profitable to invest them in this theory, we 
 need not wonder that Home Tooke, with his large 
 capital, should have realized a considerable portion of 
 fame by the same means. In the field of politics com- 
 petition has considerably diminished his profits ; but in 
 Etymology, into which we shall presently see that he 
 carried precisely the same principle, his gains have been 
 probably very nearly commensurate with his expectations 
 
 It is not in order to detract from the value of the 
 Etymological researches of these great men that I have 
 ventured to give you this sketch of their characters ; 
 but it is, that we may know exactly the assistance 
 that we have to expect from them in a science, the main 
 object of which is, to make us acquainted with our- 
 selves : it is, that we may be aware of the kind of 
 shortcoming which we are likely to find in each of 
 them, and that when, by actual examination of the 
 systems, we do find it, we may the better know what 
 it means. And it is, lastly, that we may be able to 
 reap the full benefit of their industry and talents, 
 which I am well convinced that no one can thoroughly 
 appreciate, or properly avail himself of, who has not in 
 some degree emancipated himself from their systems. 
 
 The Lexicographical method, of which I consider 
 Johnson to be the English representative, I will ex- 
 plain by an illustration. It shall be, if you please, the 
 word "Property." I will extract the article entire 
 from Johnson's Dictionary : — 
 
 "Property, n.s., from Proper. 
 
 " 1. Peculiar quality : — 
 
 " ' What special ^jj-oper/?/ or quality is that which, being nowhere 
 found but in sermons, maketh them effectual to save souls ]' — 
 Hooker, EccL Polity, 6, v. s. 22.
 
 32 ON WORDS. [ii. 
 
 " ' A secondary essential mode, is any attribute of a thing, whicli 
 is not of primary consideration, and is called a property.^ — Watts. 
 
 " 2. Quality ; disposition : — 
 
 " ' 'Tis conviction, not force, that must induce assent ; and sure 
 the logick of a conquering sword has no great 2)roperty that way ; 
 silence it may, but convince it cannot.' — Dr. H. Moobe, Decay 
 of Christian Piety. 
 
 " ' It is the property of an old sinner to find delight in re- 
 viewing his own villanies in others.' — South's Sermons. 
 
 " 3. Might of possession : — 
 
 " ' Some have been deceived into an opinion, that the in- 
 heritance of rule over men, and propnty in things, sprung from 
 the same original, and were to descend by the same rule.' — Locke. 
 
 " ' Property, whose original is from the right a man has to use 
 any of the inferior creatures, for subsistence and comfort, is for 
 the sole advantage of the proprietor, so that he may even destroy 
 the thing that he has property in.' — Locke. 
 
 " 4. Possession held in one's o^^^l right : — 
 
 " ' For numerous blessings yearly showered, 
 And property with plenty crowned. 
 Accept our pious praise.' — Drydex. 
 
 " 5, The thing possessed : — 
 
 " ' 'Tis a thing impossible 
 I should love thee but as & property.^ — Shakespeare. 
 
 " ' Ko wonder such men are true to a government, where libertv 
 runs so high, where property is so well secured.' — Swift. 
 
 " 6. Nearness or right — I know not which is the 
 sense in the following lines : — 
 
 " ' Here I disclaim all my paternal care, 
 Propinquity and property of blood. 
 And as a stranger to my heart and me 
 Hold thee.' Shakespeare, Kmg Lear. 
 
 " 7. Some article required in a play for the actors ; 
 something appropriate to the cha|-acter played : — 
 
 " ' I will draw a bill oi properties such as our play wants.' 
 
 Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream.
 
 11.] ON WORDS. 33 
 
 " ' The purple garments raise the lawyer's fees ; 
 
 High pomp and state are useful jjrojjei'ties.' — Drydex. 
 
 " ' Begin then to con our part, when we are ready to be hissed 
 off the stage, and death is now pulling off our properties.^ 
 Archbishop Sancroft's Sermons, p. 101. 
 
 " ' Greenfield was the name of the properly man in that time, 
 who furnished implements for the actors.' — Pope. 
 
 " 8. Property for rrro'pricty — anything peculiarly 
 adapted : — 
 
 " ' Our poets excel in grandity and gravity, smoothness and 
 property, in quickness and briefness.' — Camden." 
 
 Now let us inquire, what are our feelings on reading 
 this catalogue ? The first, and a most legitimate one, 
 may perhaps be admiration of the reading and diligence 
 which has gathered passages from so many excellent 
 English authors, illustrating the word and furnishing 
 in themselves, and without reference to the immediate 
 subject, a most entertaining study. That peculiar 
 faculty of Johnson, to which I have already adverted, 
 of collecting and accumulating, shines forth in this as 
 in every page of his Dictionary; but when we have 
 paid this reasonable tribute to genius, I cannot help 
 thinking that another feeling will arise in our minds, 
 which will take this form — " What," we say to our- 
 selves, " when I use the word property in one ap- 
 plication, is it no more like property in another 
 apphcation than it is like any other word in the 
 language ? Is there no common meaning, not even a 
 bead-string to hang the different meanings upon ? " 
 
 I cannot help thinking that there is something much 
 more distressing in this notion, something in it more 
 fatal to the sincerity of our minds, than at first we are 
 inclined to suspect. Those who have not made the 
 experiment for themselves of tracing out the sense of a 
 word through its different applications, may not feel 
 this so strongly as I do. But I think they must admit 
 that the common-sense conclusion of anyone would be 
 against Dr. Johnson. Anyone not told the reverse 
 
 D
 
 34 OX WORDS. [II. 
 
 would imagine, that the word "property" which he 
 heard on Friday in the mouth of a land-surveyor was 
 the same word with the word "property" which he 
 heard on Saturday in the mouth of a naturalist. It 
 would never come into his head to imagine that the 
 word was the same in the sound which it makes to the 
 ear, and the letters which manifest it to the eye, but 
 had no other resemblance at all ; and I think I may 
 add, that he would be some time before he would be 
 persuaded to adopt the conclusion. 
 
 This, then, is the radical vice which those who seek 
 the study of words, as a means of attaining a knowledge 
 of themselves, find in the Johnsonian method ; but 
 how is it that this method necessarily involves this 
 vice ? It involves it, first, by its indifference to deri- 
 vations. The derivation of a word in Johnson is 
 a secondary matter altogether ; for form's sake a deri- 
 vation is given, but almost anything will do — an 
 English noun will be derived from a French one, 
 which might just as well come from it, or a verb in 
 one language is just paralleled by a corresponding 
 verb in another. Nowhere is there an attempt to con- 
 nect more than the one or two first senses of a word 
 with the derivation — all the rest are supposed to have 
 been so long away from their mother, and to have 
 travelled so much in foreign parts, that they needs 
 must have forgotten her and she them. The second 
 and still greater hindrance to our attaining a right 
 understanding of words, and ourselves in the use of 
 them, while we continue tied to the lexicographical 
 method, is the implied notion that we know a word 
 when we know its definition. This eiTor lies so deep, 
 and its roots spread so wide, that I almost fear to 
 strike at it in the middle of a lecture. But as I have 
 no hope to find standing ground, unless it be in some 
 measure cleared away, I will endeavour to explain the 
 nature of my objection, leaving the vindication of it to 
 your own judgment. 
 
 Before the time of Bacon, definitions of objects took
 
 II.] ON WOEDS. 35 
 
 the place of the knowledge of those objects ; the great 
 principle developed by that philosopher was this, 
 — that nature was to be studied in nature, that we 
 can attain no knowledge whatever by definitions, that 
 they are merely devices for the convenience of the 
 mind while it is engaged in its experimental labours, 
 but do in no sense whatever supersede those labours. 
 This doctrine, which is almost too plain for you to 
 understand — I mean that it has so worked into our 
 feehngs that we can scarcely enter into the possibility 
 of the opposite doctrine, or suppose that it was ever 
 entertained — this is just the truth which Bacon had 
 the hardest work to maintain against the logicians of 
 his day. Now, I contend that words are entitled to 
 the benefit of a similar doctrine — that you can no more 
 reach the life of a word by means of a definition than 
 you can reach the Ufe of a chemical substance by means 
 of a definition ; that they are good and useful laud- 
 marks for the mind, while it is engaged in investigating 
 the meaning of a word, but that they are not in any 
 sense the meaning of it ; and that he who, because he 
 has got the definition, fancies he knows and under- 
 stands that word, is practising as great a fraud upon 
 himself as the old schoolmen practised upon them- 
 selves, when they fancied that by their endless specu- 
 lations and definitions of nature they were attaining a 
 knowledge of nature. 
 
 We have seen how remarkably the Johnsonian 
 system exhibits that want of unity which we showed 
 to be the characteristic of its author's mind. The 
 possession of this merit is the great attraction of 
 Tooke's system. His, you may remember, I called the 
 Derivative or purely Etymological system. I called it 
 so because, instead of giving multifarious explanations 
 of any word in common usage which presents itself 
 to him, he takes us at once to the root, or what he 
 beheves to be the root. In performing this work he 
 conferred a great benefit upon our language. For, 
 instead of allowing us to be content with merely 
 
 D 2
 
 36 ON WORDS. [ii. 
 
 knowing similar words in other languages, and calling 
 these the origin of words in our own, he led us to that 
 which is, at all events, the primitive language of us, 
 and of many of the nations in the North of Europe. 
 I do not mean that he was the first scholar who had 
 attended to Anglo-Saxon ; there had been many who 
 had studied it before him, and many, I supj)ose, who 
 have studied it much more effectually since. I do not 
 know even whether he was a sound Saxon scholar ; I 
 fancy that some doubts upon this point have been 
 raised of late years. But this is certain, that he was 
 a devoted and exclusive one, and that he compelled 
 Englishmen to regard a great many words as of native 
 origin wdiich they had been wont to trace to some 
 classical source. This was, undoubtedly, doing a good 
 service, and one could easily have pardoned Home 
 Tooke for being a little fanatical in following out his 
 o"vvn system, and for utterly denying the worth of 
 classical et}mnologies, even when they were far more 
 ob\dous and reasonable than his OAvn. But he had 
 another reason than this for exalting Anglo-Saxon into 
 our sole guide in determining the force of English 
 words. Admitting most fully that it is the mother 
 of our tongue, yet the plain evidence of history com- 
 pels us to acknowledge that it had a father as well 
 as a mother, that the thoughts which came to us first 
 A\Tapt up in the language of Rome, gave life to that 
 which would else have been merely material and dead, 
 and imparted to our language all its highest powers 
 and deepest meaning. In the South, where the primi- 
 tive language was weak, because the character of the 
 people was weak, the classical principle wholly pre- 
 dominated. Here, and in Geniiany, there was a strong 
 homely stock, which did not hinder the riper and older 
 language from making its strength felt ; nay, which 
 enabled it to exert its strength more effectually; but 
 Avhich, at the same time, has given such marked and 
 distinct features to our speech, as the classical mixture 
 has not been able in any way to obliterate.
 
 II.] ox WORDS. 37 
 
 Now of this fact Home Tooke refused to take any 
 cognizance. The clearness of his mind, imjiatient of 
 all Johnson's generalities, led him at once to fix 
 vigorously and detenninately upon the primary ele- 
 ments of a word, and to say, " I am sure these are 
 the elements of it." But the hard and material 
 character of his mind led him to stop there. He 
 would admit this, and nothing beyond this. Hence 
 he presents us with the appearance of great simplicity, 
 and it is the simpKcity of his system which makes it 
 so popular. But unfortunately it does not explain 
 facts ; it only gets rid of facts, and those oftentimes the 
 solemnest, the most imiDortant facts of a man's own 
 being. Take one or two instances, which have been 
 often noticed and exposed before, but Avhich should be 
 exposed again and again, because they are traps and 
 pitfalls in the way of every fresh student. You have 
 been used to fancy that such words as Right and 
 Wrong meant something ; that there is a right, and 
 that there is a ■\\Tong. No conventions settled what 
 these words should denote. No conventions can alter 
 their force. There they are ; ultimate points which 
 men must recognize, which then- consciences compel 
 them to recognize. We want a lio-ht fi'om above to 
 show us the right, and warn us of the WTong ; but we 
 are obliged, if we are honest men, to believe in them, 
 and act as if they vjcre, at all times, and in all ckcum- 
 stances. But if we are to beHeve Home Tooke, all 
 this is not so. Right comes from a word signifpng 
 " that which is ordered, or ordained." So be it ; I 
 shall show you presently that much is to be learnt 
 from this fact. But the impression which he wants to 
 leave on your mind is this : Right being the ordained 
 thinof, the notion of an absolute rioiit or an absolute 
 %\Tong is out of the question, a mere fiction of priests 
 and lawgivers to get credit for their own assumptions. 
 You must get a competent authority — which Hobbes 
 would make the Prince of the day, which Tooke would 
 make the popular voice — to determine what is right.
 
 38 ON WORDS. [n. 
 
 and what is Avrong. Perhaps you may say, if we only 
 get the right authority, the Ruler of the universe, the 
 position is of no importance. I believe even then it is 
 of the greatest importance, because it will involve the 
 question whether the Ruler of the universe is, accord- 
 ing to the Pagan notion, merely a Mighty Power, or 
 whether he is, according to the Christian notion, the 
 Righteous Being. But even without taking this point 
 into account, Tooke, by another of his derivations, has 
 cut us off from this refuge. Truth, he says, is derived 
 from the word to troio ; truth means, " that which a 
 man troweth." Absolute truth, then, like absolute 
 right, has vanished from the region of our thoughts, 
 and nothing is but that which seems. These are the 
 sleights of hand by which this distinguished etymolo- 
 gist robs those who give heed to him of that for which 
 all the silver and gold in the universe would be no 
 compensation. When you hear of such doings, you 
 may be inclined to think that his system does not 
 only, as I said, illustrate the character of his own 
 mind, but that it proves the essential w^orthlessness, 
 nay, mischievousness, of the study to which he de- 
 voted himself. I draw just the opposite conclusion 
 from these facts. I see in them evidence of the 
 immense importance of the study of words. I see 
 how thoroughly confused and false must be that 
 notion which treats them as mere arbitrary signs, 
 when so much of all that most deeply concerns us is 
 thus brought into connection with them. And it is 
 not an imagination, but a notorious fact, that these 
 sayings of Tooke's have produced an effect on .the 
 minds of numbers ; have led numbers to think that 
 false coins had been passed off upon them, stamped 
 with precious names, but carrying only a conventional 
 value, when they have been spoken to about Right 
 and Truth, and have been told that it is to be the 
 business of their lives to do the right, and to know 
 the truth. I allow that there must have been an evil 
 preparation of mind beforehand, that they must have
 
 II.] ON WOKDS. 39 
 
 been inclined by their moral state to disbelieve in 
 anything fixed and real, before these arguments, 
 addressed to the intellect, could have produced any 
 decided impression upon them. Still I believe that it 
 is important to show them how little warrant there is 
 for that impression in the study of words — nay, hoA\' 
 much that study, if truly and faithfully pursued, must 
 tend to dispel it. I think it is very important they 
 should understand, that words do indeed bear witness 
 to man's connection with that which is earthly and 
 material, because he is so connected, and because 
 everything which he does and utters must proclaim 
 this truth : but that if you look them fairly in the 
 face, they are also found to testify, and that not weakly 
 or obscurely, of man as a spiritual being ; nay, that it 
 is impossible steadily to meditate upon the history of 
 any single word without carrying away a conviction 
 that he is so, which all the materialism in the world 
 cannot set aside. 
 
 In using this phrase History of a icord, I have 
 indicated that method which I believe unites the ad- 
 vantages of Johnson's and Tooke's, and is free from 
 the inconveniences of both. You observed what a 
 list of meanings Johnson gave us for the one Avord 
 " property." We complained that we could find no 
 connection between these meanings — that one seemed 
 to stand as aloof from the other as if they were not 
 kinsmen, or even friends. Still it is a fact which we 
 must be thankful to Johnson for teaching us, and for 
 illustrating by so many useful quotations, that such a 
 variety of significations does exist. According to 
 Tooke's method, we should at once have settled on the 
 derivation of the word "property." We should have 
 said that it meant " that which was a man's own." All 
 those higher meanings of the word, which we found 
 expressed in so many beautiful passages in old 
 English authors, would have been brought down till 
 they intimated nothing more than is intimated by the 
 word in every bill of sale, or at any auction mart ; and
 
 40 ON WORDS. [11. 
 
 we should have been told, what is certamly true, that 
 this is a much simpler method, and is a great saving of 
 trouble. But the mischief is, that in this way, just as 
 much as in the other, we get rid of facts. We lost the 
 fact of the significations being connected in Johnson. 
 We lose the fact of there being any signification at all, 
 except the first, in Tooke. Now, what if the opposite 
 evils of these two systems, like the opposite views 
 and dispositions of the persons who supported them, 
 should have a common origin ? I think that they 
 have, I think their common error is, that they both 
 alike deny the living, germinating power of words. 
 Home Tooke, who ties a word down to its lowest 
 sense, Johnson, who bandages each use of a word 
 in a separate definition, alike disbelieve in that prin- 
 ciple which, had they acknowledged it, would have 
 brought their methods into coincidence. If they would 
 have stoojied to the strong and irresistible evidence 
 which the workings of our own minds, which all history, 
 furnishes, that there is as much a vital principle in a 
 word as in a tree or a flower, they would have under- 
 stood how it was possible that the root should be a 
 small ugly thing, and yet that it should contain in itself 
 the whole power and principle of the leaves, and buds, 
 and flowers, into which it afterwards expands ; they 
 would not have consented so cruelly to tie up all its 
 rich and luxuriant shoots ; they would not have thought 
 that the blossom in its May-day fulness and beauty 
 should renounce its connection with the root, or have be- 
 lieved that the root must assert its dignity by reducing 
 to its own ignoble and unsightly shape the blossom 
 which is its consummate glory. They would have un- 
 derstood, too, how the peculiar circumstances of any age, 
 moral or pohtical, like the influence of sun and air, of 
 spring breezes, of mildew and of blight, may modify 
 the form and colour of a word, may stint or quicken 
 its growth, may give it a full blown, coarse, material 
 look, cause it to sicken into a pale and drooping abstrac- 
 tion, or strengthen it in all its spiritual sap and juices.
 
 II.] ON WORDS. 41 
 
 111 using this language I am far from intending to be 
 metaphorical. I use that language which I believe does 
 most literally and exactly convey my meaning. The 
 point ill debate is, whether words are endued with this 
 principle of life, the manifestations of which it is impos- 
 sible in any way so truly to express as in the language 
 of outward nature. Whether it be so or not, I repeat, 
 is the question. To call this language metaphorical is 
 to beg the question. I assume that it is not so, and 
 that assumption I have supported, at least by some 
 negative evidence. 
 
 You will see, I think, that a complete etymological 
 system formed upon this idea, would require more 
 study and diligence to work it out than either that of 
 Johnson or Tooke, but at the same time would bring 
 in a far more rich reward to the student ; for it is 
 almost impossible to conjecture hoAv much light would 
 be thrown upon our national history, upon the history 
 of our wars, arts, and manufactures, above all upon 
 the history of our mental and spiritual progress, by 
 an examination of the senses which words have borne 
 at different times ; of the impressions they have re- 
 ceived from different persons ; of the new applications 
 which they have gained from different discoveries ; of 
 the changes they have undergone from different revolu- 
 tions. To know through what difficulties and under 
 what influences our language attained strength and 
 maturity, and how many symptoms of declension or 
 decay, which it may now exhibit, are connected with 
 a similar declension in our moral feelings, in our 
 reverence for institutions, or in the vigour of our 
 search after truth, must be very useful and important 
 for any Englishman, especially for those who are to 
 be in any way the guides and teachers of their 
 brethren. But it was not in this large way that I 
 proposed to consider the subject to-night. I speak 
 rather of the influence it might have on our own 
 minds ; of the assistance it might be to us in acquiring 
 self-knowledge.
 
 42 OX WORDS. [II. 
 
 Of course, even in this point of view, it would only 
 be possible for me, and perhaps, on the whole, I 
 might have thought it the most useful course, to offer 
 a few hints for your guidance in carrying out such 
 inquiries, rather than to conduct them at any length 
 myself. 
 
 I shall, therefore, conclude my lecture with perform- 
 ing a few experiments on words, -which, though they 
 may be a poor substitute for the brilliant experiments 
 on physical subjects which you may sometimes witness 
 here, may yet help you to feel that there is a life and 
 power in the words which you speak, as well as in the 
 things which you handle ; that within them too there 
 lie secret and slumbering fires, for warmth or for con- 
 flagration. If we begin with that word with which we 
 found Home Tooke dealing so summarily, the word 
 Right, we shall admit at once his assertion, that " right " 
 means that which is ordered or ordained. 
 
 How shall we apply this in the first and lowest case 
 of all — to that use Avhich Ave make of the word when 
 we speak of our " right " and " left " hand. Home 
 Tooke naturally delights in this instance. It favours 
 his hypothesis mightily that the right hand in some 
 countries should be the left hand in others, and he 
 quotes ^^■ith triumph the paradox of the road : " If you 
 go to the left you are sure to go right." 
 
 But who does not feel that even here langTiage is 
 pointing to something fixed and certain ? One nation 
 may use this hand, and call it right ; another that, and 
 call it right. One is not a rule for the other ; gi'anted. 
 But each alike recognizes the existence of a rule ; each 
 alike feels that there is some order and constitution of 
 things, determining that it should be so, and no other- 
 wise. What then do you gain by proving that the 
 word is sometimes applied to a case in which there is 
 no fixed invariable rule, or at least no acknowledged 
 one ? You give merely a proof of a witness in the 
 mind that there is some standard, some invariable 
 order, wdiich it is wishing to detect everyAvhere. But
 
 11.] ON WORDS. 43 
 
 this is not all. The corresponding word to right is not 
 used in all countries in reference to the hand. Dcxtra, 
 for instance, in Latin has no reference to right or 
 wrong. And yet in every language there is sonic word 
 which does betoken the feeling of right or wrong. We 
 are, then, driven to say that we have not got the high- 
 est sense of the word. We must look to some further 
 application of it in order to know fully what it means. 
 Have we got it, then, when we meet with this kind of 
 use of it : "I have a right to that horse ; " " You have 
 no right to put me in prison"? Evidently we are on 
 higher ground here. This sense of right points to 
 something more than the rule which determines why 
 we should use one hand rather than another, in throw- 
 ing a quoit, or writing a letter. Here is evidently 
 implied some rule made for me, and made for other 
 men, which I fancy has been violated in respect to me. 
 If you consider how these words are commonly sjDoken, 
 you feel that they contain an acknowledgment, not 
 merely that something is, but that so it ought to be ; 
 nay, that it ought to be so even if it is otherwise. But 
 still, when we reflect on this use of the word, we feel 
 that it cannot be the final or the highest one. You say 
 you have this right. Does it reside in you, then ? Can 
 you assert it ? If you can, why do you call upon anything 
 else, upon any law or any higher power, to help you ? 
 
 There must still be another use of the word to 
 explain all the foregoing. And do we not light upon 
 this application of it when I say in reference to some 
 state of mind or character, " This is right," and of some 
 other, " This is wrong " ? In speaking thus I recognize 
 a standard from which I must not depart — not an 
 accidental standard, but a fixed immutable standard, 
 one of which I am forced to say — This is the right. I 
 do not make some claim for myself which I have no 
 power to enforce, but I declare myself in subjection to 
 a law which I am bound to obey. I give this as an 
 instance of the point which I am enforcing, that you 
 must follow a word up into its highest sense in order
 
 44 ON WORDS. [ii. 
 
 to understand the lower sense of it ; that, even in this 
 highest sense, you will find it is the same word which 
 you had before noticed in some more vulgar accepta- 
 tion; and that, when you do bring it to its highest 
 point, you will see how the conscience of mankind has 
 been bearing testimony to the same truth to which 
 your conscience, if you will listen to it, is bearing 
 witness at this hour. 
 
 That word Conscience itself is one on which we 
 cannot meditate too earnestly. You should consider 
 it along with the adjective, "conscious." You should 
 consider wdiat you mean wdien you say "I am con- 
 scious" of something. You should remember that it 
 is derived from two words signifying *'to know" and 
 "together with." You must see that it impHes that 
 you know, or take account of, something which is 
 passing within your own self. It leads us to this 
 deeply solemn thought, that a man can not only 
 perceive the things that are without him, but that he 
 has eyes within, and that there is a whole world for 
 him there to contemplate. But this is an appalling 
 reflection if we do not jxirsue the thought higher, if 
 we do not ascend from the w^ord " consciousness " to 
 the word "conscience," if we do not reflect that it is 
 not our own voice merely that is speaking within, but 
 the voice of another, the perfect Teacher, Reprover, 
 Guide ; and if we do not believe that it is possible to 
 ascend from the conscience of His presence into com- 
 munion with His character and w^ill. 
 
 From this word, if you please, you may pass to one 
 which I have several times had occasion to use to-night 
 — the word Absolute. We are not perhaps in the 
 habit of connecting this word with the word " to 
 absolve," though in fact it is the past participle of it. 
 The word " to absolve " is " to set free from," the word 
 " absolute " is " set free from." The absolute is that 
 which is perfectly free, loosed from all restraints and 
 limitations — that which gives the law to other things, 
 and is a law to itself. Absolute goodness is that of
 
 II.] ON WORDS. 45 
 
 which all other goodness is only the reflection. A 
 person on earth setting himself up to be absolute is the 
 very reverse of a free man, is generally a slave, for he 
 has put himself into a monstrous position ; he has put 
 himself in the place of God. That which man should 
 desire to be is, not an absolute creature, but an absolved 
 creature ; he is a freed man, not a free man. And He 
 who is perfectly absolute, perfectly free, delights to 
 absolve His creatures that He may bring them into 
 that service which is the only freedom. 
 
 With the word " absolute " you may connect one 
 which is closely associated with it in the language of 
 the schools, the word Relation. In its primitive 
 meaning it has the sense of carrying back ; and this 
 leading thought pervades all its other uses. Each 
 relationship is always a reference, a carrying back, a 
 looking to some head, some uniting point, acknowledg- 
 ing it as its own necessary gi'ound. You cannot for- 
 get what an awful commentary upon this word was 
 supplied by the history of France, when men boasted 
 that they would be brothers ; but — forgetting that 
 brothers are relations, that relationship means referring 
 back, that a brotherhood implies a father — turned the 
 fraternal hug into a death- embrace. 
 
 I wished to have taken notice of some other cases in 
 illustration of my position, but I must have abeady 
 exhausted your patience. I will, therefore, merely 
 commend to your deep and reverent meditation one 
 other word ; it is the word " Word " itself. In the first 
 verse of St, John's Gospel you meet with the highest 
 application which it is possible to make of human 
 language. You hear Who it is from Whom all words 
 have proceeded, and of Whose voice all words should 
 be the echo. You find there that which is at once the 
 ground and the pinnacle of all discourse, that which 
 transfigiu'es even ordinary converse into a mystery, 
 and enables us to hear in the lispings of infancy the 
 first notes of that harmony which is perfected in the 
 songs of the Seraphim.
 
 III. 
 
 ox BOOKS.i 
 
 I ASKED your President - whether he ■would rather 
 that I spoke this evening of Books, or of NewsjDapers. 
 He chose, "wisely I doubt not, the subject of Books. I 
 do not wish to compare these kinds of composition. I 
 am not anxious to ascertain, nor should I be able to 
 ascertain, whether the octavo and quarto, or the Hying 
 sheet, exercise most power over our age, or which ex- 
 ercises it best. Such an inquiry would take me more 
 than a night, or a week, or a year; perhaps the result, 
 when we arrived at it, would not be worth much. 
 
 There is another comparison, which seems to me 
 far more important. Books and newspapers both exist 
 for the sake of men. There were men before there 
 were either books or newspapers, and if books or 
 newspapers are ever put in the place of men, if we 
 think more of them than of men, they will be curses 
 to us instead of blessings. Whenever books have 
 crushed the manhood of men, they have been taken 
 from men. The earth has had to forget its books, 
 that it might recover its men. When it has recovered 
 them, they have produced books, which did not crush 
 manhood, but called it forth, which showed what men 
 had been, and might be. 
 
 I propose to gather togetlier a few examples, from 
 different parts of history, which may illustrate this 
 
 1 Delivered to the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society 
 Nov. 1865. 2 The Rev. D. Yaughan, of Leicester.
 
 III.] ON BOOKS. 47 
 
 remark. If they strike you as very familiar examj^les, 
 if you think I am telHiig you a very old tale, I shall 
 not be sorry. My business is not with new things. 
 But I believe old facts may always be fresh, and may 
 give out a fresh meaning, for each new generation. 
 
 I shall take you first to Egypt, You have all heard 
 of the great Library which was once collected in the 
 city of Alexandria, It was not gathered together by 
 sovereigns like those who built the Pyramids, The 
 monarch whose name is preserved in the name of 
 Alexandria had subdued Egyj)t to Greece, The Greek 
 Ptolemies ruled in it. They had the Greek passion 
 for wisdom. They wished to make their Library a 
 house for the wisdom of all ages ; chiefly for that 
 which Greeks had contributed, which they supposed 
 must be the best ; but also for the lore of Hebrews, or 
 any other people, which could be rendered into the 
 Greek tongue, and made available for the use of Greek 
 readers and professors, Alexandria was full of such 
 professors, men who could talk and write, as well as 
 read, upon all topics in the visible and invisible world. 
 
 But neither the Ptolemies, nor the library, nor the 
 Professors, could prevent both Greece and Egypt from 
 falling into the hands of a race which had not been 
 trained among books, but amidst the hard work of 
 camps. The Greeks could talk, but they had lost the 
 power of doing. They could compose treatises ; they 
 could not form men. The Romans wanted what they 
 had, and had what they wanted. They knew little of 
 literature ; they were men, and therefore they were 
 capable of profiting by literature. Their statesmen and 
 generals listened to the professors of Alexandria, and 
 learnt more from them than the professors knew. The 
 things which they disputed about, seemed to the Romans 
 real things, things which concerned their life. 
 
 There came a great change in Alexandria. There 
 had been in it a colony of very learned Jews ; the 
 Gospel of Christ began to be preached in it ; a Chris- 
 tian Church arose in it. There were in that Church
 
 48 OX BOOKS. [in. 
 
 noble, brave men, wbo went through gi'eat persecution 
 for the Name which they bore. They were also learned 
 men. They studied both Greek and Hebrew books, 
 believing that it was for the honour of Christ that they 
 should do so. But the Church ceased to be persecuted. 
 The Roman Emperor professed Christianity. Alexan- 
 dria, like the other cities of the Empire, had powerful 
 bishops. Some of these thought that they should be 
 doing good service by destroying those books in the 
 Library which had an idolatrous character. They 
 could not kill idolatry in that way. It grew among 
 themselves, and with it gi'ew the taste for talk and 
 dispute which had always characterized that city. The 
 Christian doctrines were treated as subjects for the 
 exercise of Greek ingenuity: as subjects also for furious 
 mobs to settle with clubs and swords. There was 
 apparently an earnest zeal for questions of faith ; but 
 faith itself was gone. Then came a race in which it 
 was ahve. Amnion or Omar, the general of the 
 Mahometans, believed in God, if he regarded Him 
 chiefly as a sovereig-n, who was determined to sweep 
 away idols and insincerities from the earth. The 
 unmanly Alexandrians fell before the conquerors. 
 But these had no special war with the Library. The 
 story goes that Omar was asked to preserve it ; that 
 he considered a while, and then answered, "If these 
 books of the Greeks are contrary to the Koran, they 
 ought to perish ; if they agi'ee with it, there is no need 
 of them." So the Library perished with the gi-eat 
 buildings of the city. Some days, it is said, passed 
 before all the books in it could be consumed. 
 
 This sentence may have been put into KaHph Omar's 
 mouth, by the story-teUer, as being characteristic of 
 the Mahometans of his day. It would not ha^'e been 
 appropriate to the Mahometans of a later day, for they 
 became, in some places at least, great readers and 
 translators of books, and patrons of authors. But 
 whether the words were spoken or not, the act of 
 burning the Library is not, I think, one which we have
 
 in.] ON BOOKS. 49 
 
 need to weep over. Kaliph Omar and his soldiers 
 could not destroy any of the great living books which 
 had been produced in Greece, or in any other country 
 than Greece. They could not destroy the poems of 
 Homer, though there were multitudes of things in them 
 that were contrary to the Koran. They could not de- 
 stroy the histories of the nations that had existed before 
 the Koran was thought of. They could not destroy 
 that Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures which 
 the Koran had tried to improve, and which has lasted 
 on, and has proved its strength, while the Koran has 
 been proving its weakness. All that Kaliph Omar 
 could do was to bear witness that what is not con- 
 nected with the life of human beings, what discovers 
 to us no truth of nature and no principle of God's 
 government, what serves only to encourage pride and 
 to feed controversy, had better cease to exist, and 
 must cease to exist. The burning of the Alexandrian 
 Library was the sign of much else that had to be burnt 
 up at that time — the outside polish and refinement 
 of the world, which had to be burnt up, that the true 
 foundation of all poHteness and refinement might be 
 discovered. God was preparing a better and truer 
 civilization for men than the Greek civilization had ever 
 been ; one which should be not for a few choice people, 
 but for all manner of people. In due time, what was 
 good and stable in the old world would be recovered ; 
 but first there was to be a neAV world prepared for it. 
 
 In this long story about the Alexandrian Library, 
 I have given you a hint of what may happen when 
 books are more thought of than human beings ; when 
 they have accumulated, and men have been hidden. 
 Now I will take you to a different part of the world — 
 one in which you and I are far more interested. 
 We will see whether that has any lesson — any more 
 encouragino^ lesson — to teach us. 
 
 Just at the time when Kahph Omar was busy in 
 Egypt, the Anglo-Saxons in this island Avere under- 
 going a great change. They had come here as fierce 
 
 E
 
 50 ON BOOKS. [ill. 
 
 pirates some centuries before ; they had swept away 
 a civilization which the Romans had estabhshed among 
 us ; they had fought fiercely with the old inhabitants ; 
 they had fought fiercely among themselves. How could 
 such men ever learn to care for books ? Divided as 
 they were, they had in them a reverence for order. 
 They reverenced the relations of father and child, of 
 husband and wife ; they believed that there was a great 
 battle between good and evil, between darkness and 
 light, going on in the earth and under the earth. They 
 believed that the light and good would some day 
 prevail. Before the time I am speaking of, men had 
 come over to them from Rome and said, "The God of 
 all has established a great family in the world ; He 
 has sent His Son to claim us all as members of it. 
 You may enter this family. Good has triumphed over 
 evil ; the Kingdom of Light has proved itself stronger 
 than the Kingdom of Darkness." The Saxons were 
 slow to take in these words. They thought them well 
 over before they accepted them. When they had 
 accepted them they often fell back into their old ways. 
 But by degrees this message took fast hold of them. 
 The kings confessed a higher King than themselves. 
 The fathers believed in a heavenly Father. England 
 became a Christian nation. And then this effect fol- 
 lowed almost immediately : schools sprang up. The 
 people understood that there was a cultivation needed 
 for the ground, and that there was just as real a cul- 
 tivation needed for their own selves. Not only great 
 men but the humblest men, had a right to share in 
 this cultivation. Bede was the son of a poor herdsman. 
 Bede came to a school in Northumbria ; he learnt what 
 he could learn at that time about the stars ; he be- 
 came an Astronomer. He studied the force of words, 
 and how words are bound to each other; he was a 
 Grammarian. He studied how men reason with each 
 other, and converse with each other; he became what 
 we call a Logician. These studies he pursued, for he 
 believed that there was another study, called Theology,
 
 III.] ON BOOKS. 51 
 
 or the study of God, to which they all ministered. 
 And, what concerns us more, he wrote a History. He 
 thought the deeds of his forefathers, and our forefathers, 
 ought to be known. He composed a History, which 
 tells us much which is tnie, and tells us what men 
 thought to be true at that time, which is almost as 
 precious to us, if we want to be truly acquainted with 
 the minds of those from whom we have sprung. But 
 Bede's history, and the works of another gi-eat English- 
 man, Alcuin, who studied at York, and taught the 
 sons of Charlemagne, are Latin Books. There is, indeed, 
 a beautiful story — I regard it as a most veritable story 
 — of a young peasant, Csedmon, who wept and prayed 
 because he was asked to compose some song at a feast, 
 who was inspired to bring forth a poem in his own 
 Saxon tongue about the creation of the world. I 
 gladly own him as the ancestor of that noble race of 
 English singers, 
 
 "Who have walked in glory and in joy, 
 Following their plough, along the mountain side." 
 
 But he was the exception to a mle. Literature had 
 not yet become Saxon. Latin was usurping the place 
 of the true native speech, which was taken to be fit only 
 for boors. And then, on the other side, the manhood 
 of the Saxon was going whilst he had been acquiring so 
 much tameness and civility. The rulers were fancying 
 that it was a more godly thing to be monks than kings. 
 So the jDeople were forgetting, as was natural, that it 
 was a godly thing to obey. Under the name of Chris- 
 tianity, all the Barbarian vices — slothfulness, cowardice, 
 indifference — were spreading far and wide, and striking 
 their roots deeply. So the lessons of the Bible about 
 famihes and nations became unintelligible to them : all 
 books became unintelligible along with that. There 
 was need of some Kaliph Omar here, as in Egypt. 
 The Mahometans did not come ; but the Pagan 
 Danes, or Northmen came. They destroyed monas- 
 teries, churches, libraries. The work of two centuries 
 
 E 2
 
 52 ON BOOKS. [iii. 
 
 seemed to be destroyed. By the middle of the ninth 
 century, we are told, Alfred could not find a teacher 
 south of the Humber to give him instruction in Latin. 
 That young prince could not read, it is said, till he 
 had reached his twelfth year. 
 
 And I venture to think it was well for him, and 
 well for the land, that he could not. For if he did not 
 study Latin, he was getting into his own heart the old 
 songs which his Saxon forefathers loved ; if he did not 
 read books in his youth, he was learning to be a brave 
 man. There is another school, besides that in which 
 logic, and rhetoric, and astronomy are taught, Alfred 
 had to go into that school, and to sit in the lowest form 
 in it, till his conceit and vanity were broken down in 
 him, till he was fitted to be a true ruler of men by suf- 
 fering with them. He took a first-class degree in that 
 school of suffering and humiliation ; he came out of it 
 fit for any work. His first work was to fight. The 
 invaders were in the land ; they must be driven out of 
 it, or be reduced to quiet subjects in the midst of it. 
 Till that business was done, no other could well be 
 attempted. He had to do it thoroughly. Englishmen 
 were to be taught that they were the inhabitants of an 
 island ; that the sea was to be their element, as it had 
 been the element of their ancestors. Pirates had come 
 upon them in ships ; they must have ships to keep out 
 piracy. Then, if they were not to be a people subject 
 to other men's wit, they must feel that they had laws 
 of their own ; they must be made to understand that 
 those laws were to be obeyed. Alfred brought them to 
 this understanding. He did not make a code for them, 
 as we used to fancy. He did what was far better. He 
 enabled them to understand the worth of their old 
 Saxon customs and traditions. He led them to connect 
 these with the Commandments which had been given to 
 the Israelites, who were to be the teachers and blessings 
 of all the families of the earth. He trained them to 
 feel their relationship to each other, and the responsi- 
 bilities which were involved in relationships. All this
 
 in.] ON BOOKS. 53 
 
 was necessary before they could care again for books, 
 or could profit by books. But the King knew that they 
 needed these. He knew what books had become to 
 himself since he had found out his wants, and had 
 begun to do his work. A king taught by hard blessings 
 that there was a higher Ruler over him whom he could 
 trust, would have his people know what that Ruler was, 
 and how they might trust Him ; he would give them 
 a Bible. He had looked back to his forefathers when 
 his own condition was saddest; he would have them 
 understand what they could of their forefathers. They 
 should have the History which the peasant Bede had 
 bequeathed them. If ships were going forth from this 
 island, his people should know whither their ships 
 had sailed, or might sail; they should have the best 
 geography he could procure for them. He had suffered, 
 and had wanted consolation ; they should hear what 
 consolation the brave Roman statesman Boethius had 
 found when he was in a lonely prison expecting death. 
 All these books Alfred gave his people, in their own 
 tonjT^ue — in the Saxon tonome. He had no wish to dis- 
 parage the Latin, which he had studied, and which he 
 would keep alive ; but the speech of the nation ought to 
 be dearer to them than any other ; it ivas dearer to him. 
 
 Here is the starting-point of our nation's literature, 
 and I wish you to consider the beginning well, because 
 I believe you may find in it the explanation of all its 
 different periods of progress or of decline. It does not 
 begin from some learned schoolmen ; it does not begin 
 from some condescending monarch who patronizes 
 learned schoolmen because he hopes that they will 
 magnify him, and hand down his name to after ages : 
 its origin is from a king who is a man of toil and sorrow, 
 of greater toil and sorrow than even his outward history 
 shows him to be, for he had a complaint which never 
 ceased to torment him from his youth up, though, as he 
 had prayed might be the case, it never kept him from 
 any enterprise ; it only made him careful of every 
 moment of the time which mi slit be so short. The
 
 54 OX BOOKS. [ill. 
 
 books were needed for citizens and men ; those who did 
 not care to be citizens and men would not care for them. 
 It was a glorious dawn of literature and of civiliza- 
 tion which shone upon England in the time of Alfred. 
 It was again to be clouded over ; the Saxons were once 
 more to lose their strength and manliness ; once more 
 to lose their sense of obedience, and their sense of free- 
 dom. Kings grew feeble ; nobles grew ambitious and 
 dangerous ; priests thought that they were sent into the 
 world, not to be the servants of all, but the masters 
 of all. Another set of Northmen must come to restore, 
 by seeming to destroy. But now they were not Pagan 
 Northmen, not barbarous pirates. The Normans of the 
 eleventh century had become Christians, without losing 
 their o^vt^i love of enterprise. They were the strongest 
 people, the most fit to govern ; on the whole they were 
 also the most educated people of that time. They con- 
 quered the Saxons. It could not be otherwise : all sub- 
 sequent generations may rejoice that it was so. The 
 tribulation was sore, the discipline was tremendous. If 
 there had been no one to regulate it but the Norman 
 kings, it would have been intolerable but then the 
 Norman kings were only instruments in the hands of 
 a wiser and more gi^acious Ruler. They were able to 
 teach law and obedience to those who had forgotten law 
 and obedience; they were able to make men, who had 
 mistaken lawlessness for freedom, understand what free- 
 dom is, by feeling what bondage is ; and they were able 
 to give Englishmen books — Latin books, it is true, like 
 those which had proved insufficient for their fathers, 
 but still books of English history ; books which are 
 especially valuable, because they connect the general 
 life of England with the life of some particular neigh- 
 bourhood, some monastery which was set down in the 
 midst of one of its counties. Moreover, the Saxon 
 tongue was not dead : it was driven out of the law- 
 courts by the Norman French, it was driven out of 
 the schools by the Latin. It was still wi'itten by some 
 who were preserving the chronicle of Saxon suffering;
 
 III.] ON BOOKS. 55 
 
 it was still spoken at the hearths of the people. And 
 the people, though stripped of their lands, were ac- 
 quiring a new kind of power ; they were becoming 
 manufacturers. They were getting charters from their 
 Norman kings : they were beginning to form the corpo- 
 rations of towns. In due time, when there were men 
 who wanted a native tongue, when it could be again 
 the speech of free citizens and free men, it would come 
 forth purified, expanded, strengthened, to be an English 
 lanomao^e, to be the or^an of an English hterature. 
 
 The different steps in the development of this 
 language, how it incorporated into itself both the 
 French and the Latin which were dwelling beside it, 
 what changes of structure it underwent; these are 
 points which I leave philologers to discuss. I pass 
 over to its first essays, and to the very interesting 
 question how these were connected with the growth of 
 our English Constitution, especially with that wonder- 
 ful step in their growth, the appearance of a House of 
 Commons, to represent the freeholders of the counties 
 and the freemen of the towns. I must only stop to 
 notice how important the reign of Edward III. and 
 the war with France, which wrought so many calamities 
 on both nations, are in this respect. The war taught 
 the King and his nobles, who had vaunted of their 
 Norman descent to claim the name of Englishmen, 
 and so to claim kindred with the Saxons who fought 
 in their ranks. At no time was there more disposition 
 in these nobles to be proud of their birth ; proud to 
 call themselves knights and gentlemen. It was an 
 especial blessing, therefore, that the very ambition of 
 the King should in this way compel them to appeal to 
 the sympathies which they had in common with all 
 classes of their countrymen. 
 
 I allude to this point because it is very closely con- 
 nected with the history of English books, and especially 
 of a book which was to give an altogether new start 
 to our literature, and which was to exercise a mighty 
 influence upon all the after-stages of it. John WyclifFe
 
 56 OX BOOKS. [in. 
 
 was an Oxford school-man; he had struggled for the 
 rights of his University against the Italian friars who, 
 he thought, were invading them, and were obtaining a 
 preponderating influence there. In the course of that 
 conflict he acquired more and more dislike to the teach- 
 ing of the friars generally, as representatives of a foreign 
 Bishop, more and more of a native English feeling. 
 That feeling made him the champion of the rights of 
 the sovereio'n against those of the ecclesiastics. Had he 
 stopped there, he might have ended with being a service- 
 able courtitr of Edward III. ; but he was not to stop 
 there. He was to become a teacher of the English 
 people, from whom he had sprung. I need not tell 
 inhabitants of Leicestershire that he became identified 
 with the country life of England, that the Oxford 
 scholar passed his last days in Lutterworth. 
 
 The books which he wrote, so far as they were 
 merely controversial books denouncing his opponents, 
 may have some value for the ecclesiastical reader ; but 
 I should not care to notice them here ; they would 
 have left no stamp upon subsequent times, whatever 
 they might have done for his own. But the book by 
 which he really spoke to the hearts of the English 
 tradesmen and fax-mers was his translation of the 
 Bible. This was not an attack upon friars, but a 
 living substitute for their legends and fictions. It 
 was written in letters, but it came to the English 
 citizens like a voice which was speaking to them, 
 rather than as something which was to be spelt out. 
 It spoke to them as men busy in handicrafts, as men 
 who had the earth to till and subdue. It spoke to 
 them as husbands, fathers, citizens. It spoke to them 
 as men ; as having that in them which united them to 
 the doctors and the nobles, to people in the times of 
 old, to people in the farthest corners of the earth. As 
 a mere translation, it is of only secondary value, for it 
 is taken from the Latin. The worth of it lies in its 
 English; it has fixed the language, it has become a 
 ground of the literature. No other book could have
 
 III.] ON BOOKS. 57 
 
 been that — no book wliicli did not address itself 
 directly to the people, no book which did not come 
 with an authority — I do not mean with an ecclesiastical 
 or state authority — the ecclesiastics and the King- 
 forbade the reading of it — I mean with the autho- 
 rity which the people of Judsea felt when they stood 
 about the mount, and One opened His mouth who 
 spake to them, not as a scribe, but as a King. 
 
 In was in the days of Wycliife as it had been in the 
 days of Alfred. This book could not come forth as an 
 English book for the English people without calling 
 forth other books. The sentence attributed to Kaliph 
 Omar was again shown to be entirely inapplicable to 
 our Scriptures. The earliest poetry belongs to the 
 same age with Wycliffe's Bible. Chaucer was possibly 
 the friend of Wycliffe — certainly shared many of his 
 sympathies and antipathies. He loved the priest, or, 
 as he was called, the secular priest, who went among 
 the people, and cared for them as his fellow-country- 
 men ; he intensely disliked the friars, who flattered 
 them and cursed them, and in both ways governed 
 them and degraded them. His education had been 
 different from Wycliffe's, his early poetical powers had 
 been called forth by the ladies and gentlemen of the 
 court. He mingled much French with his speech, as 
 they did ; he acquired from them a kind of acquaint- 
 ance with life which Wycliffe could not obtain in the 
 Oxford schools. Had he remained under their influ- 
 ence he might have been merely a very musical court 
 singer; but he entered into fellowship with common 
 citizens. He became a keen observer of all the differ- 
 ent forms of life and society in his time — a keen 
 observer, and, as all such are, genial, friendly, humor- 
 ous, able to understand men about him by sympa- 
 thizing' 'with them, able to understand the stories of 
 the past by his experience of the present. Without 
 being a reformer like Wycliffe, he helped forward the 
 Reformation by making men acquainted with them- 
 selves and their fellows, by stripping off disguises, and
 
 58 ON BOOKS. [iir. 
 
 by teaching them to open their eyes to the beautiful 
 world which lay about them. Chaucer is the genuine 
 specimen of an English poet — a type of the best who 
 were to come after him ; with cordial aifection for men 
 and for nature ; often tempted to coarseness, often 
 yielding to his baser nature in his desire to enter into 
 all the different experiences of men ; apt through this 
 desire, and through his hatred of what was insincere, 
 to say many things of which he had need to repent, 
 and of which he did repent; but never losing his 
 loyalty to what was pure, his reverence for what was 
 divine. He is an illustration of the text from which I 
 started. The Enoflish books which live throuofh ages 
 are those which connect themselves with human life 
 and action. His other poems, though graceful and 
 harmonious, are only remembered, because in his 
 " Canterbury Tales " he has come directly into con- 
 tact with the hearts and thoughts, the sufferings and 
 sins, of men and women, and has given the clearest 
 pictures we possess of all the distinctions and occupa- 
 tions in his own day. 
 
 We must always remember — in this day the recol- 
 lection is especially needful — that these great English 
 books were brought forth when there were no printing 
 presses. The discovery of printing is a very gTand 
 one ; nothing that has been said of it is worthy of its 
 importance. But we shall not estimate its worth if we 
 do not reverence words more than the mere letters 
 which express them, and the letters more than the 
 mere blocks by which they are spread abroad with 
 such unspeakable rapidity. If all the machinery should 
 continue, and we should have nothing to express by it, 
 if we should have all opportunity for uttering thoughts, 
 and there should be no thoughts to utter, we may 
 become miserably poor in the midst of our treasures. 
 If we would understand what printing has done for 
 books, we must understand first what makes books of 
 worth — why men can care to distribute them, or to 
 read them. Moreover, if you would do true honour
 
 III.] ON BOOKS. 59 
 
 to the invention of printing, you must think not first 
 if its enormous achievements, but first of the men in 
 whose minds the thought of it arose — of all their toil 
 and sorrow before they brought their thought into any 
 shape, of all the material difficulties which hindered 
 them from making it available for others. You must 
 go into the workshop of Gutenberg, or Faust, and 
 look if you can at that more wonderful workshop, the 
 brain and heart of the labourer. You will find there 
 things good and evil ; a light seeming to dawn on him 
 which he is sure has come from some high source, and 
 which is to bring great blessings to men ; pride that he 
 should receive it, mean suspicions of his fellows ; eager- 
 ness to have the credit of the idea, anger that some 
 one else should have a share in it. A history, sad 
 often, and also bright, is this of discoveries, but lead- 
 ing at last to the conclusion that no piece of machinery 
 could ever come into existence if there were not a spirit 
 to devise it, and work it out; that inventions appear 
 just when they are wanted; that the men who give 
 them to us deserve all honour for them, and yet that we 
 cannot easily tell, and ought not to be able to tell, 
 which has most to do with the gift, because it is in 
 very deed a gift of God to man, and the best and 
 wisest are only instruments in imparting it. 
 
 Through whatever hands it came, the gift did come ; 
 and from that time we begin to speak of books in the 
 modern sense. Still, I believe we shall not find that 
 this modern sense makes any difference, even the 
 slightest, in our principle. The same law which ap- 
 plies to the MSS. in the Alexandrian Library, applies 
 to the printed books in the Vatican or the British 
 Museum. Books rise and fall, live and die, by the 
 same law in the reign of Queen Victoria as in the 
 reio-n of Kinof Alfred. Take a few instances drawn 
 
 • - • • • rm 
 
 from the times after the invention of printing. The 
 fifteenth century, to which it belongs, was, what we 
 call, the century of the Revival of Letters. Not that 
 letters had ever died. The books of the twelfth, thir-
 
 60 ON BOOKS. [hi. 
 
 teenth, and fourteenth centuries on morals, metaphy- 
 sics, logic, and physics, distract us not by their lack of 
 thoughts, but by the multitude of their thoughts. But 
 people had become weary of what seemed so far from 
 human life. Then Constantinople fell into the hands 
 of the Turks. The Greek scholars spread themselves 
 abroad in the West of Europe. They brought with 
 them the old histories and poets of Greece which they 
 could interpret. The men of the West, the merchants 
 of Italy, who were full of life and enterprise, could 
 understand them and delight in them, as well as in 
 the Greek statues which exhibited the beauty of the 
 human form and countenance. At the same time 
 Italians, and many besides them, began to say that 
 the old Latin, which had been spoken in the days 
 Avhen Rome was in its glory, had been forgotten, and 
 a very barbarous language substituted for it. This 
 pursuit of the old Latin and Greek books is w^hat 
 bears the name of the Revival of Letters. Some 
 think it was altogether for the good of Europe, some 
 think it introduced a gi*eat amount of heathenism. I 
 think that it was good, because God ordained it, because 
 the time was come when these old languages and old 
 books were wanted ; because the language and the 
 books which had been accepted as good for some 
 centuries had lost their hold upon the hearts of men, 
 and could not help them any more. But the fine 
 people in Europe did unquestionably fall back in their 
 hearts into the old Heathen worship, and they would 
 have done it much more if there had not been a set of 
 common people, of plain human beings, who wanted 
 something altogether different from that. 
 
 Englishmen did not share much in this movement ; 
 they were too much occupied. It was the time of our 
 terrible civil w^ar. English boys, however, began to 
 profit by the new learning. Our great schools of Win- 
 chester and Eton were set up at this time ; there 
 youths learnt the force of w^ords, the laws which we 
 are obliged to obey in the use of them. They were by
 
 III.] ON BOOKS. 61 
 
 degrees to become acquainted with the great poets of 
 the old world, to understand that what was spoken 
 centuries before, if it expressed the thoughts, even the 
 perplexed thoughts, of human beings, might instruct 
 them and quicken them. A book wliich belongs to 
 these times bore the same witness. There had been a 
 dream in the minds of Britons of a King Arthur, who 
 had fought the battles of the land, and of the Christian 
 Church, against the Saxon invader. The traditions of 
 him were all vague and uncertain ; but they embodied 
 the idea of a king who was such as a king ought to be 
 — struggling hard, bringing others around him to live 
 with him and work with him, trained by suffering, 
 disappointment, desertion ; failing upon earth, certain 
 to have a life somewhere else which should affect the 
 earth. These traditions were connected with our own 
 soil. They combined themselves wdth thoughts of 
 Christian chivalry, which had belonged to the very people 
 whom Arthur had fought against ; they pointed to a 
 King who must have greater sympathies with men than 
 Arthur had, who must have a perfection which he could 
 not have. These legends were gathered up in the midst 
 of that dark, wicked time of the civil wars. A shadow 
 might be cast upon them from the sins of that time. 
 But they showed that men could never cease to aspire, 
 and hope, and beheve in something better than they see. 
 They exercised a great influence over the poets who hved 
 in the time of Queen Elizabeth. They never proved their 
 might more, nor produced greater fruits, than they have 
 done in the reign of Queen Victoria. 
 
 This was the picture of an imaginary King. Not 
 long after there appeared the picture of an imaginary 
 Commonwealth. It was written in Latin, and was 
 called the " Utopia ; " or, the Good Place, the Good 
 Reign. But it was written by an Englishman, a very 
 honest, brave, learned, and gi'aceful Englishman. It 
 was the work of a lawyer, one of the best of English 
 lawyers ; though it was written about a place that 
 never existed, it laid bare corruptions that did exist,
 
 62 OX BOOKS. [ni. 
 
 corruptions that were passing under Sir Thomas 
 More's eyes, in his own country. Like a good man, 
 he spoke most of the evils of his own profession, those 
 which he knew best and had most to do with — the 
 bribery, and denials of justice, from which his own 
 hands were quite pure. But he also exposed the e\'ils 
 which he saw in the Church of his days; he spoke 
 plainly and severely of its need of reformation. Never- 
 theless, when the Eeformation came in his age. Sir 
 Thomas More did not like it. He would have heartily 
 supported one which had been managed by scholars 
 and accomphshed men ; he did not symj)athize with 
 one which appealed directly to the S}Tnpathies of 
 common men, suffering from the miseries of the world, 
 and of their o^\^l sins. The brave Sir Thomas More 
 would have checked such a Reformation as that by 
 any means; he rather died on the scaffold than in any 
 way sanction it. I should be ashamed not to feel a 
 great reverence for him. It is strongest when I think 
 him most wrong. But neither he, nor the best, nor 
 the worst man could stop that which was necessary 
 for the life of nations and of men. It was not in the 
 power of divines to turn the cuiTent in their way, nor 
 of monarchs to turn it in their way. Both did their 
 best, and both failed. There was a power at work 
 which they could not counteract. They could not 
 hinder the German jDeople from reading the Book 
 which Luther translated for them ; they could not 
 hinder that Book from giving a new form and power 
 to the German language, and a new direction to the 
 thoughts of its people ; and they could not hinder the 
 English from having the same Book given to them, 
 not any longer as a mere translation, Kke Wychffe's, 
 from the Latin, but from the tongues in which it was 
 written. The Revival of Letters had done this for the 
 People. The learning which the scholars would have 
 kept to themselves, and for their own glory, had found 
 its chief result in the wisdom and consolation which it 
 ministered to the common wayfarer.
 
 III.] ON BOOKS. 63 
 
 Again the old lesson was brought home to men. This 
 Book could not, as Kaliph Omar thought that his sacred 
 book might, swallow up other books; it must beget 
 books ; it must call forth a literature. The period of 
 the Reformation is the period from which books in 
 the native tongues, books speaking to the hearts of 
 men as men, and not to mere learned men — books 
 which a nation can claim as its own — may be said 
 fairly to commence. We have had our full share of the 
 blessing. Our greatest poets, Shakespeare and Spenser, 
 are the children of the Reformation. The historical 
 plays of Shakespeare could never have been produced 
 in any time before the age of Queen Elizabeth. They 
 express the national spirit which was awakened in 
 that age. They show how Englishmen were feeling 
 their relation to theu' forefathers, their interest in the 
 land before they came into it. And the poet himself 
 learned to understand the chronicles of his country by 
 mixing with the citizens of his country. He knew 
 what they must have been in the days of Henry IV. 
 by what they were in his own day ; he knew what 
 Roman citizens must have been in the days of Julius 
 Csesar in the same way. He could understand French- 
 men, Italians, Spaniards, and see their different pecu- 
 liarities ; for that man is most just, on the whole, to 
 every other nation, who has the strongest feeling of 
 attachment to his own. And Shakespeare was dwell- 
 ing in the midst of a nation which was struggling for 
 its existence against powers that would have swal- 
 lowed it up. Again, I believe that in no time but one 
 in which men had been mightily occupied, as they 
 were at that time, with the struggles of the conscience, 
 with the sense of moral evil, could such a play as that 
 of " Macbeth " have been written. The dagger which the 
 king saw before him when the murder was to be done, 
 the spot which his wife could never get out of her 
 hands after it was done, these are testimonies to the 
 battle of light and darkness in a man, and to the 
 terrible retribution when the darkness has prevailed,
 
 64 ON BOOKS. [iii. 
 
 which one finds in no later works. Having once been 
 written, they may teach us always. 
 
 Edmund Spenser, in his " Faery Queen," shows how a 
 cultivated and refined man, mixing with all the grace- 
 ful statesmen and scholars of his time, was influenced 
 by the same causes. If I spoke to you at all of him, 
 I should soon weary your patience, for I could not 
 speak briefly ; I have so much regard and affection for 
 him. I only mention him as one of the most remark- 
 able instances that great poems are composed not in 
 easy, lazy times, but when there is most work doing, 
 and when there are the most strong and energetic men 
 to do it. Spenser was fond of allegory. If he had 
 lived in a leisurely age he might only have been an 
 inventor of conceits and allegories. But he was a 
 patriot ; he visited Ireland and saw its miseries ; he 
 loved his queen ; he dreamed of a more glorious queen 
 than she had ever been. So, whether his book is 
 called an allegory or not, it tells of real and not sham 
 fights, fights in which you and I are engaged. When 
 we read him, we need not trouble ourselves much 
 about Fairy-land. Here, in this land, amidst our own 
 hills and valleys, in the streets of that city where 
 Spenser was born and died, in the streets of every 
 English town, we shall find plenty of evil enchanters, 
 and also divine helpers who can overcome them for 
 us all. The same lesson I believe might be drawn, 
 if I had time to draw it, from the history of our 
 Civil Wars in the seventeenth century. Literature 
 had been a profession in the reign of James I., a 
 court luxury in the reign of Charles I. Then came a 
 tremendous conflict. All the passions, all the hopes, 
 that had been slumbering in men's hearts were awak- 
 ened. To these we owe some of the noblest inspira- 
 tions, in verse and prose, which stir the hearts of 
 Englishmen in this day. They came from men of the 
 most opposite opinions. We owe Jeremy Taylor, the 
 prince of Royalists and Episcopalians, Milton, the 
 grandest of the Puritans and Republicans, to the faith
 
 iTi.] ON BOOKS. 65 
 
 which the Civil Wars enkindled in both, to the suffer- 
 ings which both endured. And the man who was 
 better known to the people of England than either of 
 these, the man who has expressed the deepest anguish 
 and the highest hopes, John Bunyan, owes the power 
 which he has exercised, first no doubt to the reality 
 of his own inward struggles, but much also to 
 the prison at Bedford in which he dreamed his true 
 dream. 
 
 I am far however from meaning to say that all good 
 books must have this origin. The books which we 
 connect most with the early part of the eighteenth 
 century, bear few marks of suffering; in general they 
 express ease and equanimity. They would not be true 
 representations of the men who wrote them, or of the 
 life of that time, if they had been otherwise ; for, just 
 as much as any to which I have alluded hitherto, they 
 were not mere books, but faithful exhibitions of life — 
 of a life not very elevated, somewhat frivolous, but 
 belonging to English men and English women, and 
 therefore deserving to be studied by English men and 
 English women. And if Addison and Steele in the 
 " Spectator " show us this side of life, Johnson in his 
 " Rambler " and his " Rasselas " shows us the very 
 opposite — a hard wrestling to maintain existence and 
 reconcile difficulties; discontent, and yet courage and 
 patience to endure, and hope for something better, if 
 he could not see clearly what it wa-s. These writers 
 and many more help us to understand that time ; what 
 it was in itself, and what it was to bring forth. Be- 
 sides these, there were a number of mere book-makers, 
 who had no sense of the sacredness of words, who 
 thought they might use them as they liked for any 
 mercenary or spiteful purpose. These are they whom 
 Pope describes in his " Dunciad," who might have 
 introduced such a reign of dulness and darkness as he 
 predicted at the end of it, if there had not been other 
 powers at work than theirs, if earnest and tremendous 
 questions concerning the existence of men and nations 
 
 F
 
 66 OX BOOKS. [ill. 
 
 had not arisen, which required another satisfaction 
 than that which these books or any books could give. 
 Mr. Wordsworth complains in one of his sonnets 
 that the French Revolution, unlike our English Civil 
 Wars, was barren alike of books and men. I do not 
 know whether he could have justified that assertion as 
 far as France is concerned. I am sure that an asser- 
 tion of the most opposite kind would be true, if we 
 look at the effect of that Revolution and of the wars 
 which followed it upon other nations, especially upon 
 our own. We owe, I conceive, to the thoughts which 
 it engendered, many men and many books. The poet 
 who brought that charge is an illustration of my 
 meanino-. He found an artificial diction established 
 among poets, which concealed, as he judged, poverty 
 of feelino' and thought ; he endeavoured to show, and 
 he did show most effectually, that thoughts in which 
 all human beings have an interest may be best ex- 
 pressed in simple, manly English speech. He exagge- 
 rated, most would say, the worth of the speech of 
 peasants above all other speech. But the exaggeration 
 was a sign that he had been born into an age which 
 was meant to assert the superiority of that which is 
 essentially and universally human, to that which is 
 merely distinctive of particular classes. That was the 
 fruit which he, a loyal Englishman, deeply attached to 
 the institutions of his soil, derived from the levelling 
 doctrines of the Revolution. He rejected them utterly 
 so far as they led him to scorn the past, or throw 
 away one blessing which it had left us. He would 
 not reject the great truth which was hidden under all 
 their wildness, and which sober Enghshmen could turn 
 to the best account, that there is a priceless grandeur 
 in every human being, and that neither literature nor 
 society can exist unless they confess that grandeur 
 and seek to awaken the sense of it. I cannot doubt 
 that the books which have acted most upon our gene- 
 ration, from w^hatever quarters they have come, have 
 derived their force mainly from the practical witness
 
 in.] OX BOOKS. 67 
 
 which they have borne to this truth. I do not be- 
 lieve that the interest which we have taken in Scott's 
 poems, or Scott's novels, was owing chiefly to their 
 exhibition of great knights and noble personages, 
 though no doubt this has contributed to their fame. 
 I believe the genial sympathy which he showed with 
 the Scotch people, his Jeanie Deans and Edie Ochil- 
 tree, have been the real and permanent strength of his 
 works. To these we turn with ever fresh pleasure ; 
 and it is a consolation to reflect that so much genial 
 sympathy with human beings, could have existed in a 
 man writing during the faded and artificial days of 
 the Regency, sharing in the favours of the Regent, 
 and commending himself to the affection and interest 
 of the society which was most affected by the vanity 
 and frippery of that time. A seed of better life was 
 kept alive in that society, to germinate and bear fruit, 
 one hopes, hereafter. 
 
 These seeds were not a little stifled by a set of 
 stories which succeeded Sir Walter Scott's, and which 
 bore the name of Fashionable Novels, Most persons 
 of my age will remember them. I trust they are long 
 since extinct, and have no influence whatever on the 
 present generation. They address themselves to that 
 most vulgar of all feelings, our wish to know what is 
 going on among a set of people somewhat above our 
 own level, that we may if possible catch some of the 
 most insignificant parts of their behaviour, and mimic 
 their luxuries. To these have succeeded the Sensa- 
 tional Novels, which minister to another kind of 
 desire, the desire 'to be startled with events and com- 
 binations of events which are never likely to happen, 
 — there being nothing, it would seem, in the actual 
 world of human beings, or in the world of nature, 
 which can cause us any wonder. There are some 
 admirable writers, female writers especially, who have 
 supplied our best antidote to such morbid excitements. 
 They have lifted the veil which conceals from us the 
 struggles and sufferings of those whom we are meet- 
 
 F 2
 
 68 OX BOOKS. [in. 
 
 iug every day; they have shown us something of the 
 hearts of those whom we only knew by their want 
 of the good things upon which we pride ourselves. 
 There is nothing sensational in such revelations ; but 
 they may be more terrific, and more cheering, than all 
 fantastic enormities ever were. One such writer has 
 just gone from us, and will be long remembered by 
 those who know that her Mary Bartons and her 
 Libbie Marshes describe what she knew, and express 
 inward, not fictitious, sympathies. I am sure she 
 rejoiced once, and must still rejoice, that she made 
 a few persons understand better the condition of a 
 great English town — forgive the offences and sins, and 
 honour the manliness and womanhness, of those who 
 toil and groan in it; and that she was never tempted 
 to seek a temporary and miscliievous reputation by 
 catering to the appetites of any of her sex or ours 
 who prefer sentiment to humanity, falsehood to 
 truth. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott has also kindled a healthy desire 
 among us for real histories, not merely historical 
 novels. The demand has been met by many authors, 
 whose patient industry as well as their power of ex- 
 hibiting acts and the sources of acts, surely promise 
 that they shall live. Charles Lamb said in one of his 
 exquisite essays, that there were some histories writ- 
 ten in the last age which cannot be called books at 
 all. They were mei'ely the pasteboard covers, lettered 
 " History of England," or " History of the World," 
 which careful librarians put into their shelves when 
 their books are absent. Some of the Histories that 
 our age has produced are books in the truest sense of 
 the word. They illustrate gTeat periods in our own 
 annals, and in the annals of other countries. They 
 show what a divine discipHne has been at work to 
 form men ; they teach us that there is such a discipKne 
 at work to form us into men. That is the test to 
 which I have urged that all books must at last be 
 brought; if they do not bear it, their doom is fixed.
 
 HI.] ON BOOKS. 69 
 
 They may be light or heavy, the penny sheet or the 
 vast foHo ; they may speak of things seen or unseen ; 
 of Science or Art; of what has been or what is to 
 be ; they may amuse us or weary us, flatter us or 
 scorn us; if they do not assist to make us better 
 and more substantial men, they are only provid- 
 ing fuel for a fire larger, and more utterly destruc- 
 tive, than that which consumed the Library of the 
 Ptolemies.
 
 IV. 
 
 ON THE USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 
 
 I AM going to speak of the use and abuse of News- 
 papers. Do not let this title mislead you. Do not 
 fancy that I mean to tell you of some newspapers 
 which are doing good to the community, and of some 
 which are doing evil. Do not suppose that I have 
 some scheme of a newspaper in my head which would 
 be useful to you and to the world, and which would 
 not be capable of abuse. There may be great differ- 
 ences in the newspapers which are in circulation, daily 
 or weekly, through England; but I never met with 
 one which I did not think might be abused to bad 
 purposes, or which I did not think might be turned 
 to some good purpose if we knew how. I may have 
 dreamed of a perfect newspaper, as I may have dreamed 
 of a perfect physician, or lawyer, or divine ; but I 
 never saw one, nor expect to see one. I believe if I 
 tried to produce one according to my notions, it would 
 have all the defects of those that exist now, and per- 
 haps none of their merits. 
 
 Understand then, that I do not come among you 
 for the purpose of praising, or censuring, newspaper 
 writers or newspaper editors. They would care Httle 
 for my praises, and profit little by my censures. Pro- 
 bably there are none of them here ; and I would rather 
 speak to those who are here of what concerns them. 
 You and I read newspapers. It is not of so much
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 71 
 
 importance to us to inquire whether we might have 
 some better food than we have, as to consider how we 
 may make the most of what we have, how we may 
 counteract what is poisonous in it, and bring out what 
 is nourishing. Roger Bacon is said to have trembled 
 when the might of gunpowder was made known to 
 him, and to have suppressed the discovery. Which of 
 us would think now of complaining that it had been 
 discovered, and that the system of our wars has been 
 altogether changed by it ? Which of us thinks it safe 
 to forget that there is an explosive force in gun- 
 powder, and that children should not play with it? 
 Every newspaper declares that it possesses a mysteri- 
 ous and tremendous power; nearly every newspaper 
 warns us that its rival and contemporary turns that 
 power to mischief. We have need, therefore, to be on 
 our guard. Let us try, if we can, to turn this power 
 against our enemies, the enemies of our country, the 
 enemies of each one of us. Let us try that it may not 
 undermine and extinguish that which is most dear 
 and precious to us. 
 
 I am going to speak first of the use of newspapers. 
 Again I must remind you that I do not mean of some 
 one particular newspaper, but of that kind of litera- 
 ture which we find in any newspaper that we take up. 
 I will show you how sincere I am in this profession 
 by the course which I shall follow in treating the 
 subject. There is a great difference of course in the 
 ability with which the leading articles in different 
 papers are written; those leading articles are written 
 in support of different opinions and parties. But I 
 shall not speak first of the leading articles ; I shall 
 mention the other contents of the papers before I 
 come to them, and, when I do come to them, what 
 I shall say will not be to fix your thoughts upon the 
 cleverness of this argument or the stupidity of that, 
 upon the public spirit which is displayed by those 
 who support one cause, and the want of patriotism in 
 those who support another. What I say will have
 
 72 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPEES. [iv. 
 
 equal reference to Whigs, and Tories, and Radicals, to 
 those who maintain one ecclesiastical maxim or an- 
 other, to those who write most carefully and ably, or 
 most loosely and feebly. 
 
 Perhaps you will think that there is one side of the 
 paper, one sheet in some journals, which I may pass 
 over without notice — that which contains the Adver- 
 tisements. I am far from claiming that privilege. I 
 beheve we may make gTeat use of these advertise- 
 ments, and that not merely when we want to find 
 a place, or a person to fill it; not merely when we 
 have got something to sell, or when there is something 
 w^e need to buy ; not merely when there is some friend 
 of ours going out in a ship, or coming in by one ; but 
 when we have no special occasions for which we turn 
 over the columns in that strange miscellany, when we 
 merely let our eyes wander, as we sometimes do, over 
 houses and servants and shops and vessels and books, 
 without knowing very well what we are looking for ; 
 just as we might watch the queer forms in the fire in 
 the dusk of the evening. It is a curious and motley 
 assemblage ; that at least we must feel, — a gTeat heap 
 and chaos of things, that are somehow helping to make 
 up this w^orld in which we are dweUing. Might not 
 we stop just for a moment or two to think of that, to 
 recollect what a number of wants and washes are set 
 down here, and what a number of persons are trying, 
 each in his own way, to gi-atify them ? Before any, 
 the shortest of these advertisements, was taken to the 
 ofiice of the newspaper, and the three or five or six 
 shillings paid for it, how much may have passed 
 in the mind of the advertiser ! Take, for instance, the 
 simplest case of a cook or a housemaid wanting a 
 place. I will not choose the opposite case, and en- 
 large on all the doubts and perplexities of a master or 
 mistress parting with a servant and looking out for a 
 new one, though that might open curious chapters in 
 domestic history. I w^ould speak rather of those anxi- 
 ous, terrible moments they may be, when a poor man
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 73 
 
 or woman, who knows of no other honest way of get- 
 ting a livehhood but this, and perhaps has a mother 
 and sisters dependent upon earnings to be got in 
 this way, tries one family after another, and then, as 
 a last resource, determines to run the risk of " the 
 paper." Think of all that has gone before this, and of 
 all the waiting for news after it ; the uncertainty 
 about the letter to A. B. or C. D. at the post-office, 
 the hope of some particular place which looks very 
 jDromising, but which happens to have been filled up 
 the day before. Bring before yourselves just a few of 
 the disappointments, and wearinesses, and temptations, 
 that have come to some three or four out of the num- 
 bers that are stating their wants day after day, and I 
 believe you will have already got some use out of the 
 newspaper. For is it not a most useful thing to know 
 a little more about our fellow-creatures, and the great 
 or the little things which are occupying or disturbing 
 them ? If you had a map of London spread out 
 before you, or if you looked down upon it from the 
 top of St. Paul's, or of the Colosseum in the Regent's 
 Park, you would not have such a panoramic view of 
 the streets and houses as you have in a large sheet of 
 advertisements. There you see the outsides of the 
 houses and some indistinguishable figures walking 
 about in the streets ; here you have a glimpse into 
 the insides of them, some little hint of what these 
 people are walking about for, of some of the thoughts 
 that are going on in their hearts. That I think is a 
 far more wonderful thing. And there is this advan-, 
 tage in the way we arrive at our knowledge. We 
 cannot gratify a little, petty, prying, vulgar curiosity 
 about the circumstances or the schemes of our neiefh- 
 hours. We do not know who these people are, most of 
 them, who are wanting this thing or that. The shop- 
 keepers, indeed, who are advertising their goods put 
 out their names very plainly and in large letters, that 
 we may know where to look for them. But all those 
 notices, which contain so much of secret history, only
 
 74 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 tell us of some fellow citizen, some fellow-creature of 
 ours, not who he is, or any gossip about him ; so that 
 what we learn from these records when they are put 
 together is, that we are threads in a very complicated 
 web ; or, to use another comparison, that we are parts 
 of a puzzle, in which one piece might fit into the other 
 if each that has need of something could just find out 
 the other who has that something to supply. That is 
 one view of the case, but then there is another ; that 
 we are not threads, or bits of wood after all, that we 
 are human beings, with all kinds of sorrows and joys, 
 and contradictions and sins, with a sense of being very 
 little even when we are most trying to be gTcat, and 
 with the sense of having something very great, and 
 mysterious, and immortal, about us, even when we are 
 doing very little things ; so that there may be earnest- 
 ness and passion enough in us sometimes to move a 
 world, while we are spending our time about a look- 
 ing-glass or a ribbon. Therefore, if we consider these 
 advertisements well, we find that people could not be 
 made to fit into each other even if each man who had 
 something to sell found the man who had exactly that 
 to buy ; if the woman who was wanting to be a house- 
 keeper found the person who desired exactly such a 
 housekeeper as she was ; that there must be something 
 else than this to bind us together, and make us live 
 together and work together, as men are meant to do. 
 Looked at in this way, the sheet of Advertisements 
 seems to me, in spite of the multitude of odd trifles of 
 which it is composed, a very serious document indeed. 
 In different moods it might make one laugh or cry. 
 But possibly it might make us do what is better than 
 either — might remind us that, after all, we do not want 
 the greater part of the things which these advertisers 
 want, that we can do very well without them ; but 
 that there are some things which we do want, all 
 of us, which we want each for himself, and which we 
 want that we may live as if we belonged to a society, 
 and not as if we were a set of different grains of dust,
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 75 
 
 making up a heap of dust which any strong wind will 
 blow hither and thither. 
 
 This conviction, I think, will be brought more home 
 to us if we do not leave this sheet of the paper till we 
 have glanced at one corner of it ; at least, I think it is 
 there generally that one finds the Births, Marriages, and 
 Deaths. I suppose one turns to these, thinking it just 
 possible that some friend whom we know may be in 
 one of the hsts; very Hkely indeed that we may find 
 one in the last. But if that should not be so, if no 
 familiar name should occur as a new father or mother, 
 as a bridegToom or bride, as one whose house on earth 
 knows him no more, — yet simply to have this memorial 
 of people we never saw or heard of set before us day 
 after day, in the midst of all these houses and shops, 
 these chairs and tables and millinery, is very striking 
 and affecting. Into a world full of these varieties are 
 those little creatures bom who understand nothing of 
 any of them, and yet who belong to a race which is 
 meant to have dominion over them all. What is to 
 become of that little immortal ? How is it to make 
 its way in the midst of all these things ? How is it 
 to find out the secret of its own destiny and parentage ? 
 Some of these things may be for the use perhaps of 
 that couple who are just married. They may have 
 been buying dresses, and fitting up a house. Are these 
 the things upon which they depend to make their 
 home a cheerful one, a place of peace and not of strife ? 
 Or have they some better security than that, some 
 union between themselves that is not caused by the 
 presence of these things, and will not disapjDear if they 
 all depart ? From that man and that in the other 
 column they have departed. He is stripped bare of 
 them, at all events. What is there left to him ? These 
 are the sort of questions that may come into our 
 minds ; and surely a newspaper may be of mighty use 
 to us if it suggests them. There is no need of long 
 morahties about these records. They often spoil the 
 effect of the plain words " hoo^n on such a day, married
 
 76 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 at such a church, died at such an age." The moral is 
 not in our words, but in the facts. If we take those 
 in, we shall understand how much greater the common 
 things of the world are than the rare things, how much 
 greater those things are which concern rich and poor, 
 lazy people and working people equally, than those 
 which one has and another is without ; though it is of 
 these that in our folly we take the most account. 
 
 Well, then, we have done with this sheet of Adver- 
 tisements. Let us turn to some of the other contents 
 of the paper. Here I observe a Pohce report. That 
 used to be a very favourite part of the paper, one that 
 some editors took great pains to make attractive. If 
 I told you why, I am afraid I should be coming too 
 soon to the second di'vision of my subject ; I should be 
 beginning to speak of abuses. But I am satisfied there 
 is a use in the Police reports, and my present business 
 is with that. The very name j^oUce is worth thinking 
 about. It comes from a word that means a city. It 
 is one of the same family of words with ])olicy and 
 'jjolitics. Whenever you see a pohceman you know 
 that you belong to a city, that there is a certain order 
 established in that city, that there is a Government 
 over it, that there are agents for finding out wrong- 
 doers, that there are persons to enforce the laws which 
 the wi'ong-doers break. The Pohce, such as we see 
 them in the streets of London, are of recent date. 
 Most of us can remember when they came into exist- 
 ence, under the first administration of the Duke of 
 Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. But the Pohce 
 Courts go back to a far older time than that ; and 
 without some attempt at a Pohce there could be no 
 City of London, or Borough of Southwark. These are 
 general considerations, forming one part, though a small 
 part, of what we call Politics. The Pohce reports of 
 the newspapers apply these generals to special cases. 
 There you have not rules and maxims about thieving, 
 but the actual person who is accused of thieving 
 brought up to answer for himself. It is very good
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 77 
 
 and useful to be reminded that all mere rules, all that 
 we read of in books, have to do with flesh-and-blood 
 human beings. Yes, it is good to be reminded of 
 this, even when we have to connect these human 
 beings with crimes and with punishment. That surely 
 does not make us feel less that they belong to our 
 race, that they are of our kindred. It sets us upon 
 thinking how many temptations every man and boy- 
 vagabond is exposed to that we are not exposed to, 
 and what we might have done if these had been, 
 acting upon us — if we had been left to ourselves,. 
 or left to even worse guides, if there are worse 
 than ourselves. That sermon I believe a Police 
 report may preach to us very powerfully. But if we 
 listen to it truly, the sermon will not make us fall into 
 sentimental regrets that the man or the boy was 
 detected in his evil and is punished for it. It is a 
 good thing for every man to be detected in his evil. 
 It is a dreadful thing for us to escape detection; and 
 it is bad, if we are detected, for us not to be reminded 
 that punishment is an immeasurably better thing than 
 crime, not for society only, but for the man who suffers 
 it. It cannot cure him of the evil out of which the 
 crime came, but it says to him, " There it is, in you. 
 This is to remind you of it, this is to tell you that you 
 must and can have the evil taken out of you, however 
 close it is to you." 
 
 All this I might have got as well perhaps from 
 another part of the paper which is generally longer 
 than that containing the Police reports ; I mean the 
 reports of some of the trials in the Old Bailey, the 
 Queen's Bench, and the other Courts of Law. But 
 these are not so homely. The counsel for the plaintiff 
 or defendant make long speeches, which one does 
 not always understand, and which sometimes seem to 
 embarrass the matter rather than to make it clearer. 
 And besides, so many of these causes, especially those 
 that are reported at the greatest length, have more to 
 do with questions of property between man and man,
 
 78 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 where neither party need be very wrong, though one 
 or both may be, than with great and manifest offences. 
 It is another kind of learning, therefore, that I think 
 we get from these reports about the Queen's Bench, 
 and the Common Pleas, and the Exchequer Court, and 
 the Chancery Court, and the Rolls Court. 
 
 They belong to our country's history. Westminster 
 Hall places us in the midst of our old Norman kings. 
 It reminds us that they brought over with them 
 another language than that which our ancestors had 
 spoken, and made that the language of our Law 
 Courts. It reminds us that though they did us this 
 harm, and gave us this sign of conquest and subjec- 
 tion, we yet owe it to them, in a great degree, that 
 Law and Government did establish themselves anions: 
 us. They were great tyrants, but they were instru- 
 ments in God's hands for setting up that which is the 
 gi-eat check upon all tyranny, that which is a bit in 
 the mouth of every man who tries to make might into 
 right, and to trample upon those beneath him. These 
 laws, and these different courts, grew up to meet 
 different occasions. Sometimes they owed their exist- 
 ence to wisdom, sometimes to an accident or blunder; 
 sometimes to good men who were standing up in 
 defence of what was right and true, sometimes to 
 bad men plotting against each other ; sometimes to 
 violence, sometimes to those who resisted violence by 
 wit or by courage. But there has been something 
 deeper than all these at work, or all these would have 
 come to nothing. Men have not created the law and 
 order that has been in the land ; not lawyers, priests, 
 kings, any of them. They have sometimes been in- 
 struments in carrying out the purpose of the true 
 righteous Ruler of the land, sometimes in thwarting 
 it. But that purpose has stood in despite of them, as 
 it stands on in spite of us, and of all our nonsense and 
 wilfulness. The law reports in the newspapers may be 
 helpful in making us recollect that fact. Very tire- 
 some they may be in themselves; oftentimes we may
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 79 
 
 think it is "much ado about nothing," We may even 
 fancy that justice is done rather slowly, and not 
 always done at last ; but the Courts of Justice pro- 
 claim to us that it is not a name, but a reality ; that 
 it is not of to-day or of yesterday, but of Him that 
 liveth for ever. 
 
 I ought perhaps to have spoken of another and even 
 more exalted assembly in the near neighbourhood of 
 Westminster Hall, before I alluded to the Law Courts 
 and the Police Courts. The reports of the Debates in 
 the Houses of Parliament form a very conspicuous and 
 remarkable part of the newspapers during more than 
 half of the year. I carefully abstain from alluding to 
 any of the topics which are discussed in them, or to 
 the opinions and powers of the debaters. But I must 
 reckon it among the great uses of newspapers that we 
 are reminded day by day of our o^vn connection with 
 the legislation and government of the land to which 
 we belong. If we profited by it, this would be an 
 immense advantage, one which we possess over our 
 ancestors, who less than a hundred years ago read 
 debates that were in great part imaginary, and which 
 were treated by the House as a breach of its privi- 
 leges. We ought to understand, better than they did, 
 that each one of us has a share in every right and 
 wrong act that is done by those who rule us; that 
 whatever honour or shame befalls our country befalls 
 us, the members of it. Above all, the sight of these 
 debates tells those of us who have votes for members 
 of Parliament, that these are nothing less than trusts 
 to us from God ; that he who sells his conscience to 
 any one is giving up the dignity of a citizen and a 
 man, is a slave himself, and is helping to make his 
 countrymen slaves. 
 
 All this time I may seem to have been talking 
 merely as a Londoner. But here are reports about 
 agriculture from the different English counties, about 
 the state of trade in our towns, about corporations, 
 about schools, about meetings local and general, com-
 
 80 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 mercial and benevolent, about lines of railways, about 
 health and sickness, wealth and poverty, in all parts 
 of the land. The newspapers surely do us a great 
 service in furnishing us with these statements. So we 
 are reminded that England does not consist of towns, 
 and villages, and hamlets, all with separate interests ; 
 that it is not a set of principalities as it once was ; but 
 that we are one people, speaking one language, hav- 
 ing the same law and the same Queen ; and yet that 
 within this body there are a great many different 
 members, that each town, and each neighbourhood, 
 contributes something to the strength of the body 
 which another could not contribute; coal coming from 
 one, and corn from another, and cattle from a third ; 
 this being the town for cotton, and that for cutlery, 
 and that for earthenware. And the newspaper re- 
 minds us of what we are sometimes rather inclined 
 to forget, that the coals do not dig themselves out 
 of the earth, that the corn does not sow or reap itself, 
 that if glass and cotton and knives have to do with 
 machines, those machines are worked by hands, and 
 those hands belong to living men. We have to ap- 
 prise ourselves again and again, that whether the 
 provinces and the towns of England are to strengthen 
 each other and to strengthen the capital, or to weaken 
 each other and to weaken the capital, whether they 
 are to help to make up a great country, or to destroy 
 one that is made, depends much less upon the stuff 
 they send up in the shape of cotton or calico or hard- 
 ware, than upon the stuff of which the men that work 
 these things are composed. 
 
 During the Crimean War the question was often 
 debated, whether newspapers were doing good or ill 
 service to us by reporting the acts and plans of gene- 
 rals and the condition of armies. The same question 
 has been raised by the Americans in the War of the 
 North and South. I do not pretend to settle it. That 
 injustice must often be done by such reports to men 
 who were struggling with enormous difficulties, that
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 81 
 
 their intentions may often have been embarrassed by 
 hasty guesses about them, and comments on them, I 
 have no doubt. But as I am speaking of the good 
 which newspapers do us, I would rather dwell upon 
 the benefits which I think all of us might have de- 
 rived from the account of hardships which brave men 
 were suffering on both sides. It was somewhat ter- 
 rible to be reading a journal, in an easy-chair over a 
 comfortable fire, and to be told of what men, all of our 
 own flesh and blood, some, perhaps, of our own kith 
 and kin, were bearing in the night trenches or in the 
 field, or in the hospital after the battle was over. It 
 was good to have the comparison brought fully home 
 to us, to have our shame awakened for our own com- 
 forts, to have our reverence kindled for those who 
 could bear, even more than for those who could dare ; 
 to feel how closely we are knit to men at a distance 
 from us, having vocations wholly unlike ours. There 
 were electrical wires communicating between the 
 hearts of EngHsh men and women and that of some 
 soldier in the field, more wonderful than those which 
 brought the messages concerning him. 
 
 And the sympathy, it was found, need not be a 
 barren one. There could be actual services rendered, 
 actual comforts brought home to sufferers, in spite of 
 distance, in spite even of ignorance and blundering. 
 Many of these lessons belong to a time of peace as 
 much as of war. The newspapers tell us of men, born 
 on our soil, speaking our tongue, who are making 
 precious discoveries and dying slow deaths in Africa, 
 who are conquering American or Australian forests, 
 who are encountering the old beUefs and customs of 
 India or of China. They may be imparting the bless- 
 ings which they have inherited to other lands ; they 
 are in danger of losing those blessings themselves, of 
 forgetting the past, of ceasing to be brave men and 
 speakers of truth, of acting as if they were sent upon 
 the earth to crawl upon it, to worship the gold at 
 their feet, instead of being free men and children of
 
 82 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 God, In proportion as you think of tliem, and try to 
 ward off these dangers from them, you are doing much 
 to save yourselves and your own children from the 
 like. Let us be thankful then to the newspapers for 
 bringing them to our minds, for letting us know a 
 little what these men are thinking, and doing, and 
 enduring. 
 
 I shall stay too long upon this jaart of my subject, 
 Avhich is the pleasantest part, the part in which I am 
 recounting our obligations. I must come to the Lead- 
 ing Articles, with which I said I should finish this 
 portion of my case. I suppose the editors of the news- 
 papers consider this far more important than any of 
 the divisions of their work to which I have hitherto 
 alluded. I do not agree with them, because it seems 
 to me that records of facts, even if they are imperfect 
 and need correction in some particulars, have more 
 worth and interest than talk about the facts, let it 
 be as ingenious as it may. Good deeds must be the 
 substantial part of the feast ; good sentences can be 
 but the seasoning of it. At the same time I am not 
 the least disposed to underrate the mighty power of 
 words. I believe the Leading Articles of newspapers 
 are specially useful to us in leading us to reflect very 
 seriously on this power. 
 
 A book which has lasted hundreds or thousands of 
 years, which has been read by young and old, which 
 has given birth to gi-eat thoughts and generous acts, 
 ought to impress us more with this power than a 
 flying sheet. But I doubt if it does. We feel the 
 power of the newspaper in building up and pulling 
 down characters, in affecting the judgments of men 
 about the acts of their rulers, in leading them to 
 change opinions which they fancied were very fixed. 
 We see this kind of influence fifoinof on. We are 
 conscious of it in ourselves. We cannot tell exactly 
 whence it comes or how it works. It is very myste- 
 rious and undefinable. Some man T\Tote it down per- 
 haps at his club, or in his chamber, perhaps in a great
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 83 
 
 hurry, when a messenger was waiting to send it to 
 the jjress. He might be at that moment under some 
 chance impulse of pleasure, or of anger, or of wine. 
 He might be anxious to please some friend, or injure 
 some enemy. His thoughts get themselves put into 
 letters. The letters are set in types. The next morn- 
 ing thousands of sheets carry them east and west, 
 north and south; they are read by thousands of eyes, 
 they penetrate into thousands of hearts ; they beget 
 new thoughts and words, and sometimes very fierce 
 acts, I talked of gunpowder at the beginning of my 
 lecture. You might have thought it an idle or extra- 
 vagant comparison ; but what is there in the force of 
 gunpowder that can be measured against this force ? 
 If we had a barrel of that in our houses, what would 
 it be to these words that we carry with us wherever 
 we go, which we are ready to discharge so freely, with 
 so little recollection whither they may be borne, or 
 what work of death or life they may do ? Are not 
 newspapers very useful if they bring that truth home 
 to our minds, if they make us feel that we, at all 
 events, have no right to say " Our words are our own ; 
 who is lord over them ? " 
 
 In what I have said of the uses of newspapers, I 
 have not dwelt upon the obvious advantages which 
 they afford to mercantile men, I have spoken of them 
 as instruments which may contribute to awaken our 
 minds, and set us upon enlarging our knowledge of 
 that which surrounds us, and of that which has been 
 in past times. Nothing is good which does not cany 
 us beyond itself. Every wise book helps us, because 
 it makes us understand the world, or ourselves, or God 
 better : that is what we prize it for. So a wise man 
 does not talk about himself. He makes us honour him 
 and love him because we feel that that is not the thing 
 he is chiefly occupied about. He does not want to make 
 us worship him ; if he could, he would draw us away 
 from all false worship of every kind. This test is as 
 good for newspapers as for anything else. They are 
 
 G 2
 
 84 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 useful when they help us to rise above themselves, and 
 to seek for things which they cannot tell us; when 
 they remind us for instance that we belong to a race 
 which existed ages before they existed, and that our 
 children will go on after they are turned to their 
 original rags. But they are mischievous — mischievous 
 to our knowledge, mischievous to our morality, when 
 they lead us to be content with themselves, wia^n 
 they induce us to draw our knowledge or our morality 
 from them. This is the subject I am now going to 
 speak of. I am not going to blame them, but to point 
 out a tendency which there is in you and in me to 
 make them into idols, which the more we worship the 
 more we degrade ourselves, and the less fit we are to 
 reverence anvthing that is better and higher. 
 
 Let me show you in two or three ways how this 
 tendency works. And first let me speak of the word 
 News. I have told you that the newspaper may recall 
 to us that which is very old, that it must do so if we 
 feed upon it rightly, and suck the juice out of it. But 
 you will all remember what we are told of the Athen- 
 ians, that they spent their time in nothing else but 
 either to hear or to tell some new thing. These 
 Athenians were a very clever people, the cleverest 
 people, perhaps, that has ever been upon this earth. 
 They were at one time a very great people. They 
 loved their soil ; they honoured the tombs of their 
 fathers ; they sent forth ships ; they planted colonies ; 
 they raised noble buildings ; they wrote worthy books ; 
 they resisted and put down oppressors. It was not so 
 at the time St. Luke speaks of. They had become a 
 poor, frivolous, slavish people : just because they had 
 become a newsmongering people. The passion for 
 novelty had eaten up all other and better passions in 
 them — all reverence, all faith, all freedom. It is a 
 very awful lesson. We Englishmen are not one-half 
 as clever as the Athenians were. But men have lived 
 among us, and deeds have been done among us, nobler 
 than any they could boast of. We have been a
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 85 
 
 more practical peoj)le than they were ; less prone to 
 speculation, but more successful in hard, tough busi- 
 ness. Depend upon it all these qualities are in the 
 greatest danger of perishing ; depend upon it we shall 
 become petty and frivolous, and stupid withal, if we 
 learn to spend our time as the Athenians spent theirs. 
 There are men among us who do. We call them 
 Quidnuncs or IVhat-nous. They go about from club 
 to club, and house to house, and street to street, say- 
 ing " What now ? What is the last, the very last 
 newest thing ? Who can tell us ? That which was 
 heard two or three days, or two or three hours ago, is 
 stale. We must have something fresh. That is what 
 we are hunting for." Such men are the most miser- 
 able creatures almost that this earth brings forth. The 
 past is nothing to them, nor the future. They live in 
 the moment that is passing. Their life is absorbed 
 into that. And do not let any of us say that we are 
 not in danger of becoming such men as these. We' 
 are all in danger of it; men of all parties and profes- 
 sions, men whose language sounds most serious, as well 
 as those who never speak of any world but this. Our 
 chatter and gossip may take different forms, may find 
 different excuses. But if we let the newspapers of one 
 kind or another, however high their intellectual, or 
 moral, or spiritual pretensions may be, rule over us, 
 gossips and chatterers we shall become, that and 
 nothing else. I would especially beseech my friends 
 of the working class to beware of this tendency in 
 themselves, and to help us in coiTecting it. We fall 
 into it through idleness. Everything in their position 
 and circumstances warns them that idleness is their 
 curse, that labour is their blessing. In their manual 
 tasks they must be earnest if they would do anything. 
 Let them bring the same earnestness into the little 
 time that they can give to reading ; into the words they 
 speak when they are talking with each other; into 
 the thoughts they think when they are walking alone. 
 If they study ever so httle, they may be honest
 
 86 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 students; and five minutes of honest study is worth 
 days and weeks of flimsy newsmongering study, just as 
 five minutes of honest work is worth all that produces 
 the flimsy trumpery articles, which look fine to-day and 
 are worn out to-morrow. If the newspapers supply us 
 with the materials for thinking, they will do us good ; 
 if we use them as substitutes for thinking, they will 
 destroy both our intellects and our characters. 
 
 Another point. I have tried to show you how the 
 sense of personal responsibihty may be aroused in us 
 by much that we read in the newspapers, and espe- 
 cially by the reflections which they suggest on the 
 power of the words which we hear, and which we 
 speak. But I must tell you also that the newspapers 
 may do more than all other literature together to 
 weaken in us this sense of personal responsibility. We 
 know nothing of the man who \\Tites articles in the 
 newspaper. He calls himself " We." If anyone com- 
 plains of him, " We " answer the charge ; if " We " are 
 convicted of a libel, the printer answers for it. Now I 
 do not say wdiether this ought to be so or not. I 
 scrupulously abstain from laying doMTi any maxims 
 about the conduct of newspajDer writers, what it be- 
 hoves the English law to require of them, or what is 
 due from them as subjects of the law of God. I shall 
 express no opinion on these points; perhaps I have 
 formed none. My business is with the effects of this 
 " We " system upon ourselves, not with the propriety 
 or impropriety of it in them. Looking at it in that 
 point of view, I do say very solemnly, that if any one 
 of us gets into the habit of thinking that he is not an 
 /, a li\dng person, who must give account of himself, 
 who must answer for what he says and what he does 
 before men and before God — if any kind of phraseology 
 leads him to lose sight of that truth, and not to keep 
 it with him as the one that is the most serious and 
 terrible of all in whatever business he is engaged, his 
 moral existence is in jeopardy ; he will soon be unable 
 to look his neighbour straight in the face; courage
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 87 
 
 and truthfulness will forsake him. I cannot but think 
 that we are all very much inclined to lose ourselves in 
 a crowd, to muffle and disguise our voices, to act as 
 ventriloquists, so that our words may not seem to 
 others, and scarcely to ourselves, to have come out of 
 us. And the consequence is that, by degrees, the 
 words do not come out of us ; they do not express 
 what is in us; we catch our opinions, as we catch 
 a cough or a fever, from the people we come into 
 contact with. I say then, let us leave the newspapers 
 in undisturbed possession of their magnificent plural, 
 and let each Enghshman try to take credit for nothing 
 that is not his own, to shrink from the confession of 
 nothing that is. 
 
 Sometimes it is suggested that this plural mode of 
 speaking is favourable to modesty. The newspaper 
 Avriter does not like to put himself forward. He is so 
 overwhelmed with diffidence that he would rather no 
 one asked about him, or attributed to him the pa- 
 ternity of the thoughts which he is so generous as to 
 bestow upon the world. If, after reading the leading 
 articles of newspapers, you should be inclined to say 
 that this is the impression they leave upon your mind, 
 that a retiring bashfulness, with all its accompaniments 
 of reserve in expressing any decided judgment, unwill- 
 ingness to pronounce upon the merits or demerits of 
 others, abstinence from boasting and self-congratula- 
 tion, strike you as their most characteristic features, 
 I shall say nothing at all to disturb that opinion. But 
 I must say this, that if we boiTow this form of speech 
 from the newspaper teachers, we shall not acquire 
 along with it their humble virtues. I beheve the 
 danger is very great, that if any one of us were to 
 write with the habitual consciousness that he had a 
 " We " to cover all his vain and blustering assertions, 
 he would give way to the self-conceit which is lurking 
 in him more than he had ever done before, that it 
 would utter itself in the most offensive, and sometimes 
 in the most ridiculous, language. I never can beheve
 
 88 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 that the face under a mask is the one which is most 
 troubled with bhishes. 
 
 There is, however, another justification for this plural 
 pronoun. The writer in the newspaper, it is said, 
 speaks the sentiments of the persons who he expects 
 will chiefly buy his paper. He is what is called the 
 "organ" or spokesman of a party; he has therefore a 
 right to look upon himself as a sort of collector of its 
 votes and notions. No doubt he ventures now and 
 then to correct them ; he wishes to lead the judgment 
 of his readers, to give a direction to it. But, on the 
 whole, he will not fulfil his function unless he is a 
 tolerably faithful echo of their sentiments, unless he 
 either ascertains through conversation and correspond- 
 ence, or can divine by instinct, what their sentiments 
 are, and can put them out for their perusal in a 
 jDlausible, readable form. I am sure a man must have 
 a great deal of skill who is able to do this. It is a 
 very wonderful operation this, of inhaling opinions, 
 and then of exhaling them again, each week or day. 
 I am not a fit judge whether it is a satisfactory or a 
 healthy operation for the individual who performs it, 
 whether he feels himself to be, or actually is, a freer 
 and wiser and truer, man after it than before it. That 
 he must know best. I cannot report the debates 
 which are going on within him, or count up the Ayes 
 and Noes of his conscience. But speaking as one of 
 the public, as one of you, not for you — since I have 
 disclaimed any such right — I must say I doubt very 
 much whether it is good to have our thoughts and feel- 
 ings and prejudices brought back to us day by day, and 
 made to look much better and more respectable than 
 they look when we state them to ourselves. There is an 
 instrument which we often see worn by sickly people 
 in our streets. It is called a "respirator." I have 
 heard different opinions from medical men about the 
 utility of this instrument for those who have weak 
 lungs. Some say it is good because it keeps them 
 from the outward air; some say it is bad because they
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 89 
 
 who wear it only breathe then- own breath. Which- 
 ever of these doctrines is true about those who are in 
 a bad condition of body, I do not suppose that any- 
 one would recommend a respirator to an ordinary 
 EngHshman, who has the right use of all his functions. 
 The doctor would say to him, " Go out, winter and 
 summer, morning and night. Get the freest air you 
 can. Beware of nothing so much as of close air, in 
 which your own breath is continually returned to you 
 again." Now, a newspaper which speaks to us the 
 notions and phrases of one school and party is a 
 Respirator. We get our own breath returned to us 
 again ; we do not breathe the free open air. If we 
 say plainly, " This is necessary, because our judgments 
 and consciences are in such a diseased state that the 
 free air does them harm, we cannot venture into it," 
 then we may consult the moral doctor whether we are 
 not making them more diseased, whether we are not 
 shutting out the chances of restoration by our tender- 
 ness of ourselves. But if we are not willing to allow 
 that we are out of sorts and need advice, then by all 
 means let us throw off our resj)irators ; they must help 
 to stifle us. 
 
 Perhaps it will be said, " We are not tied to our own 
 party newspaper ; we may read those which most con- 
 tradict our opinions." Just so. I should recommend 
 that course. A dear friend of mine once resolved 
 that he would read only those that contradicted his 
 opinions; he thought he had not the least occasion 
 for those that agreed with him. But there is danger 
 here too, danger of another kind. The newspapers 
 rail at each other, and rail at those who differ from 
 them. They have certain slang phrases of indigna- 
 tion, traditional witticisms which have been a long 
 time in use, but which will bear to be turned, and 
 fresh lined, and smoothed and ironed, very often. 
 These sharp sayings and well-seasoned jokes, whether 
 we know it or not, irritate us considerably when they 
 are directed against persons or principles that are dear
 
 90 USE AXD ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 to us. They enter into pur minds ftir more quickly 
 than better things; they make all the currents in 
 them muddy. They send us forth spiteful and frivo- 
 lous too, angry with the anonymous "We" who has 
 uttered the words, angry with ourselves for being 
 angry, quite certain that he is wTong, less ^villing to 
 admit than we were before that there may be wrong 
 in us. I am not saying that all these bad tempers of 
 ours may not be overcome. I am. sure they may be; 
 I am sure they must be. But do not let us hide from 
 ourselves that there they are ; do not let us pretend 
 that these influences are not likely to call them forth. 
 One of the uses of newspapers may be, that they 
 bring to hght one and another bad tendency which was 
 hidden in us ; we abuse them when we yield to it. 
 
 No doubt a newspaper might exist, perhaps actually 
 exists, which does not so much reflect the notions and 
 habits of a party or section of the community as the 
 notions and habits which are floating about in society 
 generally — what is commonly called, in the large sense 
 of the word, "pubHc opinion." I can conceive a jour- 
 nal acquiring the power of condensing a great portion 
 of this opinion, and sending it forth again among an 
 immense circle of readers, each of whom feels to a 
 certain degree as if his . own opinion was rendered 
 back to him, altered in some respects, — not exactly 
 what he supposed it was, sometimes looking so much 
 better than the original that his vanity is flattered, 
 sometimes provoking, like an ugly photogTaph taken 
 while the sun was in a bad humour. Mr. Kinglake 
 has been trying to persuade us that we actually pos- 
 sess a newspaper of this kind. He describes in his 
 brilHant way how it acts upon us, and how we act 
 upon it; how it tells us what we should think, how it 
 reflects all our varying modes of thought, how it finds 
 out what we wish at any given time, and then forces 
 our statesmen to do what we wish in spite of them- 
 selves. I do not pretend to say whether his descrip- 
 tion is as faithful as it is ingenious and consistent
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 91 
 
 with itself; but if so, the moral seems to me to be 
 this : — A newspaper which is an exact mirror of public 
 opinion should not be blamed by that opinion for 
 any variations or caprices which it may exhibit. We 
 should turn to the figure before the mirror. The 
 variations and caprices are in us; we are pleased, or 
 we are pained, at seeing them ' so faithfully repre- 
 sented. If we want newspapers to be other than 
 they are, we must be other than we are. We want a 
 standard, a "principle." Let us be sure that we can 
 never get it from public opinion. Do you imagine 
 that any of the great maxims which pubhc opinion 
 now sanctions, which newspapers enforce, were won 
 for us by either? Do you suppose the buying and 
 selling of human beings was put down by a strong 
 public opinion, by the loud clamour of journals against 
 it ? Do you not know that those who struggled in 
 that great cause had to scorn delights and live labori- 
 ous days — had to endure all kinds of false charges 
 through the \dolence of public opinion, in their firm 
 and solemn purpose that the thing which was right 
 should not give way to the thing which was popular ? 
 They had first to wrestle -with the newspapers. When 
 they prevailed, of course the newspapers would -svrite 
 splendid eulogies on their deeds, and urge the building 
 of their sepulchres. Do not suppose' it ever will be, or 
 can be otherwise. You may as well wait for the 
 crowd to pass by you in Cheapside as wait for public 
 opinion to make a scientific discovery, or extinguish a 
 great popular abuse, or assert a great moral truth. 
 All that work must go on in closets, ^dth tears and 
 prayers, and earnest fightings against ourselves and 
 against the world. The world and its newspapers in 
 due time will welcome the fruits which all can taste, 
 if there are only some to take care of the roots, of 
 which they know, and for which they care, nothing. 
 
 What I have said upon this subject, applies very 
 strongly to all efforts which are made for improving 
 the physical, intellectual, and moral condition of our
 
 92 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 working classes. I have heard some of my friends in 
 that class complain that they have no newspaper 
 which expresses their feelings, and makes known their 
 wants; a large capital, they say, is required to set a 
 journal on foot, and sustain it. Those who have capi- 
 tal become the objects of the journalist's sympathy. 
 Sometimes the half acquaintance which he has with 
 the feelings of those who have none is turned to their 
 disparagement. Whether these murmurs are just or 
 not, all must admit that they are very natural; but if 
 they lead the working men to seek for some special 
 organ for the utterance of their thoughts, I shall be 
 sorry, for two reasons : the first is, that I believe they 
 are never likely to gain their object, just because their 
 class is so enormous, because it contains so much of 
 the stuff and life of England. A journal which should 
 profess to represent the working classes would only 
 represent some little fraction of them : it would not 
 represent the deepest and most earnest feelings even 
 of that fraction, only their more superficial feehngs in 
 some moment of temporary excitement. When that 
 passes away, they would feel that their organ went on 
 playing certain tunes, giving out some scraping sounds, 
 but scarcely any with which their hearts would be in 
 harmony. It has proved so, I think, hitherto. The 
 case may be changed hereafter, but wise men ought not 
 to build much upon such an expectation. 
 
 The other reason is, that when the working classes 
 desire an organ or representative for their feelings, 
 they are desiring to be like the other classes in that 
 which makes them weak. We do not grow and ex- 
 pand as we might, because we are so fond of having 
 our own thoughts and maxims repeated to us. We 
 are confirmed in our habits of distrust, mutual sus- 
 picion, worship of gold, because we crave for teachers 
 who shall keep us in good humour with ourselves, not 
 lead us to higher aims, and a more solid foundation. 
 I trust and believe that the ambition of our working 
 people is different, that they do not wish to settle on
 
 IV.] USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. 93 
 
 their lees, but to acquire a better and nobler life. 
 God has shown them that manhood, and not money, 
 is to be their characteristic. Whatever cultivates that 
 manhood, whatever makes them better and wiser and 
 truer, that they must covet and follow after. While 
 they make it their object to get what other classes 
 have, they lower themselves to the level of their 
 meanness. When they work with us that we and 
 they may have those treasures which belong to us 
 in common, and which poverty inherits oftener than 
 wealth, they do what is best for themselves in doing 
 Avhat is best for the whole land. I do not care there- 
 fore that they should have a newspaper literature of 
 their own. I believe that there is good to be got out 
 of the newspaper literature which exists; in all that 
 good they may be sharers. I have not complained, I 
 do not think we have any reason to complain, that we 
 are in a worse condition than our fathers, because 
 newspapers have an influence over us which they had 
 not in other ages. It is always dangerous to draw 
 these comparisons; they generally are signs of ingra- 
 titude to Him who orders times and seasons. The 
 power of newspapers could not have increased so 
 mightily if other changes had not taken place which 
 may do us the greatest good, which it is our own 
 fault if we turn to evil. Their diffusion is a sign that 
 there is far more association and fellowship among 
 the members of the community than there was of old ; 
 they are a sign that each one of us has an influence, 
 and a responsibility, which did not belong even to 
 great men who went before us. The newspapers have 
 absorbed into themselves much that existed, and ex- 
 isted in a worse form, a century or two ago. If you 
 read the last volumes of Mr. Macaulay's History, you 
 will find what an infinite number of libels and pas- 
 quinades were circulating through society in the days 
 of William III., and were spreading falsehood and 
 malice wherever they travelled, which have no succes- 
 sors among us. Most pamphlets in our day die almost
 
 94 USE AND ABUSE OF NEWSPAPERS. [iv. 
 
 as soon as they are born ; the shadow of the news- 
 paper kills them. Our ephemeral literature is far 
 more organized; but in bulk it is not greater, perhaps 
 it is less, than that which was the food of other gene- 
 rations. Do not let any of us, then, complain that our 
 circumstances are making us evil; let us manfully 
 confess, one and all, that the evil lies in us, not in 
 them. No newspapers have power to rob us of our 
 EngHsh strength if we are watchful to maintain it. 
 They will make us feeble and frivolous only if we 
 trust to them to make us vigorous and earnest; we 
 can raise their tone by raising our own. They will 
 not be able to split us into parties if we ask God to 
 keep us a hearty and united nation.
 
 V. 
 
 ox CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATIOKi 
 
 I AM to speak this evening of Christian Civihzation 
 Very elaborate definitions have been given of the word 
 civilization. One of the ablest writers upon it has 
 stated some good reasons for thinking that a definition 
 of it would be mischievous, if it were possible. Per- 
 haps we may arrive as nearly as we require for our 
 present purpose at the sense of the word, by consider- 
 ing the adjective civil, out of which it has grown. 
 Civil is near akin to civic; civil life, I apprehend, is 
 the life of a citizen. Civility is the proper quality or 
 characteristic of a citizen. Whatever then helps to 
 make citizens, to give them the qualities that appertain 
 to citizens, to bring them into a better apprehension of 
 their position as citizens, to prevent that position from 
 becoming an untenable one, must come under the name 
 of "civilization." 
 
 You may think perhaps that I have limited the 
 word too much. We oppose civil to rustic. Do I 
 suppose that rustic life or country life has nothing to 
 do with civilization ? We oppose civil to military. 
 Do I suppose that the military man must be an un- 
 civilized man ; that he may not be a very civilized 
 one ? We oppose civil to ecclesiastical. Do I suppose 
 that ecclesiastical life is not civilized life, or that the 
 Church has had nothing to do with civilization ? 
 
 These are not idle questions. They are very perti- 
 
 ^ Delivered to the Young Men's Christian Association, about 
 1850.
 
 96 ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 nent and important questions. I will try to answer 
 them. I do not hold either rustic life, military life, 
 ecclesiastical life, to be inconsistent with civilized life. 
 I have a great reverence for country life, military life, 
 ecclesiastical life. I do not know that I can quite 
 contemplate civilized life apart from any one of the 
 three. Suppose it tried to exclude them all; I con- 
 ceive it would destroy itself. Nevertheless I hold the 
 distinctions which I have pointed out to be valuable. 
 If we attend to them, they will help us in our inquiry. 
 There may be a rustic or country life which is a step 
 to the life of cities, an absolutely indispensable step, 
 and a step which does not lose its worth when you 
 have ascended to the next. There may be patriarchal 
 communities, village communities, which contain the 
 germs of what is most precious in the community of 
 the town or city, and which may continue side by 
 side with that. But there may be conditions of 
 existence in the country which are hostile to the 
 gi'owth of larger societies, which are in fact not social 
 conditions at all. Those conditions we have a right to 
 call uncivilized, or by any epithet, such as savage or 
 barbarous, which is sjraonymous with that. So again 
 there may be a camp or military life, which is the 
 very beginning of the life of towns and cities, out 
 of which that life may develop itself; and there is a 
 camp or military life which may be the protection of 
 the life of towns and cities, and may grow out of that. 
 But there is also a military life which may forbid the 
 gi-owth of a civic life or which may destroy it. Again, 
 there is an ecclesiastical life, which may produce or may 
 nourish the life of towns or cities ; there is one which 
 may try to absorb it into itself and to extinguish it. 
 
 These observations will, I hope, make themselves 
 more clear to us ae we proceed ; but I introduce them 
 at once because they will assist us, I think, in seeing 
 what our subject is, and in not confounding it with 
 others which may lie very near it. We want to know 
 what powers have been at work in former days, and
 
 v.] ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 97 
 
 what powers are at work now, to fit men for being citi- 
 zens, or to prevent them from ceasing from being citizens. 
 Whatever does this deserves to be called civilization. 
 
 Are there then different kinds of civilization ? Is 
 there a true and a false civilization ? If we adhere 
 strictly to the terms that I have used, we shall not 
 perhaps be obliged to assume that there is. Whatever 
 contributes to make our life as citizens a really ten- 
 able, healthful life, must be good. The evil influences 
 must then be, the uncivilizing influences. On the 
 whole, I believe this is the right and accurate way of 
 speaking. But there are reasons which compel us 
 sometimes to depart from it. Cities may spring up 
 too slowly ; there may be a number of causes which 
 check and stifle their growth, which keep men from 
 being citizens at all. But they may also spring up 
 too quickly; men may become citizens before they 
 have passed through the needful preparation for being 
 citizens. They may acquire habits which seem ex- 
 pressly derived from their fellowship in cities, and yet 
 which, in any true sense, are unfavourable to that 
 fellowship, and will ultimately undermine it. If ever 
 I have to speak of a false civilization, this is what I 
 shall mean, something which is produced by an over- 
 eagerness to get the fruits of civil life when one has 
 not yet found the root of it. 
 
 And now, having spoken of the substantive in my 
 title, it behoves me to speak of the adjective. You 
 are members of a Young Men's Christian Association ; 
 you have no doubt therefore that the names Christian 
 and Society are naturally and properly connected. 
 And I am convinced that you are not content that 
 the word Christian should have a loose, vague signi- 
 fication. You believe that it has a real, distinct, 
 awful signification. You would not, I suspect, be 
 inchned to talk of Christianity doing this or that 
 thing, effecting this or that change in the condition 
 of the world. You would be afraid of such an ab- 
 straction as that, which might stand for a multitude 
 
 H
 
 98 ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 of different notions, false and true. You would say 
 that you must have it changed for something that is 
 personal and vital; and you would have no doubt 
 where you ought to go that you may get it so 
 changed. You would think that the grounds of all 
 teaching upon this subject must be in the Bible. 
 
 That is my conviction. And I do not think it is 
 only about the word Christian that we may find light 
 there. I believe the ground of civilization, and the 
 cause of civilization, are clearly set forth in its earliest 
 Books. The modern history of the world is, I believe, 
 an application and illustration of principles which are 
 discovered and illustrated in them. 
 
 When I speak of the ground of civilization, I wish 
 you to understand at once what I mean. In one of 
 Mr. Carlyle's miscellaneous essays, where he is com- 
 plaining of some of the departures in modern times 
 from the grandeur and simplicity of the older times, 
 he asks whether any geometrician of our day would 
 recognize the force of a phrase which he ascribes, I 
 think, to Kepler, " God geometrizes." I have no doubt 
 that many mathematicians and students of physics 
 in our day, would feel that this language, however 
 little they might be disposed to use it carelessly, or to 
 introduce it when it was not called for, had a profound 
 signification. I should be more afraid that our moral- 
 ists and politicians would not appreciate the force of 
 the expression " God civilizes." I would wish to use 
 that expression reverently and cautiously ; but I cannot 
 accept any other in place of it. I cannot talk of 
 Providence doing this or that ; it seems to me bad 
 English and bad sense to adopt such a phrase. Provi- 
 dence is forcsifiht. If there is foresight, there must be 
 some one to foresee. I require a living Being to do 
 living acts. I must not, under any pretext, shrink 
 from the Name which denotes a living Being. I may 
 fear, most reasonably fear, to take that Name in vain ; 
 but I am most in danger of doing so if I use some 
 poor unreal equivalent for it.
 
 v.] ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 99 
 
 As I claim a right to take the language of the Bible 
 literally, and not to dilute it by any paraphrases or 
 equivalents, I might go through the history of Genesis 
 or Exodus and show you what hints they give us 
 respecting the diiferent kinds of civilization akeady 
 existing in Mesopotamia, in Palestine, in Egypt; how 
 they explain to us the grounds of the society of which 
 Abraham was to be the founder; how they refer it all 
 to the revelation of an unseen Lord, who claims the 
 man as His servant and awakens his trust ; how they 
 represent the man as prevented from mixing in any 
 city, as being educated through the experiences, affec- 
 tions, sins, of a patriarchal or family life ; how they 
 trace the passage from that life into the legal or 
 national life, as founded upon the revelation of the 
 God of the family, as the absolute Being, the King of 
 kings, the Punisher of tyrants, the Deliverer of slaves, 
 their present Guide and Protector, the Punisher of 
 their transgressions, and their Redeemer, the Guide 
 of their heart, the Originator as well as the object 
 of their worship, whose will all lawgivers, priests, 
 judges, were appointed to execute ; how they declare 
 that all misery and slavery are in reserve for the 
 people, if they lose their trust in this Deliverer, and 
 begin to create Him after some notions of their own, 
 in their likeness, or in the likeness of any the most 
 glorious object which they behold. But as you are 
 familiar with this history, as you know how all the 
 songs of Psalmists, and the promises and denunciations 
 of Prophets, illustrate and expound it, I may do better 
 if I proceed in another method, and endeavour to 
 show you how hints which we obtain from the most 
 trustworthy sources respecting the civilization of other 
 nations of the old world, of those which appear to 
 stand out in the greatest contrast to the chosen nation, 
 enable us to understand its records, and to explain 
 their relation to the civilization of Christendom. 
 
 Supposing then you go with me (I dare say most of 
 you have been in the course of some visit to London) 
 
 H 2
 
 100 ox CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 to the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. Let us walk toge- 
 ther through the Assyrian Court, the Egyptian Court, 
 the Greek Court, and the Roman Court, and then sit 
 down for a while to compare the impressions we have 
 received from them. As you think of these fierce As- 
 syrian countenances which you have been looking at, 
 the keen, murderous eyes — those eagle eyes, as you are 
 disposed, and rightly disposed, to call them — that would 
 have been their own account of them — and as you 
 observe how the animal, the king, and the god, are all 
 presented to you in the same form, you are sure that 
 the authors of these statues are giving forth their con- 
 ceptions of the powers which ruled over them, are 
 telling us no Eastern tale of what their kings actually 
 were, but letting us into the secret of what they and 
 their people would wish to be. The gods and the men 
 both have the savageness of the animals, yet there are 
 clear indications in them that they are above the ani- 
 mals. They use them for their purposes, even if those 
 purposes are not essentially different from theirs. The 
 Egyptian figures give you quite a different impression 
 from them. Their faces are animal too ; but it is the 
 repose of the animal, which they delight to dwell upon. 
 You do- not know at times whether to call the faces 
 very earthly and sensual, or very sublime. There 
 is no variety of expression in them ; but there is a 
 massiveness and serenity which you wonder at. Such 
 were the Egyptian gods. The man thought that the 
 powers above must be at rest. It was a kind of dull, 
 animal rest, — a rest of death. These, too, he sought 
 for himself. 
 
 No such image of perfection, you will see, presented 
 itself to the Greek. In his statues all is life, energy, 
 freedom. The most exquisite human beauty he sup- 
 poses must characterize those who watch over him, 
 who have elevated him above the rest of the world. 
 The man seems to have got the victory over the ani- 
 mal ; the god seems to be the man in his highest glory. 
 But, more here than even in the case of the Egyptian,
 
 v.] ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 101 
 
 the god has no object but the gratification which he 
 may derive from the exercise of his power, or from 
 stooping to intercourse with creatures lower than him- 
 self. And the more vivacious the man is, the more all 
 his energies and powers are awake, the more difficult 
 one finds it to determine what other ulterior end he 
 has in using all these energies and powers but this. 
 For a time the mere joy of feeling them and exerting 
 them is enough ; when that ceases, he, whose glory it is 
 that he has risen above the animals, must sink into an 
 animal again. 
 
 The Roman Court in the Crystal Palace leads us 
 away from the mere figures which we see in it to 
 the gi'eat people, who regarded the making of statues, 
 even the raising of splendid and useful buildings, as 
 quite their secondary occupation. They did not think 
 much of the forms under which they should represent 
 their gods; they were content to borrow such forms 
 from their neighbours. But they had a stronger con- 
 viction than any of their neighbours, that the laws 
 which they obeyed themselves, and which they taught 
 other men to obey, must be derived from some higher 
 than mortal origin. They were sure that their power 
 to conquer other people had been imparted to them ; 
 that they could not be the masters of the world, if 
 a Divine destiny had not appointed them to be so. 
 Above all, no men were so deeply persuaded that the 
 force of law itself was derived from the authority of 
 fathers, that the foundation of civil society lay in the 
 family society. These were not merely portions of 
 their faith ; they were those portions of it to which 
 we must distinctly trace the strength which belongs to 
 them, the influence which they have exercised over 
 mankind. It was to the decay of this faith that one 
 must attribute their weakness, and the loss of their 
 influence. When they began to think that laws did 
 not really proceed from a Divine authority, but that 
 they, by tricks and impositions, were to keep up the 
 opinions in men's minds that they did; when they felt
 
 102 ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 that their conquests were simj^ly to \\dn power and 
 wealth for themselves; when they lost all the purity 
 of their family aflfections, and especially when they 
 became indifferent about the sacredness of the mar- 
 riage bond, then it became evident that there had 
 been something false in them from the first; then, I 
 think, it became evident what that falsehood must be, 
 and how the truth, which was clearly at work in them, 
 might be severed from it. 
 
 Well ; we have been through the Courts. Why is 
 there not, why can there not be, a Jewish Court ? Is 
 it that the Jew has been learning a lore which belongs 
 to himself, and not to these others — Assyrians, Egyp- 
 tians, Greeks, Romans ? That cannot be ; we have 
 found him bearing witness that what these others say 
 is true. They say, one and all, that some Being higher 
 than themselves must have raised them above the 
 animals, must have given them their superiority to 
 other men who are content to be animals, must be the 
 Author of their civil life, of their domestic life. There 
 is no difference so far; the testimony from all is the 
 same. Only they cannot agree what kind of Being it 
 is who is the Author of this nobler life for them ; only 
 in trying to conceive Him they seize on this concep- 
 tion and that, which is fatal to their own idea, which 
 confounds Him with some of the very things which 
 they desire to rule, some of the habits which they 
 confess they have need to overcome. So at last the 
 gods become, in the strictest sense, their workman- 
 ship; and the civilization which they ascribe to them 
 becomes based upon a trick and a deception. When 
 they awake out of that trick or deception, the civili- 
 zation vanishes. The Jew then, though he has no 
 Court, may teach us much about these Courts. He 
 enables us to interpret those peculiarities in the 
 thoughts and history of other people which would 
 otherwise be so utterly perjjlexing to us; he enables 
 us to see how the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Greek, 
 the Roman, each caught some glimpse of the Being
 
 v.] ON CHEISTIAX CIVILIZATION. 103 
 
 who was ruling over them, while they were reducing, 
 dividing, and perverting Him. The Hebrew prophet, 
 as he lay by the river Chebar, with figures before him 
 like those with which Mr. Layard has made us ac- 
 quainted, may have had visions of the true God, the 
 God of his fathers, — may have seen how He gathered 
 unto Himself the different qualities and powers which 
 the Chaldean had seen presented in different animal 
 forms ; he may have seen that He was really directing 
 the wheels within wheels of outward nature as well as 
 of human society; he may have rested at last in the 
 thought of a Man in the midst of the throne as the 
 true and satisfactory image of the hidden glory, an 
 image which must at last overthrow all other images 
 by uniting the true meaning of them all. 
 
 And thus, I think, we find the passage from this 
 Jewish civilization to that higher one of which it is 
 my business to speak to-night, which rises out of it, 
 which must continually refer back to it, which does 
 not set at nous^ht, but assumes, all the fundamental 
 principles of it, which proclaims itself however as a 
 civilization for mankind, inasmuch as it connects those 
 Jewish j^rinciples with the thoughts and necessities 
 that have been expressing themselves in different por- 
 tions of mankind, and so offers them the satisfaction 
 which they could not find for themselves. The Old 
 Testament civilization was, I take it, grounded upon 
 the principle that God has made men in His image, 
 and that He is not made in theirs; the New Testa- 
 ment civilization upon the gi'ound that the full image 
 of God has been revealed in a Man, and that there is a 
 power going forth to act upon the whole being and 
 nature of men, for the sake of raising them and con- 
 forming them to that image. 
 
 The question will no doubt occur to you — and it 
 is one which I am bound not to evade, — Is not the 
 society which is founded upon this basis a universal 
 society, a society for mankind ? Have not you just 
 represented it as such ? Have not you described it as
 
 104 ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 the termination of that special and exckisive civiliza- 
 tion which belonged to one nation, wliich severed it 
 from all the other peoples of the earth ? If that be so, 
 how does this subject concern the one of which you 
 professed at the outset to speak ? Did not you say 
 that civil was in some sense opposed to ecclesiastical ? 
 Did not you intimate that it had something to do with 
 particular cities and nations ? What relation can that 
 have with an economy like that of which you are now 
 speaking ? Are you not unawares introducing specu- 
 lations which may concern something else, but which 
 do not concern the processes by which cities or societies 
 of men are estabUshed and grow up ? 
 
 If I endeavoured to present you with a view of 
 European civihzation generally, I might lay myself 
 open to this charge ; at any rate, I do not think that 
 I could prove to your satisfaction that I was clear of 
 it ; I mean therefore to fix your thoughts for the 
 remainder of this lecture upon one country, and that 
 that country should be our own. I may be obliged 
 now and then to look a little to the right and left of 
 it; I may be reminded of some of its dependencies; I 
 may think of nations that have risen out of it. But 
 whatever I speak of will be to illustrate our own 
 history, to make the character of our own civihzation 
 intelligible, to see in what sense it has or has not been 
 a Christian civilization ; in what sense it bears out or 
 contradicts the remarks which I made about the earher 
 civilization. 
 
 Great Britian is curiously fitted to be a specimen of 
 modern civilization. It is the country of Europe which 
 makes itself known, which for all moral and political 
 purposes begins to exist just before the commence- 
 ment of our era. When Mr. Canning said, "I called 
 the New World into existence to redress the balance 
 of the Old," (meaning, in plain language, that he had 
 recognized the independence of the South American 
 Colonies,) he said, with all deference to so eminent a 
 man, a very silly thing. The New World had begun
 
 v.] ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 105 
 
 to exist some time before that, so far as it exists at 
 present. Our confession of its having an independence 
 of its own made some difference to its stability, but 
 not very much. You cannot make a rickety thing- 
 stand steadily by saying that it has a right to stand 
 if it can. But Julius Caesar had some pretence for 
 saying — he would not have been thought to boast 
 much if he had said — " I called the little island on the 
 other side of the Straits of Dover into existence." He 
 was commissioned by the real Creator of this land, by 
 the Orderer of its destinies, to do that. "A poor sort 
 of achievement," he must have thought to himself, as 
 he looked round upon the portion of the island which 
 he visited and the people who were wandering about 
 in it. "What good can these painted wretches, and 
 these priests, with their worshij) in dark gi'oves and 
 their human sacrifices, do in the great world to which 
 I belong, of which perhaps before I die I may be the 
 ruler ? " Only a man with a very lively curiosity, a 
 real interest in strange places and strange human 
 beings, and a sort of instinct that it was his work and 
 the work of his country, to tame wild creatures, and 
 to bring them into order, could have cared for such a 
 discovery. But this clear, keen-sighted man, did care 
 for it. He was not wrong in thinking that Rome 
 would be able to work up even these rough materials 
 into something of a human society. In the strictest sense 
 of the word, they did civilize Britain. They estabhshed 
 cities in it. Their military stations became cities. There 
 were markets at these stations, or towns ; roads were 
 made between them ; a military discipline was established 
 over them. Then this military discipline passed into a 
 civic order. Meritorious soldiers, who had served their 
 time, became possessors of lands, which they cultivated ; 
 the laws which they obeyed themselves, they taught 
 the native people to obey ; the buildings which they 
 had left behind in their own country could be imitated 
 here. Houses, baths, temples, appeared. Everything 
 wore a new face. Was not this civilization ?
 
 106 ON CHEISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 Surely in a sense it was; such a civilization as no 
 people, not educated like the Roman, could have 
 given; one which taught creatures who had only the 
 slightest notions of obedience, that they must obey, 
 nay, in some sense, that it was good to obey. Pres- 
 ently, there mixed with the words which issued from 
 the commanders of the Roman legions, words of another 
 sort, muttered at first indistinctly, then coming forth 
 from the lips of men who were ready to die for what 
 they said, then, from little societies of men gathered 
 in out-of-the-way corners of the land, about another 
 kingdom — a Kingdom over the spirits of men, which 
 was altogether different from this Roman kingdom, 
 which the Roman kingdom treated as a rival, though 
 rather a contemptible rival, and was determined to put 
 down. How far this message spread, or was listened 
 to, we have not much means of ascertaining. But an 
 unexpected phenomenon presents itself to us. The 
 two rival kingdoms are united. The Roman actually 
 stoops to the one which it has tried to crush. They 
 are blended into a common society; they are acting 
 together upon this British-Roman race; prefects and 
 governors who represent the one are mixed with 
 bishops and fathers who represent the other. Here, 
 as elsewhere, there may be pagans (people dwelling in 
 villages) who adhere to the old Roman worship, per- 
 haps even to the old British worship ; but the chief 
 temjales in the cities are temples for Christian worship ; 
 the Christian Fathers are united with the civil Gover- 
 nors in the management of them. 
 
 I asked if the Roman influence might not be called 
 civilization. I am now to ask, whether we have not 
 stumbled upon a Christian civilization. If I did not 
 believe in that first principle from which I started, 
 that God is the Civilizer, — if I did not suppose that 
 was a permanent principle, whatever other might 
 change, I might be disposed to say that this society 
 was a specimen of Christian civilization. But holding 
 tliat faith, I should say it was no such thing, for in a
 
 v.] ox CHEISTIAN CIVILIZATIOX. 107 
 
 little time I find all this civilization crumbled to 
 pieces. I find Christian priests or monks groaning 
 over it, as if it were a terrible loss to the country and 
 to the world. And yet I find them confessing, in the 
 same breath, that it was utterly hollow, corrupt, detes- 
 table — that there was no virtue in the rulers, no virtue 
 in the people; that the outside unity covered inside 
 divisions and hatred ; that the family life was utterly 
 debased, if not extinct. It was very excusable and 
 right for men of that day to talk with horror and 
 detestation of the cruel pagan pirates who came to 
 trample out that civilization, to banish the Christians 
 into the Welsh mountains, to establish their own bar- 
 barous faith and society. But these pagan pirates 
 were our Saxon ancestors ! We are bound to rejoice 
 and give thanks that they were permitted to do that 
 work of destruction ; we are bound to ask what there 
 was in their faith and society which was better than 
 the faith and society of those whom they expelled. 
 And we shall not be long in finding the answer. 
 They had a faith. They did believe in an actual 
 fight between good and evil, in which the good was to 
 triumph ; they did think that they themselves were 
 concerned in that strife. They had, not a civilized 
 society, but the first principle and element of such a 
 society, that without which it is helpless and heartless, 
 whatever may be its apparent vigour and bloom. 
 They had a sense of the obligations of the members of 
 families to each other; there was a pure fire on the 
 hearth, if there was not one yet on the altar. When, 
 therefore, after two centuries of fighting, the Message 
 of Peace came again to our shores, it came with an 
 altogether different power from that which it had pos- 
 sessed in the days of Roman domination. It came 
 addressing itself to the affections of the husband and 
 wife, to the conscience of the king; it was welcomed 
 as indeed the news of a higher Kingdom, which could 
 assert its authority in a region which the commands 
 of the legislator could not reach. It came to renovate
 
 108 ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 much of that old Roman civilization which was not 
 dead, but sleeping. It came confirming the national 
 feelings which the Saxon had enkindled, but which 
 with him could only take a fierce, warlike direction. 
 It came to call into existence the school, and inspire 
 an interest in sights and sounds, in the stars of the 
 firmament and the music of the choir, in the mysteries 
 of times and numbers, of human thoughts and speech, 
 This, I think, we may fairly call a Christian civiUz- 
 ation proceeding in the most direct manner from 
 lessons respecting Christ as the King of kings, as the 
 Awakener of the individual conscience, as the Quick- 
 ener of all social tendencies and impulses. 
 
 By and by, however, we discover, in this civilization 
 also a secret weakness. The strength of the Saxon lay 
 in action. Contemplation may be dear to him for the 
 sake of action, as leading to action; but if once it 
 overpowers action, if he begins to prize it, as some- 
 thing more sacred than action, as something opposed 
 to action, his power is gone, he is turned into the 
 poorest of creatures. Such a fate befell him under the 
 ecclesiastical influence of this time. The priest seemed 
 to him a higher being than the king; the king ac- 
 quired excellence and security by transforming himself 
 into a priest ; what I said might happen, did happen. 
 The civil life, the life of the city, the life which has to 
 do with order, justice, government, was extinguished 
 by that life Avhich had at first cultivated and sustained 
 it. That which was spiritual and celestial affected to 
 disdain it. Such disdain was, I conceive, suicidal. It 
 involved Atheism, The spiritual man limited God by 
 the exercises of his own mind, denied His presence in 
 the world, and His government over it ; what was this 
 but setting up another God, or erecting himself into a 
 God ? He was exposed to both dangers ; he fell into 
 both sins. He was tempted to put the Roman Bishop, 
 from whom he had received the Divine message, to 
 whom he had naturally looked up in some very won- 
 derful sense as the father of his Church, into the place
 
 v.] ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 109 
 
 of the Father of all. He was tempted to make himself 
 the Divine dictator of the consciences of individual 
 men. Such temptations might be resisted; there were 
 many influences which resisted them everywhere ; no- 
 where, perhaps, were these influences stronger than in 
 our own island ; but the effect upon the society was 
 serious. Another Divine sentence went forth against 
 it. That Saxon Christian civilization was also doomed 
 to sufter all but extinction. Pagans again were to 
 tread it down ; and again the event proved what an 
 infinite blessing lay beneath the apparent curse. The 
 old society, renovated after the Danish invasion by 
 Alfred the Great, was Saxon to its very core. The 
 king had been nourished upon Saxon songs before he 
 could read a word of Latin, before there was any per- 
 son able to teach it him. His boyhood was spent in 
 action, his manhood in suffering. He came forth out of 
 the furnace in the highest sense a Christian, not in the 
 poor sense of those who thought that the sending out 
 of fleets, judging between right and wrong, translating 
 books, were not Christian duties. These he performed 
 honestly as in the sight of God, not caring to invent 
 or originate laws or institutions, but seeking to bring 
 out those that belonged to the heart and spirit of the 
 nation, using Roman lore and Christian lore to make 
 them more vigorous and more pure ; never fearing that 
 his people should have any knowledge which he could 
 procure for them ; labouring above all things that they 
 might have it in the tongue of their fathers. That, 
 I think, is the ideal of a Christian king, and of the 
 noblest civilization. 
 
 If we have thoroughly appreciated the worth of 
 Alfred as the conservator and restorer of native insti- 
 tutions, and as the vindicator of a native lanffuaofe — if 
 we have thought that without these there can be no 
 true manly civilization, we may be much puzzled when 
 we turn over another page of our history, and find the 
 Saxon life apparently crushed altogether; Saxon pro- 
 prietors vanished from the lands of their fathers ; the
 
 110 ox CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 Saxon tongiie spoken no more by those who ruled and 
 judged in the land. This is the phenomenon which 
 the Norman Conquest presents us with. I do not 
 know that we can exaggerate the fearfulness of it, or 
 the amount of immediate misery which must have been 
 connected with it. But we have been prepared by our 
 earlier experience to believe that calamities even worse, 
 to all appearance, than this, may issue, not in the over- 
 throw of a nation's order and civilization, but in their 
 establishment on a new and firmer basis. I do not 
 myself see how the civilization of England could have 
 proceeded ; how we could have had an England, even 
 if we connect that name, as we ought to connect it, 
 especially with the Saxon, unless this conquest had 
 been ordained for us. We acknowledge that truth by 
 our ordinary method of treating history; we accept 
 the Conquest, with all its evils, as a new starting-point 
 in our annals. We confess that there has been a more 
 continuous life in the land since that epoch than there 
 was before. 
 
 Why was this so ? The answer connects the history 
 of England with the history of Europe generally, with 
 the history of the Christendom civilization. There had 
 been now for some centuries, standing face to face with 
 it, another kind of polity altogether. The Empire of 
 Islam had started from a very grand proclamation, 
 God had been declared to be the King of the nations. 
 In His Name, Mahomet and his successors had gone 
 forth beating down all idols, all conceptions of God 
 which men had formed. Their victories attested the 
 might, and the truth, of that assertion. It signified not 
 whether they came into contact with the idols of the 
 Persian, or the idols of the Christian. The Mahometan 
 declared that the old faith of the Jews was as true now 
 as ever. No new revelation could have set that aside. 
 The invisible Lord and Lawgiver was now, as ever, 
 waging war with all visible counterfeits of Himself. 
 To those who accept my first principle in the length 
 and breadth of it, the triumphs of the Islamite can
 
 v.] ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. Ill 
 
 cause no wonder. They must look at them as no less 
 necessary to the modern Christian world than the in- 
 vasion of Sennacherib or Nebuchadnezzar was to the 
 Jew, But, when they contemplate the hardness and 
 baseness of the society which arose out of those 
 triumphs; when they see how inevitably it took the 
 form of an imperial tyranny, how the belief of God 
 simply as a Ruler who issues commands and decrees, 
 simply as a destroyer of idols, between whom and men 
 there is no meeting-point, no living, permanent bond, 
 must lead to the withering of the reverence for men, 
 and the denying of all the springs and sources of 
 human life ; they must needs expect also that He 
 who permitted this discipline for His creatures, would 
 show them very clearly that there was a social order 
 for them which was the very reverse of this — a social 
 order grounded on the very principle which the Maho- 
 metans set aside and denounced, on the existence of 
 a relation between God and man. If we consider the 
 history of Europe at this time we shall see, amidst 
 all its perplexities and contradictions, how wonderfully 
 this idea, this belief, did determine all the thoughts 
 and the politics of the nations in it. 
 
 We talk sometimes of the feudal system as if it 
 were utterly opposed to civilization, as if it were a 
 crushing weight upon all human society. There is 
 abundant excuse for that language. If we contem- 
 plate the noble merely as a man possessing certain 
 privileges which others do not possess, exempt from 
 the burdens of others, exempt from their responsibili- 
 ties ; if we see him as he presented himself in France 
 before the Revolution — as he often presented himself 
 in England during the Middle Ages — no language 
 which we can use of this kind is too strong. And 
 even if we look at the feudal lord in his best condition, 
 we cannot immediately connect him with civilization 
 in the strict sense of that word. He dwells upon his 
 lands; he has little to do with the order and govern- 
 ment of the city. But the feudal principle, as it
 
 112 OX CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 asserted itself in Europe during the ages when Chris- 
 tendom was contending with Mahometanism, did not 
 declare that the noble was a privileged being, exempt 
 from obligations and responsibilities. It proclaimed 
 him to be a link in a chain of dependences and 
 responsibilities; it acknowledged the lord to have 
 duties to the vassal, as well as the vassal to the lord ; 
 it mixed the family principle with the tenures of land, 
 and the services of the soldier. It recognized Chris- 
 tendom as constituting a family : it declared that 
 family to be grounded upon the revelation of One 
 who, being the Chief of all, became the Servant of all. 
 It is a great mistake and, I think, a great impiety, to 
 deny this fact, merely because we see how continually 
 this law of mutual dependence was outraged in the 
 conduct of those who professed to be bound by it. 
 We feel the transgression when we feel the principle 
 which was transgressed. We see what were the dis- 
 orders of that society by acknowledging what was 
 the order which God had established in it. The ideas 
 of chivalry, of the knight, the great man, being a 
 servant, the servant of Christ and the servant of the 
 weak and helpless, may often be represented to us as 
 a mere affectation, because it became so afterwards in 
 those who made most profession of it, and because 
 there were the greatest inconsistencies in the conduct 
 of those who were actually influenced by it; it was 
 really an integi'al part of this order, or constitution. 
 The knights did not adopt it as a fine theory ; they 
 bowed to it as a power which they must needs obey, 
 which it was a kind of treason to resist. 
 
 Well ; we often say that the Normans introduced 
 the feudal system into England. That, I think, is 
 incorrect language. It is not in the power of any 
 people to set up a system in a land for which there 
 is no preparation in the institutions of that land. 
 The feudal principle was not new in the eleventh 
 century ; not new in England, or anywhere. But we 
 may say that the individualizing tendencies of the
 
 v.] ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 113 
 
 Saxon were not favourable to the working of this 
 principle. We may say that the first Norman prince, 
 being thoroughly penetrated with it, organized the 
 country into a conformity with it, which would not 
 have been possible if there had not been that new race 
 brought into our land, and that new distribution of 
 lands which was consequent uj)on their acquisition of 
 it. And it is true that the wretchedness was partly 
 compensated at the time, was abundantly compensated 
 afterwards, by the obligations under which the new 
 proprietors were laid, by the account which they were ob- 
 liged to render in of their estates and of the services which 
 were due from them, by the position which the king was 
 forced to assume as the enforcer of a law for the whole 
 land, from which he could not himself claim exemption. 
 
 There might, however, have been an evil of another 
 kind resulting from this change. Europe was, as a 
 power, now assuming to be a general Christendom 
 family. In this character it was urging on the 
 Crusades against Mahometans; in this character it 
 was doing homage to the earthly " father " at Rome ; 
 in this character it was using the common Latin 
 tongue for all school instruction. The Normans spe- 
 cially favoured this tendency. They were, more than 
 others the Crusaders, more than others the devoted 
 servants of the Roman bishop, more than others the 
 Latin scholars of the time. England might have been 
 so brought into this circle of nations as to lose its own 
 distinct, insular character. William the Conqueror, 
 coming over here with the authority of the Pope, 
 might have turned the country into a mere dependency 
 of the Pope. Robert, the son of William, who went 
 to the Crusades, might have inspired a whole people 
 with his rage. The ecclesiastics whom the Norman 
 princes estabhshed among us, might have hindered our 
 people from ever having again that gift of a native 
 literature which Alfred had secured for them. 
 
 None of these evils came to pass. The Norman 
 princes, once established here, became jealous of their
 
 114 ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 rights as national sovereigns, and quite determined 
 that the Pope should not take them away. Each one 
 of them felt the necessity of maintaining his position 
 at home, stronger than any impulse to join the Holy 
 Wars : that did not take hold of any English sovereign 
 till their line had ended. The Norman ecclesiastics, 
 though they wrote in Latin, wrote chronicles which 
 connected the particular history of some monastery 
 with the general history of England ; so they helped 
 to keep alive the sense of a relation between the new 
 age and that which had passed away. The ecclesias- 
 tics had disputes with the sovereign ; sometimes in 
 behalf of their own order, sometimes in behalf of moral 
 principles and culture against mere force. In the for- 
 mer case they had often led the sovereign to assert the 
 power of laws which no class of his subjects could 
 break through : in the latter, they asserted the power 
 of laws which neither subjects nor rulers could break 
 through. Either way, there came blessings out of the 
 conflict which we should have wanted if there had 
 been perfect peace. 
 
 And so the way was jDreparing for the renovation of 
 the Saxon race, and for that kind of civilization which 
 I said feudalism could not give ; which, if it had been 
 left to itself, it would have permanently checked. The 
 Saxons had been indifferent landowners. Their Thanes 
 had been petty, turbulent rulers, disobedient to the 
 chief authority, apt to be tyrannical over those beneath 
 them. In the loss of that occupation they discovered 
 another for which none were equally fitted. They 
 learnt trades ; they formed societies of artificers ; they 
 acquired charters of enfranchisement ; they began to 
 direct the government of towms; they reaj)peared as 
 the gi-eat middle class, the special English class of 
 England. All their individual skill and power had its 
 full play ; but they showed that they also had great 
 social qualities; they could work together, not of 
 course without abundance of disagreements and heart- 
 burnings, but still, with the sense of a common interest
 
 v.] ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 115 
 
 and common obligations. The trades are united by 
 religious bonds ; they imitate in some respects the 
 monastic fraternities. The charters of their confedera- 
 tions resemble those of the original houses. Still they 
 look back to old laws and old times. They boast to 
 be a revival of rights that were conceded under the 
 Saxon kings. The tradition of those kings becomes 
 stronger as the race acquires more of consistence. And 
 now charters become recognized as assertors of mutual 
 obligations for the rulers and subjects of the whole 
 land. That which the Barons in their own name 
 compelled John to sign, reaches far beyond them — to 
 the citizen, even to the serf. The citizen speedily 
 becomes a citizen indeed. He has a place not merely 
 in his own municipality ; he has a right to send his 
 advisers to the Crown. He forms part of a Parliament 
 with the spiritual and feudal lords ; and he learns to 
 speak again ; nay, to make others speak like him. He 
 has never parted with his Saxon language for the 
 purposes of trade and intercourse. Now it is found 
 capable of fulfilling all other purposes. It had been 
 gaining strength, refinement, richness, while it had 
 been kept down by the Norman-French and the 
 Latin ; it had compelled both to minister to it, and 
 develop its powers ; it started up a lang-uage for the 
 whole people, a language for the expression of the 
 divinest thoughts. It can claim a Bible for itself. 
 
 If the feudal nobles, or the ecclesiastics, had been 
 able to crush this life of the towns, or to give it 
 the form they would have chosen, what a loss England 
 would have suffered — what a loss they themselves 
 would have suffered ! I cannot measure the greatness 
 of the calamity. For I cannot help perceiving, that it 
 was this trading class which hindered the nobles from 
 being a set of self-indulgent, self-willed tyrants, which 
 maintained a continual protest against the disiDOsition 
 of the ecclesiastics to make themselves into gods ; to 
 put visible things for invisible, objects of the sense for 
 objects of the spirit. I cannot help seeing that they 
 
 I 2
 
 116 ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 were the assertors of a direct government of God over 
 the world ; that they testified of a conscience in human 
 beings which needed to be purified and dehvered ; that 
 they maintained the right of men to trust in a Purifier 
 and Deliverer. Christian civilization would have been 
 utterly at an end for England, so far as I see, if this 
 class could have been prevented, by any outward force 
 or any spiritual enchantment, from arising out of the 
 tomb in which it was buried after the Conquest, and 
 entering upon a new and higher existence. It must 
 have been kept in that tomb if our civilization had de- 
 pended on the wit and contrivances of men. It could 
 not be kept there, because the history and progress of 
 nations are not left to their mercy. 
 
 But would it have been good for this class, good for 
 the country, if it could have asserted an exclusive 
 position for itself, if it could have supplanted all 
 the order which existed in the country before, and 
 could have originated a new order of things? No 
 doubt the citizens of towns had the same motives for 
 desiring: this result, had the same excuse for desiring it, 
 as the barons or ecclesiastics had for seeking to retain 
 all power in their own hands, and for making their 
 position an exclusive one. But there would have been 
 the same curse, I believe, on the accomplishment of 
 either purpose. The member of the middle class would 
 then have lost all that veneration for the past, all that 
 feelincj of his connection with the old life of England, 
 on which so much of his strength and nobleness de- 
 pended. He would not only have treated the chivalry 
 and courage of the knight with contempt, he would 
 have forgotten the qualities which were properly his 
 own. The social, fraternal feeling, of the tradesman, 
 would have been changed for mere trade jealousies and 
 rivalries. He would have trampled on the consciences 
 of others as they trampled upon his ; and, doing so, he 
 would cease to feel the sacredness of his conscience. 
 He would no longer claim a right to trust in a Being 
 higher than himself, and higher than all mortal trust ;
 
 v.] ox CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. 117 
 
 he would rather claim a right to distrust everyone 
 except himself. He would therefore become an enemy 
 of the progress of his country ; he would hold it down 
 to the habits and notions which belonged to his own 
 cii'cle and his own town. 
 
 Without the citizens of the towns we should have 
 had no Reformation in the sixteenth century. But if 
 they had been able to impose their notions and opinions 
 on the rest of society, the Reformation would have 
 been a far less deej), radical, earnest one than it was ; 
 it would have been a change to something new, not 
 a protest against things new to the faith which had 
 sustained men in all generations. It would have been 
 a protest against many falsehoods rather than an 
 appeal to Truth ; an impatience of tyranny rather 
 than a revelation of Freedom. 
 
 There have been two great experiments of opposite 
 kinds which illustrate these remarks, and which seem 
 to me of immense interest in considering the principles 
 of true civihzation. One was made in the reign of 
 Charles I. The King was a gi'aceful, accomplished 
 gentleman ; an enlightened patron of art. He would 
 have civilized England by masques and Court enter- 
 tainments, by fine pictures, by music, by a splendid 
 ritual and church ornaments. It was quite clear that 
 the people of England could not be civilized in this 
 manner. It was the civilization of a class; it ad- 
 dressed itself to none of the deep symj)athies which 
 are stirring in men's hearts. It must be enforced by 
 tyrannical acts ; it must set at nought strong, earnest 
 convictions ; and though accomplished artists and 
 poets might second the purposes of the Court, it soon 
 became clear that art and poetry were suffering from 
 its patronage — they were becoming poor, withered, 
 insincere. They could not give life ; they needed a 
 spring of life from some higher source to renovate 
 themselves. Milton, the gi-eat Puritan poet, with his 
 living faith in God, was not merely to be the spokes- 
 man of the burnincf thousfhts and indignation which
 
 118 ON CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. [v. 
 
 were possessing men, lie was to kindle the life of 
 English song again. The Court experiment failed 
 altogether ; there was a vehement reaction against 
 it, to be followed by a diflferent reaction afterwards. 
 
 The other case to which I alluded stands in close 
 relation to the history of this Stuart time, but it is 
 draAvn from the eighteenth century. Some of the 
 earnest men who were opposed to the Court of Charles 
 became the founders of the New England colonies. 
 These colonies, in truth, exhibited the feelings and 
 belief of the middle class at a time when their feelings 
 and belief were particularly serious and deep. Their 
 descendants in the eighteenth century believed less ; 
 but they inherited inuch of the firmness, sohdity, 
 thriftiness, of their forefathers ; they were fitted for 
 the independence into which the madness of their 
 mother-country forced them. One boy especially, a 
 printer's boy of Boston, prepared them for the mo- 
 ment when they should enter upon new and mighty 
 functions. I do not know such another career in 
 the world's history. Benjamin Franklin, trained in 
 the school of hardship, rising by sheer self-denying 
 industry, with little personal ambition, stamped his 
 own image upon a new world, "Poor Richard's 
 Maxims, or the Way to Get Wealth," became a text- 
 book, almost a Bible to his contemporaries. They 
 deserved much of their fame. They gave warnings 
 which we all need to have ; they denounced habits of 
 extravagance, and recommended habits of thrift, which 
 are precious to all honest people. But was the civiliza- 
 tion which is sketched out for us in "Poor Richard's 
 Maxims " a civilization which would bear the test of a 
 country's experience ? The noblest Americans, the 
 men who are doing most, suffering most, for the sake 
 of their country, are the foremost to give us the 
 answer. They will tell us, that, so far as Americans 
 only pursue tlie ends which this book set before them, 
 so far they cannot be what Franklin would have 
 wished them to be — not to take any higher standard.
 
 v.] ox CHRISTIAN CR^ILIZATION. 119 
 
 Franklin was a man of science. But those who merely 
 follow the way to get wealth — however much science 
 may be needed to that end — will never delight to live 
 laborious days merely to find tnith. Franklin wished 
 to get rid of the slave trade, — ultimately, no doubt, of 
 slavery. But those who think only of the way to get 
 wealth must maintain that cursed institution. Frankhn 
 loved, above all things, thrift, and honesty, and fair- 
 dealinsf. Those true-hearted Americans, of whom I 
 spoke, cover their faces and weep while they talk of 
 commercial panics and repudiations as the consequence 
 of the ea(jerness to get wealth. 
 
 Are we to j udge Americans ? God forbid ! I claim 
 this lesson for us, then, as well as for them. I claim 
 it as a proof that Civilization is not to be merely of a 
 class; that each class is meant to contribute its own 
 element to the greatness and perfection of it. I claim 
 it in speaking to you, because I am sure that you — the 
 members of the middle class — have a right, not only 
 to the Civilization of your own class, but to all that 
 has belonged to your nation, now and in the days of 
 old. I claim it, because I say that the chivalry of 
 former days, the arts of former days, the poetry of 
 former days, belong to you as much as to any nobles 
 of the land. I claim it because I feel that you, as 
 members of a Christian association, are bound to beheve 
 that there is a Divine power at work, in yourselves 
 and the whole nation, to give it blessings of which no 
 dreams of ours can conceive. I claim it, with all the 
 other lessons I have tried to set before you to-night, 
 because I do trust that I shall yet see the highest 
 class, the middle class, the learned class, bringing in 
 all the treasures of wisdom, thought, hfe, to help in the 
 work they have to accompHsh — the civilization of the 
 large class which still craves it at their hands, whicli 
 demands all the help they can give it, which, we may 
 be sure, it is God's will should share every blessing 
 that His Son has confeiTed on us.
 
 VI. 
 
 ANCIENT HISTOEY. 
 
 I AM to give a lecture this evening on History. The 
 subject cannot be indifferent to any of us. I believe 
 its importance will be brought home, one day or other, 
 to every man. There have been times in most of our 
 lives when it has become utterly dead to us, wdien we 
 have said, as an English statesman said, " Read me 
 anything but that." There have been times when we 
 have been roused to such a sense of its meaning, and 
 of our concern in it, that nothing has seemed so pre- 
 cious to us. What has been our experience, may be 
 the experience of any Englishman. He may want 
 some crisis to tell him, that every step in past history 
 is a message to him concerning the present, and the 
 future ; concerning his 0"\\ti life, and the life of his 
 children. Then what have been merely sounds in his 
 ear may become words that ring through his heart. 
 We should be preparing others and ourselves for such 
 crises ; we should be considering what has quickened 
 lessons in our minds that had been lying in them like 
 mere lumber. It is not the worth of the things we 
 say which makes them effective ; it is their fitness 
 for those who hear them, it is the breath that kindles 
 them. 
 
 We commonly divide History into Ancient and 
 Modern. This is a convenient and honest division, 
 not forced upon the facts, but derived from them. I 
 
 ''■ Delivered at the Working Men's College, Great Ormond 
 Street, 1865,
 
 VI.] ANCIENT HISTORY. 121 
 
 shall speak of Ancient History to-night. If there 
 should be an open Saturday next term, or the term 
 after, I may speak of Modem. But I think we may 
 learn something of what history is, and of the impulses 
 which stir men to seek for it, and care for it, if we 
 only hear of its beginnings. 
 
 What the name means, you, perhaps, know ; I think 
 I have spoken of its derivation more than once in this 
 place. We ought not to forget it, for it is not what 
 we should have expected ; and it suggests much. We 
 are wont to think of "history" as a narrative of 
 events. It was taken from a verb which signifies to 
 ask questions. How did these two senses, apparently 
 so different, become connected in the mind of a man, 
 or a nation ? We must ask the Greeks, from whom 
 we get the word, to tell us that. 
 
 Herodotus of Halicamassus is called often "the 
 Father of History." Whether he has a right to that 
 title or not, he was at least an indefatigable questioner. 
 What kind of questions he asked, and of whom, and 
 where he asked them, and how he was led to ask 
 them, I will try to indicate. If there is a translation 
 of him in the library, as I hope there is, you can 
 verify my statements, or correct them when they are 
 wrong. 
 
 He dwelt in a city on the coast of Asia Minor. It 
 was one of many cities which consisted of Greek 
 colonists, but which were under the dominion of the 
 Persian king. The inhabitants of these cities dis- 
 covered that they had a kind of power which the 
 Persian monarch did not possess. He had all physical 
 strength, and the power of armies. The Greeks had 
 an art which sometimes rose to wisdom, which some- 
 times sank into cunning. The Greeks, moreover, 
 associated together. They had a Government in each 
 city. They had a meeting of different cities. They 
 had a common temple to which they resorted. There, 
 as they believed, dwelt a God of Light and Wisdom ; 
 their masters, the Persians, went to consult this god.
 
 122 ANCIENT HISTORY. [vi. 
 
 After a time, the Persian monarch became jealous of 
 these dangerous little colonies; he got into direct col- 
 lision with them. Then he began to ask whence the 
 colonists came, what their mother-cities were, to which 
 they turned with reverence, and with which they 
 seemed to maintain a regular intercourse. The 
 Persians heard of Athens and Sparta ; the one the 
 head of the Ionian, the other of the Dorian, tribe of 
 Greeks. They sent to demand subjection of them; it 
 was refused. Two great expeditions went forth 
 against them. The heart of the people of both tribes, 
 though they had many jealous feelings against each 
 other, rose against the common foe. At Marathon 
 the armies of Darius were defeated by the Athenian 
 general, Miltiades. The greater expedition of his suc- 
 cessor was checked in the passes of Thermopylae, by 
 a band of Spartans, who "died," as it is written on 
 their tombs, " in obedience to the laws." The Athen- 
 ians left their city, betook themselves to the wooden 
 w^alls of their ships, and scattered the fleet of the Per- 
 sians at Salamis. The strong were broken in pieces ; 
 the weak prevailed. 
 
 Herodotus was born six years after the battle of 
 Marathon, four years before the battles of Thermopylae 
 and Salamis. He gi'ew up, as a young man, in the 
 sight of the Persian despotism. He spoke the language 
 of the Greek freeman. Tales of what each had done 
 must have been continually in his ears. What could 
 be so worthy a subject of questioning for him, as, how 
 the strife had arisen, how the victory had been won ? 
 Anyone in his circumstances might have cared to pick 
 up information about this war, and, when he had got 
 the information, to spread it abroad. Herodotus per- 
 ceived how much more he must do if he would do this 
 work faithfully. He must look into the life of his 
 countrymen ; he must learn what had befallen them 
 before this Persian War. He must look into the life 
 of the Asiatics too ; he must learn what manner of 
 men they were, what they could tell him about their
 
 vr.] ANCIENT HISTORY. 123 
 
 origin, and the way in which they had waxed great. 
 A world of questions opened upon him. He must go 
 hither and thither to satisfy them. He was reminded 
 by his own position that Greece was a colonizing 
 country. He must ask about each of its colonies ; who 
 had started it, why this or that man had left the 
 house of his fathers ; what had led him to one place 
 or another. Then he was reminded continually of the 
 differences between the Greek tribes. How had these 
 arisen ? What fruits had come from them ? What 
 sort of Government and Laws had established itself 
 in one tribe or another ? Who had been its illustrious 
 men ? 
 
 To search after these matters was no holiday task ; 
 but it was only the smallest part of what Herodotus 
 had imposed upon himself. The Persians — he must 
 know about them as well as about their foes. What 
 customs had they ? Were they like the Greek cus- 
 toms, or different from them ? What did they believe 
 about the powers which they could not see, but which 
 they worshipped ? Was their belief the same with the 
 Greeks', or at variance with theirs ? Then these 
 Persians, though they had not been colonists like the 
 Greeks, had been mighty conquerors. What lands had 
 they conquered ? One of their kings, who had been a 
 fierce supporter of the Persian worship, had attacked 
 Egypt, and had treated its priests with great rudeness 
 and contempt. Egypt — that was a wonderful country ! 
 The Greek had heard that his own country had re- 
 ceived many lessons from it. He must go and investi- 
 gate it; he must find out all he could about its soil, 
 and the inundations of the Nile, and where the Nile 
 came from. He must persuade the priests to tell him 
 as much as they would about their gods and their 
 traditions, and why the King Cambyses had such 
 a vehement disUke to them. He must inquire what 
 the " tombs of the kings " meant, who had built them, 
 who were buried in them. 
 
 You will desire to know, perhaj)s, how all this
 
 124 ANCIENT HISTORY. [vr. 
 
 various information could make up one work. Should 
 it not have been diffused through a great many ? No ; 
 in the mind of Herodotus all these thoughts disposed 
 themselves, naturally and without effort, around that 
 war between Persians and Greeks, which had first set 
 him upon his inquiries, and which he never forgot, 
 whatever else he was en^aoed in. He wrote in a most 
 simple style ; he chose out of the dialects of his coun- 
 try, — for several were spoken in the Asiatic colonies, 
 — the one which was the fittest for easy nan-ative, 
 which made narrative seem most like conversation. 
 But he was a great artist nevertheless. There is no 
 picture in the National Gallery which exhibits the 
 different figures that are introduced into it, and the 
 landscajDe in the background, more in their right pro- 
 portion to each other, and so as to produce an har- 
 monious effect, than his narrative, crowded though it 
 is with men of various countries, and in various 
 costumes. We do not observe the secret of his art, 
 but it has conveyed its impression to generations of 
 those who spoke his own language, and to those who 
 speak the languages of modern Europe. 
 
 And the part of his w^ork which perhaps we are 
 most disposed to jDass over, and to treat as foolish, is 
 that which most conduces to this unity. Herodotus 
 felt, deeply and sincerely, that all the affairs of men, 
 as Avell as their thoughts and wisdom, are dependent 
 on a world which they think of, but which they can- 
 not see. The course of the Persian War must, he 
 judges, be referred to the gods. The victory of free- 
 men over the oppressors he is sure must be their work. 
 He does not at all the less believe in the work of stout 
 head and stout hearts, in the blessing of wit and fore- 
 sight, of good generalship, of well-managed ships; he 
 cannot tell how these thins^s work together with the 
 Di\dne Government, but he has a strong suspicion that 
 courage, and wisdom to discern the rio-ht end, and skill 
 in the choice of men, are hicrher and nobler gifts than 
 any success without them could be. At the same time,
 
 VI] ANCIENT HISTORY. 125 
 
 he is extremely jDuzzled by the diversity of opinions, 
 which he finds prevailing in different regions of the 
 earth, respecting the Powers which direct the events 
 of the world, and the actions of men. He is anxious 
 to get what news he can of them all, and to compare 
 them together. Often they seem to him hopelessly 
 discordant ; the stories which contain them such as he 
 cannot credit. The difference between the propensity 
 of the Greeks to make human images of their gods, and 
 the dislike of the Persians to all such images, especially 
 strikes him. He sets it all down fairly ; he has a 
 reverence for all he hears, though he cannot explain it. 
 He thinks that somehow these Divine thoughts are 
 what belong to all men, and distinguish the race 
 of men, though he is utterly at a loss to know why 
 they should also appear to be the source of their dis- 
 cords and oppositions. 
 
 On the whole, I think we may collect these maxims 
 from " the Father of History " before we proceed further 
 — that he Avas impelled to think about the previous 
 condition of his country by the interest which he felt 
 in what had passed, and what was passing in it, during 
 his own time; that he was led to care for other 
 lands because they were related to his own, and sug- 
 gested continual comparisons with it; that in the 
 course of these comparisons he became more and more 
 aware that there must be something common in human 
 beings, however superior the Greeks miglit be to all 
 the rest of them ; finally, that he believed the Greeks 
 were under some special guidance, to which they owed 
 their wisdom and their freedom; but that somehow 
 this secret guidance and superintendence must be over 
 men everjrvvhere, and must explain what was best and 
 highest in them. 
 
 I will pass on to the next of the great Greek his- 
 torians, to one who lived not far from the age of 
 Herodotus, and has been supposed, rightly or wrongly, 
 to have been stimulated to write by his example. If 
 this was the case with Thucydides, the son of Olorus,
 
 126 ANCIENT HISTORY. [vi. 
 
 it is one proof, among many, that a man of genius, who 
 is stirred up by some other to Avalk in his steps, is 
 almost sure to strike out a course of his own, and to 
 depart as widely as possible from his master. Cer- 
 tainly no two WTiters are so utterly unlike as these. 
 Thucydides is no pleasant, easy story-teller; all his 
 words are carefully considered, his sentences often em- 
 barrassed, his thoughts full of weight. I do not know 
 that it is necessary to sujDpose that he was influenced 
 by Herodotus, though they were so nearly contempor- 
 aries. New events, which Herodotus might partly have 
 seen or anticipated, had occurred ; events of altogether 
 a different nature from those which he had delighted to 
 record. They were quite as serious, even as interest- 
 ing; but as Shakespeare says, in a passage I read to 
 some of you lately, "full of state and woe." The two 
 tribes of Greece which had suspended their habitual 
 warfare, that they might encounter a common enemy, 
 each of which had sho\\Ti forth its own virtues amidst 
 many weaknesses and WTong-doings, had engaged in 
 a desperate struggle for ascendency. This struggle 
 Thucydides, who had himself been engaged in it as a 
 soldier on the Athenian side, and who, like many 
 eminent men, had been exiled from his country, under- 
 took to describe : it lasted twenty-eight years, and his 
 story does not reach to the end of it. Most of the 
 battles in it were fought in the country of Greece, or 
 in the islands about it. Only one expedition, which 
 proved the ruin of the Athenian power, went as far as 
 the island of Sicily. Just look at the area which this 
 war must have embraced on your maps, recollect the 
 time which I have told you is comprehended in the 
 naiTative of Thucydides, and then hear this strange 
 language, which he utters in his very first page. He 
 says he is going to give the world " a possession which 
 will last for ever," " What ! " you will say, " we belong 
 to an empire on which we are told the sun never sets ; 
 we read every day in the Times newspaper, about 
 that amazing war between the North and South of
 
 VI ] ANCIENT HISTORY. 127 
 
 America, in which an army sometimes travels through 
 a State that is larger than these three kingdoms; we 
 hear from geologists about the changes which our 
 planet has been undergoing through myriads of years. 
 And has this Athenian the assurance to tell us that 
 the story of a quarrel between two tribes in his tiny 
 country, which occupied less than thirty years, is 
 something in which men may take interest for ever ? " 
 Yes, he says this; and he was not a boaster, but a 
 man of gi-eat modesty. And, moreover, so far as we 
 can judge from an experience of above two thousand 
 years, his expectation is likely to be fulfilled. His 
 work has endured all that time ; it has been read 
 and studied by the citizens of countries which he never 
 heard of. Statesmen have found in it, warnings of 
 dangers, and lessons of wisdom, which they have been 
 able to apply to their own circumstances, and which 
 have been most impressive when those circumstances 
 were most serious. Hobbes, the English philosopher, 
 devoted himself to making a translation of it just at 
 the beginning of our Civil Wars in the seventeenth 
 century, because he thought no book would tell so 
 much about the causes of such a stniggle, or how men 
 ought to behave themselves in it. In my judgment, 
 Hobbes did not take a right measure of the meaning 
 of our Civil War, nor learn to act rightly in it. There 
 were principles stirring in the hearts of both sides, of 
 which it seems to me that he knew very little. But 
 I have no doubt that all he did know was learnt from 
 Thiicydides, or that he might have known more if he 
 had been as faithful a student of facts, and of men's 
 feelings, and as earnest a patriot, as Thucydides was. 
 For in those few years, on that small area, there came 
 forth the same passions which have been dividing and 
 destroying Eepublics and Monarchies in all days since. 
 There came forth the same debates about different 
 forms of government, and the mode of administerinof 
 them the same controversies about the duties of 
 colonies to a mother-country, and of a mother-country
 
 128 ANCIENT HISTORY. [vi. 
 
 to her colonies; the same arguments to prove tliat it 
 is better to restrain men by laws from the gratifica- 
 tions which temi^t them to do wrong, or that it is 
 better to leave them free to the play of their own 
 faculties, and the exercise of their own judgments, 
 which are occupying practical and theoretical people 
 in England and France, and Germany, during this 
 year of 1865. And in the midst of all the events 
 which affected the people of Sparta or Athens, we get 
 glimpses of men, gi-eat men, and men pretending to be 
 great, honest statesmen who do not understand their 
 times, now and then men unjustly suspected of dis- 
 honesty, and sometimes falling into it, because they 
 are trying to sympathize with the feelings of their 
 countrymen, and now and then stooping to flatter 
 them — these, and a number more, evil and good, who 
 were brought out by the excitement and earnestness 
 of the time, and who are patterns of similar characters 
 which have appeared at various moments in later 
 times. 
 
 Thucydides, therefore, had good reason to think that 
 his book was one which the world would not let die. 
 Looking at it from my point of view, I should say that 
 One who is above the world, and rules the world, has 
 not let it die, because it has been a treasury for in- 
 struction, a witness of the evils to which men are 
 prone, and of the power which they need to counteract 
 those evils, — a witness of that which causes States, 
 great or small, to perish, and of that which they re- 
 quire to keep them together — a witness of the reason 
 for which wise men are raised up, and of the mischief 
 which wise men may do if they are not under the 
 direction of a Higher Wisdom than their own. For 
 this lesson comes out of Thucydides also, though he 
 speaks far less in words than Herodotus, of Higher 
 powers. At each step of his narrative we are reminded 
 of what must become of a nation, even though it be 
 the cleverest nation that ever existed in the world, as 
 the Athenian probably was, if there were no order
 
 VI.] ANCIENT HISTORY. 129 
 
 which it was obliged to follow but its own ingenuity 
 and caprices. Shakespeare's lesson — 
 
 " There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, 
 Rough hew them how we will," 
 
 might be the motto to the history of the Peloponnesian 
 War, as well as to every other history. 
 
 A period of Greek history came after this which was 
 the sequel to both the others, but of which we have no 
 contemporary narrative extant, only one written long 
 after. The Republics, which strove so fiercely against 
 each other, fell under the power of a monarch of 
 Macedonia. The monarch, full of Greek thoughts and 
 energy, determined to avenge the old insults of Persia, 
 and to make Persia his subject. It was a splendid 
 experiment, and had splendid results ; for though 
 Alexander the Great, happily, could not found a united 
 monarchy, though all his empire broke in pieces, he 
 did diffuse Greek civilization over Asia Minor, and 
 Syria, and Egypt. In all these countries Greek cities 
 were founded, Greek arts and wisdom, and the Greek 
 language, established themselves. 
 
 It is in the course of Alexander's conquests that we 
 get the first glimpses of a country which has become so 
 wonderful to us during the last century. India dis- 
 covered itself to him. He found there the very same 
 kind of men whom we see exercising dominion there 
 now. The Greeks called those Gymnosophists whom 
 we call Brahmins. In essential features they were then 
 what they are now, — a caste of priests and learned men, 
 the preservers of traditions which were even then old, 
 and of a form of society which has not yet passed away. 
 
 In this case Alexander was only an observer and 
 reporter. Greece left no traces in India; but in Asia, 
 and Africa, it subdued countries to its own customs and 
 habits of thought, its langiiage and worship. But, 
 whilst it was exercising this mighty power, Greece had 
 itself fallen. Its native freedom was gone. It hoped 
 at one time to recover that freedom through the help of 
 
 K
 
 130 ANCIENT HISTORY. [vi. 
 
 a power which was not Greek, but Italian, The Romans, 
 whilst they were subduing the earth, flattered the 
 dreams of the Greek Republics, that they might be 
 independent Republics again. They could not be so. 
 They had lost the capacity for independence. It was 
 a Greek, living under the tyranny of Rome, who wrote 
 the history of the exploits and conquests of Alexander. 
 Another Greek, living also in Rome under the Emperor 
 Trajan, did a greater service to all times by writing the 
 Lives of eminent Greeks and Romans of different periods, 
 and by comparing them together. Plutarch, to whom 
 we owe these valuable biographies, winds up that portion 
 of Ancient History of which I have been speaking to you. 
 He stands on the verge of the Ancient and the Modern 
 world. Thouo'h he belonged to an age when the true 
 glory of both Greece and Rome had departed, seeing 
 they both had ceased to be free, he sympathized with 
 the freemen of both ; he helps us to understand in what 
 their influence over their times, and their respective 
 nations, consisted. Like the earliest Greek historian, 
 whom he disliked, because he had called his country- 
 men in Boeotia, stupid, Plutarch has perceived that 
 nations must be connected together, that there is a 
 human life which is common to them. And though he 
 was born in an age when men had begun to distrust 
 the Legends which Herodotus recorded, though Plutarch 
 was a philosopher, and knew all that philosophers had 
 said against these Legends, he did not venture to dis- 
 credit them. He had as strong a conviction as Hero- 
 dotus had, that human life must be grounded on a 
 Divine life ; that history is an unintelligible riddle, in 
 one age or another, if there is not a Higher guidance 
 over men. What he felt very strongly was, that this 
 guidance must be a good guidance ; that the Divine Hfe 
 must be a higher, purer, more perfect life than the 
 human. So much he was sure of: where this life was 
 to be found he could only guess. But the philosopher 
 leaves us this lesson, which comes out of all Greek 
 history, that we cannot make a great separation between
 
 VI.] ANCIENT HISTORY. 131 
 
 the world which we see and that which we do not see ; 
 that men's behef about the one will affect in a myriad 
 ways their acts in the other, and will mould their cha- 
 racters; that, somehow, the connection between them 
 must be explained, if men are to live together in societies, 
 and are not to be mere herds of animals, or the slaves of 
 base, superstitious fears. 
 
 And now we must jDass to the historians of that city 
 to which Plutarch has introduced us. Perhaps you may 
 find in his Lives, as well as anywhere, what the secret of 
 the Roman excellence was, and how it differed from that 
 of the Greeks. The relation of the father to the child, 
 seemed to the Roman, the most wonderful fact in the 
 world. There it was ; each man came into the world 
 with this bond holding him ; he could not cast it aside. 
 The authority of the father, he thought, must be the 
 greatest authority of all ; the reverence of the child to 
 the father must be the most profound of all. He 
 called it piety. It was connected with all his religion. 
 He believed in a Divine Ruler over all men, who had 
 the kind of authority which was expressed in the 
 dominion of the father over the child. This was to 
 be enforced by priests; they were to keep up in the 
 people the feeling that they must not transgress the 
 laws of the State — that they must not go out of their 
 ranks in the army. A mighty power came to the 
 Roman peojjle through this obedience, this religion. 
 It made them a compact people, and a people capable 
 of all energetic doings ; while the wit of the Greeks — 
 fine and beautiful as it was — set them at variance. 
 And yet Rome had its strifes as much as any Greek 
 city. That feeling of the Fatherly Authority made old 
 families, old persons, very venerable. These possessed 
 the earliest power and rights in the city. But, happily, 
 they could not hinder other tribes from mingling with 
 them. They, too, had surely a right to claim a place 
 in the city, — they, too, were surely meant to be citizens, 
 and have the privileges of citizens. These disputes 
 form one of the greatest, and most interesting, topics 
 
 K 2
 
 132 ANCIENT HISTORY. [vi. 
 
 of Roman liistory. They called forth the vigour of 
 the Roman character, on one side and the other; they 
 were the occasion of laws which were not established 
 without tremendous conflicts, but which remained for 
 the good of both parties. They teach us that a nation, 
 like a man, has a constitution which passes through a 
 number of shocks of youthful diseases, which only tend 
 to bring out its vigour and to show that one part of it 
 cannot be healthy unless it is sustained by another. 
 
 These are lessons which Roman history has be- 
 queathed to modern times ; no country, I think, has 
 profited by them, or may profit by them, more than 
 England. But it has another set of lessons which are 
 quite as important. There are diseases which may 
 strengthen a man's constitution ; there are diseases 
 which prove mortal. So it is with a nation. You 
 may trace the disease which was to be fatal to Rome, 
 through all the stages of its life. The habits of 
 authority and obedience produced the finest race of 
 soldiers, the grandest military organization, that was 
 ever seen in the world. There was a power in Rome, 
 to govern and organise a world; but there was the 
 passion to use this power for conquest. There was the 
 lust of appropriation. In that lay the certainty that 
 great generals would aspire to dominion, over foreign 
 tribes first, then over their own citizens. The struggle 
 for order would become the factions of men fighting 
 for supremacy; and the people, craving for the same 
 thing that their rulers craved for, would become the 
 instruments of their purposes. Then the feeling of 
 power, which had been so closely connected with the 
 feeling of relationship, of the father's protection of the 
 son, of the son's obligation to the father, would become 
 separated from this, and would at last almost crush 
 it ; then the respect of the wife for the husband, of the 
 husband for the wife, would depart ; — there would be a 
 dislocation of ties thoughout all society. Then the 
 religion of the priest would become a mere contrivance 
 to keep up the State ; he would no longer believe in
 
 vr.] ANCIENT HISTORY. 133 
 
 the gods whom he worshipped ; he would be a deceiver 
 in all the acts connected with their service. A habit 
 of insincerity would penetrate into the very root of 
 the city's life ; then some unprincipled general would 
 be welcomed as a deliverer, even by good men, — nay, 
 would be really a deliverer from the misery and crimes 
 of heartless factions. He would try to rule partly by 
 his army, partly by the reverence for old laws, partly 
 by the arts and tricks of religion. In time the army 
 would set laws at defiance ; and a religion which stood 
 upon a lie would be utterly useless to bind men, when 
 no one cared to know and obey the truth. 
 
 All these results and warnings are written deeply 
 and legibly in Roman history for our instruction. I 
 say in the history. I have not spoken so much of its 
 hooks of history, as I did of those which the Greeks 
 wrote. It has noble writers of history. Livy, though 
 he may have often misrepresented facts, either out of 
 respect to great houses, or from confusions between two 
 different reports of the same transaction, yet gives us, 
 on the whole, a most lively picture of Roman feelings, 
 and Roman life. His very errors teach us what his 
 countrymen were occupied about, to what causes they 
 attributed their greatness, or their decay. Tacitus, 
 whose history is a kind of dirge over the slavery into 
 which Rome had fallen, and an anticipation of the 
 ruin which its own armies must bring upon it, is still 
 more valuable, and has supphed reflections to wise 
 men in every country. Both these books interpret, 
 more or less satisfactorily, the history of Rome ; — 
 the History itself lives in gigantic works ; in laws, in 
 the language and condition of every country in the 
 modern world. Many books of Livy and of Tacitus 
 have perished ; it has been a great blessing to have 
 preserved what we have preserved. But had they all 
 gone, there would be signs and monuments everywhere 
 to show us what the people of whom they speak must 
 have been. Romans called their city an Eternal city. 
 If they said that it had accomplished, and was still
 
 134 ANCIENT HISTORY. [vi. 
 
 to accomplish, the purposes of an Eternal Mmd, which 
 will educate mankind, by the rise of cities or by their 
 downfall, they would have spoken truly. 
 
 Of course Roman history, like Greek history, must 
 make the condition of other countries, especially of 
 those which came under their sway, more intelligible 
 to us. We owe to Roman authority our principal 
 knowledge of Carthage, which contended with it long, 
 which it at last destroyed, which rose out of its ashes 
 a Roman city. There is consolation in this recollection, 
 since it shows that great cities, and great men, will 
 make themselves known, even through the reports of 
 their opponents. Livy evidently detested Hannibal, 
 the great Carthaginian general, yet his portrait of him 
 exhibits him to us as a most accomjjlished military 
 genius, a sincere patriot, a man of brilliant conceptions. 
 So, again, our knowledge of Gaul, and of Britain, in 
 their earliest stages, are due mainly to their conqueror 
 Julius Csesar. There are cases, however, in which 
 Roman wiiters, even the most faithful and earnest, 
 would have led us into the most utterly false impres- 
 sions of the people who were under their country's 
 yoke, if we had not other helps to ascertain the truth 
 about them. For instance, Tacitus describes, vividly 
 and powerfully, the insurrection of the Jewish nation 
 against the Roman emperor ; that leads him to repeat 
 what he knows about its j^ast condition. He no doubt 
 meant to tell the truth, for he was a truthful man ; 
 but no misrepresentation of the facts can be more 
 amusing, and even ridiculous than his. Though there 
 was a considerable, and even a rich colony of Jews in 
 Rome, he had never succeeded in getting any even 
 tolerable information from them respecting their tradi- 
 tions, or their sacred books. 
 
 The Greeks were not so ignorant on this subject. 
 Two centuries before the time of Tacitus, a king who 
 reigned in the city of Alexandria, Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus, had commanded a translation of the Jewish 
 Scriptures to be made by learned Jews ; that Greek
 
 VT.] ANCIENT HISTORY. 135 
 
 translation had been widely diffused over the countries 
 which Alexander the Great had subdued. A Greek 
 monarch, who reigned in Syria, had tried to seize the 
 copies of the Scriptui'es which he found in Jerusalem, 
 and to corrupt them, that he might introduce the 
 Greek worship into Judaea. He had been defeated by 
 Judas Maccabeus and his brethren ; the Temple had 
 been purified of the idols which had been brought into 
 it; Jerusalem possessed for a while an independent 
 government. 
 
 But the records of this age of Judsea possess only a 
 slight interest for us ; they had only a slight interest 
 for their own time. The older records, those which 
 the Alexandrian sages had rendered into Greek, — these 
 constitute the third great element of Ancient History. 
 I have reserved them for my last topic, though they 
 are the oldest of the three, because I wish to consider 
 how far they bear upon those inquiries with which we 
 found Herodotus and the Greeks occupied — how far 
 they are connected with any of the problems which are 
 raised by the Roman annalists. 
 
 Two remarks occur to us when we open these books. 
 They profess to be Histories — that is, records of the 
 actual growth and unfolding of a particular nation — 
 just as the books do which refer to Greece or Rome. 
 Secondly, they contain no thoughts or speculations 
 about Divine or invisible helpers who may be favour- 
 able or unfavourable to this nation, such as we find in 
 Herodotus. They start at once with the announce- 
 ment of a Divine Ruler ; they represent Him as making 
 Himself known to a shepherd in Palestine, and calling 
 him out, that in him, and in his seed, all the families 
 of the earth may be blessed. The whole subsequent 
 history has reference to the government and education 
 of this family by the invisible Lord. He deals with 
 it at first as a family simply. The members of it 
 dwell in tents, live apart from cities, pursue the occu- 
 pation of shepherds, — are squatters, as we should say in 
 modern language, on a soil which they do not possess.
 
 136 ANCIENT HISTORY. [vi. 
 
 They exhibit all the rude, wild passions of men in 
 this condition, commit various crimes, quarrel with 
 each other. They suffer for these transgressions, not 
 by direct formal inflictions, but by the evil conse- 
 quences which follow naturally from them. The family 
 multiplies; it is invited into Egypt, has a settlement 
 formed for it through the favour of an Egyptian king ; 
 it grows to be a horde. A successor of the king who 
 had favoured it becomes suspicious of its position on 
 his soil. He first attempts to destroy the males who 
 are born in it : then succeeds a more elaborate scheme 
 for turning the settlers to account, for reducing them 
 to slaves, for using them in the great works which 
 have made the kings of Egypt famous. A patriot 
 appears out of one of the tribes ; he kills an Egyptian 
 oppressor ; he has to fly. After forty years the God 
 of his fathers appears to him in the desert, reveals 
 Himself as One who cares for the slaves, has heard 
 their cry, and declares that He will be their De- 
 liverer. 
 
 The ground of the Jewish Nation is laid in this 
 revelation. The God whom they worship is the 
 " Deliverer." That is the Name by which they are to 
 know Him. They may not imagine Him in the like- 
 ness of anything they see or dream of; they are only 
 to recollect Him, then and always, as setting them 
 free. They are brought out of bondage. A Law is 
 given them, warning them of the acts which have 
 enslaved, and do enslave nations. As occasions arise, 
 statutes are added, dealing with special circumstances 
 in the condition of an Oriental people. This remains 
 the fundamental code of the Nation. They have vari- 
 ous institutions established for them ; the first, and 
 chief, a feast to commemorate their deliverance. Like 
 other nations, they have sacrifices, but the sacrifices 
 are not to turn the Will of Him whom they worship, 
 but to exjDress His Will to be at one with them, and to 
 put away the evil that they are conscious of. The 
 priest who performs the sacrifice is not allowed to
 
 Ti.] ANCIENT HISTORY. 137 
 
 devise any plans of his own ; he is simply to be 
 a witness of the reconciliation of which he gives this 
 token. 
 
 The Israehtes are divided into tribes and families. 
 Their military organization is dependent on this family 
 arrangement. Each man encamps under the standard 
 of the house of his father. 
 
 They march into the land which has been promised 
 them ; they drive out a race which has become in- 
 tolerable. The land is distributed according to their 
 tribes; they show no signs of excellence when they 
 are established in it ; they fall into all kinds of divi- 
 sions. They show the propensities which the Greeks 
 displayed, only without their wit and refinement ; 
 they have all their inclination for sensual, visible 
 worship. They sink into slavery. Chiefs are raised, 
 out of one or other of their tribes, to be their deliverers ; 
 they are heroes for that service ; ordinarily they are 
 just like other men. A more settled government is 
 established. There are organized judges. In time 
 they desire a king to lead their armies. They experi- 
 ence all the misery of self-willed tyranny. The Nation 
 is broken by its enemies. A better ruler who cares for 
 his people restores them. He rules in the name of the 
 unseen King and DeHverer; though he often does acts 
 of shameful injustice and oppression, which bring down 
 upon him the just and natural retribution of popular 
 revolt. There is a wise and peaceful king who spreads 
 the fame and dominion of Israel over various lands. 
 He becomes an idolater and oppressor. After his 
 death the tribes fall into two hostile camps ; a new 
 capital is established in Samaria. There is a succes- 
 sion of kings in both divisions of the kingdom, who 
 encourage superstition and moral degi'adation. Now 
 and then a reformer appears, who restores the faith 
 and energy of the land. At last the great Assyrian 
 power descends upon the northern kingdom and carries 
 its inhabitants captive, according to the custom of 
 those monarchs. The southern kingdom is threatened.
 
 138 ANCIENT HISTORY. [vi. 
 
 It has a king who, amidst some weakness and occa- 
 sional tendency to seek helj) from Egypt, trusts in 
 God, and defies the invader of the land. Jerusalem 
 is saved. A profligate successor reduces it again to 
 perdition. After a fruitless attempt at reformation its 
 inhabitants are carried to Babylon; the Temple is 
 destroyed, the city is laid waste. The captivity 
 endures till the Babylonian empire is overthrown by 
 the Modes and Persians. Then the Jews are per- 
 mitted to return to their land. They rebuild their 
 city and the Temple. Their polity and worship are 
 restored. 
 
 Here is a continuous history. We sometimes call 
 it a "religious" history. I have shown you that that 
 name does not belong to it more than it belongs to 
 Greek or Roman history; they are both religious 
 histories, if you mean that religion mixes with all 
 the commonest transactions in which- the people are 
 engaged — that they could not contemplate their life 
 apart from Divine government and protection. If, on 
 the other hand, you turn to the Jewish history, you 
 find that its most solemn warnings are directed against 
 kings and priests who believed themselves to be very 
 religious, who established altars for the sake of pacify- 
 ing, or propitiating, a Power that they believed might 
 do them injury. The great difference between this 
 History and both the others, as I have remarked al- 
 ready, is that it starts from no conceptions of men as to 
 beings who may do them good and injury; it starts 
 from the assertion of the Being who seeks wholly and 
 simply to do good, to form a Nation, to keep it at one, 
 to deliver it from the bondage which it brings upon 
 itself, or into which other men may bring it. The 
 prophets who are the interpreters of this History, who 
 brouo-ht home the meaning; of it to the minds of their 
 countrjnnen, enforce this lesson continually. They 
 exist to enforce it. They affirm that a just and 
 righteous Being is ruling over them, that injustice 
 and unrighteousness of all kinds are hateful to Him ;
 
 VI.] ANCIENT HISTORY. 1.39 
 
 that these must bring curses upon a land, in whatever 
 form they are exhibited — in whomsoever, king, priest, 
 or peasant, they appear; that their Lord is seeking to 
 dehver them out of these curses by deHvering them 
 from the evils which are the source of them ; that all 
 the punishment at home, and the captivity abroad, is 
 a discipline which is ministering to this end. 
 
 If you ask me whether all the blessings of which 
 these teachers speak were not blessings to their own 
 race, I answer, first, that the primary announcement of 
 the record is, that this race was chosen out especially to 
 be a blessing to all the families of the earth ; secondly, 
 that every step of this history is a witness that the 
 Jews, instead of being picked specimens of humanity, 
 exhibited its roughest and coarsest grain ; thirdly, that 
 the prophets are continually setting forth to the Jews 
 the hope of a deliverance of all nations, of the dis- 
 covery of their God to all nations, as the only one 
 which could be the least cheering or satisfactory to 
 themselves. And there is one more answer, that this 
 nation did believe itself to be separated from all na- 
 tions, not to be their blessing but their curse, and that 
 the result of that conviction was such a signal over- 
 throw of their city and nation as did not befall any 
 Greek city, or the city of Rome, or any other of which 
 we have the report. 
 
 I do, then, look upon the history of this Nation, not 
 as an isolated one, but as the key to the rest of Ancient 
 History, as that which explains to us why Ancient 
 History is the history of distinct nations, and what 
 was the source of their strength, and what was the 
 cause of their downfall. As long as there are nations 
 in the modern world, so long I believe these records 
 of Greece, of Rome, of Judaea, must always be the 
 lesson-books ; and that the one of which I have spoken 
 last must be used to clear the difficulties of the other 
 two, and to remove the despair which, taken by them- 
 selves, they would engender. But they have all three 
 suggested to us the thought of something that is
 
 140 ANCIENT HISTORY. [vi. 
 
 deeper and more universal, than national life. They 
 have all contained the testimony of a human life, of a 
 life which is common to all the nations of the earth. 
 They assure us that it must be; they do not show us 
 under what conditions it can be. Unlike as the Latins 
 and Greeks are, Plutarch says there is a bond between 
 them, a ground of comparison between their great men. 
 Rome aspires to hold the nations in one. The prophets 
 of the Old Testament say that God has created them 
 for a unity which He would reveal. How any of these 
 expectations have been fulfilled, or may be fulfilled ; 
 that, I believe, is the question which Modern History 
 investigates — of which it is somehow to find the 
 answer.
 
 VII. 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY.i 
 
 The History of England, how it may be read to most 
 advantage, is the subject I have proposed for your 
 consideration this evening. Do not let the terms in 
 which I have stated it alarm you. I do not design 
 to enter into a long disquisition about history in 
 general, or our own history in particular. I shall 
 not suggest any new method of reading it, to disturb 
 all the methods which one or another of you has 
 been accustomed to follow. My object is altogether 
 different. I have seen others puzzled, I have been 
 puzzled myself, by a number of different plans which 
 have been suggested for studying History, by a number 
 of different warnings not to adopt this plan or that, 
 because it can lead to no good. One tells me that 
 the old plan of attending to the reigns of the Kings, 
 and the succession of Dynasties, is quiet obsolete. One 
 says that what we call our Constitutional Histories 
 are tiresome and useless ; they give us much philo- 
 sophical discourse, but few facts. A third says that a 
 History of the People, of their manners and customs, 
 is the only valuable history, or that it is not valuable 
 at all — that we can get nothing out of it. Some of my 
 cloth will say that all history should be Ecclesiastical 
 History; some will say that we should keep as clear of 
 that as possible, if we would not pervert all secular 
 
 1 Delivered at the Working Men's College, Great Ormond 
 Street, 1866.
 
 142 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vii. 
 
 records, and all evidence. Again, we are warned to 
 keep clear of this book, for it is written by a Tory, who 
 will certainly cheat us with notions of Prerogative and 
 Divine Right ; of that book, for it will show us all men 
 and all questions through Whig glasses ; of a third, for 
 it will be certain to make us Democrats. Then the 
 variety of our resources is turned against us. The 
 materials for history have become so numerous, so 
 interminable, who can hope to master even a few of 
 them ? We spend our time in determining those 
 which we need not think of; so there is not much left 
 for those that we deem to be worthy of our attention. 
 Then, we are making history so fast, that it becomes a 
 doubt with us whether we have any leisure for that 
 which is made. What can a man with a little leisure 
 do but read the newspapers ? Till we have mastered 
 the doings of Queen Victoria, who will turn to Queen 
 Elizabeth ? 
 
 These, I believe, are real hindrances and perplexities 
 to many of us. I shall be heartily glad if I should be 
 able this evening to remove two or three of them. 
 
 First, I will speak of those conflicting methods 
 which offer themselves to us, and one or another 
 of which we suppose we must accept, to the rejection 
 of the rest. May I, or may I not, learn my old 
 rhymes about — 
 
 " William the Conqnerer long did reign, 
 William his son hy an arrow was slain " ? 
 
 or, shall I resolve that William the Conqueror, and 
 William Rufus, do not concern us at all ? that all we 
 liave to do with are great epochs, like the Magna Charta, 
 the Reformation, the Civil Wars, the Revolution ? One 
 has often been tempted to that opinion. Surely, we 
 have said to ourselves, these individual monarchs are 
 not better, some of them much worse, many of them 
 much feebler, than their neighbours. What right have 
 they to be remembered, when a number of much wor- 
 thier peoj)le are forgotten ? That is a plausible kind
 
 vil] ENGLISH HISTORY. 143 
 
 of speech ; but I am satisfied it is not sound siieech. 
 Whatever these men were, their good or their evil has 
 had an importance for England, has an importance 
 for England at this day, which we cannot measure. 
 We do not gain more insight into the worth of their 
 subjects by overlooking them ; we shall understand 
 the worth of their subjects much more, if we frankly 
 acknowledge the position they have held, and the 
 influence they have exercised. I doubt greatly whether 
 ours is not the country in Euroj^e which received most 
 of blessing, and most of mischief, from its sovereigns ; 
 whether those countries which are governed by absolute 
 rulers have not been really less practically influenced 
 by them than we have been. I will not go over the 
 different steps by which I have been led to a conclusion 
 apparently so paradoxical. But I will endeavour to 
 show you that a much higher authority, one which we 
 shall all acknowledge to be a higher one, bears witness 
 that our old way of reading History, the one into 
 which we were adopted when we were children, is one 
 in which we may persevere with the greatest profit 
 when we become men. 
 
 Whatever we may think of Shakespeare's Plays as 
 guides to a knowledge of English History, I think 
 most people will confess that they have learnt more 
 about the different jDersons who have acted in that 
 history from them than from any other source. The 
 men and women whom he shows us are not names or 
 shadows, but such as we at once recognize, such as 
 we are sure must have been. They are men of all cha- 
 racters, classes, degrees, professions; but Shakespeare 
 always begins from the king. The titles of his plays 
 are not chosen unfairly, or by accident. He does not 
 put King John, King Richard II., King Henry IV. in 
 the front of the battle, and then exhibit to us some of 
 the more striking events, or the more remarkable 
 people, of their times. The kings are the prominent 
 figures in the drama ; the others all stand in some 
 relation to them. Mr. Knight indeed thinks that
 
 144 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vii. 
 
 young Arthur is the hero of Shakespeare's " King- 
 John." It may be so. An artist may find that the 
 little boy is the centre of the group, that all the other 
 personages fall into their places about him. But it 
 seems to me that Shakespeare's art was true to facts ; 
 that though he may violate the mere chronology of 
 them, he never disposes them, or those who are con- 
 cerned in them, otherwise than he judged from the 
 books he read that they had been disposed in the real 
 world. He found an ugly, disagreeable object, the 
 most prominent object in England at the beginning 
 of the thirteenth century. That prominent place it 
 retains on the stage. The uncle is not introduced to 
 set off the nephew; the nephew enables us to under- 
 stand the uncle. And not only the nephew. King 
 John's character brings out the character of the 
 King of France ; and of Pandulph, the Pope's legate ; 
 and of Constance, Arthur's mother ; and of Elinor, 
 his own mother; and of Faulconbridge, the like- 
 ness of his brother Richard ; of Hubert, his agent ; 
 of the English Barons, Pembroke and Salisbury; and 
 many more besides. If John had been thrown into 
 the background, or had been made better or worse 
 than he was, each of these would have come out in 
 false proportions, in a wrong light. Shakespeare has 
 given us a John whom we can believe in ; a villain, 
 but not an all-black villain ; one whose baseness comes 
 out by degrees as opportunities for evil doings occur ; 
 who might have passed for a courageous assertor of his 
 royal dignity, if the gloss and varnish of his profes- 
 sions had not been rubbed off in temptation. Such a 
 man explains the occurrences of his reign better than 
 a hundred discourses could have explained them. We 
 do not want to be taken to Runnymede, and to be 
 shown how the Barons wrung the Charter from him. 
 That might have made a good scene for a melodrama, 
 or have furnished an excuse for very eloquent ha- 
 rangues ; but for the history it is much more important 
 to know what sort of man the King was ; how he was
 
 VII.] ENGLISH HISTOEY. 145 
 
 likely to lose the afifection and allegiance of his lords ; 
 how they were likely to act when they were estranged 
 from him. That Shakespeare has had insight to perceive ; 
 that he helps us to perceive. We may want other informa- 
 tion hereafter, but we may be very thankful for this. 
 
 You may see from this instance how a very unkingly 
 King — about the last, one would have thought, that a 
 poet would have chosen for his subject — may never- 
 theless influence the transactions of a period, and bind 
 them together. Shakespeare appears as if he had 
 almost intended to force this lesson upon us. The 
 very next play in his English series to that of " John " 
 is "Richard II.," a still more desperate undertaking 
 than the former, if an heroic man was wanted. There 
 is actually no hero, or heroine, in the whole poem. It 
 is throughout the picture of a weak, helpless ruler 
 and a weak, helpless age. Hichard cannot govern; his 
 nobles cannot obey. They charge each other with 
 lying, and treachery ; they are ready to fight on that 
 issue ; he gives them leave, then withdraws it, and 
 banishes them. Kinghood in his hand becomes mere 
 reckless indulgence. The land is farmed for his debts ; 
 the estates of his uncle are confiscated ; his cousin 
 comes from exile to claim them; he becomes the 
 popular champion. The King has a vague sense that 
 there is a divinity hedging him round ; that, somehow, 
 rebellion cannot overtake him. But it does overtake 
 him. He utters eloquent speeches; but he cannot act. 
 Only in sufifering, something nobler comes forth in 
 him. He who, when the world went well with him, 
 was a mere child and fool, in prison and in death 
 shows that he had a heart with which we can sympa- 
 thize. It is the story of a broken man, a dilapidated 
 and exhausted period. But it is a perfectly true pic- 
 ture ; and the truth of it arises from Shakespeare's 
 perception, that the ruler and his people correspond to 
 each other; and that, when they sow the wind to- 
 gether, they will reap the whirlwind together. 
 
 The following reign of Henry IV. is altogether
 
 146 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vri. 
 
 unlike this, full of action and interest. The King is 
 again the type and pattern of his subjects. His head 
 lies uneasily; he cannot persuade sleep to visit him. 
 The Prince must spend his superfluous energies in 
 robberies on Gad's Hill. All the nobles in the north, 
 Scotch and English, are in commotion ; Hotsj)ur must 
 be always on horseback ; Glendower hears all the 
 spirits in the vasty deep beckoning him to recover 
 the Welsh Border ; even Falstaff must quit Eastcheap, 
 and his jests, and lead his ragged corps to Shrewsbury. 
 The play of " Henry IV." is a drama according to the 
 true force of the word. All are doing. 
 
 Again, in "Henry V," the nation's strength, and the 
 nation's evil, are gathered up in the King. In his wild 
 days he has established a sympathy with his people. 
 They like the man who can pass so rapidly from the 
 Boar's Head riots to the invasion of France. He is 
 entirely their master; yet he is one with them ; able 
 to assume the common soldier, mix in their ranks, 
 acquaint himself with the opinions of his host, and 
 then go forth with them to endure all risks of defeat, 
 and to give them confidence of victory. And yet I do 
 not think the splendour of Agincourt is so full of this 
 lesson as the time of discomfiture, commotion, and civil 
 war, which follows. The weak, good, boy-sovereign is 
 in a most remarkable sense the centre of all that 
 strife. His presence is felt through every stage of 
 it. He cannot compose it in the least. He has not 
 a notion of composing it. He has not a notion 
 of asserting his royalty, or of compelling others to 
 obey ; but he has the most entire wish to be right, the 
 most humble sense of his own incapacity. That sense 
 grows with his growth. All the turbulent spirits 
 gather about him ; his wife tyrannizes over him ; York 
 becomes his rival. He remains a witness — a real wit- 
 ness, however ineffectual for the time — that there is a 
 Divine order which is higher than all the fierce wills 
 and self-seeking purposes of men, and will at last 
 subdue them to itself.
 
 VII.] ENGLISH HISTORY. 147 
 
 If I went on to the play of "Richard III.," who 
 winds up the Plantagenet period, and whose super- 
 natural villainy is the means of avenging its crimes, 
 and of bringing in a better era — still more, if I spoke 
 of " Henry VIII.," the one drama of the Tudor period, 
 I might show you how much Shakespeare has done 
 for the illustration of every part of our annals, by 
 adhering strictly to what I may call his " Royal " 
 method. The last example is a specially strong one. 
 As we hear nothing directly of the Great Charter in 
 his " King John," so we hear nothing directly of the 
 Reformation in his "Henry VIII." 
 
 Henry VIII., the mover of the English Reformation, 
 whose assertion of his own supremacy was the protest 
 against the Roman supremacy, is brought out fully and 
 distinctly before us ; not as a monster, not as a hero, 
 but as a monarch with a resolute will, with a con- 
 science and inclination often at variance, often strangely 
 confused ; capable of doing justice, capable of gross 
 injustice. And Katherine, the best and purest lady of 
 the old time ; Anne Boleyn, a lively representation of 
 the new time ; Wolsey, the most splendid of the 
 worldly Churchmen, of whom the nobles and the 
 people for different reasons are wearied ; Cranmer, 
 suspected as a heretic by them, upheld by the King's 
 belief in his honesty; a number of other figures, all 
 contributing to the pageants of the time, all exhibiting 
 its solemn and tragical character, stand about the 
 throne in various relations to the sovereign. He who 
 will study them in that position, grouped as Shake- 
 speare has grouped them, will obtain hints respecting 
 the great movement of the age which neither those 
 who contemplate it simply from the Protestant, or 
 simply from the Romanist, point of view, can give 
 him. 
 
 I do not say for a moment that we ought to be 
 satisfied with this way of considering King John's age 
 or King Henry's age. I merely maintain that it is a 
 good way, and that no other which has yet been dis- 
 
 L 2
 
 148 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vii. 
 
 covered will enable us to dispense with it. Shake- 
 speare has tanght us not to choose out dainty bits of 
 our national records, and to feed exclusively upon 
 them. He has shown us that any period, the most 
 apparently flat and dull, the most turbulent and be- 
 wildering, contains its lesson, and will give out that 
 lesson if we deal fairly with it, and do not force it into 
 conformity with our own notions. He has shown us 
 that each reigii has a certain completeness, that it can 
 be considered as an integral portion of a Divine drama. 
 He has shown us, at the same time, that the reigns 
 are inseparably linked together; that the events of 
 one gTow out of those of the other ; that every one 
 is scattering some seed of curses or blessings which 
 another will have to gather in. He has made us feel 
 that no varieties in the vegetable or animal kingdom 
 can equal the varieties which a passage of human 
 history reveals, if we only watch the one as a naturalist 
 watches the other. But he shows us also the unifor- 
 mity amidst the variety ; that men of former centuries 
 are like, in essentials, to those who are walking the 
 earth and taking jDart in the affairs of kingdoms now. 
 And that neither then nor now could they arrange 
 things as they liked, or alter laws and principles 
 because they found them inconvenient. 
 
 If Shakespeare's historical plays have helped us to 
 make these discoveries, we can ajjply them in cases 
 where we have not his guidance. A man of genius 
 does us good just so far as he makes us see things more 
 truly, more as they are. If he jxits himself, or his 
 own opinions, or his wit, between us and the things, 
 he does us harm. I believe Shakespeare has done this 
 less than most of those whom we call historians ; 
 therefore, though I am glad to profit by their correc- 
 tions of his mistakes, I think on the whole he has set 
 us on a better track of investigation than the most 
 popular of them have done. 
 
 I will allude to one of them, the one who, some 
 will think, deserves the title of a " Royalist " historian
 
 VII.] ENGLISH HISTORY. 149 
 
 much better than Shakespeare does. David Hume 
 began his Enghsh History from the time of our Stuart 
 princes ; about them he said he found that there was 
 most of party misrepresentation. His business as a 
 philosopher was to clear that misrepresentation away. 
 What it meant was this : He disliked intensely the 
 Covenanters of his own land, and the English Puri- 
 tans. He liked Charles I. because he resisted them, 
 and because he was a patron of letters and of art. 
 The Whig party, which was in ascendency in the days 
 of George II., was also displeasing to Hume ; partly 
 because Sir Robert Walpole, their chief Minister, was 
 indifferent about literature, partly because their poli- 
 tical maxims were not in accordance with those which 
 he had learnt both in Scotland and France. Hume 
 was quite as much of a Frenchman as a Scotchman ; 
 he had formed his mind under French influence. Now 
 the French philosophers of the eighteenth century 
 hoped much from monarchs in the war they were 
 waging against priests ; popular assemblies — even such 
 semi-popular assemblies as the parliaments of France — 
 they suspected. Hume, therefore, came back from that 
 country with all his Stuart feeling, all his dislike of the 
 Covenanters, strongly reinforced. They had spoken 
 of a Divine government as higher than any earthly 
 government. In such a government Hume had no 
 belief; he desired to destroy any thought or dream of 
 it in his countrymen. He found that the Covenanters 
 had been ready to fight and die for a conviction. That 
 struck him as an idle and fantastic enthusiasm, which 
 a man of a quiet temjDerament and philosophical habit 
 of mind ought to discourage and scorn. In this spirit 
 he wrote the first volumes of his work, upon the model 
 of which all the rest was formed. He held a brief for 
 Charles I. against the English Parliament and the 
 Scotch Covenanters. No one could have pleaded more 
 dexterously in support of his client. He contended, 
 that whatever breaches of law and stretches of pre- 
 rogative could be alleged against him, had been com-
 
 150 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vii. 
 
 mitted by previous sovereigns ; the notion of violating 
 a Constitution was absurd. Where was the Constitu- 
 tion ? If it was on paper, it had gone for nothing 
 when any strong will, like that of Henry VIII. or 
 Elizabeth, had been disposed to set it aside. 
 
 These arguments made Hume for a short time un- 
 popular. They set at nought doctrines which the 
 Whigs of that day and their predecessors had always 
 contended for ; the nation was not prepared to abandon 
 them. But in a few years the booksellers found the 
 copies which they had supposed to be unreadable 
 vanishing from their counters. Failure gave place to 
 an unparalleled success. Hume's History established 
 itself as the History of England to be read by all 
 gentlemen, and to be taught in all schools. I remem- 
 ber reading some years ago, in a periodical of high 
 reputation and authority, if I do not mistake in the 
 Quarterly Review, the broad assertion, that no other 
 can ever take its place; that Englishmen as little 
 want a new Constitution as they want a substitue for 
 Hume's History. 
 
 That comparison was specially unfortunate ; for 
 Hume, whatever be his other merits, is emphatically 
 the "unconstitutional" historian. One would call him 
 the ingenious advocate for attacks upon the Constitu- 
 tion, supposing he had entertained the least faith that 
 a Constitution existed, that it was not a mere name or 
 fiction. It is Hume's work which has been the chief 
 impulse to the class of works on English History which 
 are called Constitutional. They have been mainly 
 written to show that what he deemed a fiction was a 
 reality; that its principles and its growth can be 
 traced ; that, however often it might have been 
 assaulted in one time or other, the acts which assaulted 
 it were wrong acts, and were felt to be wrong; that 
 the Parliaments of Charles the First's time were per- 
 fectly right in ai^pealing to old charters which testified 
 against these acts; that if those Parliaments them- 
 selves, or one of them, afterwards committed breaches
 
 VII.] ENGLISH HISTORY. 151 
 
 of the Constitution, it did at last vindicate itself both 
 against Parliament and the King. Evidence was given 
 that there is a Code which binds them both, and which 
 neither can trample upon with impunity. Histories 
 written with this object, or with some such object as 
 this, have, it seems to me, a very great value. When 
 they are undertaken by men of such large erudition, 
 such conscientious diligence, and such calm, judicial 
 minds, as the late Mr. Hallam, they must be full of pre- 
 cious instruction for all kinds of people. But even less 
 careful students and thinkers than he was, have done 
 exceedingly good service by the light which they have 
 thro^vn upon one and another passage of our annals, 
 and of our laws ; by the clear evidence which they 
 have brought to show, that English liberty is not 
 something to be talked of in school-boy themes, or in 
 speeches at hustings ; that it has a substantial meaning, 
 and that each generation has accepted it as an inherit- 
 ance which it was to maintain and to transmit. This 
 constitutional mode of treating history is unquestion- 
 ably opposed to the Humean mode of treating it. But 
 I believe the Humean method is even more directly 
 opposed to the Shakespearian method. I do not find 
 that Hume's King has anything like the same position 
 with the Shakespearian King. He is simply the antago- 
 nist of his Parliament or his people. He neither comes 
 forth himself with any distinctness, nor does he throw 
 any clear light upon those around him. With all the 
 skill of Hume in defending Charles I. from attacks and 
 objections, he does not inspire us with as much interest 
 for him as Shakespeare awakens in us for so poor a 
 creature as Richard II. It is difficult in any part of 
 Hume's History to find any man, or any woman, whom 
 simply as such, one can reverence or love. Their 
 actions are reported in a most flowing, agreeable style. 
 The historian makes many sage observations about 
 them ; but we do not know them at all, or care for 
 them ; and it is difficult to believe that the historian 
 did either.
 
 152 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vii. 
 
 On tlie other hand, there is no contradiction be- 
 tween Shakespeare's "kingly" Histories and the true 
 "constitutional" Histories. They supply what he has 
 left blank. They help us to understancl how the Kings' 
 reigns came to be so significant, so full of eminent 
 actors and sufferers, as he shows us that they were. 
 These Histories interpret the fact that kings like John, 
 in spite of their own meanness, give each a colour to 
 their time, and in some measure determine what its 
 character shall be. And by bringing the two together, 
 and using them each for its own purpose, we correct 
 some exaggerations into which those who adhere ex- 
 clusively to either frequently fall. Thus, for instance, 
 Lord Macaulay has said that our history properly begins 
 with King John, because that is the reign in which the 
 Charter was won. Now that opinion, it seems to me, 
 destroys the very meaning of the Charter; for the 
 Charter speaks of rights which already belong to 
 Englishmen, and of which the King had no business 
 to deprive them. If it had made that right which had 
 been wrong before, we should not reverence it as we 
 do; nor would the King have stooped his neck to 
 receive it. We must not start from King John if we 
 would understand what King John was obliged to do. 
 We must see how a law was established by the Roman 
 legions when they made roads, raised walls, turned 
 their camps into towns and workshops, set up courts 
 of justice for our Celtic ancestors ; how a deeper order 
 which is expressed in domestic institutions, in the 
 reverence of husbands and wives, and of fathers and 
 children, came forth amidst all the wildness of the 
 Saxons, and was the basis of their freedom ; how law 
 and order are connected with the Message of the King- 
 dom of God and the work of Christian Missionaries; 
 how the Norman, even when he proclaimed himself a 
 conqueror, was obliged to acknowledge a stronger law, a 
 firmer order, than had existed before, one from which 
 he could not exempt himself unless he could exempt 
 his vassals from it. Then we shall see what the
 
 VII.] ENGLISH HISTORY. 153 
 
 Charter was, and why it extended farther and embraced 
 more classes than its framers might have wished ; why 
 it became a document of freedom to all succeeding 
 generations. And so we escape another fault which is 
 sometimes imputed to these " constitutional " Histories. 
 They are said to be dry and formal records rather of 
 legislation and political alterations, than of that which 
 men did and had endured. That charge will in no 
 wise apply to them, if we associate them with the other 
 kind of Histories ; then they will be full of life. If, for 
 instance, we asked ourselves, how did these nobles, 
 whom we find growing so restive under King John, 
 acquire the power to control his movements ? how did 
 these ecclesiastics, whose revenues he plundered and 
 whose spiritual mastery he defied, acquire those re- 
 venues or obtain that mastery ? we should be led 
 back into the constitution of the Feudal monarchies, 
 and see what part the kings, and the nobles, and the 
 priests bore in them ; how each checked the other ; 
 how each bore "witness to the other of old customs and 
 fixed principles which they could not transgress; and 
 numbers of stories, which lie scattered about in old 
 books, of fierce words and deeds spoken or acted by 
 one or the other, would come in to show us what this 
 Constitution meant, and how each class of men chafed 
 at the bit and tried to get it out of their mouths, and 
 how, if either of them succeeded, there came an anarchy ; 
 and then how out of the anarchy order rose again, but 
 with new enemies to contend against it. And if we 
 asked further, what was to come out of this strife of 
 Kings and Barons, and whether they were to be ever 
 at peace, or whether they were to be alone in their 
 battles, the next reign would give us an answer full 
 of striking incidents, and a deep moral. Henry III. 
 swears to observe the Charter to which his father had 
 sworn. He breaks his oath. He offends his English 
 nobles by choosing French favourites. One of these, 
 De Montfort, becomes their leader in opposition to 
 him. Soon he looks farther than the Barons. He
 
 154 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vii. 
 
 summons Knights of tlie shire and Burgesses of the 
 town, to consult with them. The ParKament as- 
 sumes a new shape. A Commons' House is joined 
 to it. The rebelhon of Leicester introduces the most 
 important of all developments in the English Consti- 
 tution. That development would have been impossible 
 if other changes had not taken place first. The old 
 Saxon population, deprived of theu' lands, have become 
 the tradesmen and citizens of the English towns. A 
 middle-class has grown up, consisting mainly of them ; 
 they have obtained charters and formed corporations. 
 They speak the old language of the country. That 
 language, crushed under the foreign speech of the 
 Court, has risen again, strengthened by its mixture 
 with that, and with the Latin which is taught in the 
 schools. The English Commons have found their 
 English tong-ue, and so they are able to make their 
 voices heard in an English Council of the Wise. 
 Though a rebel has first summoned them, the kings 
 who succeed claim their presence. They count it a 
 hardship ; for they are summoned to London chiefly 
 to impose taxes on the people who send them. By 
 degrees they become conscious of their power; those 
 who lay on taxes can complain of gTievances. They 
 exercise the right in various ways. The monarchs 
 feel the new power. Sometimes it is a restraint upon 
 them ; sometimes they are glad of it, for it is a check 
 upon the power of the nobles ; still more it is a check 
 upon the power of the clergy. For this new estate, 
 which represents the towns and the yeomen of the 
 soil, has been influenced by the preaching of Wycliffe 
 and of the Enghsh secular or parish clergy, who mix 
 Avith the people; who dishke the friars and foreigners; 
 who dislike the higher ecclesiastical orders as worldly. 
 The Commons' House, even if it sometimes is content to 
 pass statutes against heretics, yet shows honest jealousy 
 of continental j)riests, and is very glad to tax those who 
 have large revenues. They are glad to work with the 
 kings for these objects ; to thwart them when they are
 
 VII.] ENGLISH HISTORY. 155 
 
 not strictly national. They gladly second the efforts 
 of Henry VIII. to set himself free from the yoke of 
 Rome, even though by doing so they may strengthen 
 his prerogative. They are heart and soul with Eliza- 
 beth, let her notions of her o^vn power be ever so lofty, 
 whilst they feel that that power is used to assert her 
 position as an English Queen, their position as an 
 English people. But they become the stout anta- 
 gonists of the sovereign's power the moment it begins 
 to be asserted, as they suppose it to be by the Stuarts, 
 for its OAvn sake and not for the nation's sake. 
 
 There is a profound interest in tracing these steps 
 in our- constitutional history, which are regular and 
 consistent, though they are so unlike each other, and 
 which come out best and most clearly in a number of 
 special incidents, and which illustrate the temj)er and 
 feelings of the men who are concerned in them, and of 
 the times in which they occurred. Vague declama- 
 tions about the growth of Institutions do not help us 
 half so much as the deeds and words of the men who 
 watched this growth, and tried wisely or ignorantly 
 to hasten it or hinder it. No one has done more to 
 show us this than the eminent man whose dictum 
 about King John's reign I have disputed. Lord 
 Macaulay, " constitutional " writer as he is, has helped 
 us to read the History of the Revolution by giving a 
 prominence and a worth to the character of William 
 III. which it had never received from any previous 
 historian. We have a person at the centre of the epoch. 
 We see him setting in movement the best efforts of the 
 age, controlling the most turbulent parties of the age. 
 
 But I said that some writers in our day were im- 
 patient of both these kinds of History, the Royal and 
 the Constitutional, and wanted what they called a 
 "People's History" to be a substitute for them. It 
 is all very well, they say, for mere amusement, to 
 read these dramas about the acts of kings. " We may 
 leam, as you say, something about other human 
 characters while we consider thefrs; good, no doubt.
 
 156 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vii. 
 
 may come from knowing how the Nobles hi old times, 
 how the Commons in later times, wrestled for privi- 
 leges or rights, and won them. But the great mass 
 in every period — what do we learn of them from 
 studying these few people, who were connected more 
 or less closely with the Court? What have all these 
 fights done for their condition ? " These are questions 
 which ought to be asked, and which, I think, can in 
 some measure be answered. But we shall not get the 
 answer, I suspect, if we sever the people's history from 
 the other histories; if we try to make it a thing by 
 itself. We must settle this maxim in our minds. That 
 which is inorganic cannot be described. The moment 
 any class or any country becomes organized, or seeks 
 to become so, it acquires a history; you can speak of 
 it, and write of it. I may lament that such little 
 countries as Greece or Italy should usurp such a large 
 portion of the records of the old world ; that enormous 
 continents should lie almost in entire shadow, and 
 should only just become known to us by the light 
 which is thrown on them by these small races. But 
 it cannot be otherwise. These societies had a life and 
 an order, or were trying for one. That brings them 
 within our observation. We can contemplate them 
 as parts of a human society ; not as a mere collec- 
 tion of atoms that are struggling against each other. 
 If we attend to this maxim, we shall not murmur, 
 as at first we may very naturally do, because History 
 seems to include so few figures, and to cover so small 
 a ground. But, on the other hand, we shall feel the 
 most extreme desire that it should take in more 
 figures, and cover a larger ground. We shall under- 
 stand that the Eoyal records, and the Constitutional 
 Histories, do not merely concern the persons whose 
 names stand forward in them. All those who have 
 done anything worth doing have been intentionally, 
 or unintentionally, working for others besides them- 
 selves ; working for the whole land in which they 
 dwelt ; working for generations unborn. No one pur-
 
 VII.] ENGLISH HISTORY. 157 
 
 pose which they achieved could be Umited by the 
 circle for which they framed it ; no principle which 
 they asserted could be confined by their notions of 
 what it meant. The framers of the Magna Charta 
 may have been barons or ecclesiastics. But the laws 
 which they affirmed for their protection worked after- 
 wards for the protection and the elevation of the 
 lowest serf. Do not suppose, then, that we must 
 repeat the History that has been accomplished, that 
 we must re-write the History that has been written 
 in our land, in order that we may do justice to 
 this subject, in order that we may give it all the pro- 
 minence which is due to it. If we take that course, 
 the People's History will become a mere remonstrance 
 and denunciation, — a perpetual attempt to show why 
 things should have been other than they have been ; 
 that is to say, no history at all, merely a new scheme 
 of the universe, an effort of imagination to conceive a 
 country which has not been, and which 1 rather fancy 
 would have been utterly intolerable if it could have 
 been. Whereas, if we accept the older method as our 
 starting-point, we may be continually inquiring what 
 the Kings or Parliaments were doing, or were not 
 doing, to make the body of the people sharers in the 
 blessings of the land, citizens in the full sense of that 
 word. Such an inquiry would involve the history of 
 all the steps which led to the abolition of serfdom in 
 England, the records of our Poor-law legislation, an 
 account of agrarian tumults, and the efforts to suppress 
 them or remove the occasions of them ; all accounts 
 that can be obtained of municipal government, and of 
 the ways in which men became freeholders in the 
 counties, or freemen in the towns. It would contain 
 a great chapter on the foundations of our schools, and 
 on the efforts which have been made from the earliest 
 time to bring one or another class under education; it 
 would involve all illustrations that could be got of 
 the domestic life of our people, anything that would 
 show how far they were becoming capable of national
 
 158 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vii. 
 
 organization by realizing that organization wliicli 
 there is in every household. What individuals or 
 legislation had done, therefore, to make their houses 
 more habitable, their homes more like home, would be 
 a part of this subject. To discover what had been 
 the popular feeling of any time as indicated by the 
 ballads, pictures, plays, that were current in that 
 time ; what influences of this kind were acting upon 
 the lower class from the upper classes, what were 
 proceeding from itself, would be one of the most im- 
 portant objects of the historian. With this must be 
 combined an examination of those gi'eat effects which 
 were produced by the Mendicant Friars in the 
 thirteenth century, by Wycliffe and the Lollards in 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth, by Latimer and the Re- 
 forming Preachers who addressed themselves directly 
 to the people in the sixteenth century, by the Puri- 
 tans in the seventeenth, by the Methodists in the 
 eighteenth ; together with all the more ordinary and 
 regular effects that were produced by parochial 
 ministrations. 
 
 I have included this last subject in the Popular 
 History, though you would say, perhaps, that it be- 
 longs more properly to the last class of histories which 
 I named, the Ecclesiastical. I have done so because 
 my object throughout has been to show you that these 
 classes, though they may be distinguished, cannot be 
 separated, and that each is ruined and made useless 
 by the attempt to give it an exclusive character. 
 To no kind of histories, I conceive, does that remark 
 more strictly apply than to the one about which I 
 have now to say a very few words. If the Eccle- 
 siastic endeavours to divorce this subject from the 
 general life of the country, from the story of its 
 Kings, its Parliaments, the body of its people, the 
 result will be that he exhibits the Church as a 
 corporation which has interests different from all 
 these, opposed to them all. He will then become 
 a very miserable apologist for failures and sins that
 
 VII.] ENGLISH HISTORY. 159 
 
 ought to be confessed ; or he will try to throw the 
 blame of them upon persons whom he treats as 
 enemies. And these enemies will be continually mul- 
 tiplying. Not only Kings, Statesmen, Parliaments, 
 will be complained of as obstructing the purposes of 
 the Church, or interfering with its rights ; all schools 
 and parties, except the one to which the historian 
 belongs, will be called in to account for the evils which 
 it has not cured, to explain why the powers with 
 which it has been entrusted have not effected what 
 they might have effected. Now, it seems to me, that 
 if the Church historian was faithful to his own maxim, 
 faithful to the precedent which he regards, or should 
 regard, with most reverence, he would take the course 
 which is the most opposite to this. The last thing 
 that a Jewish prophet would have thought of was 
 to make apologies for his own order, or for the order 
 of priests, or to separate their interests or their wrong- 
 doings from those of the kings, or their advisers, or 
 of the whole land. That which he had to do was, to 
 bear witness of a Divine and Righteous Power, higher 
 than kings or their advisers; a Power always exerting 
 itself for the moral good and renovation of the land, 
 which king, and priests, and prophets might obey or 
 might resist ; with which they might co-operate, or 
 which they might thwart; but which would work out 
 its purposes by means of them, or in spite of them. 
 And Ecclesiastical History written with this convic- 
 tion, under the power of this belief, could not be 
 a party history ; it must be a witness against the party 
 tendencies of the writer, and of all other persons what- 
 ever. He must be more on the watch against them 
 in himself than in anyone else. He must be glad to 
 hail the good in each party which has kept it alive 
 and made it necessary, and saved it from being merely 
 a check on the good of every other. So he will be 
 able to welcome the services which the priests of the 
 Middle Ages rendered to society by their conflicts 
 with the usurpations of the kings ; and the service
 
 160 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vn. 
 
 which the kings rendered to society by their battles 
 with the usurpations of the priests. He will hail every 
 influence, proceeding froin Dominican or Franciscan, 
 which bore witness that the poor man had a spirit 
 within him to which Divine words could reach ; he 
 will detect influences proceeding from the same men 
 just where they tended to degrade the poor man's 
 spirit and make him their victim and slave. He will 
 recognize every power that went forth from the Church 
 to assert the serf as a brother, and so to break his 
 chains; he will regard every effort to put another 
 kind of chain upon him as a treason against the 
 principles of the Church, as an act of Atheism. He 
 will welcome the eftbrts of any Reformers who tried 
 to break these chains in the Divine Name. He will 
 be sure, that as soon as they begin to set up in their 
 own name, and to conquer with this name, they must 
 become impostors and oppressors. So far as the priest 
 bore witness of a universal and everlasting order 
 which binds all men, and which they cannot break 
 through without destroying themselves, so far he 
 would see in him a great upholder of constitutional 
 order in every land ; so far as the priest set up his own 
 self-will, or the self-will of any monarch, against such 
 a constitution, so far, by the same rule, he must be a 
 transgressor. If in the strength which he declares to 
 be Divine, he combats with all forms of WTong and in- 
 justice, and sacrifices himself in the struggle, he must 
 be worthy of the highest honour ; if he pretends that 
 the evil is stronger than the good, if he enters into 
 compact with it, and makes use of it for his own ad- 
 vancement, he must be more guilty than all others. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured to show you that the dif- 
 ferent methods of writing English history which have 
 been presented for our choice need not be rivals; that 
 we want them all; that each, rightly used — used, I 
 mean, in conformity with its own pretensions — will 
 illustrate the rest; and I would say just the same 
 about the opinions of different writers. It does not
 
 vii.] ENGLISH HISTORY. 161 
 
 seem to me that we need have that fear of Tories, or 
 Whigs, or Democrats, which some entertain. If each 
 of them tell us frankly what he believes, if he brings 
 before us what he has seen, and admires and loves, we 
 may be very thankful to him ; we may be sure that 
 he is doing his best, that he is giving us the help 
 which he was meant to give. The Whigs of his day 
 found fault with Hume for reverencing and "drop- 
 ping a generous tear " for the sorrows of Charles I. and 
 Strafford. I find no such fault with him. " Generous 
 tears" can do no harm. I think he indulged in many 
 uncrenerous sneers at the enemies of Charles I. and of 
 Strafford ; that he did no justice to their purposes and 
 their sufferings. I wish he had twenty royal heroes 
 instead of one. It is the utter want of belief in any- 
 thing heroic, of reverence for any man, that one mourns 
 in him. It is this, I hold, by which he has done injury 
 to the sons and daughters of England. But I do not 
 want to commence a crusade against his History. For 
 its clever siDecial pleading, for its exquisitely easy 
 style, it is entitled to all the respect it has received. 
 It will do no one any harm who has learned in his 
 father's house, or from other teachers, that there is 
 something in earth and heaven which is worth living- 
 and dying for. It may do him good, as the drunken- 
 ness of the helots did the young Spartans good, by 
 inspiring him with a dread of utter indifference and 
 scepticism. 
 
 And as with the Eoyalist so with the Constitu- 
 tional, Historians. A very little allowance — less than 
 our natural suspicion disposes us to make — will save 
 us from any false impressions which their partiality for 
 individual men might make upon us. Everyone is on 
 his guard against Lord Macaulay's defence of William 
 III. in the case of the Massacre of Glencoe, or of Ids 
 jobs in behalf of the favourite, Portland. If the author 
 had been less ingenious in his apologies for them, they 
 would have detracted less in our minds from the real 
 fame of his hero. Whenever he is truly in love with a 
 
 M
 
 162 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vir. 
 
 man or with a principle, I would trust him in the main, 
 and try to keep up with his admiration ; but I would 
 not trust his portrait of Marlborough. That is not credi- 
 ble. There may have been all the covetousness, all the 
 baseness, in his character which he imputes to it ; but 
 there must have been something else, something which 
 the biographer has not seen, or the man could not have 
 done what he did. I give you these instances in 
 support of a doctrine which I know is not generally 
 accepted, but which I think will bear to be tested — 
 that negative opinions and bitter antipathies are what 
 impose upon us most mischievously; that positive 
 beliefs, if they be ever so vehement, cordial sympathies, 
 if they be ever so extravagant, will contribute elements 
 of knowledge, of interest, of hope, to our studies, which 
 would otherwise be flat and dreary. We do not want 
 a neutral sort that is neither Tory, Whig, nor Demo- 
 cratic ; we want each in its strength, each to tell us 
 something that is not in the other. 
 
 But is not history becoming hopeless and intermin- 
 able ? Is not every subject — literature, physical science, 
 art, legislation, military tactics — growing to be a part 
 of it ? Who can dream of mastering all the principles, 
 all the details, which are necessary for the thorough 
 understanding of a few years ; to say nothing of a 
 reign, or the annals of a country ? No one, surely. 
 But there are two sides to this objection. Beneath the 
 theoretical difficulty there lies a practical advantage. 
 Every subject has so much to do with history, that 
 every man who is devoted to any subject, whose 
 business is mainly with that, has a road which leads 
 him to history, has a point of affinity with all the 
 transactions of his land. If art, trade, physical science, 
 military tactics, have all to do with it; the artist, the 
 tradesman, the student of physics, the soldier, may 
 each claim his right in the history, may each bring his 
 contribution to it. Beginning the study from his own 
 topic, working at it for the sake of that, he finds him- 
 self unawares in contact with the friends whose occu-
 
 VII.] ENGLISH HISTORY. 1G3 
 
 pations are the most alien from his ; he is asking their 
 help, they are asking his. 
 
 By this means the professional writer becomes less 
 of a pedant, while he feels much more the dignity of 
 his profession. And we feel that we learn more of 
 history from him than from one who has no special 
 calling, because he wi'ites it dramatically. It is for 
 him something that is done, not merely that is talked 
 about. We civilians understand, I think, the retreat 
 of Corunna better from Sir Charles Napier's naiTative 
 of it than we could do from anyone who had not 
 been an eye-witness, or was a less competent eye- 
 witness. And the hero of Scinde can afford to tell 
 us of his own fears at that time as no less brave 
 man could. A commercial man who would take us 
 through his campaigns in times of success and of 
 panic must in like manner be a great instructor 
 respecting that which concerns the whole body politic, 
 as well as respecting the trials of its particular mem- 
 bers. We need not read all that they say; but each 
 one ofives us some hints which make the general course 
 of ovir history more intelligible. And the antiquary 
 and the critic of documents find each his own proper 
 place. We have not time to bestow on mere prosers ; 
 but the Dryasdusts may pick up real gems amidst 
 heaps of rubbish ; critics may sometimes give us such 
 knowledge as will convict all who have gone before 
 them of ingorance. 
 
 Least of all need we be dismayed by the last com- 
 plaint to which I alluded, that we have no time for 
 the records of the past because we are so busy with the 
 present. If, indeed, we mean that we have acquired 
 such a habit of craving for some new thing that we 
 cannot tolerate anything that is old, that is a serious 
 disease, a disease which will prove fatal to any nation 
 which does not seek some timely cure of it. If we 
 mean that we find the exclusive study of newspapers 
 continually aggravating this tendency, and moreover 
 taking away from us the capacity for rising above the 
 
 M 2
 
 164 ENGLISH HISTORY. [vii. 
 
 public opinion, or the private opinions, of the age in 
 which we Hve, and of those who guide its thoughts, 
 this also is a discovery which should lead to serious re- 
 flection and a serious course of action But neither of 
 these dangers arises from any calamity in our position. 
 These dano^ers suowst, as all our circumstances 
 suggest, that we especially need the lessons of our 
 past history, and that as we need them, we may better 
 than others profit by them. The life of a recluse 
 student may be favourable to the mere work of poring 
 over books, or of deciphering manuscripts. It is not 
 the most favourable to the work of learning the toils 
 and struo-oles of human beings, the Divine drama which 
 is ever unfolding itself before our eyes. We must be 
 alive that we may know that which has lived and does 
 live. But we cannot live merely in the passing in- 
 stant. That which holds us tied and bound to that 
 instant is death. Our English history, like the history 
 of our own selves, is a message to us concerning that 
 which is, and was, and will be evermore.
 
 YIII. 
 SPENSER'S " FAERY QUEENE." i 
 
 I AM to speak to you to-niglit of a very long iDoem, 
 tlie longest perhaps in the English language. Few 
 persons probably have read it from beginning to end. 
 There are some who are frightened from reading it at all. 
 ,1 believe it is not only the length which frightens them. 
 They do not know exactly what to make of the title, 
 and they have heard strange rumours about certain 
 hidden meanings in it which they must gness at, and 
 which, after taking great pains, they may perhaps ne^^er 
 discover. It may be worth while, they say, for people 
 who have leisure and great sagacity to spend their time 
 in spelling out the conceits of an old author. There 
 may be a certain pleasure in hitting the mark, and some, 
 perhaps, even in sending the an'ows which fall most 
 ■v\dde of it. But people who are busy, and can only take 
 up a poem now and then for an evening's entertain- 
 ment, can hardly be expected to give themselves this 
 trouble. They would rather find an author who will tell 
 them out plainly what he wishes them to understand. 
 
 I am soiTy that an ojainion of this kind should pre- 
 vail. For lam sure Spenser's " Faery Queene" is good 
 reading for all kinds of people, especially for all people 
 bom on this English soil. Whatever its title may 
 seem to say, it is not a poem about some imaginary 
 unknown world, but about the world in which you 
 and I are dwelHng, It was -wTitten by an Englishman 
 
 1 Delivered at the Working Men's College, about 1864.
 
 166 SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE." [viii. 
 
 who lived in the most Enghsh reign in our history, 
 and whose heart was as full as any man's ever was 
 of English feelings and sympathies. And it is a book 
 about those things in which all Englishmen, and all 
 men, are interested equally. Edmund Spenser had 
 some friends among courtiers and among learned men. 
 But he did not, on the whole, succeed well at Court, 
 and it is not among learned jDeople that he has been 
 the greatest favourite. It fact, till courtiers and 
 scholars find out that the greatest treasure, the highest 
 glory, they have is that which they have in common 
 with every clown, they never will understand rightly 
 any great poet ; they will never learn what he has done 
 to teach them. 
 
 Edmund Spenser belongs to us who live now in 
 London. He was born in East Smithfield in 1553 ; 
 he died in King Street, Westminster, in 1598, He may 
 have been connected with high families; but he seems 
 to have been poor ; for when he was sixteen he went to 
 Pembroke Hall, at Cambridge, as a sizar — that is, as 
 a poor student. He was not happy, apparently, at 
 Cambridge ; though he owed to it at least one good 
 friend, and he must have brought away from it some 
 good knowledge. When he left it he went as a private 
 tutor into the North; then he came to London, and 
 became acquainted with one of the noblest men of the 
 time, Sir Philip Sidney. There are some stories told 
 to explain how they found each other out. I do not 
 think they are worth record ; we may be sure that 
 men who are meant to help each other, and love each 
 other, will find each other out in some way. Sidney's 
 life would have been altogether different without 
 Spenser, and Spenser's without Sidney; so we need 
 not fancy that the poet had to wait at the great man's 
 door, while he was looking over part of the " Faery 
 Queene," before he learnt that he was worth more 
 than all the gold that Sidney or anyone else had to give 
 him. Sir Walter Ealeigh, who had not perhaps as 
 thoroughly pure a spirit as Sidney, but who had wider
 
 VIII.] SPENSER'S " FAERY QUEENE.'' 167 
 
 thouglits, a more daring love of enterjDrise, and, I should 
 think, a more real understanding of poetry than he had, 
 was also one of Spenser's dearest friends. Sidney and 
 Raleigh believed, like wise men as they were, that 
 one who could sing beautiful songs was not at all less 
 fitted for civil employment on that account — would 
 probably have more sympathy and fellowship with 
 human beings, than those who had been brought up 
 amidst red tape ; and that, if he had a call for it, he 
 would have just as much aptitude for business as any 
 mere drudge. Perhaps through the influence of the Earl 
 of Leicester, Sidney's uncle, Spenser was sent to Ireland 
 as Secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton. He proved that 
 his friends were sound in their judgment of him by 
 writing the best " View of the State of Ireland," and of 
 the condition of the people which, so far as I know, any 
 Irish Secretary ever wrote. He married in Ireland, and 
 worked away in his retirement at many of his minor 
 poems, and at his great book, "The Faery Queene." 
 Long as that poem is, it is incomplete, and the story 
 goes that six books out of it were lost by Spenser's 
 servant as he was crossing from Ireland. That, per- 
 haps, was not the case ; and if it was, we may not have 
 so much cause for regi^et. Spenser's fame may not 
 have suffered so much as we might at first fancy. He 
 may have spoken all he was meant to speak in the 
 earlier books. The lost books may have been but the 
 leavings of his mind ; they might not have helped us 
 to understand him or ourselves better. I do not know, 
 but I think we sometimes mourn rather overmuch 
 about the works that great men intended to ^VTite and 
 did not write, as well as about those that they did and 
 that have perished. Even when they are histories, the 
 gaps in our information, which we think so deplorable, 
 may be partly filled up by an earnest study of the hints 
 and memorials which remain to us. If more was told 
 us about what has happened, we might be less diligent 
 in comparing one scrap with another, and so discovering 
 what really did happen. And when it is not history,
 
 163 SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE." [viii. 
 
 but the thoughts and creations of men's minds we have 
 been deprived of, we may reflect that every man can 
 but give us fragments of his mind, and cannot by any 
 means save us from the trouble of putting the frag- 
 ments together. Most likely he has told us as much 
 as he could tell us in what remains. We should make 
 the best of what we have, and not waste our time in 
 complaining of what we have not. There is a sadder 
 story about Spenser himself than this about his poem, 
 and part of it, I am afraid, we must believe. It was a 
 wild time in Ireland when he was there. He has 
 described to us better than almost anyone, what sort 
 of people the old Celtic inhabitants were whom the 
 English colonists came to subdue. He has described 
 all their faults and brutality ; but he has spoken of 
 them with a living, poetical interest. And when he 
 ceased to hold any Government appointment, he lived 
 on his estate at Kilcolman, in the county of Cork, and 
 cultivated it ; faithfully, I have no doubt, and with as 
 much kindness to the native population as they would 
 let him show. But an insuiTection broke out under 
 Tyrone. Spenser's house was burnt ; all his property 
 was destroyed. It is even said that his infant child was 
 in the house and could not be saved out of it. He and 
 his wife had to fly to England, it would seem, penni- 
 less. Ben Jonson says that Spenser died in Westminster 
 for lack of bread, and that when the Earl of Essex sent 
 him tw^enty pieces, he returned them, saying, he was 
 sorry he had no time to spend them. One need not 
 conclude that his friends who cared for him had for- 
 gotten him, or that the Queen, if she had known his 
 case, would not have provided for him. He was pro- 
 bably doANTicast and broken-hearted, eager to shrink 
 from those who would have been mostwilKng to prove 
 their affection to him, desirous only to lay down his 
 head and be at rest. 
 
 This story of the departure of such a man is melan- 
 choly enough ; but there is nothing disgraceful in it, 
 or in any j)art of the poet's biography. He had to
 
 VIII.] SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE." 169 
 
 pass through the suffering which enabled him to under- 
 stand his fellow-men, and which proved that God was 
 taking care of him. He also had many felicities which 
 he was thankful for, and which we have reason to be 
 thankful for, as they give a tone and character to all 
 his poetry. The gi-eatest of these felicities, I conceive, 
 was that he was born in that English age of which I 
 have sf)oken already. When I say that, you must not 
 expect to find in Spenser frequent panegyrics upon his 
 own age, as if it were the best that ever had been, or 
 ever was to be. On the contrary, you will often hear 
 him talking about the degeneracy of the period into 
 which he was born, and of what men did and thought 
 in the good old days that had passed away. It often 
 makes one wonder to read such sentences, and then to 
 find one's self exalting this very degenerate time as if it 
 were immeasurably above our own. Did not Spenser 
 know much more about it than we do ? Or is it the 
 case, that every age is worse than that which went 
 before it, and so that Queen Elizabeth's was worse than 
 Henry the Fourth's or Henry the Fifth's, and that ours 
 is much worse than Queen Elizabeth's ? I believe that 
 Spenser did know much more about his time than we 
 do ; and therefore that he saw a multitude of faults in 
 it that are nearly hidden from us. I believe he would 
 not have been nearly as good or as wise a man as he 
 was, if he had not felt those faults and lamented over 
 them more than he could over any that were at a dis- 
 tance from him. The faults and sins of his time were 
 his own faults and sins. They were those which he 
 had to struggle with, which were tormenting him. How 
 could any others distress him as these did ? How could 
 he feel any others to be as great as they were ? When 
 he talked of the good old times, he talked of what had 
 survived to him of those old times. And that was the 
 good, the permanent part of them — the wheat which 
 God had gathered into His garner. There was plenty 
 of chaft' mixed with that wheat ; but that the wind 
 had carried away. It was not blown into his eyes, as
 
 170 SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEEXE/' [vm. 
 
 tlie chafif of his own time was. It is the same, I 
 beheve, always. If we are not feehng the evils of our 
 own time much more keenly, much more painfully 
 than we do the errors of any other time, we cannot do 
 the work we are meant to do, or fight the battle we 
 have to fight. If we are always complimenting our 
 age, that is only an ingenious roundabout way of com- 
 plimenting ourselves. On the other hand, when we 
 praise the past time, which those who were living in 
 it found plenty of occasion to blame, we praise that 
 which has passed through the fires, that which was not 
 the vileness and corruption which they hated, and 
 which they were doing what in them lay to destroy. 
 And therefore one may say of any period which one 
 looks back upon, wherein great men lived and great 
 deeds were done — " This was a great period " — although 
 one knows all the while that those great men were 
 struffo'linQf with a host of littlenesses in themselves and 
 in all around them — although one knows that every 
 great deed had some base and paltry deed close to it, 
 and that there was an alloy of baseness and paltriness 
 even in that which was noblest. 
 
 It is in this sense that I call Queen Elizabeth's 
 period a great period. It is in this sense that I speak 
 of it as one of Spenser's felicities that he was born in 
 that period. Do not suppose me to mean that it would 
 have been good for you or me to have been born in it. 
 We ouffht to wish for no lot but that which has been 
 given us. We are made for Queen Victoria's time ; 
 we are fit for no other. Our instruments, our hands, 
 our hearts, are given us to work with in this time, 
 to struggle with the evil, to bring out the good in this 
 time, in order that people may look back in after-days 
 and say, " See what has come down to us from it ; 
 see what good has survived all the wrong which those 
 who dwelt in it tell us of; see what there was in it 
 which we are to imitate." The blessing to Spenser was 
 this, that the age into which he was born was just the 
 one which was fittest to awaken all the powers that
 
 vm.] SPENSER'S "FAEEY QUEENE." 171 
 
 were latent in him, just the one which enabled him 
 to understand what a man upon this earth has to strive 
 for, as well as what he has to strive against. Much 
 had departed in that reign which Englishmen had once 
 thought very precious, or if not precious, at least neces- 
 sary. A multitude of old legends, which had been the 
 delight of the people, had been swept away by the 
 Reformation. The Bible had been brought into the 
 common tongue of the people, and had driven out a 
 world of fancies about invisible things to which they 
 had once paid reverence. Many men who saw these 
 things said, " This is very melancholy ; the people 
 think no more of fairies and enchantments which they 
 had believed in ever since the pagan time, and they 
 think no more of those stories of Saints which they 
 had heard of from the Friars, and which had got 
 mixed in their minds with their old nursery tales and 
 rhymes. What is to become of them ? How can they 
 go on ? " And then, when they turned to the upper 
 classes, they saw cause for doubts which appeared to 
 have still greater justification. " The nobles and 
 knights of England," they would say, "used to join in 
 great battles of Christendom against the Infidels. 
 They used to go on expeditions to help the weak ; 
 they were full of devotion to women. Now that has 
 passed away. They have become proud and selfish ; 
 seekers of wealth and dignities for themselves. They 
 have no thought of anything that belongs to all nations 
 in common, anything that is earnest and devout, any- 
 thing humble and chivalrous." There were great 
 pretexts for such words as these ; pretexts to those 
 who read the nobler achievements of the past times 
 and forgot all the cruelty, meanness, malice of those 
 times ; pretexts to those who read and who saw what 
 the nobles and great men of their own time were 
 doing, how little they seemed to care for the well- 
 being of the land of which they were protectors, how 
 they turn the Reformation and the Gospel into a 
 means of bringing booty and plunder to themselves.
 
 172 SPEXSER'S "FAERY QUEENE." [viii. 
 
 Accordingly there were some who said, " If we could 
 but bring back the old superstitions and the old 
 notions about chivalry — if we could but make our age 
 like the age of our forefathers, what a triumph that 
 would be ! " Such an experiment had been made in 
 the reign proceeding that to which Spenser belonged. 
 It had ended in England's very nearly becoming a 
 province of Spain, And what had Spain, which was 
 the country that was to teach us chivalry and religion, 
 been doing herself? She had been engaged in very 
 mighty works, in very glorious enterprises. Her ships 
 had discovered a New World ; her knights had gone 
 forth to conquer it. They had shown a prowess 
 certainly gTeater than any that their fathers had 
 sho^\^l. They had professed a religion as strict ; but 
 their enteri^rise, their chivalry, their religion, had all 
 been turned to the acquisition of gold. The means 
 were worthy of the end. For the religion, the chivalry, 
 the enterprise, had been all brought to promote and to 
 justify piracy, murder, every intolerable crime and 
 cruelty. If Philip II. had continued the sovereign of 
 England, this is the school in which Englishmen must 
 have been trained. But it was appointed that he 
 should not continue the sovereign of England. His 
 queen died, and another queen reigned in her stead. 
 Now was the time in which it was to be decided 
 whether England could have knights and gentlemen 
 of her own, formed upon a different pattern from those 
 Spanish knights and gentlemen; whether she must 
 lose all the faith that belongs to men because she had 
 parted with the stories that belong to children ; 
 whether she could not have enterprise and chivalry 
 without trving to bring back wars that belonged to 
 another generation, which had not been very righteous, 
 and which had not led to any great result in that 
 generation; whether England might not be a coloniz- 
 ing country, and see the sights and breathe the air of 
 the New World without becoming the tormentor of 
 its inhabitants and the slave of its crold. This was the
 
 viri.] SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE." 173 
 
 question which our forefathers in that day had to 
 answer. And I believe they did answer it; not per- 
 fectly, not without committing a great many sins, 
 some of them the very same sins which their enemy 
 had been guilty of, each of which was sure to bring- 
 down future jDunishments upon the land, but yet in a 
 way that shows that they were obeying higher guid- 
 ance than their own, that an unseen Wisdom was 
 directing their counsels. What is most remarkable in 
 that time, I think, is that sailors in their ships, states- 
 men in their cabinets, knights in the court, divines in 
 their pulpits, poets in their studies, without under- 
 standing one another in the least, often contradicting 
 and despising each other, were nevertheless all work- 
 ing together to find out this answer — were all contri- 
 buting their quota to make it effectual for their country 
 and for mankind. 
 
 I am to tell you how I think one of the poets of 
 that time applied himself to this task, and what kind 
 of success he had. The words " Faery Queene " remind 
 us that the poet was living under a queen. This is no 
 fancy of mine ; Spenser tells us so again and again ; 
 and we must take him at his word, not giving him 
 credit for flattery, or any low motive, for saying so, or 
 we shall not understand the very purpose of his work, 
 and the good that was accomplished by it. He felt — 
 all the distinguished men of his time felt — that it was 
 a blessing, a perfectly unspeakable blessing for Eng- 
 land at that time, that it was governed by a woman. 
 Perhaps there never was a time in our history when 
 the country seemed so much to want the head and hand 
 of a man, when vigour was so essential, when weakness 
 would have been so fatal. And yet there never was a 
 time when Enoiand was in so much danger of losinc^ 
 all grace, refinement, deference to the weak ; when 
 worship of mere might, physical and intellectual, was 
 so likely to have displaced every other worship. The 
 two first Tudor princes had been men of mighty energy. 
 Unlike in most respects Henry VII. and his son had
 
 174 SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE." [viii. 
 
 equally impressed their subjects with such a feeling of 
 force and sovereignty as no previous generation had been 
 conscious of. Then followed a boy, who died at sixteen, 
 and a woman, who was the tool of a Spanish husband. 
 Such reigns must have naturally awakened a longing for 
 strong rule. If that rule had been a male one, it would 
 probably have been, either a frightful domestic tyranny, 
 or one which absorbed all other thoughts in the 
 thought of foreign conquest. The loyalty of England 
 was drawn forth in a new form and character when 
 Elizabeth proved that she possessed all the intellectual 
 and moral force that was demanded of a sovereign, 
 without ceasing to have the feelings, and tendernesses, 
 and weaknesses of her sex. That this loyalty and 
 attachment were spurious and affected, no man in his 
 senses, who reads the acts and studies the literature 
 of the period, can believe. They were most genuine. 
 There was, however, the fear of their terminating in 
 the Queen. Then they might have become mere 
 courtly conceits, and by degrees have lost all their 
 sincerity. To the poets of England, especially to 
 Sjienser, we owe it that the feeling towards Elizabeth 
 was not allowed to be exhausted in compliments to 
 her, or to any mortal princess. Whatever excellence 
 was in her, was marred by a thousand frailties and 
 weaknesses. It might be contemplated through her, 
 and yet apart from her. There was an ideal excellence 
 which she might help her people to contemplate, and 
 which might remain for their contemplation after she 
 had left them. The " Faery Queene " is such a queen 
 as this. 
 
 I spoke of superstitions which the English people 
 had cherished about Elves and Fairies. It was a 
 mythology which had come down to them from their 
 Scandinavian ancestors ; it never had deserted them. 
 Thoughts of kindly or malicious beings, dwelling 
 about them, in some invisible region not far from 
 themselves, gave them a certain pleasure and a certain 
 terror; mixed with their Christmas, and Candlemas
 
 vm.] SPENSER'S " FAERY QUEENE.' 175 
 
 and Michaelmas feasts ; were preserved in old songs 
 and tales, which had been handed from father to son, 
 and of which no one could say when they had begun. 
 Then these had become combined with tales of 
 knightly adventures, of the Champions of Christen- 
 dom, who had wonderful and mysterious aids in their 
 battles with giants and magicians ; especially they 
 had been associated with the great Prince Arthur, who 
 was half regarded as a great Christian hero, though 
 the stories about him had a strange savour of pagan- 
 ism, and half as a great English hero, though all the 
 battles reported of him were battles against those 
 Anglo-Saxons who celebrated his achievements. All 
 these different stories were only half believed at any 
 time. Still they connected themselves with what 
 ought not to be a half belief, with what should be the 
 strongest of all convictions, the belief that there is an 
 invisible world surrounding us — the conviction that 
 there is a real and intimate relation between that 
 world and ourselves. Might it not be possible to 
 preserve that conviction, to connect ' it with all the 
 most practical and earnest thoughts of the English 
 gentleman and the English peasant in the days of 
 Elizabeth, and so to save what was really precious 
 and venerable in the old superstitions, now that 
 they were doomed, and must evidently fall off and 
 die? 
 
 One would have thought this a very noble aim. 
 But the more one tried to conceive how it could be 
 accomj^lished, the more, I think, one would feel at a 
 loss. How the " Faery Queene " and the English 
 Queen should be brought to understand each other, 
 how Arthur and the Knights and the Fairies should 
 ever speak to us again, and establish a relation with 
 our battles with our daily foes, this I, at least, could 
 never have conjectured. Nor would the case have 
 been made clearer to me by an account which Spenser 
 gives of his own purpose in a letter to Sir Walter 
 Raleigh. He tells him that under twelve knights,
 
 176 SPENSER'S "FAEEY QUEENE." [vnr. 
 
 who all served the gi-eat Gloriana, Queen of Fairyland, 
 he intended to typify the twelve moral virtues. Now, 
 I must frankly own I have a dread of these twelve 
 moral virtues. I do not mean that I dislike them in 
 the abstract ; but I mean to say that they are likely 
 to become mere abstract personages, and that then I 
 do not feel that I can the least care for them, but feel 
 a certain horror of them, as of beings who pretend 
 to be something very great and turn out to be merely 
 nothings. I must confess that, if I had read Spenser's 
 letter without reading his poem, I should have ex- 
 pected him to reduce flesh and blood, men and women, 
 into mere qualities — such as mere Temperance, Holi- 
 ness, Justice, which look fine in a book, because they 
 have capital letters perfixed to them; but vanish into 
 thin air as soon as any one approaches them. 
 
 Having read his poem, I have come to exactly the 
 opposite conclusion : I have found, that just what I 
 and other persons are apt to turn into mere abstrac- 
 tions, what we can talk about as if they meant 
 nothing, become, with him, great living and tremen- 
 dous realities. Holiness is not a word with a big 
 letter; it is brought before me in the person of a 
 living man, who is going out to fight an old Dragon 
 and to break down a castle in which he holds his 
 captives in prison. I find this Knight of Holiness 
 betrothed to a fair damsel, Una, who goes forth with 
 him, to guide him on his way to the enemies whom 
 he has to encounter. This lady, I am told is Truth, 
 and I believe it; but then she is described to me in 
 these words : — 
 
 "A lovely Ladie rode liim faire beside, 
 Upon a lowly Asse more white than snow, 
 Yet she much whiter ; hut the same did hide 
 Under a vele, that wimpled was full low ; 
 And over all a blacke stole shee did throw : 
 As one that inly mournd, so was she sad, 
 And heavie sate upon her palfrey slow ; 
 Seemed in heart some hidden care she had, 
 
 And by her, in a line, a milkewhite lambe she lad.
 
 VIII.] SPENSER'S " FAERY QUEENE." 177 
 
 So pure and innocent, as that same lambe, 
 She was in life and every vertuous lore ; 
 And by descent from Royall lynage came 
 Of ancient Kinges and Queenes, that had of yore 
 Their scepters stretcht from East to Westerne shore, 
 And all the world in their subjectinn held ; 
 Till that infernall feend with foule uprore 
 Forwasted all their land, and them expeld ; 
 Whom to avenge she had this Knight from far compeld." 
 
 This description, I believe, takes away all notion from 
 our mind that Truth is something cold, and hard, and 
 dead ; I am apt enough to have that conception of her, 
 to think that when we talk of pursuing Truth we mean 
 pursuing something that is formal, and artificial, and 
 verbal ; something that it is impossible to love, and 
 therefore impossible to give up everything for. Whereas 
 the poet is determined that I should confess it to be 
 living, and beautiful, and worthy of the highest fidelity 
 and obedience that we can render it. 
 
 But the Eed Cross Knight, who is wedded to this 
 Una, this Truth, very soon has to come in contact with 
 Error. And what is Error? Now, at least, we shall 
 have some cunning, logical definition. The poet will 
 not try to make us think of this as living anywhere 
 but in books and propositions. You shall hear : — 
 
 " But, full of fire and greedy hardiment, 
 The youthful! Knight could not for ought be staide ; 
 But forth unto the darksoin hole he went, 
 And looked in : his glistring armor made 
 A little glooming light, much like a shade ; 
 By which he saw the ugly monster plaine, 
 Halfe like a serpent horribly displaide, 
 But th' other halfe did womans shape retaine, 
 
 Most lothsom, filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine. 
 
 And, as she lay upon the durtie ground. 
 Her huge long taile her den all overspred, 
 Yet was in knots and many boughtes upwound, 
 Pointed with mortall sting. Of her there bi'ed 
 A thousand yong ones, which she dayly fed, 
 Sucking upon her poisonous diigs ; each one 
 Of sundrie sha])es, yet all ill-favored : 
 Soone as that uncouth light upon them shone, 
 Into her mouth they crept, and suddain all were gone. 
 
 N
 
 178 SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE." [viii. 
 
 Their dam iipstart out of her den effraide, 
 And rushed forth, hurling her hideous taile 
 Abont lier cursed head ; whose folds displaid 
 Were stretcht now forth at length without entraile. 
 She lookt about, and seeing one in mayle, 
 Armed to point, sought backe to tume againe ; 
 For light she hated as the deadly bale, 
 Ay wont in desert darkness to remaine, 
 Wliere plain e none might her see, nor she see any plaine." 
 
 The Red Cross Knight, or the Knight of HoKness, 
 we may suppose, is to be a specially model man, one 
 who is to be held up as an example of unfailing, iin- 
 deviating rectitude in all circumstances. Spenser has 
 no such conception of him. He has a right purpose, 
 a hioh and glorious aim ; but because he has that, he is 
 liable to all temptations, to exactly those you would 
 suppose him most free from. He who is bound to 
 Truth by the firmest bonds must, of course, be a hater 
 of Hypocrisy. You know, we all hate hypocrisy in 
 other people. Spenser is rude enough to tell the 
 holiest man among us that he is liable to be assaulted 
 by Hypocrisy, to be deceived and conquered by him. 
 For Hypocrisy, like Error, is with our poet no shadow. 
 You have him brought before you here as a very 
 distinct person : — 
 
 " At length they chaunst to meet npon the way 
 An aged Sire, in long blacke weedes yclad, 
 His feete all bare, his beard all hoarie gray, 
 And by his belt his booke he hanging had : 
 Sober he seemde, and very sagely sad, 
 And to the ground his eyes were lowly bent, 
 Simple in shew, and voide of malice bad ; 
 And all the way he prayed as he went. 
 
 And often knockt his brest, as one that did repent." 
 
 Then we are told in the next canto, how 
 
 " This guilefull great Enchaunter parts 
 The Redcrosse Knight from Truth : 
 Into whose stead faire Falshood steps, 
 And works him woefull ruth." 
 
 There is no attempt to disguise the degradation. 
 Duessa, who is called Fidessa, takes the place of Una
 
 vm.] SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE/' 179 
 
 in his lieart. To her he surrenders himself ahnost 
 entirely. 
 
 Do you ask what this means ? You will get many 
 answers. One will tell you how it describes a man 
 deluded by Falsehood and Superstition ; another that 
 it describes the slavery of the Christian Church to 
 the same enemies. I believe that it could not mean 
 one of these things without meaning both, and there- 
 fore there is no occasion to decide between opposing 
 commentatoi'S. And this is what I would say to you 
 about the complaint which I told you many people 
 make of Spenser, that it requires great ingenuity to 
 get at his meaning, and that when you think you 
 have got it, you cannot be sure that he did not intend 
 something quite different. I would beseech all his 
 readers not to waste any ingenuity in deciphering his 
 hieroglyphics. The simplest man who is engaged in 
 the battle of life will know most of what he means. 
 None who are not engaged in it will know anything 
 of what he means, let them be as clever as they may. 
 It is true of his poem, as it is of every good poem, that 
 more is meant in it than meets the ear, more than the 
 poet knew himself, more than any of us can know ; 
 and therefore we need not quan-el with one another 
 about the signification of it. The experience of every 
 man is different in some respects from the experience 
 of every other, and yet in essentials they are alike ; 
 and therefore each man may see something, in a great 
 poem concerning human experience, which another 
 does not see, and each man's discovery may throw light 
 upon that of every other, instead of contradicting it. 
 
 But to continue : Una, that is Tnith, does not lose 
 her power or forego her mission because her Knight 
 has deserted her : — 
 
 " One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way, 
 From her nnhastie beast she did aliglit ; 
 And on the grasse her dainty limbs did lay 
 In secrete sliadow, far from all mens sight : 
 From her fayre head her fillet she imdight, 
 
 N 2
 
 180 SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE." [viii. 
 
 And layd her stole aside. Her angels face, 
 As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright. 
 And made a sunshine in the shady place ; 
 Did never mortall eye behold such heavenly grace. 
 
 It fortuned, out of the thickest wood 
 A ramping Lyon rushed suddeinly, 
 Hunting full greedy after salvage blood. 
 Soone as the royall virgin he did spy, 
 With gaping mouth at her ran greedily. 
 To liave attonce devourd her tender corse ; 
 But to the pray when as he drew more ny, 
 His bloody rage aswaged with remorse, 
 And, with the sight amazd, forgat his furious forse. 
 
 In stead thereof he kist her wearie feet, 
 And lickt her lilly hands with faAvning tong. 
 As he her wronged innocence did weet. 
 0, how can beautie maister the most strong, 
 And simple truth subdue avenging wrong ! 
 Whose yielded pryde and proud submission. 
 Still dreading death, when she had marked long, 
 Her hart gan melt in great compassion ; 
 And drizling teares did shed for pure affection." 
 
 I need not draw tlie moral of this story (Spenser has 
 drawn it), that Truth is the mightiest thing in the 
 world, that all bnite force is created to bow to it, and 
 will bow to it at last. This is the great and ever- 
 lasting lesson, of which there may be ten thousand 
 different and ever-renewing applications, but which 
 will remain, though heaven and earth pass away. 
 Spenser himself gives us one of these applications in 
 the sixth canto of this lay of the Red Cross Knight, 
 where he brings Una before us sitting and giving laws 
 to a savage tribe, who kneel before her and do her 
 homage. It was a fine, and glorious, and practical 
 lesson which the poet was reading to his countrymen 
 in that colonizing age, when they were going forth to 
 subdue new races that had probably been once civilized 
 and had sunk into barbarism — when the Spaniard, who 
 had gone amono^ those races, had found no means of 
 subduinu' them but the claws of the lion and the arts
 
 VIII.] SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE." 181 
 
 of Archimago — to tell them that simple Truth in her 
 Aveakness was stronger than these, and could work 
 results which they could never work. It was a lesson 
 to England in that day, and in all days to come, which 
 it would be well that she should lay to heart. 
 
 I have shown you, I think, that no quahties long 
 remain mere names or fictions in Spenser's hands. 
 If you will read at your leisure the fourth canto of 
 this lay, which describes Duessa's House of Pride, I 
 think you will find that each of her six sage coun- 
 sellors, Idleness, Gluttony, Envy, and the rest, has a 
 most terrible distinctness, a reality which we do not 
 forget when we meet him, as we are sure to meet him, 
 in ourselves and in others. Take the first : — 
 
 " But this was drawne of six unequall beasts, 
 On which her six sage Counsellours did ryde, 
 Taught to obay their bestiall beheasts, 
 With like conditions to their kindes applyde : 
 Of which the tirst, that all the rest did guyde, 
 Was sluggish Idlenesse, the nourse of sin ; 
 Upon a slouthfull Asse he cliose to ryde, 
 Arayd in habit blacke, and amis thin, 
 
 Like to an holy Monck, the service to begin. 
 
 And in his hand his Porteese still he bare, 
 That much was worne, but therein little redd ; 
 For of devotion he had little care, 
 Still drouTid in sleepe, and most of his daies dedd : 
 Scarse could he once uphold his heavie hedd, 
 To looken whether it were night or day. 
 May seeme the wayne was very evill ledd, 
 When such an one had guiding of the way, 
 That knew not whether right he went, or else astray. 
 
 From worldly cares himselfe he did esloyne, 
 And greatly shunned manly exercise ; 
 From everie worke he chalenged essoyne, 
 For contemplation sake : yet otherwise 
 His life he led in lawlesse riotise, 
 By which he grew to grievous malady ; 
 For in his lustlesse limbs, through evill guise, 
 A shaking fever raignd continually. 
 Such one was Idlenesse, first of this company."
 
 182 SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE/' [vin. 
 
 All my extracts have been taken from the first of 
 Spenser's books, partly because I believe it is the most 
 popular, partly because the poet's purpose becomes 
 most intelligible when we follow the progress of any 
 one of his stories. There is, however, a connection 
 between all these stories ; there is a person who appears 
 in each of them, and who is the centre round which all 
 the poet's conceptions appear to move. This is Prince 
 Artliur. His first appearance to Una, when sorrowing 
 for her lost knight, is described thus : — 
 
 " At last she chaunced by good liap to meet 
 A goodly knight, faire inarching by the way, 
 Together with his Squyre, arayed meet : 
 His glitterand armour shined far away, 
 Like glauncing light of Phcebus brightest ray ; 
 From top to toe no place appeared bare, 
 That deadly dint of Steele endanger may 
 Athwart his brest a bauldrick brave he ware. 
 That shind, like twinkling stars, with stones most pretious rare : 
 
 And in the midst thereof one pretious stone 
 Of wondrous worth and eke of wondrotis mights, 
 Shapt like a Ladies head, exceeding shone. 
 Like Hesperus emongst the lesser lights. 
 And strove for to amaze the weaker sights : 
 Thereljy his mortall blade full comely hong. 
 In yvory sheath, ycarv'd with curious slights, 
 Whose hilts were burnisht gold, and handle strong 
 Of mother pexle ; and buckled with a golden tong. 
 
 His haughtie Helmet, horrid all with gold, 
 Both glorious brightnesse and great terrour bredd : 
 For all the crest a Dragon did enfold 
 With greedie pawes, and over all did spredd 
 His golden winges : his dreadfuU hideous hedd, 
 Close couched on the bever, seemd to throw 
 From flaming mouth bright sparckles fiery redd. 
 That suddeine horrour to faint hartes did show ; 
 And scaly tayle was stretcht adowne his back full low 
 
 Upon the top of all his loftie crest, 
 
 A bounch of heares discolourd diversly, 
 
 With sprincled pearle and gold full richly drest, 
 
 Did shake, and seem to daunce for jollity, 
 
 Like to an almond tree ymounted hye
 
 VIII.] SPENSER'S " FAERY QUEENE." 183 
 
 On toj) of greene Selinis all alone, 
 With blossoms brave bedecked daintily ; 
 Whose tender locks do tremble every one 
 At everie little breath that under heaven is blowne. 
 
 His warlike shield all closely cover'd was, 
 Ne might of mortall eye be ever seene ; 
 Not made of Steele, nor of enduring bras, 
 Such earthly mettals soon consumed beene, 
 But all of Diamond perfect pure and cleene 
 It framed was, one massy entire mould, 
 Hewen out of Adamant rocke with engines keene, 
 That point of speare it never percen could, 
 Ne dint of direfull sword divide the substance would. 
 
 The same to wight he never wont disclose, 
 But whenas monsters huge he would dismay, 
 Or daunt unequall armies of his foes. 
 Or when the flying heavens he would affray ; 
 For so exceeding shone his glistring ray, 
 That Phoebus golden face it did attaint, 
 As when a cloud his beames doth over-lay ; 
 And silver Cynthia wexed pale and faynt. 
 As when her face is staynd with magicke arts constraint. 
 
 No magicke arts hereof had any might. 
 Nor bloody wordes of bold Enchaunters call ; 
 But all that was not such as seemed in sight 
 Before that shield did fade, and suddeine fall ; 
 And when him list the raskall routes appall, 
 Men into stones therewith he could transmew, 
 And stones to dust, and dust to nought at all ; 
 And, when him list the prouder lookes subdew, 
 He would them gazing blind, or turne to other hew. 
 
 Ne let it seem that credence this exceedes ; 
 For he that made the same was knowne right well 
 To have done much more admirable deedes. 
 It Merlin was, which whylome did excell 
 All living wightes in might of magicke spell : 
 Both shield and sword, and armour all he wrought 
 For this young Prince, when first to amies he fell ; 
 But, when he dyde, the Faery Queen it brought 
 To Faerie lond, where yet it may be seene, if sought." 
 
 I have given you this long extract because Prince 
 Arthur is at once one of the most important person-
 
 184 SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE." [vni. 
 
 ages in the "Faery Queene," and the one whose place 
 in it the reader finds it hardest to understand. I shall 
 not try to explain what his office is, because I believe 
 the poet will give a much clearer explanation of the 
 whole subject than I can. I will merely give you a 
 hint or two, which j)erhaps may somewhat assist your 
 own thoughts. 
 
 Prince Arthur is, as I have said, in the stories of the 
 Middle Ages, at once the leading Champion of Christen- 
 dom and the British Prince — the champion of our soil. 
 All the tales of him, surrounded by the twelve Knights 
 of his Round Table, make us think of the land of our 
 lathers as a sacred land, over which heavenly eyes 
 are watching, for which heavenly powers are fighting. 
 All the stories at the same time of his education by 
 Merlin, of his enchanted sword, of his death, of his 
 appearance again some other day, carry us beyond any- 
 thing that is merely local; he seems to belong alto- 
 gether to another and more sublime recrion, without 
 losing for a moment his relationship to this. 
 
 I apprehend that it was the desire of the author of 
 the " Faery Queene " to make this bright vision, with 
 the various seemingly contradictory elements of which 
 it is composed, a substantial one for his contemporaries, 
 and for all Britons who should come after them. I 
 think he wanted us to feel not less, but more attach- 
 ment, to the land of our nativity, and to the homes 
 and tombs of our fathers, than we have been wont to 
 feel. I think that he had no fear of confounding the 
 Queen Gloriana with the Queen Elizabeth, that he 
 chose to leave something of that confusion, because he 
 thought there could be nothing true, nothing heavenly, 
 in the aspirations or the purposes of his fellow-men, if 
 they lost their interest in their own country under 
 pretence of any wider sympathies with the world, or 
 any solitary devotion to God. If they did not under- 
 stand that their battle was here, and that their victory 
 was to be here — if they did not feel that they were 
 struggling for their country when they were struggling
 
 VIII.] SPENSER'S " FAERY QUEENE." 185 
 
 for themselves, he believed they would become very 
 worthless and contemptible creatures. But, on the 
 other hand, he wished every man to know that a whole 
 host of invisible enemies are about him at every in- 
 stant — that Idleness, Gluttony, Envy, Hypocrisy, and 
 Falsehood, the ruler of them all, are the most actual 
 and tremendous foes with which every man is contend- 
 ing, but one of which assails this man more, another 
 that ; he wished us to feel that the battle is an in- 
 dividual one and yet a common one, that every knight 
 who is doing his work must needs be aiding every 
 other knight ; that no one can be doing his work unless 
 he is setting before himself some high ideal, some noble 
 standard, after which, amidst all discomfitures, he is to 
 strive ; and that there must be some ideal in which 
 all these are united together, some perfect Knight and 
 Deliverer, belonginof to earth and heaven, in Whom 
 they are expressed. 
 
 I have spoken to you very little of the exquisite 
 pictures in this poem, and of the music of its verse, 
 because it seems to me these come home to our hearts 
 much more as we read the poem, or hear it read, than 
 through any criticism. I wished rather to remove an 
 impression, which I think hinders our pleasure and 
 profit in reading any poem, that the writer has devised 
 some artificial machinery for the sake of giving effect 
 and interest to his thoughts. I am sure nothing delights 
 us at last but what we feel to have truth at the found- 
 ation of it, no poetical inventions but what we feel are 
 used as the most transparent medium that can be 
 found, for enabling us to discern truths which would 
 otherwise be hidden from us. Spenser, it seems to me, 
 invented nothing ; he took that which he found lying 
 idle, and useless, and unintelligble. He showed us 
 what sense, and beauty, and harmony there lay be- 
 neath it, what help we may get from Fairyland, if we 
 understand that Fairyland is about the noble, and the 
 shopkeeper, and the peasant ; that even in the midst 
 of the city where he was born a poor man, and died
 
 186 SPENSER'S "FAERY QUEENE/' [viii. 
 
 perhaps for lack of bread, there is a way by which our 
 spirits may ascend into it, may see its bright skies, and 
 taste its fresh fountains ; that everyone who seeks his 
 help and armour there, may become as gentle a knight 
 as he was who wore the Red Cross shield, may be able 
 to vanquish as many giants and enchanters as any who 
 went forth from the palace of Gloriana.
 
 IX. 
 
 M I L T N .1 
 
 You ■s\411 find among Mr. Wordsworth's Sonnets this 
 very memorable one ; it was written in London in 
 1802 :— 
 
 " Milton ! thou sliouldst Ije 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 ; 
 
 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 open my lecture with these words, partly because 
 no one had so good a right to speak of a poet as a 
 poet, still more because the poet speaks so much more 
 of what Milton was than of what he wrote. It is the 
 man who he thinks could reprove England for its 
 selfishness ; it is the man whom he somewhat extrav- 
 agantly asks, what Milton certainly Avould not have 
 asked of any mortal, to restore to his country freedom, 
 virtue, power. It is the man whose soul he represents 
 as dwelling like a star above the earth, and yet taking 
 
 1 Delivered at the Birmingham and Midland Institute.
 
 188 MILTON. [IX. 
 
 upon itself the most earthly duties. Neither when he 
 wrote this Sonnet, nor durin«^ all the years in which 
 he published it afresh for his countrymen, would Mr. 
 Wordsworth have made himself responsible for Milton's 
 opinions, political or ecclesiastical. Some of his poems 
 show how strongly in his latter years he dissented 
 from them ; but the character of the man remained for 
 Wordsworth a steadfast and permanent object amidst 
 all the fluctuations of opinion through which he, or his 
 observer, or the ages might have passed. A student 
 of language and of verse had a temptation to think of 
 the voice whose sound was like the sea more than of 
 the purity, majesty, and freedom of the person who 
 uttered the voice ; but Wordsworth felt that, if the 
 one does not correspond to the other, it is a hollow 
 and false voice, which we should not admire and 
 cannot listen to for any long time. 
 
 I shall not inquire what there was in the London of 
 sixty years ago which suggested to Mr. Wordsworth 
 such painful reflections about the selfishness and de- 
 gi-adation of his coimtry. These thoughts may come 
 to good and earnest men at all times ; there is always 
 enough to justify them ; there is always much to 
 qualify them, and to prove that the ancient English 
 dower has not been forfeited ; but there was in 
 London, in whatever street of it he might be walk- 
 ing, much which would recall to anyone acquainted 
 with Milton's life the incidents of it, and those special 
 proofs of its gi-andeur as well as of its lowliness which 
 presented themselves to his brother-poet in painful 
 contrast with the world around him. Suppose he 
 was jostled by the crowd in Cheapside ; in one of the 
 streets which nm out of it there had dwelt two 
 hundred years before a scrivener named Milton, whose 
 shop was denoted by a sign-post, who lost money and 
 credit with his family by becoming a Protestant ; who 
 was married to a woman not known beyond that 
 neighbourhood, but famous for her deeds within it; 
 who on the IJtli December, 1608, had a son given to
 
 IX.] MILTOX. 189 
 
 liim. He will have remembered how this boy grew 
 up with an unusual beauty of countenance, so that 
 at nine years old all painters delighted to copy it. 
 Passing into St. Paul's Churchyard, Mr. Wordsworth will 
 have looked reverently at the School founded by Dean 
 Colet, where this boy spent more hours of the night 
 than his eyes could bear in poring over the books 
 which were dear to him then and in all his after- 
 days. He may have pursued his walk down Fleet 
 Street till he came to St. Bride's Churchyard. There 
 he may have tried to identify the shop of Russell, a 
 tailor, where the St, Paul's boy in the ripeness of 
 his age, after he had visited Italy and received the 
 homage of its great men, became himself a hard- 
 working schoolmaster. The poet may have traced 
 him to Scotland Yard, near Whitehall, where, in ad- 
 vancing or fixed blindness, he wrote letters to the 
 different Courts of Europe, as Cromwell's Latin Secre- 
 tary ; then to a house opening into St. James's Park, 
 which was assig-ned him as an official residence. 
 Wordsworth will have known that no such pleasant 
 neighbourhood was appointed for Milton's last days. 
 Perhaps, however, he began his pilgrimage with a visit 
 to the house near Bunhill Fields, where " Paradise 
 Lost " must have been chiefly written, and to Cripple- 
 gate Church, where its author is buried. He may 
 have ended it in the Abbey, where a tardy homage 
 had been paid to the Poet of the seventeenth century, 
 and might be hereafter to the Poet of the nineteenth. 
 
 ■ You may complain that I should trouble you in 
 Birmingham with my London topography; but if one 
 can associate its thoroughfares and by-places with re- 
 collections that concern the glory of the whole land, it 
 becomes yours as much as ours ; everyone who visits it 
 may feel that he has as much to do with it as those 
 who dwell in it. I do not question that the streets of 
 your great town are also full of sacred memories, that 
 they bring, back to you the great men of other days, as 
 they suggest to us the wonderful achievements of
 
 190 MILTON. [IX. 
 
 this day. There may always be an interchange and 
 commerce in these treasures between different parts of 
 the same coimtry, as well as between countries which 
 seas divide from each other. And certainly, as far as 
 property in poets is concerned, those who dwell in 
 Warwickshire, and have Stratford-on-Avon near them, 
 need not be jealous of any pretensions which we can 
 put forward. 
 
 It is not, however, for the sake of one town or 
 another that I have led you to these different homes 
 of Milton ; it is because I believe you cannot under- 
 stand him, or his works, in any way so well as by 
 connecting them with the stages of his life. The 
 eminent writer of the Sonnet which I have quoted 
 invented a very artificial division for his own works ; 
 he called them poems of the Imagination, poems of the 
 Fancy, poems of Sentiment, poems of Reflection. I 
 have no doubt that he knew what he meant, and that 
 something is to be learnt about the nature of Fancy 
 Imagination, and Reflection from his classification ; 
 but I am sure his readers are often puzzled to know 
 why one of their favourite poems might not as well 
 have been described by one title as the other. And 
 they would all, I think, mucli prefer to know in what 
 place, at what time, under what impulses, amidst what 
 society, the thoughts were breathed and the words 
 came forth, than to have them ticketed and labelled 
 for their use even by the writer himself 
 
 The verse and the prose of Milton, far more than 
 those of most great men, are expressive of what he 
 was doing, enjoying, or suffering at the time they 
 were poured out. I do not mean that they were 
 sudden extemporaneous utterances of some passing 
 impulse. They are full of thought and deliberation ; 
 still they were born amidst great throes in the heart 
 of the writer as well as of his nation. We lose the 
 sense and flavour if we read them without reference 
 to their chronology. Considered as compositions, or 
 subjects of criticism, I can say nothing about them
 
 7X.] MILTON. 191 
 
 Avhich lias not been said a hundred times before, and a 
 hundred times better ; but I may, perhaps, give you 
 a hint or two about the way of making Milton his 
 own expositor and commentator, so that the wisdom 
 or folly of my comments, or of any other man's may 
 be of little importance to you. 
 
 I should not make any allusion to certain poems 
 which Milton wrote in Latin, mostly when he was 
 quite a boy, if it were not that two of them tell us 
 some facts which gi-eatly affected his subsequent life 
 as well as those early years. One, which is addressed 
 to his father, was written, it would seem, to justify 
 himself from some complaints about his over-devotion 
 to poets and poetry. He reminds his parent that he 
 himself was an artist ; that music, the sister of poetry, 
 had been always a cherished pursuit with him ; and he 
 thanks him with earnest affection for having taught 
 him from the first that money was not to be the object 
 of his life, for having freely spent his own that his son 
 miorht have the culture which would fit him to follow 
 higher ends. The music of the elder Milton passed 
 into the heart of the younger ; he became the most 
 musical of English writers. In his own words, he was 
 possessed by — 
 
 " Thoughts that voluntary moved 
 Harmonious numbers.'' 
 
 The unworldliness of his father became a still nobler 
 and more precious inheritance ; one for which children 
 may give thanks who have none of his genius, and 
 without which his genius would have been dwarfed 
 and debased. 
 
 Another of these poems is written to Thomas Young, 
 his earliest tutor, who had become a pastor among the 
 English merchants at Hamburg. The letter is full of 
 classical and mythological fancies, which would strike 
 most of us as strange and out of place ; very likely 
 they did not seem so to this worthy divine, though he
 
 192 MILTON. [IX. 
 
 was a strict Puritan, and though Milton probably 
 owed to him, as much as to any man, the Hebrew 
 training of his mind. Whatever learning he had of 
 another kind, iliat was at the root of it. No dream of 
 visible gods interfered with his awe of the Invisible. 
 His poetry, his prose, his whole life, was the expres- 
 sion of that awe. He had a deeper, a more thoroughly 
 Jewish horror of idolatry than almost any Englishman 
 who ever lived, though that sentiment has been char- 
 acteristic of our countrymen above any people in the 
 modern world. The immense interest which he felt 
 in the study of heathen writers, his passionate love 
 for them, strengthened instead of weakening this 
 detestation. He seemed to feel that he could not pay 
 them their proper honour, or enter into the truth 
 which was in them, unless he read them by the Light 
 of the Higher Truth which was a protest against their 
 falsehoods. 
 
 And so it was with another class of writings of 
 which he became greatly enamoured, at the very time 
 when he was most busy with these books of the Old 
 World. I use the word " enamoured," for it is the true 
 one to explain his impression about books. They were 
 to him like persons ; the print, and paper, and bind- 
 ings were no dead barriers between him and the men 
 and women who were described in them, or who spoke 
 in them. All were alive ; he talked with them and 
 knew them. Well, then, it might have appeared a 
 dangerous thing for a young man to plunge into the 
 romances of the Middle Ages, which recount many 
 acts that are impure and evil, and attribute them 
 to heroes whom they extol. 
 
 There is a passage — one of the . most elevating and 
 consolatory, I think, in the English tongue — wherein 
 he declares what effect these writings, as well as 
 those which belonged more directly to his school 
 and university course, produced upon him. I wish 
 I could venture to read the whole of it to you ; 
 those who do not know it would thank me, those
 
 IS.] MILTON. 193 
 
 who know it already would, I believe, tliank me 
 more ; but I must content myself with these few 
 sentences : — 
 
 "Next, that I may tell ye whither my younger feet 
 wander'd ; I betook me among those lofty Fables and 
 Romances, which recount in solemn cantos the deeds 
 of knighthood founded by our victorious kings ; and 
 from hence had in renowne over all Christendome. 
 There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he 
 should defend to the expense of his best blood, or of 
 his life, if it so befell him, the honour of virgin or 
 matron. From whence even then I learnt what a 
 noble vertue that sure must be, to the defence of 
 which so many worthies by such a deare adventure of 
 themselves had sworne. And if I found in the story 
 afterward any of them by word or deed breaking that 
 oath, I judg'd it the same fault of the Poet as that 
 which is attributed to Homer, to have written undecent 
 things of the gods. Only this my minde gave me that 
 every free and gentle spirit without that oath ought to be 
 borne a Knight, nor needed to expect the guilt spurre 
 or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder, to stirre 
 him up both by his counsell, and his arme, to secure 
 and protect the weaknesse of any woman. So that 
 even those books which to many others have bin the 
 fuell of wantonnesse, and loose living, I cannot thinke 
 how unlesse by divine indulgence, prov'd to me so 
 many incitements as you have heard, to the love and 
 stedfast observation of vertue." 
 
 The defence of which this is a specimen was wrung 
 from Milton by some hard words which were spoken 
 of him after he became a controversial writer. I quote 
 them that you may see what this young Puritan was, 
 and how much more chivalrous young men would be 
 if tliey studied under him. 
 
 In the work from which I have quoted, Milton refers 
 to his life at the University, in answer to calumnies 
 which were propagated in his own time, and have been 
 renewed since ; he " acknowledges publickly, with all 
 
 o
 
 194 MILTON. [IX. 
 
 gratefull minde, that more than ordinary favour and 
 respect which I found above any of my equals at the 
 hands of those curteous and learned men, the Fellowes 
 of that Colledge wherein I spent some yeares; who 
 at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the 
 manner is, signified many wayes, how much better it 
 would content them that I would stay; as by many 
 letters full of kindnesse and loving respect, both 
 before that time and long after, I was assur'd of their 
 singular good affection towards me." Such a testimony 
 ought to serve for their acquittal from any charges of 
 unkind treatment which were at first meant to dis- 
 parage the supposed sufferer, but which Avould now be 
 looked upon as the cruellest imputations upon those 
 who inflicted it. 
 
 But the really important documents concerning his 
 life in college are the poems which he composed there. 
 The most memorable of these, the "Hymn on the 
 Nativity," is familiar to many of you; it is too long 
 for quotation ; extracts from it would be of little profit, 
 I shall only notice it as an illustration of that great 
 characteristic of Milton to which I alluded before, his 
 habit of making all the stories of Heathen Mythology 
 unfold and illustrate the truth ; which we are apt to 
 use only for the exposure and confutation of their 
 absurdity. In taking this course he followed the 
 example of his admirable and learned predecessor, 
 Edmund Spenser. And I think these two illustrious 
 poets have done more both to counteract the mischief 
 of paganism and to vindicate the use of the treasures 
 which it has bequeathed to us, than all the Apologists. 
 There is one of his University exercises, written when 
 he was nineteen, which I like to remember. It was 
 written partly in English and partly in Latin, and the 
 English part of it is a witness that all he learnt of 
 other nations was only to serve for the better study 
 and enriching of his own. It begins : — 
 
 " Hail, native language, that by sinews weak 
 Did?t move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
 
 IX.] MILTON 195 
 
 And mad'st imperfect words with childish tripps, 
 Half unpronounc't, slide through my infant lipps, 
 Driving dum silince from the portal-dore, 
 Where he had mutely sat two years before : 
 Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask, 
 That now I use thee in my latter task. 
 
 I have some naked thoughts that rove about 
 And loudly knock to have their passage out ; 
 And wearie of their place do only stay 
 Till thou hast deck't them in thy best array." 
 
 And then, with great pomp of words, and a kind of 
 quaint humour, he associates classical stories about 
 Apollo and the Nymphs with the hard forms of Logic. 
 It is only a boyish effort, with much of boyish redun- 
 dancy in style and thought; but I know few more 
 striking proofs that " the boy is father to the man." 
 
 Four years later he wrote a Sonnet which was a 
 surer witness of what he was then, and of what he 
 would be afterward : — 
 
 " How soon hath Time, the suttle theef of youth, 
 Stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth yeer ! 
 My hasting dayes flie on with full career, 
 But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. 
 
 Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth 
 That I to manhood am arriv'd so near, 
 And inward ripenes doth much less appear. 
 That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. 
 
 Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, 
 It shall be still in strictest measure eev'n, 
 To that same lot, however mean or high, 
 
 Towards which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven ; 
 
 All is, if I have grace to use it so. 
 As ever in my great task Master's eye." 
 
 Whether Milton's spring was late or early, the sum- 
 mer fruits began to come forth immediately after this 
 twenty-tliird year. It was in 1632 that he went to 
 Horton, near Colebrook in Buckinghamshire, a house 
 which his father had taken to reside in during his old 
 age. There he passed j&ve years. In those years he 
 
 2
 
 196 MILTON. [IX. 
 
 wrote " L'Allegi'o " and " II Penseroso," " Comus," " The 
 Arcades," and " Lycidas." I will not attempt to de- 
 scribe the place or the neighbourhood ; those of you 
 who consult the work of Professor Masson, the latest, 
 and most diligent and devoted of Milton's biographers, 
 will find a clear and lively account of it as it was and 
 as it is. It deserved the zeal of any of Milton's ad- 
 mirers to investigate and describe that place, for it was 
 specially inhabited by his genius. We often use that 
 word carelessly ; we forget its connection with the 
 adjective "genial;" we forget that "genius" means the 
 vital productive power of a man. Well ; those years at 
 Horton are undoubtedly the poet's most genial time, 
 the one in whixih he produced with the greatest freedom 
 and joy; when all things about him most echoed the 
 music that was in him. The poem he calls " II Pen- 
 seroso," in which he tries to bring before us all images 
 that move to sadness and melancholy, is really just as 
 great a proof of his inward gladness as the one in 
 which he sings the praises of Mirth. He could not be 
 content without finding a response in Nature to every 
 mood of his mind ; and he does find it. The song of 
 the Nightingale, which many wise men say is full of 
 rapture and delight, could feed his melancholy because 
 he wished to feed it ; because it was, in truth, just as 
 pleasant a sensation to him as the one which is con- 
 trasted with it, only suggesting something deeper and 
 more permanent. So in the other poem he calls Shake- 
 speare "Fancy's child," and says that he 
 
 " Warbles his native wood-notes wild." 
 
 We are much more apt to speak of Shakespeare as the 
 child of Truth, as one who brings before us the realities 
 of life ; no chance warbler of wood-notes, but the com- 
 poser of very elaborate harmonies. But Milton's words 
 are perfectly true for their own object. That is the 
 light in which one who was in search of all entertain- 
 ments for the fancy, would regard the plays of Shake- 
 speare; they would not be studies to him in his own
 
 IX.] MILTON. 197 
 
 life, or in the lives of his fellow-men. The songs and 
 freaks of Puck, the dreams of Oberon and Titania, 
 the dialogues of Rosalind and of Touchstone in the 
 forest of Arden, would represent the mind of the poet 
 to such an observer, and this without any reference to 
 the general purport of the drama. I have wandered 
 more into criticism than I intended ; but my wish 
 is to make this passage of Milton's life intelligible 
 to you, and to prepare you for a future one when he 
 would become acquainted with a very different kind of 
 sadness from that which is pictured in " II Penseroso." 
 
 But even now, when he was most alive to the charms 
 of all external objects, he was never deserted by that 
 sense of a responsibility to the unseen Task-master 
 which he had expressed in his Sonnet, and which was 
 the secret of his life and his power. The witchery not of 
 Nature only, but of all bright and lovely human forms 
 and faces, was upon him. No courtier of Charles I. 
 felt the attraction of the masques and entertainments 
 in which the monarch and his wife delighted, more 
 than the young Puritan, In the " Arcades," as in the 
 masque of " Comus," he did full honour to the Countess 
 of Derby and to the ladies of Ludlow Castle. But the 
 object of that masque was to exhibit in richer and 
 more glorious verse than had ever been consecrated to 
 courtly tastes and courtly indulgences, the battle of 
 virtue with its tempters, and the Divine help which is 
 sustaining it against them. The time was approaching 
 when Milton would try, as he said himself, with his 
 left hand to fight against what he held to be the corrup- 
 tions of England in its high places, I believe he was 
 ficrhtinsf against them with his right hand when he 
 showed how all the amusements which had been most 
 abused, all appeals to the eye and the ear, all classical 
 and Middle-age fables, might be consecrated to the 
 service of Righteousness and Truth. I must not allude 
 to the other memorable poem of this time, " Lycidas," 
 further than to say, that its great interest as a key to 
 Milton's biography lies in that which perhaps weakens
 
 198 MILTON. [IX. 
 
 its effect as a pastoral or elegiac poem. He intimates 
 very clearly that his thoughts are elsewhere than in the 
 days which he had passed at Cambridge, or in the sea 
 where — 
 
 " Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high ; " 
 
 that he was busy with anticipations of a great change 
 which was to come upon England : he held that — 
 
 " That two-handed engine at the door 
 Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more." 
 
 Before he took any further interest in that two- 
 handed engine, he paid the visit to Italy of which I 
 spoke. The complimentary verses which he received, 
 or which he wrote, in the old or the modern lanomaoe of 
 Italy whilst he was there, are nothing to us. But that 
 he should have seen all the sights which Italy offered 
 to him, should have felt their fascination in every pore, 
 should have received the incense of the most unex- 
 pected and most agreeable flatterers, and should have 
 escaped out of the furnace unhurt, with fresh know- 
 ledge and fresh perception of beauty in Art and Nature, 
 but more an Englishman, more a man, more a believer 
 in the Unseen and Eternal than before — this signifies 
 to us much ; this no one who is speaking of him ought 
 to pass over. Nor should we ever forget that it was 
 exactly when the impressions of Italy were freshest and 
 most strong upon him, that he returned to England, 
 to take part in its political strifes, and to earn his 
 bread by teaching boys. I put the two facts together, 
 because together they explain the paradox in Mr. 
 Wordsworth's Hues, that his 
 
 " Soul was as a star and dwelt apart," 
 
 whilst he was plunging into the fiercest debates of his 
 time. He certainly did not dwell apart from any con- 
 troversy that was raging ; he certainly preserved no 
 tone of philosophical or literary indifterence. He was 
 not more tolerant of the oj^inions which he opposed
 
 IX.] MILTON. 199 
 
 than his contempoi^ries ; he drew no nice distinctions, 
 such as our consciences bid us draw, between the opinions 
 and the men who supported them. He is fierce and 
 merciless to all whom he deemed, rightly or ^^Tongly, 
 the enemies of his country's freedom and of justice. But 
 his soul did dwell apart in this sense. When he is most 
 vehement, when you dissent most from his judgments 
 of events or of men, you cannot help feeling that it is 
 justice, fi-eedom, his country, he is caring for ; that these 
 ends are present in his mind, are dearer to him than 
 all others, whether he sees the way to them or not. He 
 dwells apart from the factions of his age when he is in 
 the midst of its factions. The party he is fighting for, is 
 dear to him only for the sake of the purpose to which 
 he supposes that it is pledged. If in his judgment it 
 forsakes that purpose, he will forsake it, let the persons 
 who compose it be as much his friends as they may, let 
 their wrath against him be as gi-eat as it may. And he 
 secured his soul from many perils by that course which 
 Mr. Wordsworth calls " laying on himself lowly duties." 
 He might have been tempted for the sake of his family, 
 for the enjoyment of the literary ease which he prized so 
 highly, to have let out his pen to the service of some 
 party, or some man. The schoolmaster in St. Bride's 
 Court and in Aldersgate Street was able to be indepen- 
 dent of politics, and therefore to be an honest pohtician. 
 If I do not give you extracts from any of his specially 
 controversial -vsTitings — I have already given you one — 
 it is not that I wish to pass them over because the con- 
 clusions in them are often directly opposed to mine, for 
 I think that I have learnt most from those that are so ; 
 but because so much collateral information, which I 
 have not the time, if I had the power, to give, is neces- 
 sary to the illustration of them. But I must refer to 
 two of his prose wi-itings, because they illustrate some 
 of the features in his character to which I have drawn 
 your attention. The first is a speech which many of 
 you will have read and re-read — it is that for the Liberty 
 of Unlicensed Printing. I must not take passages from
 
 200 MILTON. [ix. 
 
 it, though the temptation to do so is gi-eat ; but I would 
 have you remark that this magnificent discourse was 
 addressed to that very Long ParKament on the behalf of 
 which he had struggled so passionately ; which he had 
 welcomed as the deliverer of the land. This Parliament, 
 in the exercise of what it supposed was a devout care 
 of the faith and morals of the community, and that it 
 might hinder the publication of some of those writings 
 which Milton most disliked, undertook to establish 
 licensers of the press. He had to encounter his own 
 friends ; it was their prejudices that he exposed and 
 refuted. The soul which was " as a star which dwelt 
 apart " from a low earthly expediency, never shone more 
 clearly and brightly than when he stood forth to pro- 
 claim that we should not " affect a rigour contrary to the 
 manner of God and of Nature, by abridging or scanting 
 those means, which books freely permitted are, both to 
 the trial of virtue and to the exercise of truth." For 
 he adds, "Were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing 
 should be preferred before many times as much the 
 forcible hindrance of evil-doing." 
 
 The second book to which I alluded was Milton's 
 Letter to Mr, Hartlib, on Education. I am not going 
 to tell you what the scheme of instruction was 
 which he desired for his pupils, or to inquire whether 
 it was a reasonable or unreasonable one. There may 
 be all possible differences about that question ; there 
 can be none about the fervent practical zeal with 
 which he devoted himself to the consideration of the 
 subject. He did not "lay lowly duties upon himself" 
 that people might call him humble, or only that he 
 might obtain food for his family. He resolved to 
 show that the work of teaching boys is "lowly," 
 because everything good is lowly; that being so, it is 
 a gi'and task, worthy of the noblest intellect which the 
 world has ever seen; and that such an intellect ought 
 to be exercised in showing how the theory of education 
 could be reformed, how its practice could be made 
 effectual. What was remarkable in the reform that he
 
 IX.] MILTON. 201 
 
 proposed, was this. It was not such as any one would 
 have naturally expected a poet, and a man deeply con- 
 versant with ancient lore, to produce. He would make 
 the study of words subsidiary to the study of things; 
 he would connect lessons in agi'iculture with lessons 
 in grammar; but this he would do for the cultivation 
 of his pupils' minds and characters, not that he might 
 advance them in the world. He dreaded the mercenary 
 tendencies of the education which he saw established in 
 England ; to make it more mercenary was the last aim 
 that he set before himself, or before any of his countrymen. 
 The "writings of Milton as Cromwell's secretary were 
 chiefly in Latin. He certainly did not enter the ser- 
 vice of the Protector without entertaining the most 
 hearty sympathy for him and for his cause He 
 supposed him to be the champion of order and of free- 
 dom; the assertor of an actual Divine government 
 over men. Having adopted that conviction, it was not 
 in him to shrink from any vehemence in support of it ; 
 to use any soft or mild phrases in denouncing those 
 men, learned or unlearned, who pleaded on the side of 
 his opponents. If you ask me whether he was not 
 often coarse, savage, personally abusive, I should 
 answer, Undoubtedly he was ; sometimes in his Eng- 
 lish writings, much more when he was using a 
 vocabulary which did not suggest to him domestic 
 and human thoughts, which he could half regard as a 
 rusty and worn-out weapon, even when he was strik- 
 ing the hardest blows with it. I do not justify this 
 opinion ; but it seems to have been entertained by 
 men who in their private intercourse must have exhi- 
 bited much kindliness and urbanity. And those who 
 have known anything of the temptations of contro- 
 versy when that temptation has not been added to it, 
 when they were using their own English tongue, in an 
 ao^e much more bland and delicate than the age of the 
 Stuarts, will tremble before they cast stones at the 
 images of their forefathers for the offences of this kind 
 which they committed. It is better, instead of doing
 
 202 MILTON. [is. 
 
 that, to take home the painful and humihating lesson, 
 that Milton's nobleness and piety are not able to make 
 his cruel and unjust words tolerable, but only bring 
 theii- ugliness into greater relief; to recollect, that 
 if ours are less offensive, it is because there is less in 
 them to make men feel this contrast; to assure our- 
 selves, that if we profess to care for our cause more 
 than for ourselves, Milton, who certainly did that, 
 weakened his cause, and brought discredit upon it, by 
 every personality to which he resorted in defence of it. 
 
 I am not, as you see here, Milton's panegyrist or 
 apologist. I want to discover the course and purpose 
 of his life ; in that, and not in my words, must be the 
 apology or paneg}Tic which he deserves. A man must 
 be understood before we can praise him or blame him. 
 When we do understand him, if he is a great man we 
 shall feel his faults very keenly ; far more keenly than 
 those of anyone whom we reverence less — the light will 
 show us the darkness. 
 
 I make this remark partly in connection with a class 
 of Milton's \\Titings from which I vehemently dissent, 
 those which concern Marriage and Divorce. His prac- 
 tical conclusions upon these subjects appear to me all 
 wrong ; partly adoj^ted from the excess of that Hebrew 
 temper which I said was so prominent in him, partly 
 from what he saw and felt of the incongTuity of many 
 marriages which had been ratified by very holy 
 sanction. But I cannot help confessing that my dis- 
 like of these \\a-itings is due in gi'eat measure to Milton 
 himself I speak both of his poetry and of his life. 
 His first wife scorned him as a Puritan, and left him. 
 He received her back, and for her sake supported and 
 protected her Royalist relations through the times 
 of the Commonwealth. Of his second wife he wrote 
 these lines, which certainly express his inmost heart : — 
 
 " Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
 Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, 
 Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, 
 Eescu'd from death by force, though pale and faint.
 
 IS.] MILTON. 203 
 
 Mine, as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint, 
 Pnrification in tlie Old Law did save, 
 And such, as yet once more I trust to have 
 Full sight of her in heaven without restraint, 
 
 Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. 
 Her face was veil'd, yet, to my fancied sight, 
 Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd 
 
 So clear, as in no face with more deli,2^ht. 
 But, oh ! as to embrace me she inclin'd, 
 I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night." 
 
 The last line signifies the period of Milton's story to 
 which we have come ; to that night of which he has 
 spoken so often in what are sometimes called episodes 
 from his gxeat poem, but which I always regard as 
 part of its very substance. 
 
 Dr. Johnson said, and many have said after him, 
 that the reading of " Paradise Lost " is a task which 
 people perform once and are glad never to resume. I 
 do not wonder that this should be so. To have a book 
 put into one's hands which one is told is very sublime, 
 or devout, or sacred, or one of the great epics of the 
 world, is to have a demand made on one's admii'ation 
 to which we submit at first dutifully, and against 
 which in a little while we feel an almost inevitable 
 rebellion. I do not think, for myself, that I ever could 
 care for " Paradise Lost " while it came to me under 
 the seal of those gTand titles ; the reality of it seemed 
 to disappear ; it was very fine, no doubt ; one was 
 bound to pay it a respectful homage, but it belonged 
 to another sphere from ours ; one longed for more 
 earthly and homely things. It is quite otherwise, I 
 believe, when we receive it as the deepest, most com- 
 plete utterance of a human spirit ; when it comes forth 
 as the final expression of the thoughts of a man who 
 has been fighting a hard battle, who appears to have 
 been worsted in the battle, who thinks that he has 
 fallen on evil days and evil tongues ; whose eyes 
 
 " roll in vain 
 To fitid the piercing ray, and found no dawn ; " 
 
 who was cut off from all the joys of nature at the very
 
 204 MILTON. [ix. 
 
 time when he was deserted and persecuted by his 
 fellow-men. Hear in " Paradise Lost " the song of 
 such a man, gathering up all the memories and experi- 
 ences of the years through wdiich he has passed, of the 
 men with whom he has conversed, and of the books 
 that he has loved. Read it as the expression of an 
 unchanged and imperishable faith in the Will of a 
 Righteous Being, which disobedience cannot set at 
 nought, against Whom all evil powers may strive but 
 cannot prevail ; read it as the assurance that that Will 
 is the source of all the beautiful things w^hich he can 
 look upon no longer, of all the music which is in him, 
 and which sounds through creation — read it thus, and 
 you w^ill need no critics to tell you about its sublimity, 
 or to classify it with books to which it has probably 
 very little resemblance. It will come to you with its 
 o^vn evidence and power, as the voice of a man, but a 
 voice which can make the deepest mind of a grand age 
 of English history intelligible to our age ; a voice which 
 can teach us how all ages are united in Him who is, 
 and was, and is to come. That seems to me the way 
 of reading " Paradise Lost ; " and therefore it is that I 
 said that the passages which exhibit to us the poet's 
 personal sorrows and consolations are no episodes in it, 
 but give us the key to its inmost meaning. 
 
 " Thou hast given us ' Paradise Lost,' hast thou 
 nothing to say of 'Paradise Found ? " was the demand 
 of Elwood, the Quaker, to whom the world is so deeply 
 indebted for his care of the poet, for carrying him to 
 the house of one of his friends in a genial climate, 
 some distance from the plague-stricken city in which 
 he habitually dwelt ; most of all for the answer which 
 he obtained to his appropriate and well-timed question. 
 It was the fashion of former times greatly to disparage 
 " Paradise Regained." In the reaction against that 
 fashion recent commentators have, I think, unduly 
 exalted it. I can conceive nothing more instructive 
 or suggestive than the idea of the poem; nothing 
 which throws more light upon the life of the Puritan
 
 IX.] MILTON. 205 
 
 period. And it is exquisite for its completeness as a 
 work of art, exquisite for the self-restraint of the 
 artist. But I miss the personal allusions ; I think the 
 absence of them has in part justified the disappointment 
 which most readers feel in it. Milton appears to me 
 greatest when he is on the ground of the Old Testa- 
 ment, comparatively feeble when he ventures into the 
 region of the New Testament. He has been called, 
 and not wrongly, our Hebrew Poet. On both these 
 grounds I think the latest of his poems, " Samson 
 Agonistes," is worthy to be the latest. I read it as a 
 climax and summary of all that had gone before. Lord 
 Macaulay, I know, found fault with it, and of course 
 gave exceedingly clever reasons for setting it below 
 everything else which Milton wrote. I will not discuss 
 those reasons ; to one who looks at the question from a 
 purely critical point of view, I have no doubt they are 
 conclusive. But I have not assumed this point of 
 view in any part of my lecture, and I cannot assume 
 it now. Throughout I have striven to speak of "the 
 man " Milton, and I know not where the man discovers 
 himself more wonderfully than in Samson. He is 
 himself the blind and captive Israelite. He seeks the 
 sun and shade to hide himself from the daily task, the 
 weary toil at the mill; he is soothed by the sympathy 
 of the brethren of his tribe, speaking to him in those 
 old Greek measures which had been in his ears from 
 childhood, and which he loved to blend with the 
 sterner thoughts of the Hebrews ; he groans over the 
 loss of his country's freedom and strength ; he hears 
 the mockery of the Philistines; he feels the invincible 
 strength coming back to him that he may quell the 
 proud of the earth and the aggressor; ... he meditates 
 on the ways of God, so various, and he might say con- 
 trarious, which are yet moving on to a blessed issue, and 
 dies that he may conquer. Over him the dirge is sung — 
 
 " But he, though blind of sight, 
 Despis'd and thought extinguisht quite, 
 With inward eyes illuminated, 
 His fierye vertue rouz'd
 
 206 MILTON. [ix. 
 
 From under ashes into sudden flame, 
 
 Like that self-begotten bird 
 
 In the Arabian woods embost, 
 
 That no second knows nor third, 
 
 And lay erewhile a Holocaust, 
 
 From out her ashie womb now teem'd, 
 
 Revives, re-flourishes, then vigorous most 
 
 When most inactive deem'd. 
 
 And though her body die, her fame survives, 
 
 A secular bird, ages of lives." 
 
 " Samson Agonistes " recalls me to the verses by 
 another poet with which I began. The play is one of 
 human weakness, as much as of strength ; of weakness 
 succeeding strength, that strength may be perfected in 
 weakness. So far, therefore, as Mr. Wordsworth's 
 lines are a mere glorification of Milton, Milton himself 
 is the best witness against them. So far as they com- 
 memorate a man who amidst disappointment and 
 sorrow was enabled to bear witness of a Wisdom and 
 Truth higher than his own, which claimed him for 
 their minister and to which he submitted himself, I 
 hope you will deem that they are confirmed by the 
 little olance which we have been able this evening to 
 take of his history. But in this I venture to dissent 
 from Mr. Wordsworth : I believe that it would not 
 have been good for England that Milton should have 
 appeared in the reign of George III., or that he should 
 appear in the reign of Queen Victoria. I believe he 
 appeared in the hour that was best for him and for 
 us ; that he represented his own time ; that his work 
 should be to awaken the hearts and energies of men 
 who may represent ours. And I believe that, in the 
 truest sense, he and all men that have served their 
 generation and are fallen asleep, are living at this 
 hour ; that they are with us as witnesses of our acts 
 and our failures ; to reprove us if we are selfish men ; 
 to encourage us to walk in cheerful godliness ; and to 
 show us how our souls may "dwell apart" from the 
 evils of our time, how we may lay upon ourselves 
 whatever lowly duties it demands of us.
 
 X. 
 
 MILTON CONSIDERED AS A SCHOOLMASTER. i 
 
 I PROPOSE to speak this evening of Milton as an actual 
 schoolmaster, as well as of his letter to Mr. Hartlib, in 
 which he expounds his idea of education. The subjects 
 are distinct, though no person who really appreciates 
 Milton would wish to separate them. 
 
 Edward Phillips, his nephew and pupil, tells us that 
 " soon after his return from Italy he took him a lodg- 
 ing in St. Bride's Churchyard, when he first undertook 
 the education and instruction of his sister's two sons, 
 the younger whereof had been wholly committed to 
 his charge and care. . . . He made no long stay 
 in these lodgings; the necessity of having a place to 
 dispose his books in and other goods fit for the fur- 
 nishing of a good handsome house, hastening him to 
 take one. And accordingly a pretty garden-house he 
 took in Aldersgate Street, and therefore the fitter for 
 his turn by the reason of the privacy, besides that 
 there are few streets in London more free from noise 
 than that," 
 
 Dr. Johnson says, that all the biographers of Milton 
 shrink from this passage in his life, or try to explain 
 it away. The remark evidently does not apply to 
 Phillips. He observes indeed that "Milton never set 
 up for a public school to teach all the fry of the 
 parish, but only was willing to impart his learning 
 and knowledge to relations and the sons of gentlemen 
 
 1 Delivered at the Royal Institution, January 1857.
 
 208 MILTON CONSIDEHED [x. 
 
 that were his intimate friends." But he does not even 
 hint that he regarded this occupation as discreditable, 
 or pretend that Milton undertook it gratuitously. 
 Later Avriters whom Johnson had read may have taken 
 up either of these opinions. If they did, no one could 
 rebuke them ^\^th greater justice or better grace than 
 himself Probably they had formed some notion of a 
 poet which made them anxious to associate him with 
 mountains and streams, rather than with the streets 
 of a city ; or they had thought that he ought not to 
 engage in any work that was likely to be attended 
 with more trouble than reputation, or to earn his 
 bread by anything except the pen, or the patronage 
 of gTeat men. 
 
 Johnson could refute every one of these notions 
 from his own experience. Fleet Street was his proper 
 home; he had been a schoolmaster; he knew how 
 much labour and what little honour, sometimes how 
 little bread, might come to those who were working 
 with the pen. He had treated the patronage of gi-eat 
 men with disdain, Moreover, he knew how few of 
 the great poets of England had been nursed in these 
 quiet retreats, or engaged in those celestial occupa- 
 tions which these fantastical admirers had imagined 
 for them. 
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer was probably born in London. 
 He was Comptroller of the Petty Customs in the port 
 of London. He fell into disgrace with the Court by 
 the part he took in the election of a Lord Mayor. We 
 have reason to remember these facts ; for if we owe 
 the "Testament of Love" and the "Legend of Fair 
 Women " to the knowledge which he acquired in Courts, 
 or while on foreign embassies, we should never, I 
 conceive, have had the " Canterbury Tales," but for 
 the acquaintance with homely English life which he 
 learned as a London citizen. Edmund Spenser, again, 
 was born in East Smithfield ; and there is the sad — I 
 fear not disproved — tradition, that he died for lack of 
 bread in King Street, Westminster.
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 209 
 
 Shakespeare's earliest years might be passed in one of 
 the counties of England— a county, by the way, singu- 
 larly flat and dull — from which he might gather some 
 hints for the forest of Arden, but which gave him no 
 glimpse of hills or of sea. But all his manhood was 
 spent in London, where he was busy amidst stage- 
 lamps and with stage accounts, and was learning in 
 Blackfriars and Eastcheap to understand princes and 
 carriers, Romans and English, better than they were 
 ever understood. 
 
 Milton's ties to London, to the vulgarest parts of its 
 city, are still closer. His birthplace was Bread Street. 
 The Spread Eagle, which was the sign that his father, 
 the scrivener, dwelt there, was the sign also that that 
 father belonged to a worthy family, and reminded the 
 boy that he had cause to honour him for having lost 
 his inheritance. There the worthy tradesman worked 
 hard and successfully, that his children might have no 
 worse an education than he had in his younger days at 
 Christ Church ; there he imparted, to one of them at 
 least, his passion for music, and his knowledge of it. 
 There Milton may have learnt still more precious 
 lessons from a mother known through all that neigh- 
 bourhood for her charities. It was a step from that 
 street to St. Paul's School, where he began, at ten 
 years old, to purchase future blindness by intense 
 study. 
 
 There were no doubt three breaks in his London life. 
 One was passed at Cambridge. It must have affected 
 his after-thoughts in many ways — none more than those 
 which had reference to education. But assuredly the 
 Cam never became in his mind a rival of the Thames. 
 There are painful passages in an epistle to Charles 
 Diodati about its reeds and its naked fields, in which 
 there are no shades, and its unsuitableness for wor- 
 shippers of the Muses, which one tries to forget and to 
 balance against others, but which prove very decisively 
 that a university which is exceedingly sacred to many of 
 us, and which on the whole has paid him a very hearty
 
 210 MILTON CONSIDERED [x. 
 
 reverence, was not dear to him, either during tiie years 
 which he passed at it, or even in retrospection. 
 
 It must have been quite otherwise with his father's 
 house at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. The five genial 
 years which produced " L'Allegi'o," " II Penseroso," 
 '•' Comus," " The Arcades," " Lycidas," must have been 
 full of all rich imjiressions from the sights and sounds 
 of nature, such as were certainly not to be found or 
 created in Bread Street. The wonderful assemblage of 
 clear, bright, joyful images at the beginning of " L' Alle- 
 gro " would be proof enough that knowledge was at no 
 entrance there shut out from the poet, that light and 
 life were streaming into him at every pore. And there, 
 also, he made acquaintance not only with the lark 
 and the sweetbriar and the eglantine ; he not only 
 listened — 
 
 " How the hounds and horn 
 C'heerly rouse the slumbling morn, 
 From the side of some hoar hill. 
 Through the high wood echoing shrill ; " . 
 
 but he became acquainted with Ludlow Castle, con- 
 nected with the actual inhabitants of it his pure and 
 beautiful visions of the lady who resisted the enchanter, 
 of her brothers, and the attendant spirit. Still, even 
 ■ji this period, which is so especially devoted to the 
 country and country pleasures, we hear, in his second 
 defence, of his paying visits to London that he might 
 buy books, and perfect himself in music and mathe- 
 matics. And there are indications, I think, in all the 
 poems of this time that he expected to find himself 
 again in his old haunts amidst hard work, and that the 
 " fresh woods and pastures new," of which he speaks in 
 '■' Lycidas," might be far more tangled and far less green 
 pastures than those which he had lately visited. 
 
 His visit to Italy was indeed the immediate occasion 
 of that line, and may have fulfilled it in its simplest 
 sense. No one was ever so well prepared as he was for
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 211 
 
 some of the sights which greeted him there ; no one 
 could have been so unprepared for the praises which he 
 received from scholars, who, as he says, were not forward 
 to bestow such on men of this side the Alps. It gives 
 one a wonderful sense of the substantial and stable 
 quality of his mind and character, that he could sustain 
 the weight of outward beauty which crushes so many 
 for whom it has not half the attraction that it had for 
 him, and of flatteries coming from men whom he could 
 appreciate, and which he knew were paid to the writings 
 in which he had shown least of his genius. If he had 
 been educated under a Puritan teacher, it does that 
 teacher the highest honour ; it shows him worthy of all 
 the affection Milton expressed for him, that he had not 
 made his scholar insensible to one graceful or beautiful 
 impression, but that he had given him the secret of not 
 surrendering to impression his Northern and English 
 character. But I beheve his safety lay in the strength 
 and in the depth of his sympathy. He cared for Italy 
 too much not to feel its sufferings more keenly than its 
 praises. The friendship of Manso reminded him how 
 the poet whom he had loved and helped had 
 
 " .... in his youth begun in gladness, 
 But thereof" came "in the end despondency and madness." 
 
 The lesson was too serious and awful not to be laid 
 to heart by one who was himself in the jjrime of 
 manly strength, and beauty, and enjoyment. And no 
 doubt the sight of Galileo, grown old, a prisoner 
 to the Inquisition for thinking in astronomy otherwise 
 than the Dominican and Franciscan licensers thought 
 (so he speaks in his " Areopagitica"), may have had a 
 considerable effect in determining him not to stay 
 on that enchanted ground, and even to abandon his 
 long-formed intention of visiting Athens, rather than 
 be away from the city of London at a moment when 
 England was astir, and when he thought he mio^ht 
 do somewhat to direct the thoughts and kindle the 
 
 p 2
 
 212 MILTON CONSIDERED [x. 
 
 hopes of his countrymen. To London, at all events, 
 he came again in the year 1639, just when the King 
 was making his second attempt to subdue the Scots. 
 And it was then he went to Russell, the tailor, in 
 St. Bride's Churchyard, and took lodgings for his 
 pupils. 
 
 " Let not," says Johnson, " our veneration for Milton 
 forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on 
 great promises and small performance, on the man who 
 hastens home because his countrymen are contending 
 for their liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of 
 action, vapours away his patriotism in a private 
 boarding-school." Johnson does not explain exactly 
 what degree of merriment his veneration for Milton 
 permitted him; I should be happy to take part in it 
 if I could see the point of the jest. He must have 
 perceived, I should think, that the edge of it was taken 
 off by his own great and manly observation in answer 
 to the BiogTaphers, who represented Milton as a 
 gratuitous teacher. If he was, as he undoubtedly was, 
 a somewhat poor man, with tastes which might make 
 money very desirable, and cultivated society very 
 agreeable to him, I think the course he took was a 
 singularly prudent and honourable one. He had 
 determined — perhaps on quite insufficient grounds — 
 but he had determined, that the cause of the Court was 
 not the cause which an Englishman ought to espouse. 
 That Court was one unusually fond of literature, 
 unusually judicious in its patronage, certain at this 
 time to be looking out for advocates who could defend 
 its measures. The rumour that a young Englishman, 
 who had earned panegyrics and prizes in different 
 academies of Italy, had just returned to his own land, 
 was likely enough to reach the ears of those who 
 would convey it to the Archbishop or to the Queen. 
 There was nothing in Milton's previous history which 
 could prove him to be an impracticable subject for 
 solicitations from those who could make solicitations 
 agreeable. He had not ^vritten against Court enter-
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 213 
 
 tainments, like Prynne or Leighton ; he had himself 
 been the author of a Masque. Noble families could 
 speak favourably of him. If he had uttered some 
 strange words in a University poem, or if his connec- 
 tions were with the Puritans, it might be all the more 
 desirable to break those notions and that connection 
 before any mischief resulted from either. Such cal- 
 culations were most reasonable ; Milton could not help 
 knowing that they were. He was never without a 
 proper and manly self-aj)preciation ; everything in his 
 recent experience must have confirmed it. Under 
 such circumstances, what could a sincere man, aware 
 of his own weakness, do better than, in the first place, 
 cultivate a severe kind of life which should make 
 the attractions of luxury comparatively indifterent to 
 him ; secondly, take some means of providing himself 
 with necessaries which should raise him above the peril 
 of being induced to use his pen for that purpose ; 
 thirdly, select an occupation which would make him a 
 less creditable associate for those who might have been 
 glad to amuse themselves with his learning and elo- 
 quence ? Milton might almost as much dread to be at 
 the mercy of the party whose cause he espoused as of 
 that which he opposed. Experience soon showed liim 
 how little he could support the views of either. He 
 owed it, therefore, to truth that he should put himself, 
 so far as he could, out of the temptation to this sub- 
 serviency also. 
 
 There seems, therefore, no great excuse for the 
 memment into which Johnson was driven in spite of 
 his veneration for Milton. Vapouring away patriotism 
 is undoubtedly a very bad thing in a private boarding- 
 school, or elsewhere. But it seems not impossible that 
 Milton betook himself to the private boarding-school, 
 that his patriotism might not pass into vapour, that it 
 might remain a substantial possession to him, and that 
 he might express it in the form which seemed to him 
 the truest. 
 
 And he entered upon the work by which he was to
 
 214 MILTON CONSIDERED [x. 
 
 earn a livelihood, and keep his honesty, as if it were a 
 serious one, into which it concerned his own honour 
 and his country's that he should throw his whole 
 heart. The situation for his school was not hastily 
 chosen. Aldersgate, as Edward Phillips has told us, 
 was one of the quietest streets in London. In Mr. 
 Cunningham's excellent handbook there is a passage 
 respecting it, taken from Howell's " Londonopolis, " 
 which may give us some notion of its likeness to that 
 in which the Post Office now stands. That lively and 
 spirited sketch of London was published in 1657, 
 eighteen years after Milton hired his house. " This 
 street," says Howell, "resembleth an Italian street 
 more than any other in London, by reason of the 
 spaciousness and uniformity of building, and straight - 
 ness thereof, with the convenient distance of the 
 houses ; on both sides whereof there ai'e diverse fair 
 ones, as Peterhouse, the palace now and mansion of the 
 most noble Marquis of Dorchester. Then is there 
 the Earl of Thanet's house, with the Moon and Sun 
 taverns, very fair structures. Then is there, from 
 about the middle of Aldersgate Street, a handsome 
 new street, butted out and fairly built by the company 
 of Goldsmiths, which reaches athwart as far as Red 
 Cross Street." You will find from Mr. Cunningham 
 that two members of the Cabal, Lord Shaftesbury and 
 the Duke of Lauderdale, had afterwards houses in this 
 street ; that Peterhouse was bought by the See of 
 London, when the Great Fire had destroyed the 
 episcopal residence in St. Paul's Churchyard ; and 
 that a Bishop was residing in it as late as 1720. 
 Milton must have strained a point to secure a house in 
 such a street so occupied. But we learn from his 
 letters to Mr. Hartlib, how much the character of the 
 place appeared to him to affect the quality of the 
 education given in it. 
 
 There he received the sons of some of his more 
 intimate friends. One speculates naturally about the 
 possible names of these friends, but not to much profit
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 215 
 
 Charles Diodati, the correspondent of his early years, 
 was lately dead, Milton had lamented him in a Latin 
 Elegy, which Johnson condems for its pastoral affec- 
 tations, but which may, perhaps, conceal under that 
 veil deeper feelings than he cared to express in his 
 own person, and yet which required same utterance. 
 Henry Lawes — 
 
 " Whose tuneful and well-measured song 
 
 First taught our English music how to span 
 Words with just note and accent, not to scan 
 With Midas' ears, committing short and long ; " 
 
 and whom he had claimed as the Casella of another 
 Dante, had already been associated with him. 
 
 '' Lawrence, of virtuous fatlier virtuous son," 
 
 is another with whom he seems to have lived on terms 
 of cheerful intimacy. He asks : — 
 
 " Xow that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, 
 Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the lire 
 Help waste a sullen day ] " 
 
 But he lives for us only in this invitation. — Another •._ 
 his friends was Cyriack Skinner — 
 
 " Whose grandsire on the royal bench 
 Of British Tliemis, with no mean applause. 
 Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws." 
 
 To him he %\Tote that pleasant sonnet in which he 
 bids him 
 
 " To-day deep thoughts resolve Avith me to drench 
 In mirth that after no repenting draws." 
 
 To him he wrote that grand sonnet upon his blind- 
 ness ; so that he must have been a friend in various
 
 216 MILTON CONSIDERED [x. 
 
 chauges of gi'ief and joy. One passage in Phillips 
 seems to suggest the possibility of his being a pupil. 
 With other more illustrious friends he had probably 
 not yet made acquaintance. 
 
 " Vane, young in years, but in sage counsels old," 
 
 as well as Fairfax and Cromwell, must still have 
 been strangers to him. We can make no safe con- 
 jectures, therefore, about those who may have thought 
 him fit to form their sons or kinsmen into scholars and 
 citizens. Our knowledge of his lessons, and of the 
 eifects of them, must be derived from his two nephews, 
 the Phillipses, with whom his work began, 
 
 I will not extract the description which Edward 
 Phillips gives from his own recollection of the studies 
 in Aldersgate Street, because I shall have to give 
 much of it in a more expanded form, when I speak of 
 the " Letter to Mr. Hartlib." But the testimony which 
 he bears to Milton's unsjjaring industry, to his freedom 
 from pedantry, to the example which he set his pupils 
 of indifference to ordinary indulgences, and yet to the 
 frank, hearty mirth with which he kept his occasional 
 " gaudy days " among some beaux of Gray's Inn — " not 
 nearly so bad," Phillips adds, " as the beaux of our 
 days" — might help to remove a good many apprehen- 
 sions respecting him which are derived from third-hand 
 reports, or pure fancy. 
 
 And this evidence is of the more value because it 
 was given in very mature life by a man who had not 
 imbibed Milton's politics ; and who knew, also, and 
 frankly confessed, that there were other jDarts of his 
 mind and character which he had imbibed as little. 
 Thanks to the indefatigable industry of the author of 
 " Caleb Williams," we know a good deal of both of the 
 Phillipses. The story is not altogether a pleasant 
 one, but it ought to be told, as all truth should 
 be, especially when for any reason we feel tempted 
 to conceal it.
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 217 
 
 The elder sister of John and Edward PhilHps was 
 that "fair infant dying of a cough," who is celebrated 
 in one of Milton's earliest poems. He consoled, you 
 may remember, the mother, to whom he was tenderly 
 attached, with the thought " of the present she to God 
 had sent," and with the hope of an offspring who 
 "should make her 'name' to live." That was an 
 uncle's prophecy, which he did his best to fulfil, but 
 which was not fulfilled. Milton took charge of the 
 boys, who were, the one ten, and the other nine. Both 
 became vigorous and persevering men of letters. John's 
 work began when he was under twenty. He wrote an 
 answer to an anonymous attack upon his uncle's " De- 
 fence for the People of England," Milton probably 
 correcting the Latin, and pointing some of the sen- 
 tences. In 1655, he used his pen for a very different 
 purpose. He produced what he called " A Satire 
 against Hypocrites." The objects of it were the Pres- 
 byterians and the Presbyterian clergy. We might 
 suppose he was writing in the interest of the Indepen- 
 dents. But it was not so. He had become a Royalist, 
 and a Royalist of the species which Clarendon de- 
 nounces almost as vehemently as Mrs. Hutchinson ; of 
 that species which had brought the cause into disgrace 
 with the people, and had done so much to secure the 
 success of Cromwell's Ironsides. Then he became a 
 writer of prophetical almanacks. The first, published in 
 1660, hinted dimly at the confusions of the time and 
 the hopes of the Stuarts. The second, in 1661, was 
 reckless and furious against those whom he had de- 
 fended in his Latin arguments five years before. One 
 sentence, quoted by Mr. Godwin, about the execution 
 of the Regicides, is as atrocious and brutal a one as a 
 dissolute and heartless partisan ever indited. It need 
 hardly be said that all the politics of this most earnest 
 period only furnished John Phillips with occasion for 
 jesting. But it was the same, also, with the most 
 wholesome and manly literature of other ages. He 
 wrote a wretched travestie of the fifth and sixth
 
 218 MILTON CONSIDERED [x. 
 
 books of the ^neid, intimating an opinion — wliich 
 I can believe in such a man was a sincere one — 
 that Virgil himself was only at bottom a writer of 
 burlesque. Becoming a bookseller's hack, he continued 
 the " Chronicle of Heath," into which he introduced 
 this passage : — 
 
 " To better also the condition of the King our Sove- 
 eigii Charles II. as to his kingdoms, came forth several 
 defences of his authority in several treatises, especially 
 that of Salmasius, called the Royal Defence, which our 
 Milton, since stricken with blindness, cavilled at." 
 
 It is a worthy and suitable conclusion of such a 
 history that John Phillips afterwards appeared as a 
 defender of Gates, and an instrument of Shaftesbury; 
 that as soon as James succeeded to the throne he ad- 
 dressed him in fulsome panegyric, and that he trans- 
 lated " Don Quixote " to suit, as he said, the manners 
 of the time, substituting vulgar and stupid English 
 allusions for the pure wit and high feelings of Cer- 
 vantes. This man, however, seems to have had a 
 prodigious industry, to have done his work for the 
 booksellers with creditable care ; and, when he spoke 
 of subjects that had nothing to do with his own time, 
 to have exhibited powers of original thought and 
 reflection. 
 
 Edward Phillips was a very different man from his 
 brother. He went to Magdalen Hall, Oxford ; found 
 it under severe Pviritan government ; took the same 
 infection which John Phillips had taken, and brought 
 forth a book called " The Mystery of Law and Elo- 
 quence," which, judging from Mr. Godwin's extract, 
 must have been as licentious, though not nearly so 
 malignant, as the Satire on Hypocrites. 
 
 After this first outbreak, his character, as well as his 
 pursuits, took a higher tone. He devoted himself to 
 History and to Philology, and wrote a continuation of 
 Baker's Chronicle, and what he called a "New World 
 of Words." He became tutor to a son of Evelyn, who 
 woiild certainly not have chosen him unless he had
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 210 
 
 thought well of his conduct and principles. His 
 " Theatre of the Poets," on which Sir Egerton Brydges 
 has bestowed rather extravagant praise, shows at least 
 a wide acquaintance with ancient and modern writers. 
 In it he speaks with fraternal partiality of John 
 Phillips, and with affectionate reverence of his uncle. 
 His "BiogTaphy of Milton" was nearly his latest 
 work. It is much more meagi^e than one could wish, 
 but it is simple, earnest, unaffected. In his "Theatre 
 of the Poets," Milton's style has evidently been a 
 temiitation to him. He often becomes inflated in the 
 desire to imitate it. Here he speaks truly as from 
 himself. 
 
 I admit, therefore, that in the only two cases we 
 know of Milton's education, it produced quite other 
 fruits that he would have desired. That his pupils 
 became Royalists, might not seem as great a fall to 
 us as it must have done to him ; that one of them, at 
 least, became a frivolous, dishonest, heartless Royalist, 
 must, I should think, appear equally shocking to true 
 men of every party. And I am far from denying that 
 the elevation of Milton's own mind may have contri- 
 buted to this result. A 3'oung man who felt the con- 
 trast between it and the mind he was cherishing in 
 himself, would wrajD himself in greater baseness to 
 escape the reproach. The Phillipses are fair speci- 
 mens of the reaction against Puritanism, which was 
 taking place in a number of youths before the Restora- 
 tion, and which was to exhibit itself in the nation at 
 large afterwards. I have no doubt that a Royalist 
 teacher of high and elevated character might have 
 driven John Phillips into a furious self-willed Puritan- 
 ism, A man of a lower tone in either party would 
 probably have suited him better. 
 
 Dr. Busby's discipline might have scourged him into 
 a man, while Milton's only provoked him into becom- 
 ing a very vulgar gallant. All this should be frankly 
 acknowledged, that we may estimate his education 
 rightly. But it should also be remembered that the
 
 220 MILTON CONSIDERED [x. 
 
 Phillips who talked of " the old man that was stricken 
 with blindness," never, so far as can be made out, in 
 one single passage of his nun>erous ^vritings, spoke of 
 his uncle's lessons as partaking of those qualities 
 which gave the occasion to his satire. He probably- 
 hated him very bitterly ; but he did not pretend that 
 he had done anything to make moral principles, or the 
 Christian faith, look mean in his eyes. 
 
 I believe, then, we may set this down as one instance 
 of the disappointments of which the life of every great 
 man, and of every age, reveals a series. I know disap- 
 pointments will be pleaded, by any who need them, as 
 arguments that gi'eat men should not exist, or that all 
 their greatness is imaginary. They will be pleaded 
 also, as proofs that there is no Providence over the 
 world — that we are left to the empire of chance. 
 They who choose may find in them arguments for 
 humility, and therefore for hope. They may feel that 
 a Paradise Lost is necessary to a Paradise Regained ; 
 that Samson must have been a captive, and blinded 
 and mocked that he might come forth a conqueror. 
 
 Dr. Johnson observes that out of Milton's wonder- 
 working academy, nothing proceeded but Phillips's 
 "Theatre of the Poets." If he had known what else 
 the Phillipses produced besides that, he would not 
 perhaps have thought better of the academy, for his 
 Toryism never made him tolerant of profligacy and 
 ; insincerity. But the phrase "wonder-working" is 
 entirely due to himself. Milton never boasted of the 
 academy as having produced any wonders, 'or as being 
 likely to produce them ; he never, so far as I know, 
 alludes to his own experiment in education ; certainly 
 he does not in the " Letter to Mr. Hartlib," which is 
 the treatise especially devoted to that subject. We 
 know by accident, from Edward Phillips's Life, that 
 j 1 he did attempt with his own pujjils, on a small scale, 
 1 1 that which he supposes might be attempted in his 
 [ ' ideal school. It is a gi-eat satisfaction to know that 
 he did not write that book merely as a theorist, that
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 221 
 
 the boys of whom he speaks are not mere paper boys, 
 that he had actually put his hand to the plough, if he 
 had not any great results to show from his tillage ; but 
 for anything which his tract says to the contrary, it 
 might have been wi'itten by a teacher who was lament- 
 ing his blunders, as much as by a man who was rejoic- 
 ing in his success. It is unquestionably the work of a 
 man aiming at a standard which he has not reached 
 and which he does not expect to see reached by him- 
 self, or in his own day, which it is nevertheless right 
 to set forth because people of other days who never 
 knew him, and probably would have refused to profit 
 by anything that he said, might be the better for it. 
 Accepting the book in this sense, I think it may at 
 least be worth our while to see whether it tells us 
 anything which can help to make us better. If we 
 take his scheme as a subject for our criticism, we may 
 say very clever things about the absurdity or the im- 
 practicability of this or that part of it, or in a different 
 mood of mind we may resolve that we should gain 
 immensely if we could substitute it for all the plans 
 which we have inherited or invented ; but in either 
 case I apprehend we should be doing equal wrong to 
 Milton and to ourselves. Every man whose thoughts 
 have lived has known that he could only be the 
 teacher of another age so far as its own circumstances 
 and trials made his words applicable to it; and that 
 a number of his words would be thrown aside as in- 
 applicable provided it was to profit by the rest. And 
 we surely in our turn ought to know that the more 
 we are disposed to learn and the less we are inclined 
 to cavil, the gTcater will be our security against adopt- 
 ing that which is not intended for us, the greater our 
 chance of discovering that which is. 
 
 "I am long since persuaded," he begins, "that to 
 say or do aught worth memory and imitation, no purpose 
 or respect should sooner move us than simply the love 
 of God and of mankind. ... I will not resist therefore 
 whatever it is of human or divine obligement that you
 
 222 MILTON CONSIDEEED [x. 
 
 lay upon me, but will forthwith set down in writing, 
 as you request me, that voluntary idea — of a better 
 education, in extent and comprehension far more large, 
 and yet of time far shorter, and of attainment far more 
 certain, than hath been yet in practice. Brief I shall 
 endeavour to be ; for that which I have to say, assuredly 
 this nation hath extreme need should be done sooner 
 than spoken. To tell yovi therefore what I have bene- 
 fited herein among old renowned authors, — and to search 
 what many modern Januas and Didactics, more than 
 ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads 
 me not ; but if you can accept of these few observations 
 which have flowered off, and are, as it were, the bur- 
 nishing of many studious and contemplative years, 
 altogether spent in the search of religious and civil 
 knowledge, and such as pleased you so well in the 
 relating, I here give you them to dispose of." 
 
 Schemes for increasing the extent of knowledge and 
 shortening the time for acquiring it, have become so 
 rife among us in these later years, that we listen with a 
 natural kind of suspicion to any of them by whom- 
 soever propounded, and assume that there must be 
 quackery, conscious or unconscious, at the bottom of it. 
 But assuredly Milton did not contemplate lessening 
 the depth and sincerity of learning by his sugges- 
 tions for enlarging the compass of it. It was this 
 depth and sincerity which he comjjlained of as want- 
 ing in the schools and universities of his day. Nor 
 was he revolutionary in this sense, that he undervalued 
 the principle which he found to be implied in the 
 teaching of those institutions. Languages had been 
 his own favourite study; languages had been the pro- 
 fessed study of his countrymen, and with languages he 
 begins. The maxim that " language is but the instru- 
 ment conveying to us things useful to be known," 
 which underlies his whole treatise, might lead us to 
 suppose that he did not value it at all as a direct means 
 of culture ; but this conclusion would be a hasty one. 
 He evidently considered that the study of the substance
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 223 
 
 of good books was the way, and the only way, to arrive 
 at the Hving apprehension and mastery of their lan- 
 guage, and therefore at any of the sound mental discip- 
 line which a language may impart. On this ground 
 it is that he protests against what he calls "the pre- 
 posterous exaction of forcing the empty wits of chil- 
 dren to compose themes, verses, and orations, which 
 are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work 
 of a head filled, by long reading and observing, with 
 elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not 
 matters," he says, "to be wrung from poor striplings, 
 like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely 
 fruit ; besides the ill habit which they get of wretched 
 barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom with 
 their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet 
 not to be avoided without a well-continued and 
 judicious conversing among pure authors digested. " 
 These remarks you perceive, whether just or not 
 in themselves, are the utterances of a scholar, even 
 of a somewhat fastidious scholar. His compassion to 
 boys is sustained by a great horror of their solecisms. 
 He would save them from exercises which he regards 
 as useless and cruel at the time when they are im- 
 posed ; but it is that they may be better fitted to 
 perform those exercises afterwards. Such sentiments 
 at all events do not come inconsistently from a man 
 who had written so much Latin poetry himself, and 
 who made it the condition of his accepting the 
 Secretaryship under Cromwell, that the correspon- 
 dence with Foreign Powers should be in Latin as 
 a common lano^uao^e for intercourse. 
 
 It is, however, quite true that Milton aspired to 
 make the gTammar-school a real school. This is the 
 characteristic feature of his education. Both here and 
 in Germany the two kinds of instruction are opposed 
 to each other; the teaching of words or of Philology 
 is supposed to be one business ; the teaching of business, 
 or, as we sometimes say, of common things, to be 
 another. He believed this division to be artificial and
 
 224 MILTON CONSIDERED [x. 
 
 unnecessary; the best school in thhigs he thought 
 would be the best school in words. I do not know 
 whether he has anywhere expressed his opinion of 
 Bacon, or whether he had studied the Novum Organon. 
 The minds of the two men were so exceedingly unlike 
 that it is quite possible he never fully appreciated his 
 great predecessor ; but the influence of his habits of 
 thinking is most manifest in the treatise on Education. 
 It is in fact an application of Bacon's maxims, and an 
 attempt to destroy some of the very idols at which he 
 had struck a blow. Thus he complains of the Univer- 
 sities that, " Instead of beginning with Arts most easy, 
 and those he such as are most obvious to the sense, they 
 present their young unmatriculated novices at first 
 coming with the most intellective abstractions of Logic 
 and Metaphysics." Here he distinctly points out the 
 road to knowledge as starting from the objects of sense, 
 as being tentative and experimental with reference to 
 them, as leading onward by that method to the dis- 
 covery of principles and truths. He declares, just as 
 Bacon does, against the opposite course, of beginning 
 from abstractions and conclusions of our intellects, as 
 being fatal to all healthy progress and all certain re- 
 sults. It may be urged, indeed with great force, that 
 such remarks applied much more properly to the 
 Universities when they were frequented, as in Milton's 
 day, by boys of fifteen or even of twelve, than they 
 can do to this time; that the previous discipline in 
 arts most easy and obvious to the sense may have been 
 well got through before the ages of eighteen or nineteen, 
 and that then Logic and Metaphysics may claim their 
 rightful place as preparations for approaching man- 
 hood. I say nothing against or for these statements ; 
 only I think that in that case the countrymen of Bacon 
 and of Milton should see to it that there has been that 
 preliminary instruction, and that it has been well gone 
 through, lest those consequences which he speaks of 
 in his time should ever have to be mourned over in 
 ours. For these novices, he says, "having but newly
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 225 
 
 left those grammatic flats and shallows, where they 
 stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lament- 
 able construction, and now on the sudden transported 
 under another climate to be tossed and turmoiled with 
 their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps 
 of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred 
 and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this 
 while with ragged notions and babblements, while 
 they expected worthy and delightfid knowledge : till 
 poverty, or youthful years, call them importunately 
 their several ways, and hasten them with the sway of 
 friends either to an ambitious and mercenary, or ignor- 
 antly zealous divinity ; some allured to the trade of 
 law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and 
 heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which 
 was never taught them, but on the promising and 
 pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, 
 and flowing fees. Others betake them to State affairs, 
 with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous 
 breeding, that flattery, and court shifts, and tyrannous 
 aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom, 
 instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious 
 slavery, if, as I rather think, it be not feigned. Others, 
 lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit, retire them- 
 selves, knowing no better, to the enjoyments of ease 
 and luxury, living out their days in feasts and jollity, 
 which indeed is the wisest and safest course of all these 
 unless they were with more integrity undertaken." 
 
 So far Milton has been speaking against some of the 
 practices which he saw, and laying down principles 
 for reforming them. Now he proceeds to the more 
 hazardous task of tracing the outlines of his own plan. 
 He begins with finding out a spacious house and 
 ground about it fit for an academy, and big enough to 
 lodge one hundred and fifty persons, whereof twenty or 
 thereabouts may be attendants, all under the govern- 
 ment of one. Everyone will perceive that the house in 
 Aldersgate Street was only the attempt of an indi- 
 vidual to do with the most imperfect appliances what 
 
 Q
 
 226 MILTON CONSIDERED [x. 
 
 he wished should be done, probably by the Govern- 
 ment, though he does not directly say so, in every 
 city throughout the land. This institution was to be 
 both school and university: an unhappy and incon- 
 venient arrangement, it seems to me, and one which 
 would defeat many of the purposes which Milton 
 had most at heart. As Edward Phillips went to 
 Oxford, we may presume that his uncle did not at any 
 rate suppose that his own school could serve this 
 double purpose. 
 
 When he comes to the studies which are to be pur- 
 sued in the school or college, we find him attaching 
 considerable importance to grammar, but still more to 
 distinct and clear pronunciation, " as near as may be to 
 the Italian, especially in the vowels." Obviously 
 therefore Latin is in his school, as in others, the first 
 instrument of the teacher; but it is an instrument, 
 and he finds it not always a convenient one for his 
 purpose. He complains that there are few books 
 among the Latin classics, like Cebes and Plutarch, 
 which would win them early to the love of virtue and 
 true labour. The deficiency must be supplied by the 
 teacher himself, who is to use all books, whatsoever 
 they be, to stir them " up with high hopes of living to 
 be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and 
 famous to all ages." Some other hour of the day 
 these younger pupils are to be taught the rules of 
 arithmetic, and soon after the elements of geometry. 
 After evening repast their thoughts will be best taken 
 up in the easy grounds of religion, and the story of 
 Scripture. 
 
 The next step "of Milton's education" is to the 
 authors on agriculture, Cato, Varro, and Columella ; 
 " for here," he says, " will be an occasion of inciting 
 and enabling them hereafter to improve the tillage of 
 their country, to recover the bad soil, and to remedy 
 the waste that is made of good." Still the verbal 
 education is going on with the real. The subject will 
 make the words of the writers he has named enter
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 227 
 
 iuto their minds. When they can construe them, 
 they will be masters of any ordinary prose. Next he 
 would have them learn in any modern author the use 
 of globes and of maps, and read some compendious 
 method of Natural Philosophy. Next we plunge into 
 Greek, and a somewhat tremendous plunge it is ! For 
 having learnt the grammar with great expedition, 
 Milton assures us that the historical physiology of 
 Aristotle and Theophrastus will all be ojDen before us. 
 Then Greek and Latin authors together help in the 
 principles of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and 
 geography. We get instructed in fortification, archi- 
 tecture, engineering, or navigation. In Natural 
 Philosophy we proceed leisurely from the history of 
 meteors, minerals, plants, and living creatures as far as 
 anatomy. Then we are to read out of some not tedi- 
 ous writer the institution of physics. 
 
 I am perfectly aware that a number of these sugges- 
 tions would sound absurd and extravagant anywhere, 
 and nowhere more absurd and extravagant than to an 
 audience like this, which can estimate in some degree 
 the depth and intricacy of those subjects of which 
 Milton disposes so rapidly, and who also are not likely 
 to set much store by the manuals out of which he 
 would deliver his lessons. I do not suppose anyone 
 would propose to teach agriculture in Cato, or Natural 
 Philosophy in Seneca. But the question which I 
 started before, I must renew now. Is it wiser to 
 amuse ourselves with a great man, or to get the best 
 wisdom we can out of him, leaving what does not suit 
 us, as he would have wished that we should ? The 
 object of Milton is clearly not to cram his pupils with 
 an immense quantity of verbal information, but to 
 bring all verbal information to a test, by connecting it 
 with the operations of nature and of man. If his own 
 amazing power of acquisition led liim greatly to over- 
 rate that of ordinary boys, and if the machinery he 
 had to work with was a very awkward and cumbrous 
 one, we might surely correct his over-doing by con- 
 
 o 2
 
 228 MILTON CONSIDERED [x. 
 
 tinually recurring to the end for which he recommends 
 it, and avail ourselves of our own advantages to remove 
 embarrassments from his method which he would have 
 rejoiced to remove if he had known how. And I think 
 you will allow that if Milton is an Idealist, he is a 
 stern Realist too ; one who would have us always con- 
 versant with facts rather than with names ; one who 
 aims as directly at the useful as the most professed 
 Utilitarian could do. His reason for giving his pupils 
 a knowledge of physics is that " perchance one of them 
 may some time or another save an army by this frugal 
 and expenseless means, and not let the healthy and 
 stout bodies of young men under him rot away for 
 want of this discipline, which is a great pity and no 
 less a shame to the commander." To set forward their 
 proceedings in nature and mathematics, he would have 
 them procvire, as. oft as shall be needful, the helpful 
 experiences of hunters, fowlers, fishermen, shepherds, 
 gardeners, apothecaries; and in the other sciences 
 architects, engineers, mariners, anatomists : and this 
 will give them such a real tincture of natural know- 
 ledge as they shall never forget, but daily augment 
 with delight. Hesiod and Theocritus, Lucretius and 
 the " Georgics " of Virgil, he thinks, will add to the 
 delight of these studies, and will be far more under- 
 stood and relished than they are wont to be, by those 
 who have taken some part in them. 
 
 I do not suppose that I have much occasion to deal 
 here with the objections of Johnson against this method 
 of instruction, which are grounded upon the compara- 
 tive insignificance of a knowledge of external nature, 
 and of the sciences which that knowledge requires or 
 includes. But I may observe that never were good 
 and well-delivered sentences more thrown away, or 
 more utterly inappropriate to the purpose for which 
 they are used, than those in which he maintains that 
 moral knowledge is superior to physical, and that the 
 main end of education is to fit us for living as true 
 men. No principle is so constantly asserted through-
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 229 
 
 out Milton's tractate as that ; no one was more worked 
 into the whole tissue of his instruction. Instead of 
 using the classics as they are often used in schools, 
 with the apology that they are very useful for forming 
 a style or some such beggarly purpose, but with a half 
 doubt whether they may not be undermining the 
 moral sense of the pupils and contradicting higher 
 truths, he uses orators, poets, lawgivers, simply as 
 instruments for forming brave men and good citizens, 
 maintaining that if they do not serve that purpose it 
 is the teacher's fault, because he misunderstands the 
 nature of his pupils and the end of life, or the relation 
 of the wisdom in these books to a more perfect wisdom. 
 Everything in his lessons from first to last is aiming at 
 the formation of a manly character, and an English 
 character. Believing that the acquaintance with reali- 
 ties is precious for his pupil in each of these respects ; 
 that an Englishman is the most poor and helpless of all 
 creatures when he is only busy about abstractions, the 
 most vigorous and effectual when he is in converse 
 with facts ; believing that a man is meant to rule 
 Nature, and must humble himself to it that he may 
 understand it and so rule it, he does not shrink from 
 recommending those studies as vital parts of a good 
 education which Johnson regarded only as its extra- 
 neous accidents : but he just as little exalts natural 
 studies as he exalts language into an end instead of an 
 instrument. The test of both is to mould men who 
 can fight the battle of life. 
 
 To this end he regards exercises as contributing no 
 less than studies. " That exercise, " he says, " which I 
 recommend first, is the exact use of their weapon, to 
 guard and to strike safely with edge and point. This 
 will keep them healthy, nimble, strong, and well in 
 breath ; is also the likeliest means to make them gi'ow 
 large and tall, and to inspire them with a gallant and 
 fearless courage, which, being tempered with seasonable 
 lectures and precepts to them of true fortitude and 
 patience, will turn into a native and heroic valour, and
 
 230 MILTON CONSIDERED [x. 
 
 make them hate the cowardice of doing wrong. They 
 must also be practised in all the locks and gripes of 
 wrestling, wherein Englishmen were wont to excel, as 
 need may often be in fight to tug and grapple and to 
 close. " In fact his education is very military, for 
 " about two hours before supper they are, by a sudden 
 alarum or watchword, to be called out to their military 
 motions under sky or cover according to the seasons ; 
 first on foot," then, as their age pei'mits, " on horse- 
 back." They are, "in sport," but with much exactness 
 and daily muster, " to serve out the rudiments of their 
 soldiership in all the skill of embattling, marching, 
 encamping, besieging, and battering, with all the helps 
 of ancient and modem stratagems, tactics, and warlike 
 maxims." " Besides these constant exercises at home," 
 he adds, " there is another opportunity of gaining ex- 
 perience, to be won from pleasure itself abroad. In 
 those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm 
 and pleasant, it were an injury against Nature not to 
 go out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicing. 
 I should not therefore be a persuader to them of 
 studying much then, but to ride out in companies with 
 prudent and staid guides to all the quarters of the 
 land, learning and observing all places of strength, all 
 commodities of building and of soil for towns and 
 tillage, harbours, and ports of trade ; sometimes taking- 
 sea as far as to our navy, to learn there also what they 
 can in the practical knowledge of sailing and sea- 
 fight." 
 
 By these means he hopes to cultivate the peculiar 
 gifts of his pupils, and "if there were any secret 
 excellence among them, to fetch it out ; " and this he 
 thinks would restore many old virtues and excellences 
 to our land which its higher Christian knowledge 
 would prevent from degenerating into violence and 
 brutality. To counteract these indeed is the great 
 end of all his discipline. No one speaks more of 
 refined breeding and culture as being desirable and 
 possible for all people whatsoever. No one takes,
 
 X.] AS A SCHOOLMASTER. 231 
 
 what I suppose we should all consider, more rational 
 means for promoting it. The study of music, as we 
 might expect, is an essential element of his education. 
 It is not reserved for a few fortunate persons, but is to 
 be used for the benefit of the whole school, expressly 
 because, " if wise men and prophets be not extremely 
 out, it has a gi*eat power over dispositions and manners, 
 to smooth and make them gentle from rustic harshness 
 and distempered passions." 
 
 I had ijitended to make many apologies for speaking 
 to you upon a subject very unlike those with which 
 you are ordinarily instrvicted and entertained here, and 
 which, besides its strangeness, is deficient in all the 
 aids which those subjects derive from brilliant experi- 
 ments and skilful exposition. But I have thought 
 that on the whole Milton might make the apology 
 better than I could. His object as a schoolmaster was 
 to unite natural studies with human studies, that both 
 might contribute to the formation of just men and a 
 sound Commonwealth. I believe that is the object 
 which the conductors of this Institution have at heart, 
 and which perhaps they may aid by lessons of which 
 he was ignorant ; but as I am sure that one of the 
 chief lessons which your studies of the mysteries of 
 the universe teach you, is humility, you will not be 
 ashamed to learn from a man who may have made 
 a thousand mistakes which we need not make, but 
 who nevertheless had a wisdom and a righteousness 
 of purpose in him which the best and truest will most 
 delight to honour and be most eager to possess.
 
 XL 
 
 EDMUND BURKE.i 
 
 I SHALL make no apology for speaking to you, to 
 members of a Literary Society, on the life of a gi'eat 
 English statesman. I believe that you desire, as far as 
 in you lies, to allay party fevers ; to substitute questions 
 of general interest for those which agitate particular 
 localities. I do not know how you can promote either 
 end more effectually than by reflecting on the history 
 of a man, who was mixed in the party strifes of his 
 own day, who did not escape from them unscathed, 
 yet who was continually seeking for principles which 
 belong to all times. Now that he has been almost 
 sixty years in his grave, when there are so very few 
 left who heard his words or even remember the influ- 
 ence he exerted on his contemporaries, we can under- 
 stand what there is of him which has passed away, 
 and what there is which has survived and will always 
 survive. The result, I am sure, will not lead us to 
 care more for mere accidental and temporary excite- 
 ments ; it may teach us that we cannot safely separate 
 our literary pursuits, even our literary recreations, from 
 the history and life of our nation. 
 
 Edmund Burke, however, was a man of letters as 
 well as a statesman. Other questions interested him, 
 besides those which came under his notice in the 
 House of Commons ; what did come under his notice 
 
 1 Delivered at the Bury St. Edmunds Literary Society, 1857.
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 233 
 
 there, lie spoke of in words which have deUghted 
 numbers who thought httle of the special occasions 
 which called them forth. I might limit myself to the 
 consideration of him as an Essayist and an Orator, 
 forgetting that he had ever argued for Economical 
 Reform, or impeached Warren Hastings, or arraigned 
 " a regicide peace." But I confess that he does not 
 interest me chiefly as either statesman, essayist, or 
 orator — that I should not care for Jiim in any of these 
 characters if I did not perceive that he was lirst of all 
 a Man. I may disagree with a number of his opinions ; 
 I shall not tell you with how many I agree or disagree. 
 But he himself, I think, is a subject worthy of all 
 study, and of very sincere affection. That I may 
 know him, I must get what light I can from any of 
 his acts or discourses. Whatever names they bear, 
 however they may be classified, they will show us 
 something of him ; it may be his weakness, it may be 
 his strength. Only I find it a good rule, when I am 
 contemplating a person from whom I want to learn, 
 always to look out for his strength, being confident 
 that the weakness will discover itself, as far as it is 
 good for me to be aware of it, without seeking for it. 
 
 Edmund Burke was born in Dublin, in the year 
 1730. He was the Irishman of the last age, as the 
 Duke of Welhngton was the Irishman of this. But it 
 was easier to guess the nationality of the first than of 
 the second ; for we assume that every Irishman is born 
 an orator, and this is just the faculty which the great 
 soldier did not possess. There was no early develop- 
 ment of it in Burke. The younger Pitt is said to have 
 been set upon a chair by his father and to have deli- 
 vered speeches when he was six years of age — a 
 story illustrating the vanity which mixed with the 
 nobler qualities of the Earl of Chatham. Burke, to 
 all appearance, escaped the terrible calamity of being 
 a youthful prodigy. There are no reports, so far as 
 I know, of any extraordinary feats that he did in the 
 way of learning, or of any wonderful sayings that he
 
 234 EDMUND BURKE. [xi. 
 
 uttered. He was sent to the school of a Mr. Shackleton, 
 a modest and sensible Quaker, who probably checked 
 any tendency there might be in him to premature 
 display ; a good reason, if it was so, why Burke should 
 have loved him, as we know he did, to the end of his 
 days. This reverence for his master, and his cordial 
 affection for his brother and several of his schoolfellows, 
 afforded a better promise, I conceive, for the future, 
 intellectually as well as morally, than the most rapid 
 growth in abilities and acquisition would have done. 
 The open-hearted, warm-hearted boy draws in nourish- 
 ment from all that he sees, hears, and reads ; the clever 
 boy often gives out more than he receives. 
 
 Burke went from Mr. Shackleton's school to Trinity 
 College, Dublin. He was younger than boys at our 
 Universities are, only fourteen, when he entered the 
 College, and eighteen when he took his degree. Of 
 those years likewise, there are not very clear records. 
 One cannot make out that he shone among his con- 
 temporaries, or that he won any conspicuous honours. 
 But he never can have been idle, never without a 
 purpose. He may not have framed to himself a distinct 
 plan of his future life. Very few do that ; and those 
 who do, are not always the wisest. A young man 
 cannot predict into what circumstances he may here- 
 after be thrown, or what work may be provided for him. 
 He can be learning how men of other days have 
 thought, and acted, and fought their way; he can be 
 finding out what he is capable of, he can be struggling 
 with the petty distractions and temptations of each 
 hour. Burke may not have been making this prepara- 
 tion the less because his path was a quiet one. He 
 was involved enough in the bustle of the world after- 
 wards. It was probably just as good for him that he 
 did not anticipate it at College, and that he did not 
 come up to London preceded by any flourish of trumpets 
 to tell what he was going to be. 
 
 In 1750 he was in London, at the Middle Temple. 
 His father was an attorney, and wished him no doubt
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 235 
 
 to distinguish himself at the Enghsh bar. He must 
 have been acquiring a knowledge of law while he was 
 in the Temple, for he showed that he had it afterwards 
 when he became a statesman. But he does not seem 
 to have been able to connect the study of it with the 
 practice of it. That he declined to engage in, then. 
 And I should imagine, from remarks he made upon 
 lawyers afterwards, when he was drawing a spirited 
 sketch of the character of Mr. George Grenville, that 
 the resolution was formed deliberately, and that he did 
 not regret it. Whether he took a wiser and safer course 
 in giving himself to literature, and in becoming a 
 writer for periodicals, I dare not pronounce. Men are 
 conducted in strange ways. A better Wisdom than 
 their own shapes their ends ; their self-will is sometimes 
 turned to their discipHne and instruction. Certainly 
 Burke did not avoid, as no man will, temptations and 
 vexations by entering upon this path. He never, it 
 would appear, had to struggle with a poverty which 
 some of the friends whom he knew in later years 
 encountered. He brought some money with him ; he 
 had not the recklessness which we are apt to attribute 
 to his countrymen ; the tasks whidh he undertook under 
 the patronage of the booksellers were wisely " selected," 
 and proved in general prosperous. It was seven or 
 eight years, however, before he entered upon the most 
 judicious and successful of them, the " Annual Register ; " 
 and in the meantime he may have experienced many 
 of the hopes deferred, the sickening disappointments, 
 the sore struggles with the question, whether it is 
 not well to part with a little honesty for the sake 
 of pleasing the public, which most who give up a 
 profession for the sake of what they suppose is the 
 greater freedom and elevation of a literary life, have 
 to endure. 
 
 Seeing, however, that he was destined to be a poli- 
 tician hereafter, all this training was, I have no doubt, 
 very profitable to him. It brought him into acquaint- 
 ance with men and books together — with common men
 
 236 EDMUND BURKE. [xi. 
 
 and not with fine men, with books that would enlarge 
 the circle of his thoughts, his knowledge of other 
 countries, and of history; not with books that would 
 train him rapidly for a clerk or a diplomatist. He 
 boasted in his later days, with great truth, that he was 
 not "rocked and dandled into a legislator." This was 
 no doubt a time when he was passing through a rough 
 discipline, which htted him to make laws by learning 
 something of the men who have to obey them, possibly 
 some of the motives which there are to break them. 
 He learnt also to feel for the necessities of authors, a 
 lesson of which not a few received the benefits in his 
 own prosperity. 
 
 In your town, to Suffolk men, I need mention but 
 one instance which gives him some claim upon your 
 gi'atitude and that of all Englishmen. When the poor 
 boy of Aldborough, George Crabbe, had served his 
 apprenticeship to a surgeon near Bury, and then at 
 Woodbridge, and had gone to London and made appli- 
 cation to one patron after another, it was Burke who 
 read the MSS. and the letter of the poor youth who 
 was walking about in despair upon Westminster Bridge, 
 and saved him from starvation to write " The Borough " 
 and " The Tales of a Hall." 
 
 Though in one sense a servant of the booksellers, 
 Burke was not merely doing such work as would bring 
 in bread for the moment and then be forgotten. He 
 made at least two permanent additions to the literature 
 of his country. I must speak of them, because in dif- 
 ferent ways they illustrate the character of the man, 
 and show how unlike his training for public employ- 
 ment was to that of most official men. 
 
 The first is entitled " A Vindication of Natural 
 Society." This title may startle anyone who is ac- 
 quainted with the general purpose of Burke's life, and 
 with the maxims for which he was contending in 
 every part of it. No one had less respect for the con- 
 dition of the savage than he had; no one was less 
 inclined to overthrow the order of society, and recon-
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 237 
 
 struct it, by dwelling on what men might have been 
 before they entered into it. He believed that men are 
 social beings by God's constitution, and that they 
 cannot be good for anything when they are not living 
 as if they were. The notions which became exceedingly 
 popular a short time afterwards, here as well as in 
 France, those of which Rousseau was the gi'eat cham- 
 pion, about the necessity of sweeping away the vices 
 of civilization by returning to the life of the woods, 
 had never the slightest hold upon him ; his mind 
 which was essentially historical, utterly rebelled against 
 them ; he scarcely did justice to that strong sense of 
 the evils of artificial life in which they originated. 
 How then did he care to write a "Vindication of 
 Natural Society " ? The book is a parody upon the 
 style and manner of Lord Bolingbroke. That writer 
 had been very fond of maintaining that natural religion 
 — by which he meant the religion that man discovers 
 for himself — is all-sufficient for him ; that a Revelation 
 is altogether unnecessary, and has corrupted that which 
 existed before it. The promulgator of this opinion 
 was an eminently refined person, a despiser of the 
 vulgar, a man formed by, and formed for, artificial 
 life — who played occasionally with haycocks and pitch- 
 forks with a very graceful imitation of nature, but who 
 would have liked as ill to have abandoned his dignities 
 and worked for his food as anyone that ever existed. 
 The wit of Burke's essay is, that he supposes this very 
 aristocratic man to maintain the advantage of a purely 
 natural society upon the very same ground upon which 
 he had maintained the advantages of a purely natural 
 religion. The imitation of style was so skilful, that 
 many are said to have been deceived by it. I cannot 
 understand how such a mistake could have been possi- 
 ble for any who had the very slightest acquaintance 
 with the designs or character of Bolingbroke. The 
 outside resemblance only makes the internal contrast 
 more striking. What I wish you, however, chiefly 
 to recollect, is, that Burke did not appear in his first
 
 238 EDMUND BURKE. [xi. 
 
 conspicuous work merely or chiefly as a successful 
 jester, A parody may be very amusing; but he had 
 as distinct and serious a purpose in this as in any of 
 his writings. It showed, among other things, what 
 kind of statesmen he did not admire or aspire to resem- 
 ble. Bolingbroke was the most showy of all political 
 actors as well as writers. There was none by whom a 
 young man was more likely to be attracted. He had 
 taken what might strike anyone as a very comprehensive 
 view of the state of parties in England. He had 
 shown that he could adapt himself to the circumstances 
 of the time, and be a friend of the Pretender, or of the 
 Brunswick succession, a defender of the old country 
 school, a liberal philosopher, each by turns, or even — ■ 
 so enlarged and elastic was his scheme of action — all 
 at once. No one could utter finer or more fantastic 
 maxims, no one had greater skill in making history 
 illustrate what doctrines he wished it to illustrate. 
 He was, moreover, the friend and teacher of Pope, 
 the most popular poet of the eighteenth century, whom 
 Burke doubtless heartily admired. There was much 
 to captivate him in such a model ; yet he was repelled, 
 not captivated. He discerned petty spite against 
 individuals who had injured him in the boaster of 
 comprehensiveness ; a strut and affectation and per- 
 j)etual self-glorification in the would-be patriot ; a want 
 of any real reverence for men, or love of men, in the 
 student of human actions. He appears therefore to 
 have determined, very solemnly, that, whatever guide 
 he followed, Bolingbroke should be his beacon, and not 
 his guide. I see much of his own after-life in this re- 
 solution, and therefore I have been more careful to speak 
 of the book which contains the first indication of it. 
 
 The other book which Burke wrote at this time was 
 " An Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the 
 Sublime and Beautiful." I do not propose to follow 
 liim through this inquiry, though I conceive that it is 
 an interesting one, and that the study of this treatise, 
 if we aoT-'ee with its conclusions ever so little, will be
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 239 
 
 well rewarded. But yovi will be inclined to exclaim, 
 " What ! did he really intend to connect himself with 
 the affairs of the country ? Was he contemplating a 
 seat in Parliament ? And did he turn aside to write a 
 treatise on a question of Taste, fit only for poets and 
 artists ? " I ought not to deny that it is a question about 
 taste ; for the introduction is entirely devoted to that 
 subject. But his object is not to lay down certain 
 rules or maxims as to that which we ought or ought 
 not to like, but to find out whether there is not some 
 ground on which our likings and dislikings rest, whether 
 there are not some perceptions and feelings which are 
 common to us all. All of us who are met in this room 
 to-night have some admiration for the stupendous power 
 of Nature, have some delight in what is graceful and 
 harmonious. There may be a great many degrees in 
 this admiration or this delight. They may be called 
 forth by one object in one person, by another in 
 another. The susceptibility of such emotions as well as 
 the power of expressing them, may be much greater in 
 some poet like Mr. Wordsworth or Mr, Tennyson, than 
 in any of us. But then, why is it that we like to read 
 the poems of a man who has more of this feeling than 
 we have ourselves ? Is it not because we look upon 
 him as our spokesman ? He brings out something 
 that was hidden in us — that we did not know was in 
 us. He says what we should like to say if we could. 
 He is not, then, a more special man than we are ; he 
 is more of a common man. The human sympathies 
 have been more awakened in him than in us. If so, 
 it may surely be possible to find out what that is in 
 us all which receives these impressions. We need not 
 be at the mercy of every fine gentleman who says, 
 " That is my taste ; I like this or that work of nature 
 or of art ; I call it beautiful, — my opinion makes it 
 so." But we may inquire whether there are not 
 some principles which determine our admiration or 
 enjoyment. We may treat men's thoughts on this sub- 
 ject, and the words in which they describe them, just
 
 240 EDMUND BURKE. [xi. 
 
 as the chemist treats any material that falls under 
 his analysis. 
 
 Now this is exactly what Burke has attempted. He 
 uses this language at the outset of his inquiry, which is 
 just such language as Mr. Faraday or Professor Owen 
 would use about the subjects in which they are such 
 acknowledged masters : — 
 
 " The term taste, like all other figurative terms, is 
 not extremely accirrate. ... I have no great 
 opinion of a definition, the celebrated remedy for the 
 cure of this disorder. For when we define, we seem in 
 danger of circumscribing Nature within the bounds of 
 our own notions, which we often take up by hazard, or 
 embrace on trust, or form out of a limited and partial 
 consideration of the object before us, instead of extend- 
 ing our ideas to take in all that Nature comprehends, 
 according to her manner of combining. ... A de- 
 finition may be very exact, and yet go but a very 
 little way towards informing us of the nature of the 
 thing defined ; but let the virtue of a definition be 
 what it will, in the order of things, it seems rather to 
 follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it ought 
 to be considered as the result. It must be acknow- 
 ledged that the methods of disquisition and teaching 
 may be sometimes different, and on very good reason 
 undoubtedly; but, for my part, I am convinced that 
 the method of teaching which approaches most nearly 
 to the method of investigation, is incomparably the best ; 
 since, not content with serving up a few barren and life- 
 less truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew ; 
 it tends to set the reader himself in the track of inven- 
 tion, and to direct him into those paths in which the 
 author has made his own discoveries, if he should be 
 so happy as to have made any that are valuable." 
 
 I think, if you put these things together, you will 
 agree with me that Burke may have been learning 
 very useful lessons while he was pursuing this subject, 
 — lessons respecting his fellow-men, lessons respect- 
 ing the fixed principles there may be even in things
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 241 
 
 that are most fluctuating, lessons respecting the right 
 method of seeking for these principles. And these 
 lessons were, I conceive, just what he would need 
 when he became a statesman. He would then find 
 himself amidst a number of petty interests, and of men 
 pursuing these interests to the forgetfulness of any- 
 high and general purposes. He might easily persuade 
 himself that human beings had in them no faculties 
 for wondering at what is sublime, or delighting in what 
 is beautiful. It was surely good for him to have, con- 
 vinced himself beforehand that they had these faculties ; 
 that such gifts were not confined to a few favourites 
 of fortune or men of letters, but that they dwell in 
 the hearts of peasants and handicraftsmen, ready to be 
 called forth when once the right spring is touched. 
 This, I take it, was a very great truth indeed for a 
 politician to be initiated into, and one which he was 
 much less likely to discover after he had once begun to 
 run in the political rut. And next, as he is perpetually 
 in the midst of the most variable and chanffinof acci- 
 dents, as the events which he may be occupied with 
 to-day are different from those with which he was 
 occupied yesterday, as he has to notice endless vicissi- 
 tudes of tempers and motives in men, he is very likely 
 indeed to think that all things are subjects of accidents 
 and caprice, that there is no order in the affairs of the 
 world at all, that they are only pedants who talk about 
 principles. You will allow that this is a most fatal 
 impression for any man to receive, fatal to the honesty 
 of an individual's life, and therefore fatal to the honesty 
 of a statesman's life. And yet how great the tempta- 
 tion to it must be ! How much greater than we, who 
 are out of the vortex of that life, can possibly conjecture ! 
 How almost impossible it must be for a man who is 
 merely trained in diplomacy, or in managing popular 
 assemblies, not to yield to it ! But there is also the 
 third danger, of a man becoming actually a pedant in 
 his apparent zeal about principles, of his laying down 
 certain rules and definitions for himself, and measuring
 
 242 EDMUND BURKE. [xi. 
 
 the actions of men, the course of history, by these. So 
 he may get himself a credit for rigidness of purpose and 
 high consistency ; yet all the while it will be a purpose 
 of his own which he is following, not the Divine pur- 
 pose. His consistency may arise from the very narrow 
 horizon with which his sight is bounded ; he may have 
 no view to the right or the left ; at last he may come 
 to look at very little but his own shadow. That 
 method, then, which Burke had learnt from men of 
 science, and which he applied to questions of art, may 
 have been of the greatest worth in showing him how he 
 should deal with the subjects that presented themselves 
 to him as a legislator. He was not to curb and control 
 them by his notions and definitions ; he was, faithfully 
 and laboriously, with ever fresh humility and confession 
 of his own mistakes, to seek for the truth that was in 
 volved in them, that he might guide himself by it. 
 
 If you turn over any edition of Burke's works, you 
 will probably find, next to the " Inquiry into the Sub- 
 lime and Beautiful," two tracts : the first, " An Account 
 of a Short Administration ; " the second, " Observa- 
 tions on a late publication entitled ' The Present State 
 of the Nation.' " You will be inclined to ask, How 
 can we bridge over the chasm between works of so 
 strangely dissimilar a kind ? I have given you one or 
 two hints which may perhaps help you to answer the 
 question, so far as the topics treated of, and the way of 
 handling them, are concerned. But, of course, the 
 change which they indicate in the author's pursuits 
 and modes of life needs to be explained. Much indeed 
 had passed in the interval between these publications ; 
 he had gone to Bath for his health, and been married. 
 He had written for the publisher of his essay "An Ac- 
 count of the European Settlements in America," and in 
 preparing this task had acquired a far greater know- 
 ledge of English trade and of the principles of trade 
 generally, than belonged to his contemporaries ; he had 
 commenced a History of England ; he had traced the 
 contemporary history in the " Annual Register." Then,
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 243 
 
 in the year 1759, he returned to Ireland as private 
 secretary to William Gerard Hamilton, the Chief 
 Secretary of the Lord-Lieutenant, Hamilton was a 
 man who liked reputation, and most prudently refused 
 to risk it ; he had deUvered one speech in the House of 
 Commons, and as that procured him the only advan- 
 tage for which he supposed speeches were to be de- 
 livered, he never made another. He also liked patron- 
 age, and liked that those whom he patronized should 
 be his slaves. Finding Burke an exceedingly useful 
 slave, he wished to retain him in that character. But 
 as Burke had a strange and ungrateful preference for 
 freedom, he resigned the pension which Hamilton had 
 procured for him, and returned to England. Then he 
 became private secretary to a much juster and wiser 
 man, the Marquis of Rockingham. He received no 
 salary from him, and he obtained a seat in Paliament 
 without his aid ; but he was deeply and personally at- 
 tached to the Marquis, and it was the dismissal of his 
 short Administration in 1766, which Burke commem- 
 orated in the first pamphlet to which I alluded. That 
 pamphlet merely enumerates in a few clear, forcible 
 words, the acts by which he judged that Lord Rock- 
 ingham's Ministry had deserved the gratitude of the 
 country. He had already defended some of those acts 
 in the House of Commons ; he had probably had much 
 to do with the suggestion and preparation of them in 
 the closet. And now it was perceived, by men who 
 may not have been very willing to make the discovery, 
 that a student of principles could be a more indefatig- 
 able drudge in working out details than those who 
 never devoted themselves to any other business. This 
 is a leading characteristic of Burke ; and I should be 
 losing a great moral of his career if I passed it over. 
 You have often heard of his brilliant declamation and 
 his inexhaustible fancy. You should never allow such 
 phrases to make you forget that he was a more pains- 
 taking collector and methodizer of facts, that he under- 
 stood statistics better, than any clerk. I do not put 
 
 R 2
 
 244 EDMUND BURKE. [xi. 
 
 this statement forward as if there was anything won- 
 derful in it. I conceive it was most natural that the 
 man who could see most significance and order in 
 facts and figures, should apply himself to them most 
 vigorously and cordially. The wonder is, that those 
 who have no human association with them, who do 
 not see that they lead to anything or involve any- 
 thing, should be able to treat them with any patience. 
 Burke might well be diligent, for his diligence brought 
 some reward with it — I mean the kind of reward such 
 a man values most. It enabled him to be of some 
 benefit to his fellow-creatures, and to see the path in 
 which it behoved him to walk. 
 
 There were other rewards, often more coveted than 
 these, which he did not despise, but which came to 
 him more slowly. It was his friend Goldsmith who 
 said about him — he was far too magnanimous to make 
 any such complaint himself — 
 
 " In short, 'twas his fate, unemployed, or in place, sir, 
 To eat mutton cold and cut blocks with a razor." 
 
 The "cold mutton" was, I doubt not, very endurable 
 if he was really reduced to it ; the " cutting blocks 
 with a razor " points to another more curious, probably 
 more painful experience. It is explained by the pre- 
 vious lines of the same poem, which describes Burke 
 as an orator in the House of Commons, who — 
 
 " Still went on refining, 
 
 And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining." 
 
 How it came to pass that speeches which delight and 
 instruct those to whom the topics treated in them are 
 comparatively obsolete, should have acted as a dinner- 
 bell to those to whom these topics were as full of the 
 deepest interest as the Indian Mutiny is to us, has 
 been a problem which many have undertaken to solve. 
 Some of the solutions are certainly not satisfactory. 
 He can scarcely have owed his unpopularity to any 
 defects of voice or manner, for Mr. Fox's stammering
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 245 
 
 and spluttering are notorious, and yet he was listened 
 to with profound attention even by those who most 
 disliked his sentiments. It cannot have been that 
 Burke was regarded as an adventurer; for that evil 
 name belonged with ten times better right to Sheridan, 
 who was applauded to the skies. Certainly it was not 
 the dryness of his style, for he has a power, such as I 
 should think scarcely any speaker in any age or 
 country ever possessed, of imparting animation to the 
 dullest topics. Nor is Goldsmith's charge of " refining " 
 to be taken in the sense which we sometimes give to 
 the word. He does not draw hair-breadth distinc- 
 tions, or widen his arguments till the purpose of them 
 becomes invisible. He never amuses himself or the 
 spectators with dancing on the tight-rope, or swallow- 
 ing swords, or throwing up balls and catching them. 
 He had too much business on hand, and was too much 
 in earnest in doing it, to indulge in any mere feats of 
 dexterity ; but he did unquestionably refine, so far as 
 to demand attention and thought from those who 
 never refined. His sentences were not of measured, 
 even length, and did not terminate in some high- 
 sounding phrase which satisfied the ear, and could be 
 at once committed to memory for future use. He 
 introduced whatever was necessary to the fulness of 
 his statement, or to the elucidation of his argument, 
 without considering whether it would serve the pur- 
 pose of those who had already determined how they 
 should vote, and who only wanted some palatable 
 reasons which could make their consciences and their 
 constituents understand why they had so determined. 
 His very pains therefore to be intelligible procured 
 him the fame of being puzzling and wearisome. 
 
 So many explanations and illustrations were needed 
 to satisfy his own sense of the gi'eatness of the sub- 
 ject, that those who had no sense of its greatness at 
 all, who only wanted to dispose of it as quickly as 
 they could, were of course irritated. It was very 
 fortunate for him if they left him to a few friends and
 
 246 EDMUND BUEKE. [xi. 
 
 the Speaker. Oftentimes tliey expressed their disHke 
 much more energetically ; it was not fit that so trouble- 
 some a man should make himself audible at all — the 
 scraping of their own feet was much more agreeable 
 to them than his voice. Such facts should be recorded 
 for the w^xrning and the comfort of the times to come, 
 and it should be remembered also that many who 
 joined in scraping down the Irish adventurer who had 
 come to disturb their peace, began before the end 
 of his life to think that his words, w^hether understood 
 or not, were the best protectors of them and their 
 lands. 
 
 I need not say much of the second of the pamphlets 
 to which I refeiTcd, which was an answer to one by 
 Mr. George Grenville, though it is a valuable document 
 for the history of the early part of the reign of George 
 III., and though it shows how passing topics may be 
 always made interesting to after-times, when they are 
 connected with permanent principles. But I ought 
 not to pass over another essay, also on an apparently 
 temporary subject, which is named " Thoughts on the 
 Cause of the Present Discontents." It was written in 
 the year 1770, ten years after the accession of the 
 Sovereign. It especially refers to the scheme of govern- 
 ment which he was said to have adopted. He was 
 supposed to bestow his confidence, not on his responsi- 
 ble Ministers, but upon a set of persons called " King's 
 friends," who belonged to no school or party, who had no 
 political maxims whatever, who merely represented the 
 private feelings of the Court, and selected, overthrew, 
 and reconstructed administrations according to their 
 pleasure. It was a strong conviction of the danger of 
 this sort of government which led Burke to main- 
 tain the use and worth of recognized parties. The 
 " Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents " 
 is the best apology for parties, I suppose, that was ever 
 written. It should be read with the commentary 
 which the life of the author supplies to it. With 
 the strongest conviction that every man ought to
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 247 
 
 belong to some party, with a clearer understanding 
 than almost any man of the party to which it was his 
 calling to attach himself, he nevertheless was the 
 instrument at one time of bringing the most opposite 
 parties into union ; and at another of dividing that 
 with which for years he had been associated. I am 
 not ffoinof to enter into the rio^ht and wrontj of either 
 of these courses, but I think they show us very clearly, 
 first, that this party is not so practical a thing as it 
 seems to be, since the man who could justify it best 
 in writing, was obliged to abandon it in fact; and 
 secondly, that there must be some more sacred and 
 divine obligation than this of party, otherwise the 
 man who was most conscientiously, and with the most 
 serious purpose, devoted to one, and who had most 
 pursued principle in all his political arrangements, 
 would scarcely have been the most remarkable in- 
 stance on record, and that not once only but repeatedly, 
 of one who breaks loose from those parties. 
 
 Perhaps the next subject which we encounter in 
 looking through Burke's vvritings, may show us what 
 obligations those were, to which all petty considera- 
 tions about factions must, in a mind like his, have 
 been subordinate. He is now engaged in questions 
 about the relation of two worlds. All the knowledge 
 which he had acquired respecting the English settle- 
 ments in North America, whilst he was a mere literary 
 workman, was now needed to illustrate the obligations 
 which the mother country owed to the finest and most 
 full-grown of her children; by what arts she might 
 expect to receive back love and obedience from her 
 offspring. I use this language because Burke never 
 regarded it as merely figurative language — never re- 
 sorted to it merely to turn a period. The great value 
 of all his speeches before and during the American 
 War, is, I apprehend, this, that he treats relations be- 
 tween countries as if they were no less real than the 
 relations between individuals, as if they too involved 
 atFections and duties which could not be stifled or
 
 248 EDMUND BURKE. [xr. 
 
 neglected without injury to one side as well as the 
 other. 
 
 His statesmanship therefore rises above petty maxims 
 such as men resort to who think that suspicion is the 
 great law of life, and that the more advantages you can 
 take of your neighbour, the better it is for yourself. The 
 highest policy is shown to be the most humane policy, 
 the profoundest wisdom is the most trasting wisdom. 
 You are sure to go wrong if you tie yourself by artificial 
 riTles, and ask whether this or that act falls within the 
 letter of them, instead of considering what it is that we 
 expect from others, and therefore what it is that we 
 ought to give them. This application of maxims, which 
 we allow to be generous and wise in the intercourse 
 between man and man, to the transactions between a 
 nation and its colonies, strikes one at first as so simple, 
 so obvious, that we scarcely venture to call a man a 
 profound statesman who adopts it. And yet, may not 
 these be the deepest politics, after all ? May not the 
 shallow politics be those which are made up of trick 
 and diplomacy ? May not they be always supplying 
 new illustrations of the divine maxim, that " lying lips 
 are but for a moment"? And may not the men who 
 recur to plain homely laws of honesty and justice be 
 taking us to the very foundations of things, of the laws 
 which God Himself has established for His world ? 
 
 Burke was aware of all the complications of modem 
 life, of all the excuses which those complications supply 
 for a tortuous system of action. But he had arrived at 
 a deliberate conviction from the study of history and 
 the observation of his own time, that the more intricate 
 all our relations to each other are, the more the evil 
 deeds of us and of our fathers have perplexed them, the 
 more wise and necessary it is not to confute them by 
 fresh falsehoods, but to unravel them by letting in the 
 light of a higher truth upon them. What I once heard 
 a benevolent physician say of a madman, " Be sure you 
 speak only the most direct truth to him ; poor fellow, 
 his mind is confused enough already with his own false
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKK 249 
 
 impressions," is just the doctrine which Burke was 
 preaching to the artificial world of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. We are embarrassed enough with the plots, and 
 schemes, and petty arts we have dabbled in ; we have 
 tried that road long enough ; let us see whether a little 
 plain dealing may not serve us better. It was not, as 
 I have said already, that he wanted to return to any 
 imaginary age of gold ; he believed in no such age. 
 He did not wish to get rid of trade and commerce, that 
 he might restore pastoral or agricultural simplicity ; 
 he accepted trade and commerce as gifts of God, the 
 laws of which are to be carefully pondered. He 
 believed that in one time just as much as another, in 
 one subject just as much as another, we are bound by 
 laws which we did not make, which we cannot set 
 aside, and that if we try to repeal them, and set up 
 our own poor maxims in the place of them, they will 
 avenge themselves upon us. 
 
 The morality which he had enforced in his speeches 
 during the American war, he was called to exhibit in 
 his own case in the year 1780, when he appeared before 
 his constituents of the city of Bristol to explain his 
 conduct to them, and to ask for a renewal of their con- 
 fidence. They had chosen him first in the year 1774. 
 At that time he had used language which I think it is 
 not quite unfitting to read to you at this time. His 
 colleague had expressed his wish to receive instructions 
 from the electors as to his course of conduct, and his 
 intention of conforming to them. Mr. Burke told them 
 that he could do no such thing : " Certainly, gentlemen, 
 it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representa- 
 tive, to live in the strictest union, the closest corre- 
 spondence, and the most unreserved communication 
 with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have 
 great weight with him ; their opinion high respect ; 
 their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to 
 sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfaction, to 
 theirs ; and, above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer 
 their interests to his own. But, his unbiassed opinion,
 
 250 EDMUND BURKE. [xi. 
 
 his mature judgment, his enHghtened conscience, he 
 ought not to sacrifice to you ; to any man, or to any 
 set of men living. These he does not derive from your 
 pleasure ; no, nor from the law and constitution. 
 They are a trust from Providence for the abuse of 
 which he is deeply answerable. Your representative 
 owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment ; 
 and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices 
 it to your opinion. My worthy colleague says, his 
 will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, 
 the thing is innocent. If grovernment were a matter 
 of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought 
 to be superior. But government and legislation are 
 matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination ; 
 and, what sort of reason is that, in which the deter- 
 mination precedes the discussion ; in which one set of 
 men deliberate, and another decide; and where those 
 who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred 
 miles distant from those who hear the arguments ? 
 
 " To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men ; that 
 of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, 
 which a representative ought always to rejoice to 
 hear; and which he ought always most seriously to 
 consider. But authoritative instructions ; mandates 
 issued, which the member is bound blindly and im- 
 plicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though 
 contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment 
 and conscience : these are things utterly unknoAvn to 
 the laws of this land, and which arise from a funda- 
 mental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our 
 constitution. 
 
 " Parliament is not a congrcsa of ambassadors from 
 different and hostile interests ; which interests each 
 must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other 
 agents and advocates ; but Parliament is a deliherative 
 assembly of one nation with one interest, that of the 
 whole ; where, not local purposes ; not local prejudices 
 ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from 
 the greneral reason of the whole. You choose a Mem-
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 251 
 
 ber indeed ; but when you have chosen him, he is not 
 Member of Bristol, but he is a Member of Parliament. 
 If the local constituent should have an interest, or 
 should form a hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the 
 real good of the rest of the community, the Member 
 for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from 
 any endeavour to give it effect." 
 
 Well ! he had given them this notice of the principle 
 upon which he intended to act; but, as might have 
 been expected, when he did act upon it they were 
 offended. He had injured their trade, the merchants 
 of Bristol thought, by his votes on the American War, 
 and by supporting an Act for relieving debtors from 
 the cruel imprisonment to which they were then sub- 
 jected, and by some important measures connected 
 with Ireland. He had offended their prejudices in 
 other ways, and he had been too busy in his parlia- 
 mentary work to pay them as many visits as they had 
 supposed were due from a representative. Upon some 
 of these points he had already explained himself in the 
 course of the Session of Parliament in a Letter addressed 
 to a Gentleman in Bristol and to the Sheriff of Bristol, 
 — letters which you will find in his works, and which 
 are full of instruction. But he made his completest 
 defence in a speech delivered just before the election. 
 That speech, I do think, was the bravest and the 
 wisest ever addressed to an assembly of Englishmen. 
 Would that our younger statesmen might read it again 
 and again, till they have, in the true sense of the phrase, 
 learnt it by heart ! I must not indulge in extracts, 
 for I should not know where to begin or where to end. 
 I will read only these sentences : " I became unpopular 
 in England for ' one of these acts,' in Ireland for the 
 other. What, then ! What obligation lay on me to 
 be popular ? I was bound to serve both kingdoms ; 
 to be pleased with my service was their affair, not 
 mine." 
 
 The citizens of Bristol were not pleased with this 
 service ; they dismissed him. He was returned, how-
 
 252 EDMUND BUEKE. [xi; 
 
 ever, for another place to that Parliament. The 
 measures of his friends prevailed in it. Lord North 
 abandoned the Administration, the Marquis of Rock- 
 ingham was again Prime Minister. Mr. Burke became 
 Paymaster-General of the Forces. In that office he 
 would have accomplished the scheme of economical 
 reform which he had proclaimed in a speech he had 
 delivered two years before. But Lord Rockingham 
 died, and Lord Shelburne succeeded him. Mr. Burke 
 believed that the old scheme of ruling by Court in- 
 fluence was about to be resumed by the connivance of 
 this Minister. To counteract it he urged on, if he did 
 not propose, a coalition between Mr. Fox and Lord 
 North. This was one of the occasions, to which I 
 alluded, on which Burke disturbed those party rela- 
 tions which he deemed so important, and bore wit- 
 ness that they can at best be only means to an end. 
 Whether he took the right w^ay of accomplishing the 
 end is another question ; I said at the beginning of my 
 lecture that I was far from thinking that he passed 
 unhurt through the conflicts of factions. I hoped that 
 we might learn from his biography what are the gi'eat 
 and what are the little transactions in which public 
 men are engaged ; what are their own greatnesses and 
 littlenesses. If we compare the events in which the 
 Old and the New World are equally interested with 
 these squabbles about Lord Shelburne, and Mr. Fox, 
 and Lord North, how beggarly these last appear ! If 
 we compare Burke himself returning from Bristol in 
 1780, with Burke the organizer of a new party in 1783, 
 how great he looks in the hour of defeat, how poor in 
 the hour of success ! It is no little satisfaction to 
 remember that that hour of success did not last long. 
 The Fox and North Ministry was broken up. Mr. 
 Pitt become Premier, and Burke continued out of 
 office for the rest of his life. 
 
 One great occupation of these later years he entered 
 upon while he was connected with the Ministry. He 
 had given his mind to the relation of Engfland with her
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 253 
 
 Colonies in the West. When she was separated from 
 them, he devoted himself as vigorously to her relations 
 with that mighty empire in the East which had been 
 won by her soldiers and was ruled by her merchants. 
 This subject has become to us one of such deep and 
 awful interest, that I have scarcely courage to speak of 
 it merely as illustrating the life of an individual man. 
 And one may rejoice that among the solemn and ter- 
 rible associations which the name of India awakens in 
 every one of us at this moment, we may quite forget 
 all the bitter animosities and Court intrigues w^hich 
 fathered about the Bills of Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt ; all 
 that was merely personal in the prosecution of Warren 
 Hastings. We may rejoice still more, though not 
 without trembhng, to believe that some of the allega- 
 tions which we read in Burke's speeches about the 
 British rule in India — allegations, it is to be feared, 
 derived from only too accurate knowledge — some of 
 his comparisons of the older government which had 
 supplanted it, would have been retracted if he had had 
 the experience of another seventy or eighty years. But 
 the substantial part of these speeches remains, after all 
 these deductions, a study and warning for the English 
 statesman and the Englishman, which now less than 
 ever he can afford to forget. It was the greatest 
 honour and glory of Burke's life, that which raised 
 his politics so far above the level of ordinary politics, 
 that he was awake himself, that he did strive to 
 awaken his countrymen, to a sense of the tremendous 
 responsibility under which the possession of such an 
 empire laid us; to a sense of the misery which we 
 should bring upon ourselves and our institutions if we 
 ever regarded races and nations as articles of merchan- 
 dise. If there had not been some who took this 
 measure of our duties when they first devolved upon 
 us, could India have received any of the blessings 
 which we boast of having conferred upon her ? If we 
 had been generally aroused to the sense of our obliga- 
 tions, should we have needed a plague of fire and of
 
 254 EDMUND BURKE. [xi. 
 
 blood to tell us that no one of us can any longer deny 
 his share of the guilt or of the penalty ? 
 
 I have left myself no time for speaking of the last 
 eleven years of Burke's life, and of that series of his 
 works which opens with his " Reflections upon the 
 French Revolution." It is better that I should have 
 done so, for there is comparatively Httle difference of 
 opinion in this day about his conduct in the American 
 War. There is a general disposition to acknowledge 
 that he did good service ultimately, if not immediately, 
 to India. But a thousand questions arise respecting 
 his views of the events in France, which are mixed 
 with all the controversies and heats of our own age. 
 The little which I shall say upon this subject will be 
 for the purpose of illustrating the character of the 
 man, and for the further purpose, which I have kept 
 before me throughout this lecture, of showing how we 
 may profit by his wisdom, even if we have fallen upon 
 times which require a higher guidance than that which 
 he can give us, and if we have had some experience 
 which may enable us to correct the conclusions which 
 he deduced from his. It is notorious that his opinions 
 resiDecting the French Revolution separated him from 
 some of the friends to whom he had been most attached, 
 especially from the one upon whom he had bestowed 
 so splendid a panegyric in his speech on the Indian 
 Bill. " Thus ended," (this is his own pathetic narra- 
 tive of the separation, in the " Annual Register,") " thus 
 ended a friendship which had lasted a quarter of a 
 century. The House proceeded to the order of the 
 day, and shortly afterwards adjourned." Though he 
 "wished to restore what he called the old Whig party, 
 he did in fact prove the great render and confounder 
 of parties. Nevertheless I think that any one who 
 observes that characteristic of his speeches respecting 
 America which I have dwelt upon, — I mean his asser- 
 tion that there are actual relations existing between 
 nations and between all the orders in a particular 
 nation, and that the whole happiness of society de-
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 255 
 
 pends upon the acknowledgment of these relations 
 and upon the fulfilment of the mutual duties which 
 they involve, — will not wonder or think him inconsist- 
 ent if he complained of a Revolution which seemed to 
 him to set aside all relations, to reduce society into its 
 original elements, and to rebuild it upon the assertion 
 of individual rights, not of obligations. It seems to 
 me that in protesting against the voluntary adoption 
 of such a system, he was doing a great service to every 
 country, most of all to the toiling and suffering people 
 of every country. He was asserting a principle which 
 they can the least afford to part with ; since every 
 wrong that has been done to them has arisen from the 
 forgetfulness of it. He was right, I think, to say that 
 our English Constitution is precious, because it asserts 
 the obligations and responsibilities of the different 
 portions of society to each other, and that it never can 
 be expanded or improved by setting up any maxim 
 which makes one class or another suppose that it has 
 a power which can break through them. Where he 
 seems to me to have failed, is in not sufficiently recog- 
 nizing the width and the depth of these assertions. If 
 it is true that society is constituted of these mutual 
 relations and obligations, then we must lo6k upon 
 every dissolution of society as a divine sentence and 
 judgment upon the indifference or contempt of them. 
 The agents may have worked blindly, often madly. 
 Their blindness and their madness were themselves 
 parts of the sin for which the Judge of all was calling 
 those who had the means of opening their eyes and 
 making them sane, to give account. The sufierings 
 which they produced may well make us tender and 
 charitable to the sufferers. But they must not tempt 
 us, as I think they did very naturally tempt Burke, to 
 overlook the enormous corruptions and the frightful 
 heartlessness which could have no other catastrophe 
 than this, and which, if they had been allowed to 
 fester undisturbed, would have been immeasurably 
 more fatal than any such catastrophe. Nor can I
 
 256 EDMUND BURKE [xi. 
 
 help feeling very strongly that Burke, because he did 
 not judge the sins of the passing age with sufficient 
 severity, looked upon the coming age with far too little 
 hope. He took, it seems to me, a truer measure of the 
 oTeatness of the events in which he was moving than 
 any of the men about him of either school. He saw 
 that the results of these events could not be calculated 
 by the horoscopes of ordinary politicians. He felt that 
 it was an utter mistake to apply phrases that were 
 borrowed from old classical times, or from English his- 
 tory, to the French movement. He saw that that was 
 not what is called a constitutional movement in any 
 sense of that word ; that it was not an attempt to 
 recover any of the old traditions or principles of French 
 society ; that it was a violent defiance of them all. He 
 did not see that it might be an effort to assert that 
 there is an order for human beings, a fellowship for 
 men simply as men, which constitutional maxims are 
 by their very nature too limited, too national, to up- 
 hold. He did not see that there was no necessary con- 
 tradiction between such a human, such a universal 
 fellowship, and those national institutions of which 
 no one understood the worth so well as himself. He 
 did not see that through tremendous conflicts, through 
 efforts at a universal anarchy or at a universal des- 
 potism, God might design to show us at last what the 
 true human society is, and how all particular societies 
 may attain their own highest growth and fruitfulness in 
 the light of it. Because, with all his gift of prophesying 
 evils which were certainly to come, he could not per- 
 ceive this good which might be lying behind them, 
 he was not always able, I think, to understand even 
 that past history which he had explored so diligently. 
 With all his honesty and nobleness, he could not quite 
 think that the preservation of the order of the world 
 was not in some degree owing to the tricks and contri- 
 vances of statesmen, even though he had continual 
 and painful experience how much they were contri- 
 butino: to increase its disorders. He could not do
 
 XI.] EDMUND BURKE. 257 
 
 justice to the piety of the men of our Revolution whom 
 he admired most, a piety which rose above their own 
 narrow conceptions as well as the poor theories of their 
 opponents. He could not think that they entirely 
 meant what they said, that God put down those who 
 had broken their obligations to Him. He thought it 
 was a seemly and beautiful phrase, not the utterance 
 of an everlasting truth. I believe that those times, at 
 the coming of which he trembled with a natural and 
 reasonable fear, — with the fear of a man who under- 
 stood that they were to be most awful, who did not 
 understand that the more awful they were, the more 
 they bore witness of the guidance of Him in whom all 
 awe dwells, — were to teach us that no seemly phrases 
 which mean nothing, can stand the shock of a mighty 
 crisis ; but that such a crisis may bring to light that 
 which lay hidden and half-dead beneath them, may 
 bring us face to face with realities to which they 
 pointed. I believe that all history has become more 
 grave, and terrible, and full of significance, since that 
 time, because the present has become more grave and 
 terrible also ; but, that if we have faith to look iipon 
 both, to see in each the interpretation of the other, we 
 shall not shrink from the thought of the future, because 
 it must compel us to meet the whole problem of human 
 society, because it must compel us to seek for a divine 
 solution of that problem. 
 
 Burke died in the year 1797 ; he belongs emphati- 
 cally to the last age. He left no successor, as he once 
 dreamt that he might, who should maintain his prin- 
 ciples and support his name in the coming age. He 
 died childless. It was the loss of his son, on whom he 
 had looked with an affection which belonged to his 
 character, with an exaggerated admiration which was 
 a most pardonable exercise of his fancy, which struck 
 the final blow to his spirit as well as to his body. There 
 is no decline of intellectual power in his later works. 
 His eloquence perhaps reaches its highest point in 
 them ; but there is the irritation and despondency
 
 258 EDMUND BURKE. [xi. 
 
 which I have endeavoured to account for. There is 
 the lesson to us, that each man has his appointed work 
 to do, that more than that work he cannot do ; that if 
 he does it as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye, the 
 times to come may bless his memory and give thanks 
 for his wisdom ; but that we are not to expect from 
 men past, present, or coming, that which we may look 
 for and shall find in Him who is, and was, and is to 
 come.
 
 XIL 
 
 ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION.^ 
 
 I HAVE been reflecting upon some phrases which most 
 of us adopt almost without knowing that we adopt 
 them, and which, it seems to me, have done no httle 
 harm to our studies. We are apt to draw our language 
 respecting knowledge, from that which of right belongs 
 to property. We talk of transmitting knowledge as 
 we talk of transmitting lands from father to son. 
 We talk of acquiring knowledge as we talk of acquir- 
 ing money. Perhaps it scarcely occurs to you — it 
 often does not occur to me — that these are metaphori- 
 cal or artificial expressions. They have become so 
 worked into our speech that we suppose they are just 
 as applicable to learning as they are to houses or to 
 the funds. And I am far from denying that they 
 have a good sense. I should be very sony to 
 banish them altogether. There is a most important 
 principle involved in the doctrine that a father may 
 leave intellectual treasures to his sons as well as 
 material treasures. There is an important truth in the 
 saying, that knowledge, like bread, is to be acquired 
 by the sweat of the brow. I would keep up the 
 recollection of these facts by occasionally using these 
 familiar expressions, because, if we destroy the con- 
 nection between knowledge and property, we shall 
 make property and all that has to do with it more 
 
 •^ Part of a New Year's Address to the Pupils of some of the 
 Classes at the "Working Men's College. 1863. 
 
 S 2
 
 260 ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. [xii. 
 
 sordid and base. I would say to the rich man, " There 
 is something in this language which is worth your 
 remembering." But I would say to him also, " There 
 is a better and nobler language than this ; one which 
 tells us what it cannot tell us. The poor man, if you 
 will listen to him, will teach you that language." 
 What is that language ? A man goes out to his work, 
 say at six or seven on a January morning; the same 
 miracle occurs every twenty-four hours. The streets 
 are dark, only made more dismal by a few gas lamps 
 which are gradually put out. The sun appears ; there 
 is a light upon his path ; the light is upon all the 
 houses and shops amidst which he is walking. The 
 light may not be mixed with much warmth on these 
 wintry days ; but he knows there is warmth as well as 
 light there for him, and for all who are out in these 
 streets ; for all England, for countries utterly unlike 
 England. Light has been associated with knowledge 
 — has been the symbol of the way in which men come 
 to know, in all regions and in all ages. Is it not the 
 natural, the true symbol ? If we take those that are 
 derived from property in change for it, do not you 
 think we shall suffer greatly ? For see what the 
 difference is ! If knowledge comes to us as light comes 
 to US, it can never be third-hand or second-hand know- 
 ledge. The sun is very, very old ; but he is new to me 
 every time I welcome him. He is still the bridegroom 
 fresh from his chamber. He is not the least worn or 
 tarnished because my ancestors of the generations of 
 old rejoiced at the sight of him. And again, it does 
 not the least interfere with the illumination which I 
 receive from him, that tens of thousands of others are 
 illuminated by him at the same instant. I have, no 
 doubt, acquired the illumination — if you mean I am 
 the better for it. I have not acquired it the least, if 
 you mean that I can claim it as mine to the injury or 
 exclusion of any other creature. And as to imparting 
 or diffusing it, what I can do in that way is to invite 
 all I know to leave their close houses and enjoy it with
 
 XII.] ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. 261 
 
 me ; or to let it into their houses when that is possible. 
 If I take any other course than that, I shall not diffuse 
 light, but perhaps darkness. 
 
 You may think me perverse for insisting so strongly 
 upon the distinction between these two forms of ex- 
 pression, each of which I allow, within due limits, to 
 be reasonable. But I cannot tell you how much I 
 think is involved in it. I believe that your tasks 
 in each one of your class-rooms will be fruitful or 
 barren in proportion as you remember or forget it. I 
 will go with you from one to the other that you may 
 see whether your experience confirms or refutes mine. 
 
 I cannot begin better than with your Drawing-classes. 
 Those who have studied in those classes have a great 
 excuse for using the words with which I appear to be 
 finding fault. They do, I am satisfied, acquire a great 
 power of using their hands, and directing their pencils. 
 They acquire a faculty of observing, which they had 
 not before they came here. No one has less right than 
 I have to dispute that these are peculiar gifts, since I 
 can put in a singularly little claim to either. And it 
 is equally true that these gifts are not new powers. 
 Men, in other days, have had them. Hints have been 
 left for the exercise of them, which may warrant us in 
 saying that they have been transmitted to us. All 
 this is true. And yet when I go into your rooms, it is 
 not for these I envy you ; it is that those leaves which 
 you are copying have actually discovered to you their 
 cunning workmanship, their secret beauty. It is that 
 human faces have told you a little of the wonder that 
 is in them. I rejoice that you can express with your 
 pencils something of what they have said to you ; that 
 you can help us to understand them a little. A light 
 has burst upon you, which shows you those forms and 
 colours, with which you have been familiar so long. 
 The old things have not changed their own nature, but 
 they have become new to you. You like them all the 
 better because they are the same that you have had 
 with you since you were children. You may indeed
 
 262 ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. [xii. 
 
 have a desire kindled in you to see the places of which 
 you have only heard. In the midst of close streets you 
 may dream of mountains and lakes, and wish to come 
 in contact with them, that they may be facts, not 
 dreams, in your minds. It is well to have your horizon 
 so enlarged; but it is better still that within that 
 horizon, so many things start into life which were 
 almost dead. In each case you have found how truly 
 knowledge is an unveiling of that which is, and of that 
 which is common. If you have been at ever so much 
 pains in seeking it, when it has come you have said, 
 " There it is ! Something that was hidden has shown 
 itself to me. More that is hidden will show itself to 
 me. My eye may be feeble, but it can take in marvel- 
 lous things. If I am permitted to make any likeness 
 of them, how faint it must be ! Yet what a blessing 
 that there is this way of leading others to share my 
 perceptions, to enter into my joy ! " 
 
 I speak with the gi-eater pleasure and confidence of 
 this subject, notwithstanding my ignorance of it, be- 
 cause this has been the kind of feehng which your 
 art-teachers have especially laboured to cultivate in 
 you. Whether they have directed you to the human 
 figure or to trees and flowers — whatever methods they 
 may have deemed the best — the object of them all, if 
 I imderstand them rightly, has been that you should 
 see things as they are. They have no notion that you, 
 or that they, can improve the works of God. They 
 are not content that you should merely carry away, or 
 represent, certain vague impressions of yours about 
 those works. Whatever object, small or great, you 
 copy, they would have you try to get a glimpse of 
 what that object means. The object, and not your 
 acquirements, is what they would have you exhibit ; 
 therefore they supply me with the best illustrations 
 I could find of the doctrine which I am enforcing 
 to-night. 
 
 My next shall be taken from one of our studies which 
 I have, if possible, a still greater interest in describing
 
 XII.] ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. 263 
 
 as a peculiar treasure, which only a few can be expected 
 by great diligence or luck to obtain, I speak of 
 that one which for a while you neglected as too noisy 
 for your other occupations, but which the zeal and 
 science of one of your best friends has at last natu- 
 rahzed among you. He recommended to you the 
 method of instruction which has been adopted, on the 
 ground of its universality. Its merit in his eyes was, 
 that it was for the many, not for the few. Do you 
 think that in saying so he degraded the art, for the 
 honour of which he must be especially jealous? He 
 seemed to me to be showing his deep reverence for it, 
 to be asserting claims on its behalf which those who 
 boast of it as their own and refuse it to the people are 
 denying. If Music thus becomes a common language, 
 it must have all the glory which those who have loved 
 it best and understood it most have felt to be in it. 
 It must be deeper than our ordinary speech. However 
 many may be the different forms which it has put on 
 among different races, suitable to the tempers and 
 habits of those races, it cannot be limited by these ; it 
 must be the sign that all are alike men ; it must be the 
 attempt — if as yet only an imperfect attempt — to 
 express that which is human, that which binds us 
 together. I am sure there must be such an expression 
 as this is ; I am sure of it all the more, when I feel how 
 little it is an articulate expression for me ; when I am 
 most compelled to say that I have only the faintest 
 dream of its signification. 
 
 And therefore I am sure that all musical teaching 
 must be a discovery ; that it should make knoAvn to 
 the humblest man relations between him and his 
 fellows. I cannot disbelieve, though I may be utterly 
 unable to comprehend, anything which musicians have 
 told us of the inner harmonies of which they have 
 been made conscious. The beautiful S3rmpathies, the 
 clear pure lives, of such men as Felix Mendelssohn, of 
 such women as Mrs. Goldschmidt, should awaken in 
 us much more than an admiration of them, though that
 
 264 ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. [xii. 
 
 may be most cordial. We should hail them as wit- 
 nesses, that those who have most of what is called 
 musical acquirement, are those who most regard it as 
 a bond to all their suffering brothers and sisters. We 
 should assure ourselves that every divine gift to indi- 
 viduals is precious only as it unites them more with 
 their kind. 
 
 The transition from this elevated form of human 
 speech to the languages of particular countries is a very 
 easy one ; for you can scarcely begin to study any lan- 
 guage without finding yourself listening to some of the 
 songs that have been sung in it. Almost every lan- 
 guage has been cradled in song, if it has not been bom 
 in song. When people have learnt to utter more than 
 mere animal cravings — when they have felt that they 
 had fellowship with each other, music has somehow 
 joined itself to words; they have come forth together. 
 Why do I use such a vague, awkward phrase as 
 " somehow ? " Because I cannot tell you the hovj, and 
 I do not know that anyone can. The more one con- 
 siders the origin of speech, the more profoundly mys- 
 terious it seems. The greatest philologers do not clear 
 away the mystery ; the greater they are, the more they 
 make you aware of it. They lead you further and 
 further into the heart of it ; they try to make you per- 
 ceive what relation each language has to every other; 
 they convince you that there must be some fellowship 
 between them all; some centre to which they all turn. 
 As they trace the growth of each distinct stock or 
 stem, you feel, as Mr. Max Miiller said in his lectures 
 at the Royal Institution, that you are studying facts 
 which con'espond to the facts of nature ; though they 
 concern men so nearly, you cannot resolve them into 
 contrivances or arrangements of human skill ; you can 
 never find the place where, or the time when, certain 
 men met and agreed to call things by certain names. 
 Words grow out of certain roots as much as trees grow ; 
 their different meanings expand themselves as the 
 leaves of a tree expand themselves. We have not to
 
 XII.] ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. 265 
 
 do here with the general conclusions of men who have 
 given their study to the Science of Language as such. 
 You go to particular classes for the study of French, or 
 Latin, or German, or English. It is far better to do so. 
 Our great philologists would urge you to do so ; for 
 they have arrived at universal principles through the 
 special facts which have been discovered to them in 
 the examination of one or another languaofe, and in com- 
 paring two or more together. And I think these great 
 men would say to you, "Do not fancy that you can 
 acqiiire, a language — any language whatever. It is 
 too big a thing for any man to acquire." You cer- 
 tainly will have no leisure to do that. But if the 
 language has been spoken by men such as you are — ^by 
 your fellow-creatures — it may show you truths which 
 you did not know before ; truths concerning those 
 men, truths concerning yourselves. A light flashes 
 out of a word sometimes which frightens one. If it is 
 a common word of our own tongue, one wonders how 
 one has dared to use it so frequently and so carelessly, 
 when there were such meanings hidden in it; such 
 beautiful treasures — or such dangerous materials as 
 might explode, and scatter mischief all around. If it is a 
 word of another tongue, one is struck with its likeness 
 to some word that occurs in our every-day intercourse. 
 Whence arises the resemblance ? How can we trace 
 it ? If we can trace it a good way, each new link 
 suggests a fresh wonder ; a multitude of other words 
 and other meanings, we find, are either of the same 
 family originally, or have been married into it. Then 
 comes the question — How did these words meet to- 
 gether ? How do they shape themselves into a sen- 
 tence ? Certainly there seems no hazard in it. They 
 must follow each other in a certain order; they must 
 behave themselves to each other with a certain decency 
 and respect. It is very strange, this grammar. I find 
 it wherever I go. German, French, Latin, English, they 
 have all got it. Differences, gi^eat differences, there are 
 between them ; but yet how much in common ! How
 
 266 ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. [xn. 
 
 much must be in each which is also in the other ! 
 At first there seems something baffling, almost over- 
 whelming, in such reflections. 
 
 A mere acquirer, indeed, is not struck by them at all. 
 If you speak of them to him, he says — which is very 
 true — that you are merely uttering commonplaces. 
 But commonplaces are more worthy to be thought of 
 than rarities. The secrets of our life lie hid in them. 
 Never, therefore, slight them. These which concern 
 the derivation of words, and their connection in sen- 
 tences, never grow old. There may be a number of 
 new theories about them, but the facts are richer and 
 wider than the theories ; the theories are chiefly good 
 because they bring facts to light which have been 
 overlooked. Into whatever language class you go, 
 facts will present themselves to you which will make 
 your ordinary speech a much more sacred speech to 
 you. Those who are in the Latin class will find what 
 close hnks there are between the London citizen of 
 1863, and the Roman in the time of Julius Caesar ; 
 how much their speech and thoughts have affected 
 ours. Those in the German class will find themselves 
 still nearer the roots of that speech and those thoughts ; 
 while yet they will find that there must be deeper 
 roots beneath. The French teacher will show you 
 how many affinities and how many difl:erences there 
 are between the exquisite instrument for intercourse 
 which he possesses, and the one which we use; every- 
 where you will be reminded of home by what you see 
 abroad. And if you stay at home and keep to the 
 Enghsh Language Class, you will have a number of 
 discoveries made to you, which wiU show you what 
 myriads more are still to be made. 
 
 A pedant, whose character is admirably drawn in a 
 drama with which your German teacher will have 
 made some of you acquainted, exclaims, as he leaves 
 his sorrowful and discontented teacher, who thinks he 
 has been merely stuffing himself with words, " Now 
 know I much, yet hope I to know much more." That
 
 XII.] ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. 267 
 
 is the proper natural tone of the acquirer. " A light 
 has reached me which has shown me a little of my 
 own ignorance — a Httle of the wonderful nature which 
 God has given me. Let me have more light, that I 
 may perceive how much less I know than I seem to 
 know." In that form the thankfulness and the desires 
 of the true learner express themselves. 
 
 I ought not to leave the subject of Words without 
 alluding to another subject which has been set before 
 some of you in these class-rooms. Logic is derived from 
 the Greek name for " word." Its etymology may easily 
 mislead us, yet no one who is entering upon the study 
 ought to forget it. Only a creature who uses words has 
 anything to do with logic. Shakespeare speaks of mere 
 animals as " wanting discourse of reason." That is to 
 say, they do not connect thoughts together ; they have 
 not the power of communicating thoughts to each other. 
 That, he regards, as the prerogative of a man. Now 
 everyone who exercises this prerogative is, whether he 
 is aware of it or not, a logician. He conforms to cer- 
 tain rules ; he follows a certain order in his discourse ; 
 otherwise he would not be understood ; he would con- 
 vey no sense to the man he conversed with. To find 
 out what these rules are — to learn this order — is the 
 work of the student of logic. To help him in this task, 
 to show him what perceptions one or another man has 
 had of these rules and this order ; that is the work of 
 the teacher. You see that here, as elsewhere, we are 
 engaged about that which is common to human beings ; 
 we are learning, not what some may do and others not, 
 but what must be true about us all. 
 
 The man who knows all the rules and maxims of 
 Logic is not the least above the rest of his species ; he 
 has only begun to understand a little of that which 
 connects him with his species. And if he loses sight 
 of that fact — if he fancies he has got hold of a great 
 art or trick which gives him an advantage over other 
 men, I do not hesitate to say that he falls below them. 
 He becomes more foolish than other men, fur his feet
 
 268 ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. [xii. 
 
 may become entangled in his own nets ; he may spin 
 endless webs about himself which he cannot break 
 through. He becomes more wicked than other men, 
 for he may use his craft to perplex them ; to make the 
 worse appear the better reason. Ultimately I think 
 the folly and the wickedness meet. The wise man is 
 taken in his owm craftiness ; he is found to be a self- 
 deceiver as well as a deceiver of others. Logic has 
 often got a bad name from both these causes. It has 
 been suspected of being mere child's play. It has been 
 suspected of being a scheme for imposing upon plain 
 men. If it is looked upon as a mere acquirement, it 
 may be either. If it is looked upon as a discovery of 
 laws which we are all meant to obey, it may often save 
 us from wasting our time in child's play, it may be a 
 protection against many impostures. 
 
 This remark leads me to studies which have been 
 more pursued here than logic has ever been ; as, for my 
 own part, I should wish them to be. They are included 
 in the general name. Mathematics — a very beautiful 
 and instructive name, seeing that it is derived from 
 the word for learning, and that it indicates the position 
 of those who are seeking Science to be always the posi-. 
 tion of learners. It is that which has made geometry 
 a keen delight to a number of earnest and faithful 
 men. They have felt that they were learning step by 
 step some of the laws of the earth upon which they 
 were moving ; some principles which, being ascer- 
 tained as true in one case, are true in all cases. 
 Arithmetic, in like manner, has had a great charm for 
 them, as they have learned that the numbers with 
 wdiich they were dealing in the most ordinary calcu- 
 lations were not mere instruments or devices for 
 calculations ; that they are contrived on profound 
 principles; that men in all times and places find 
 them, and do not make them. If these studies are 
 treated as acquirements, men may become self-exalted 
 — and stupefied also — by their acquaintance with 
 forms and with numbers. They may lose their relish
 
 XII.] ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. 269 
 
 for their study of the facts of nature, because they 
 cannot reduce them under their measures, or confine 
 them by their lines. They may be incapable of 
 examining the deeds of men; may complain that men 
 are so troublesome, and do such a number of acts 
 which they cannot account for, that if they would only 
 cease to be free and to think, something mio^ht be 
 made of them. But the true mathematician — that is, 
 the true learner — has had his mind opened and pre- 
 pared to receive the teachings which come to him 
 from every part of the universe. He will not demand 
 of the botanist that flowers should not grow, or of the 
 geologist that he should find no changes in the struc- 
 ture of the earth, or of the physiologist that he should 
 not investigate all the signs of life in the human body, 
 all its varieties of disease ; he will listen to all they 
 tell him, and like them all the better for the mysteries 
 which he cannot fathom ; only believing that there 
 is an order and harmony in them all, and expecting 
 that their order and harmony will one day be made 
 manifest. 
 
 That is the spirit in which I trust you will frequent 
 any of those classes which deal with natural science, 
 or, as we sometimes call it, physical science, the science 
 of those things which are born, and which grow. If 
 you come to acquire any of these sciences, you will 
 sometimes be puffed up with a vain assurance which 
 will hinder you from receiving any fresh instruction 
 from them, any correction of the errors into which you 
 have fallen ; you will sometimes be accepting every 
 fresh notion as if that must be true, casting away 
 everyone you have held hitherto as if that must be 
 false ; you will sometimes fall into utter despair and 
 think that nothing can be ascertained. If you go on 
 desiring light — though it may come slowly, though it 
 may come through much darkness — I am satisfied it 
 will come. You will be ready for the entrance of 
 fresh light — you prize dearly that which has been 
 granted you; the sense of your ignorance will be
 
 270 ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. [xii. 
 
 always deepening, and with it the security of your 
 . knowledge. 
 
 I say this confidently about these sciences, though I 
 am very unfit to speak of them ; for the experience of 
 those who have profited most in them goes with me ; 
 they will support me and not contradict me. I say it 
 with equal confidence about studies into which I have 
 entered in a very slight degree — those which we some- 
 times suppose are made entirely loose and irregular by 
 human passions, human taste, and human will. The 
 mathematician and the natural philosopher are often 
 contrasted with the poet and the man of letters. The 
 contrast, I am sure, need not exist, and ought not to 
 exist. The English University which is most devoted 
 to Mathematics has been the most fertile in poets ; 
 some of the most eminent of our literary men in this 
 day are intensely attached to physical science. Where 
 the opposition between them exists, it arises, I think, 
 from the cause which I have pointed out in this lecture. 
 Some men try to acquire a gi'eat many notions about 
 poetical and prose compositions. They try to practise, 
 perhaps, a little in that way themselves. They magnify 
 their own craft at the expense of every other; they 
 scorn what they call the dryness of mathematics — the 
 cold treatment of Nature and its beauties by the man 
 of Science. It is not so with those who come to the 
 poet, or to the novel writer, for instruction. They find 
 that either of them is good so far as he enables them to 
 see more into the meaning and order of Nature, or of 
 their own lives ; to understand better what relations 
 exist between them and their fellow-creatures. They 
 do not care for either, if his diction is ever so fine, if he 
 exhibits ever so many of what the wise in such matters 
 tell them are the proper characteristics of poetical or 
 prose fiction, provided he fails to impart this light. In 
 plain words, they do not care for fiction. They like 
 Mr. Tennyson, they like Mr. Kingsley, just as they like 
 Mr. Faraday or Mr. Huxley, for telling them truth, not 
 for telling them lies. And so the studv of what we call
 
 XII.] ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. 271 
 
 works of fiction, becomes naturally connected with the 
 study of History. The books of an age explain the 
 events of an age ; the events of an age help us to under- 
 stand what was special in the writers of its books. 
 Those who bid us acquire a knowledge of English his- 
 tory are greatly divided about the nature of that know- 
 ledge, and the way we are to seek for it. Some of them 
 point out the importance of mastering facts, and ascer- 
 taining when and where they occurred ; some say that 
 the facts are in themselves worthless, but that they may 
 help us in arriving at some general notions or proposi- 
 tions, which may be useful in judging our fellow-crea- 
 tures, and in guiding our own conduct. I cannot tell 
 you how much disputing there has been about these 
 two methods, and how much time that might be spent 
 in learning, we may waste in considering which of them 
 is the right one. Those who support the first course call 
 the champions of the other very hard names. " They 
 put" — so their revilers affirm — "certain fine specula- 
 tions of their own in place of what has actually been 
 done, and call it philosophy." These answer by calling 
 the reporters of fact, dry, jejune creatures, who cannot 
 discriminate between that which is precious and that 
 which is insignificant, but count anything which comes 
 to their net good if they only label it a fact. I do not 
 like any of these raiUngs, or wish to take part in them ; 
 though I cannot deny that both have much plausibility. 
 And so I am driven back in this case as in all the rest, 
 upon my old doctrine. I have no hope of acquiring a 
 knowledge of even a small portion of the smallest 
 history. But I feel that I want the light which history 
 gives me, that I cannot do without it, I find that I 
 am connected, in my o"vvn individual life, with a past 
 and a future as well as a present. I cannot make out 
 either without the other. I find that I am connected 
 with a nation which has had a past as well as a present, 
 and which must have a future. I am confident that 
 our life is meant to be a whole ; that its days, as the 
 poet says, should be linked each to each in natural
 
 272 ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. [xii. 
 
 piety. They fall to pieces very easily ; it is hard , 
 often it seems impossible, to recover the links between 
 them. But there comes an illumination to us ever and 
 anon over our past years, and over the persons gone 
 out of our sight who worked in them. Places we have 
 visited with them, help to bring them back ; to re- 
 collect the year and the month and the day is of great 
 use, for so the events and the persons are seen, not 
 confusedly, but clearly, standing as they actually 
 stood. Thus it is with the ages gone by. Every 
 one of them is telling upon us ; every man who has 
 thought and worked in them has contributed to the 
 good or evil which is about us. The ages are not 
 dead ; they cannot be. If we listen, they will speak 
 to us. 
 
 Times and places will be great helps in understanding 
 their voice, as in understanding the voices that come to 
 us from our own boyhood and childhood. The death 
 of a king may make a crisis in the progress of a nation, 
 as the death of a personal friend makes a crisis in our 
 o\vn lives. An old town-hall, or the relics that tell of 
 a battle which has once been fought, may be like some 
 house or room that reminds us of those from whose lips 
 we have learnt, or of some struggle that we have had 
 to pass through. The times and places will not in 
 themselves be the precious things ; but that which was 
 done in them, those who dwelt in them. We shall 
 care more for the things than for any propositions 
 which we make about them ; for our propositions may 
 be very good or wise, but they are limited by the 
 minds that form them. A truth is full and living, and 
 contains a thousand different lessons, one of which 
 may commend itself to one man, one to another, ac- 
 cording to his deeds. Each of us may help the other 
 to find the lessons which he wants ; but we must not 
 put ourselves between him and the truth whence all 
 the lessons proceed. 
 
 I have one more subject to speak of. In that German 
 play to which I have referred already, the hero laments
 
 XII.] ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. 273 
 
 that he has studied Jurisprudence, Medicine, and all 
 other arts, and alas ! also Theology, and that he is just 
 as wise as he was before. I doubt not that a man who 
 seeks to acquire Jurisprudence, Medicine, or any art, 
 will some day be obliged to utter that complaint. I 
 am sure that the " alas ! " of Dr. Faustus will proceed 
 from the soul of the theological student who has 
 laboured with that aim. His pursuit must seem 
 utterly bewildering, an utter self-contradiction. He 
 must feel that he has been making continual efforts to 
 attain the unattainable, to grasp the infinite. He must 
 regard his study, either as standing aloof from all 
 others, condemning them all, or as a chain which is 
 to bind them all. 
 
 Just because I believe what I have been saying to 
 you this evening respecting other studies, I hold that 
 this one condemns none of them, but justifies them 
 all — is meant not to bind any, but to break its chains. 
 When Columbus first caught sight of the land which 
 was the reward of years of toil and disappointment, we 
 called him the discoverer of America. He would have 
 said that America discovered itself to him, or that God 
 discovered it to him. A veil was withdrawn, a world 
 that Europe was intended to know became known ; it 
 was his high honour to say, " There it is ; every one of 
 those poor sailors shares the discovery with me. To 
 each person who sees that Continent hereafter, it will 
 discover itself as it now does to us." That, I under- 
 stand, is the fundamental maxim of theology. We 
 cannot discover the Eternal and Infinite, but He dis- 
 covers Himself, and in discovering Himself helps us to 
 see what we are, what our relations to our fellow- 
 creatures are, what we are to seek, what we are to 
 hate. Because I am convinced that this is so — be- 
 cause I should despair of myself and you, and of the 
 universe, if I thought otherwise — therefore I can see a 
 meaning, a worth, a sacredness, a hopefulness in every 
 pursuit to which you devote yourselves here or else- 
 where ; therefore I can trust every New Year will do 
 
 T
 
 274 ACQUISITION AND ILLUMINATION. [xii. 
 
 more for you than the last. The assurance of a Reve- 
 hxtion that has been made, of a Revelation that is to be 
 made to the whole earth ; this I find the chief comfort 
 and encouragement in thinking of your work, or of 
 my work, of your little society, or of the whole society 
 of human beings.
 
 XIII. 
 
 ON CRITICS.i 
 
 In the year 1801 a periodical was established in Edin- 
 burgh which has exercised a considerable influence 
 upon the thought and the criticism of this country 
 during the last half-century. Those who commenced 
 this work took for their motto the words, "The judge 
 is condemned when the guilty man is absolved or 
 escapes condemnation." They therefore proclaimed 
 themselves judges ; their function was to decide 
 what writers were deserving of punishment; on those 
 who did, they pledged themselves to inflict it sum- 
 marily. 
 
 It is said, that of the persons who felt themselves 
 called to this office, and who formed this determina- 
 tion, scarcely one had passed his twenty-first birthday. 
 That may appear an early time for men to take their 
 seats upon the bench ; yet many of us can recollect 
 that at that age, though we might have few or none of 
 the gifts which these Edinburgh Reviewers gave ample 
 evidence that they possessed, we thought ourselves 
 perfectly competent to assume the same position and 
 to pass sentence upon the universe. If we did not 
 think so then, we probably should never have arrived 
 at the belief afterwards ; for as we grow older painful 
 doubts of our infallibility spring up within ourselves, 
 and are encouraged by the persons with whom we 
 
 1 A Lecture delivered at the Brighton Atlienoeum, 185G. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 ON CRITICS. [xiii. 
 
 converse. It now and then occurs to us that perhaps 
 the judge is condemned for his severity as well as for 
 his leniency, and that he may sometimes mistake an 
 innocent man for a guilty one. Nay, the judge may 
 even feel that his own office, grand as it is, does not 
 quite satisfy his human cravings. He may wish for a 
 little sympathy with his fellow-creatures ; he may 
 dream that he would be more comfortable if he were 
 more on their level, if he stood at least on a not quite 
 immeasui-able height above them. He would like not 
 always to be laying down the law, and to be occasion- 
 ally receiving wisdom as well as giving it forth. Such 
 desires and regrets begin to be awakened in us about 
 that time when, as Young says, a man suspects 
 himself a fool, — they have ripened considerably by 
 that maturer time, when, according to the same 
 authority, he knows it. One who was in his youth a 
 severe, though certainly, on the whole, a genial critic, 
 has said : — 
 
 " A something whispers in my heart 
 That as we downward tend, 
 
 Lyc-oris, life reqiiires an art^ 
 
 To which onr souls must bend ; 
 
 A skill, to balance and supply ; 
 
 And ere the flowing fount be dry, 
 
 As soon it must, a sense to sip 
 
 And drink, with no fastidious lip." 
 
 But although great weight is due to this experience, 
 it is also true that we may learn more of the tendencies 
 of an age from young men than we can from old men. 
 These accomplished Edinburgh E-eviewers, and other 
 reviewers much less accomplished, would not have 
 aspired to such great tasks when they were young, and 
 would not have produced so much effect, and excited 
 so much rivalry, if there had not been a bias in our 
 time towards criticism which there never was to the 
 same degree in any former time, and which it is not 
 possible — and therefore, if we admit a Providence over 
 the minds of men, which it is not desirable — to coun- 
 teract. Shakespeare has put into the mouth of his
 
 XIII.] ON CRITICS. 277 
 
 worst character the words, " I am nothing if uot 
 critical." I believe it may be true of the very best 
 men of our time that they are nothing if not critical. 
 But then I apprehend that they have taken some 
 pains with themselves that their criticism shall not 
 be of the same kind with lago's — that it shall not 
 be cold, suspicious, hateful, quickly detecting all that 
 is evil in things or in men, very slow in discovering 
 the good because there is no wish to discover it. I 
 think they must be aware how easily they may slide 
 into that lago temper, and must have sought help in 
 cultivating that which is the direct contrary of it. In 
 what I say to you this evening about critics, my object 
 will be to point out, so far as I am able, how we may 
 become critics of the one sort, or of the other. It is far 
 enough from my intention to say who are of the one 
 sort or of the other. I speak of errors which I know 
 in myself, much more than any I know of in my 
 neighbours. I believe the capacities for both charac- 
 ters lie in each of us, and that it is almost certain that 
 we shall all of us sink into the one if we do not rise 
 into the other. 
 
 The word "critic" unquestionably means a judge. 
 The motto of the Edinburgh Reviewers gives it its 
 literal force. But if you have been at a criminal trial 
 in English courts of justice, and have marked the de- 
 meanour of the wisest and most righteous of the men 
 who preside in them, I think you will have observed 
 that the task of pronouncing sentence, even the task of 
 laying down the law for the guidance of the jury, is 
 not the greatest or the most difficult which they per- 
 form. In our days, at least — I do not know how it 
 may have been in the more hanging days of our 
 fathers — the black cap is not regarded by the spec- 
 tators, certainly not by him who puts it on, as the most 
 worthy or distinctive ensign of his office. Sadly and 
 reluctantly he resorts to it at last. Not till he has 
 exercised all his higher faculties in discriminating 
 between conflicting points of evidence; not till after
 
 278 ON CRITICS. [xui. 
 
 the most patient toil in severing facts from guesses, 
 truth from appearances — after the most scrupulous 
 allowance for unfairness in narrators, and for reasons 
 why the act should not have been committed — he has 
 been driven to the conclusion that it has been com- 
 mitted, and that the doer of it is before him. Even 
 then, by the provisions of our law, he cannot, as you 
 know, take the decision into his own hands. He can 
 only use the light that has been given him to direct 
 the minds of the twelve men who are to try the case ; 
 he is at best their mouth-piece. This distinction of 
 duties is represented, I think, by the two names for a 
 judge in the language from which we have borrowed 
 the word "critic." Mr. Grote, in his "History of 
 Greece," uses very often tlie word " Dicast." That 
 describes accurately the work which the judge has to 
 jDerform at last ; but his criticism has been exercised 
 before. If I am right in these remarks, a critic upon 
 any subject whatever — whether he speaks of books, or 
 art, or men — is not to think first or chiefly what judg- 
 ments he may pass upon that which he is occupied 
 with : he may be a long time before he finds himself 
 able to pass a judgment. Perhaps he may be less able 
 and less willing to do it after a long consideration than 
 he was at the first moment. But he may be cultivat- 
 ing hi? judgment; he may be acquiring a habit of 
 discernment which he certainly had not at first, and 
 which he will find much more valuable to him for his 
 own sake, and for all the business of life, than the 
 power of laying down the law respecting books, or 
 art, or men, supposing he could have the largest circle 
 to listen to his decrees and to accejDt them, supposing 
 he had the poAver of enforcing punishments for the 
 transgression of his laws, supposing he could cause the 
 largest number of men to smart under the rod, or to 
 suffer capitally under the axe. I will try to illustrate 
 what I have been saying in a few particular cases. I 
 will begin with books. I fancy there is nothing we 
 more like to exercise our criticism upon than on the
 
 xin] OX CRITICS. 279 
 
 style of the books that come in our way. I am think- 
 ing now chiefly of books in prose ; of poetry I may 
 speak a httle by and by. Such a style, we pronounce, 
 is an affected style, or an un-English style, or an 
 unintelligible style, or a pompous style, or a too 
 colloquial style, or a style that departs from all good 
 models, or a style that is a mere imitation of certain 
 models. Some one of these phrases is applied to a 
 particular writer, first, perhaps, by some oracle in a 
 drawing-room circle, or it may have come forth with 
 the annoymous weight of some newspaper. It gets 
 quickly into circulation. Then some one rises up 
 in defence of the writer. He likes the affected, or the 
 un-EngHsh, or the irregular, or the imitated style ; 
 perhaps he adopts it and exaggerates it. He, too, has 
 his set of followers. There are some who listen to his 
 decrees; perhaps he can get them into print. Thus a 
 great amount of criticism is abroad ; a number of 
 judges are condemning the guilty man, trembling lest 
 they should be condemned if he is absolved. But, 
 after all, what has been gained ? What real critical 
 faculty has one of these judges been exercising ? Those 
 epithets which he has bestowed upon the style do not 
 tell you in the least what an Enghsh style, or a correct 
 style, or a true style, is. That secret is hid in the 
 heart of the commentator. He may hold up a few 
 sentences to ridicule, with a " Look there ! how bad 
 that is ! What nonsense this is ! " He may even hint 
 what he thinks is the proper model for all people to 
 follow ; but by saying that, he does not in the least help 
 us to avoid these faults, if they are faults, or to follow 
 the right leader, if he is a right one. He leaves the 
 impression upon our minds that he is a standard 
 of taste, and that he knows that he is. It is a comfort- 
 able conviction certainly, as long as he can retain it ; 
 but I cannot see that mankind is in any degree 
 improved by his possession of a quality which it seems 
 that he is utterly unable to impart. 
 
 Is there, then, to be no criticism of style ? Is there
 
 280 ON CRITICS. [xiir. 
 
 no such tiling as style ? Do we mean nothing when 
 we say that the style of Milton is altogether different 
 from the style of Burke ? I apprehend that we do 
 mean very much ; just as much as when we say 
 that the handwriting of two men is different, or their 
 walk, or their voice, or their manners in a room. All 
 these are real differences ; some of them, if not all of 
 them, are helps to tell us wherein the men differ from 
 each other, what is the characteristic peculiarity of 
 each. And that is the good which one gets from the 
 style of a book. If it is not the expression of what a 
 man is, it is absolutely worthless, with whatever rules 
 it may be in conformity ; if it is, it is one means of 
 getting acquainted with him. It will not tell you all 
 you want to know of him, but it will tell you some- 
 thing. It may show you, no doubt, his weakness as 
 well as his strength ; it may explain to you what he 
 cannot do as well as what he can. But, at all events, 
 let us try to know what it does say before we proceed 
 to classify it, or to pass sentence upon it. It is won- 
 derful how much our faculties of discernment will 
 grow, and unfold themselves, if we begin by throwing 
 all our notions about style overboard, and simply 
 come to be taught why this author spoke in this 
 way and that in another, why this was significant of 
 him and of the time in which he lived, and another 
 belonged to a person who lived in a different time and 
 who had another work. The process may be a slow 
 one — we may make no sensible advance in it, we may 
 not be able to set down the results to our own satis- 
 faction; but then see how much more interesting the 
 process itself is than that for which we exchange it. 
 When I am setting myself up as a judge of authors 
 for the purpose of condemning the guilty, I shall look 
 out for those who are likely to give me most occupa- 
 tion by their absurdities. I shall consider that my 
 business is with the bad, though I may chance now 
 and then to light uijon something good. What effect 
 must this continual familiarity with what is mean and
 
 xiii.] ON CRITICS. 281 
 
 vulgar, with that which I prefer because it is mean 
 and vulgar, have upon my own mind ? Suppose I 
 continue to denounce it, suppose I continue to find a 
 delight in denouncing it, must I not insensibly acquire 
 its likeness, or else become intolerably conceited be- 
 cause I am above it ? But in the other case, I must 
 look out for the best and ablest writers, because they 
 are the best worth hearing, and because I want their 
 styles only to manifest them. I must mix constantly 
 with those who will make me ashamed, not proud of 
 myself. And I shall at last get more than I sought 
 for. The gTeat man is the man who most reflects the 
 temper and spirit of his time. Though he will ^^^•ite. 
 differently from his contemporaries, you may discover 
 from him what those contemporaries were, what they 
 were thinking, feehng, suffering. I should like to 
 give you specimens of what I mean from the two 
 authors whom I named casually just now. There are 
 no two styles in our langi;age perhaps more unlike 
 each other than the style of John Milton and the style 
 of Edmund Burke. I will not attempt to express the 
 difference in words. You cannot read any paragi-aph of 
 the one, or of the other, without feeling it. And I do 
 not think you can read any paragraph of one or of 
 the other, whether you agree with it or not — whether 
 it strikes at some cherished opinion of yours or sup- 
 ports one — without feehng that it is the genuine, 
 noble, natural expression of the mind of a genuine and 
 noble man ; without feeling that they could not be 
 changed for one another or blended together but at 
 the peril of both becoming false ; without feeling 
 that the one belongs to the England of the seven- 
 teenth century, and the other to the England of the 
 eighteenth ; without learning how different those two 
 
 • • • • 1 1 
 
 periods were ; without feehng that the nation m both 
 was the same nation. Let me read you a passage 
 from Milton's "Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed 
 Printing," and then one from Burke's " Speech to the 
 Electors of Bristol," then I think that you will under-
 
 282 ON CRITICS. [xiii. 
 
 stand how much the style of an author may teach us 
 respecting him, and respecting ourselves, if we do not 
 apply to it our narrow measures and tie it down by 
 our petty rules of art : — 
 
 " I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in tlie 
 Chnrcli and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Bookes 
 demeane themselves, as well as men ; and thereafter to confine, 
 imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For 
 Bookes are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie 
 of Life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny 
 they are ; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest ethcacie 
 and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know 
 they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous 
 Dragons' teeth ; and being sown up and down, may chance to 
 spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unless wari- 
 nesse be used, as good almost kill a Man, as kill a good Booke : 
 who kills a Man, kills a reasonable creature, God's Image ; but 
 hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason itself, kills the 
 Image of God, as it were in the Eye. Many a Man lives a 
 burden to the Earth ; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood 
 of a master-spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a 
 life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof 
 perhaps there is no great losse : and revolutions of ages doe not 
 oft recover the losse of a rejected Truth, for the want of which 
 whole Nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore 
 what persecution we raise against the living labours of publick 
 men, how we spill that season' d life of man preserv'd and stor'd 
 nj) in Bookes ; since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus 
 committed, sometimes a martyrdome, and if it extend to the 
 whole impression, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution 
 ends not in the slaying of an elementall life, but strikes at that 
 cethereall and fifth essence, the breathe of reason itself, slaies an 
 immortality rather than a life." 
 
 From Burke s Speech at Bristol jorevious to the Election. 
 
 " Gentlemen, — Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. In 
 such a country as this, they are of all bad things the worst, 
 worse by far than anywhere else ; and they derive a particular 
 malignity even from the wisdom and soundness of the rest of 
 our institutions. 
 
 '' For very obvious reasons j^ou cannot trust the Crown with a 
 dispensing power over any of your laws. However, a govern- 
 ment, be it as bad as it may, will, in the exercise of a discretion- 
 ary power, discriminate times and persons, and will not ordinarily 
 pursue any man, when its own safety is not concerned. A mer-
 
 XIII.] ON CRITICS. 283 
 
 cenary informer knows no distinction. Under such a system, 
 the obnoxious people are slaves, not only to the government, but 
 they live at the mercy of every individual ; they are at once the 
 slaves of the whole community, and of every part of it ; and the 
 worst and most unmerciful men are those on whose goodness 
 they most depend. 
 
 " In this situation men not only shrink from the frowns of a 
 stern magistrate, but they are obliged to fly from their very 
 species. The seeds of destruction are sown in civil intercourse, 
 in social habitudes. The blood of wholesome kindred is infected. 
 Their tables and beds are surrounded with snares. All the means 
 given by Providence to make life safe and comfortable, are per- 
 verted into instruments of terror and torment. This species of 
 universal subserviency, that makes the very servant who waits 
 behind your chair, the arbiter of your life and fortune, has such 
 a tendency to degrade and abase mankind, and to deprive them 
 of that assured and liberal state of mind which alone can make 
 us what we ought to be, that I vow to God, I would sooner bring 
 myself to put a man to immediate death for opinions I disliked, 
 and so to get rid of the man and his opinions at once, than to 
 fret him with a feverish being, tainted with the jail-distemper of 
 a contagious servitude, to keep him above ground, an animated 
 mass of putrefaction, corrupted himself, and corrupting all 
 about him." 
 
 But if the study of such passages as these may 
 expand as well as elevate our minds, and give us some 
 sense of the very different ways in which great prin- 
 ciples may be uttered by the men who have been 
 possessed of them, do we not want some warnings 
 against the errors of style into which great men often 
 fall, and especially against that terrible error of affecta- 
 tion ? If rules would help us in this matter, we want 
 them exceedingly. If we could ever be preserved from 
 writing or speaking anything that is not simple, and 
 natural, and manly, he who suggested the means of 
 preservation would be worthy of our highest gratitude. 
 But let me say, once for all, he that wants to be saved 
 from this fault will never be saved from it by looking 
 for it in another. The good which converse with noble 
 writers will do him is, that they will enable him to 
 detect it in himself. They will be very helpful in 
 teaching us our un-English ways, and our affected 
 ways. Sometimes they will teach it by the contrast of
 
 284 ON CRITICS. [xin. 
 
 their own truthfulness and simpHcity, sometimes by 
 the pain which we shall find in seeing their deviations 
 from the excellences which they have taught us to 
 admire. I am touching here upon a very severe kind 
 of criticism, a very disagreeable kind. It is when the 
 judge discovers the culprit at his own door, in his own 
 home. It is when he is brought to confess, " The 
 things which I fancied I saw outside are here in me. 
 This guilty man must not be let free, or I shall indeed 
 be condemned." I suppose we should all like to escape 
 that criticism if we could ; but those who have had to 
 undergo it have reason to thank God that they could 
 not escape it, and to confess that all their notions 
 of criticism were utterly false till they had passed 
 through it. 
 
 I have spoken so long upon this subject, partly 
 because, as we all write prose, we are all criticising 
 ourselves when we speak of that, whereas if I passed 
 to verse I should be entering upon a subject of which 
 experience can tell me nothing. For that reason, if I 
 thought criticism consisted in finding fault, or in laying 
 down laws, or in punishing the guilty, I should hold 
 my peace ; because for me to undertake any one of 
 these functions would be the sheerest usurpation. But, 
 upon the other principle, he who has^ least of the 
 poetical faculty may be most indebted to poets; they 
 may have awakened in him perceptions, and given 
 him an insight, which but for that influence he would 
 have wanted more than any. And, using this test, I 
 believe we are not likely to become indiscriminate 
 devourers of poetry, or to fail of a certain keen sense 
 of what has power in it and what has not. We may 
 find, indeed, that that does us good at one period which 
 we thought lightly of at another. Comets that we 
 wondered at may pass away, and stars that were hidden 
 may come forth and shine very brightly. Every day, 
 therefore, may make us more afraid of laying down 
 censures, or of accepting those wdiich would exclude 
 this or that man from the roll of poetical teachers ;
 
 xiH.] ON CRITICS. 285 
 
 but, on the other hand, every day will make us more 
 indiflferent to that which does not speak to ourselves, 
 which merely plays about us without entering into us. 
 There is no occasion to tell any person who admires 
 such verses that he must not do so. We cannot the 
 least tell that he must not. It may be very good for 
 him that he should. All we have to do is to be 
 honest : not to pretend to be affected by that which 
 does not affect us if it is ever so popular, not to deny 
 that any does which is ever so unpopular ; to sympa- 
 thise with other people in their feelings as much as 
 we can, and not to say more about our own than the 
 circumstances demand. So by trying to be true and 
 not false with ourselves, we shall come to have a 
 relish for truth, and a dislike to falsehood wheresoever 
 we meet with it. 
 
 But here again a caution is to be observed. The 
 poetry which is not true in itself, which is merely 
 imitated or adopted from others, may, nevertheless, not 
 unfrequently be the expression of a true heart. This is 
 a paradox which I can explain to you far better in the 
 words of a very earnest and real poetess of our own 
 day than in my own : — 
 
 " Many fervent souls 
 Strike rhyme on rhyme who would strike steel on steel 
 If steel had offered, in a restless heat 
 Of doing something. Many tender souls 
 Have strung their losses on a rhyming thread 
 As children cowslips : the more pains they take, 
 
 The work more withers 
 
 You catch a sight of Nature earliest, 
 
 In full front sun face, and your eyelids wink 
 
 And drop before the wonder oft ; you miss 
 
 The form through seeing the light. I lived those days, 
 
 And wrote because I lived, unlicensed else. 
 
 My heart beat in my brain. Life's violent flood 
 
 Abolished bounds ; and which my neighbour's field, 
 
 Which mine, what mattered ? It is so in youth : 
 
 We play at leap-frog over the God Term. 
 
 The love within us and the love without 
 
 Are mixed, confounded ; if we are loved or love, 
 
 We scarce distinguish. So with other power :
 
 286 ON CRITICS. [xiii. 
 
 Being acted on and acting seem tlie same ; 
 
 In that first on-rush of Life's chariot wheels 
 
 We know not if the forests move or we. 
 
 And so, like most young poets in a flush 
 
 Of individual life, I poured myself 
 
 Along the veins of others, and achieved 
 
 Mere lifeless imitations of live verse. 
 
 And made the living answer for the dead, 
 
 Profaning Nature. . . . 
 
 We call the Muse, ' O Muse, benignant Muse,' 
 
 As if we had seen her purple-braided head 
 
 With the eyes in it start between the boughs 
 
 As often as a stag's. What make-believe 
 
 With so much earnest ! What effete results 
 
 From virile efforts ! ^Vhat cold wire-drawn Odes 
 
 From such white heats ! Bucolics where the cows 
 
 Would scare the writer if they splashed the mud 
 
 In lashing off the flies ! Didactics driven , 
 
 Against the heels of what the Master said ; 
 
 And counterfeiting epics, shrill with trumps, 
 
 A babe might blow between two straining cheeks 
 
 Of bubbled rose to make his mother laugh ! 
 
 And elegiac griefs, and songs of love. 
 
 Like cast-off nosegays picked up on the road, 
 
 The worse for being warm : all these things writ 
 
 On happy mornings with a morning heart 
 
 That leaps for love, is active for resolve, 
 
 Weak for art only." 
 
 I hope I need not say that I understand Mrs. 
 Browning to speak in these verses as a dramatist, not 
 as an autobiographer. If I took them in the latter 
 sense, I should have to protest against them as very 
 unjust to many true poems which bore the name of 
 EHzabeth Barrett, which were no mere " cowslips on a 
 rhyming thread," which have not withered, nor are 
 likely to wither. Subject to that remark, I accept her 
 words as a description no less wise and faithful than it 
 is beautiful, of the true and honest and deep impulses 
 which may lead young poets to wi'ite what is in 
 itself feeble and short-lived. The lesson should not 
 be lost on any critic who cares to do good and not 
 to inflict pain. 
 
 The guilty men, whom the original Edinburgh
 
 XIII.] ON CRITICS. 287 
 
 Reviewers desired to take vengeance upon, were 
 chiefly among their contemporaries. But it is impos- 
 sible that our judgments should be limited to them. 
 Old wi'iters, esijecially the A\Titers of history, must 
 stand a trial in our courts. And we shall deal with 
 them whoever they be, upon the same princii^les that 
 we followed in the other case, A venerable person, 
 say Herodotus or Livy, or one of our old English 
 Chroniclers, is brought to the bar. It is discovered 
 that certain stories occur in one or other of these 
 writers which must be regarded as fables, not as 
 authentic narratives. The rapid judge, terribly afraid 
 that he shall be condemned if the culprit escapes, 
 immediately writes "mythical" or "legendary" 
 against the old book. " Very pretty, " he says, " no 
 doubt, for children. It is quite proper that they 
 should have nursery tales such as we had in our days. 
 But what are they to us ? We know them to be 
 false." A peremptory decision — perhaps satisfactory 
 to him who makes it ; but not quite satisfactory to 
 those who believe that there is such a thing as history, 
 and who wish to discover what it is. They know that 
 Sir Robert Walpole told his son not to read him his- 
 tory, for that he knew to be false. The clever states- 
 man did not speak at all of the history which contains 
 allusions to supernatural beings. He meant that with 
 which he had been conversant all his life — that which 
 he had been contributing to make. He meant the 
 policy of Courts and Prime Ministers. He meant the 
 speeches and votes in the House of Commons, and all 
 the by-play that preceded them. These he had the 
 best possible reasons for knowing to be false, or, at 
 least, to contain a preponderating element of falsehood 
 in them. And yet, out of these materials — out of 
 memoirs written often by very dishonest men who did 
 not wish to tell the truth — out of letters, and docu- 
 ments, and debates, often contrived for the very pur- 
 pose of mystifying it — we do suppose we can extract 
 something which is real, something which did actually
 
 288 ON CRITICS. [xiii. 
 
 happen. We even call that which is liable to all 
 these perversions and contradictions " the historical 
 period ; " we boast that there we are out of the reach 
 of legends. Therefore this kind of treatment — these 
 broad classifications — will avail us very little if we are 
 really wanting to understand the course of the world, and 
 what has been done in it. There seems to be another 
 kind of criterion altogether different from this ; much 
 more sifting, and at the same time much more reverent. 
 The true critic must desire to pierce through the con- 
 fused and incoherent statements of one time as much 
 as of another. And being convinced that there is 
 eternal Truth at the bottom, that the world is God's 
 world, and that no crafts or trickeries of men can 
 cause it to be otherwise, he must always wish to get 
 through every fiction that men have devised into the 
 fact tliat is hidden beneath it. The most honest and 
 faithful criticism of this time, instead of treating the 
 old histories with contempt, has restored them to 
 honour. It has acknowledged that the legends which 
 they contain are often much more worthy of examina- 
 tion and study than those with which Sir Eobert 
 Walpole was conversant. A patient critic may not be 
 sure that he has discovered what they mean. He may 
 see glimpses of meaning which others may follow out ; 
 or he may have mistaken their meaning, and others 
 may find the clue to it : but every step in his progress 
 convinces him that it is there ; that men did not make 
 it, but found it, and generally marred it. He does not 
 believe them to be Hars because they thought the 
 world was under supernatural guidance. He does not 
 find that those whom Sir Robert Walpole knew, who 
 had no such faith, lied less because they thought all 
 things were left to them and their management. He 
 is astonished to find how much the histories of all 
 nations are involved with these supernatural records. 
 He thinks that a fact well worth looking into. If 
 he could find an interpretation of it, much would be 
 cleared up to him that has puzzled him. He even
 
 XIII.] ON CRITICS. 289 
 
 hopes that such an interpretation may exist. This is 
 the other kind of criticism to which I alluded ; and I 
 believe there are many honourable and admirable speci- 
 mens of it in our day. I think all good may be hoped 
 for from such critics, because they believe in Truth, 
 and because they are convinced that it can only be 
 sought for in humility. 
 
 Before I quit this subject of historical, or, as it is 
 sometimes called, philological criticism, I may give you 
 an instance of the way in which the same man may 
 exhibit the most clear and masterly judgment when he 
 takes one of those courses of which I have been speak- 
 ing, and may become feeble and contemptible when he 
 deviates into the other. I believe it will be allowed 
 by foreign scholars, as well as by English, that our 
 countryman Richard Bentley was one of the subtlest 
 diviners of the meaning of obscure passages, one of the 
 most skilful detectors of forgery, one of those who 
 understood best how to follow out a course of evidence, 
 and to see how each point of it bore upon every other. 
 Considering that he was naturally a rash, dogmatical, 
 ill-tempered man, it is wonderful how all these bad 
 (qualities were held in check, and with what patience 
 he could devote himself to the working out of a diffi- 
 cult historical problem when that was his object, only 
 allowing his talent for guessing, which was unrivalled, 
 to assist him in catching at hints which were after- 
 wards to be verified by experiment. In this sense he 
 is the beginner of a method in philological and histori- 
 cal studies very like that which Bacon began in physi- 
 cal studies. But this same man, in an evil hour, set 
 himself up as a judge'and improver of " Paradise Lost." 
 He could not admire the book, he knew nothing about 
 it ; but because he was a great critic he fancied he was 
 a judge of poets, and was able to set them right. His 
 emendations of this poem remain the greatest monu- 
 ment of absurdity that an ingenious man ever raised. 
 They should be read by young men, not that they may 
 laugh at one who was vastly superior to any critic of 
 
 u
 
 290 ON CRITICS. [xm. 
 
 Ills own, or perhaps of later times, but as a solemn 
 warning that the gi-eatest possessor of the critical 
 faculty becomes a fool when he thinks he can look 
 down upon gi*eat authors instead of looking up to 
 them, — when he fancies that he can measure them by 
 his rules instead of seeking to know what were their 
 rules, and what they themselves were. 
 
 But there are subjects more interesting to us — at 
 least to most of us — than the mere examination of the 
 sources of history ever can be. We may look at great 
 periods of history, we may study the feelings and 
 passions and objects of those who were the actors in 
 them. Here is a field for those two kinds of critics 
 I have been speaking of, to try their different plans in. 
 When I speak of plans, however, I do not mean that 
 all the plans of those who set up for judges, and look 
 down upon the events and doers of past times as some- 
 thing far beneath them, will be the same. Of neces- 
 sity they will be very various. Each of them stands 
 on his own pinnacle ; he contemplates the ground 
 below from that. One takes his measure from what 
 he thinks the peculiar distinctions and glories of the 
 nineteenth century. By these he judges of the twelfth 
 century, or the sixteenth, or the seventeenth. So far 
 as they departed from these they are all pronounced 
 evil ; so far as any approximates to these, there is in it 
 an element of good. Another takes his stand on the 
 maxims of the party in which he has been educated ; 
 everything is seen from a Whig or from a Tory point 
 of view. One set of actors is seen to be fighting for 
 everything that is holy and precious, the other for 
 everything that is mean and detestable. There may be 
 degrees of excellence on the one side, and degrees of 
 villainy on the other ; but one carries the black flag 
 and the other the white ; that decides the question 
 generally about leaders as well as privates. Another 
 spectator dwells upon a more serene height than either 
 of these. He looks down with impartial pity and con- 
 tempt upon the whole struggle ; all are foolish, all are
 
 xni.] ON CRITICS. 291 
 
 wrong. He is ashamed of belonging to so contemptible 
 a race of beings ; it is quite amazing to him how he 
 ever came to belong to them, why his habitation was 
 not assigned to him in some fixed star, entirely out of 
 the reach of their passions and turmoils. 
 
 I do not say which of these different judges I should 
 most wish to follow, if I must follow one of them. I 
 will frankly tell you which I should least like to follow. 
 I would rather be the most vehement and mad partisan 
 than one of those cold contemners of all parties and of 
 all men. Wordsworth speaks of one of his heroines 
 
 " As dwelling in a sky 
 
 Of undisturbed humanity." 
 
 I never liked the phrase, or envied the position. 
 But it seems to me that these men have attained a sky 
 of undisturbed inhumanity ; and therefore I could most 
 heartily say in this sense, " Save, oh, save me from the 
 impartial man ! " But I apprehend that there is a kind 
 of criticism which does not make it needful that we 
 should be partisans in order to escape from this worse 
 calamity. If we once abdicate that high position of 
 being law-givers, and wish rather to know what the 
 law is under which we are all placed, and to obey that, 
 we may take most interest in those parts of our history 
 which have been most stirring; we may wish nothing 
 less than that they had not been stirring ; we may 
 complain of nothing less than the earnestness of those 
 who were engaged in them on either side. It is not 
 their earnestness which hurts us, except that it shames 
 us for having so little of the same quality, for believing 
 so little, for being so cowardly in asserting what we 
 believe. Their earnestness, we may be sure, was given 
 to them because they were asserting a principle which 
 it was worth while to live and to die for, — I mean that 
 each party was asserting such a principle ; that in our 
 civil wars, for instance, there was not one atom too 
 much of zeal on either side for what that side felt to be 
 at stake, not one atom which we could afford to dis- 
 
 U 2
 
 292 OX CRITICS. [xiir 
 
 pense with — the absence of which would not have been 
 to us the most gi-ievous loss. It is the pettiness and 
 selfishness which mingled with this earnestness, the 
 little, low motives which had nothing to do with the 
 principle, and which curdled and made sour that which 
 had to do with it, — this is what we are to hate ; for 
 this is what we know in ourselves to be the cause of 
 all our individual feebleness, of all our national desren- 
 eracy. We cannot criticise it m them till we have 
 criticised it first in ourselves. When we have, the 
 more heartily we condemn it the more heartily we shall 
 reverence all the better thoughts and feelings which 
 were struggling against it in every party and in every 
 man ; the more Ave shall be sure that those, had a divine 
 origin and a permanent strength ; the more we shall 
 be sure that they have each brought in their contribu- 
 tion to the national strength, and that they \vill unite 
 to make it stronger still when the spirits that have 
 degTaded and held them down shall be cast out. 
 
 In what I have said on this subject I have thought 
 particularly of the period of our own civil W9,rs, because 
 that has suffered more than perhaps any from the 
 partial as well as the pseudo-impartial temper, and 
 because no time would reward us more if it were 
 studied in a hearty, sympathising, reverential spirit, 
 which would not suffer us to pervert or warp any 
 documents to suit a purpose of ours, which would 
 enable us to discern, much more clearly than we ever 
 have done, that Divine purpose which is working 
 itself out through all the most contradictory and self- 
 willed movements of men. But the principles which 
 are applicable to this crisis are appHcable to all times. 
 They would enable us to do justice even to those torpid 
 and stagnant times which often follow great excite- 
 ments, into which great men seem not to be bom, or in 
 w^hich they become changed into little men, being 
 dwarfed, not by their circumstances, but by their own 
 submission to circumstances, by their want of earnest 
 faith in a power that could raise them above circum-
 
 XIII.] ON CRITICS. 293 
 
 stances. Even in such times a&^ these, the true critic 
 of history will see that the same laws are at work as 
 in those which bring forth all the good that is in men, 
 and all the evil, into full display. They will learn that 
 nothing is so ignominious as that craving for great men 
 to appear, as if the universe depended upon them ; as 
 if each man may not do right in his own sphere with- 
 out waiting for them, or asking whether there are such 
 or not ; as if the very longing for them were not a part 
 of that restlessness which interferes with all gi-eatness 
 and checks the growth of it. In fact, what I have 
 been chiefly maintaining throughout this lecture is, 
 that the desire to be kings, and judges, and law-makers, 
 has been one main cause why we have not done more, 
 and are not capable of more ; and that if we would 
 turn the faculty which we suppose qualifies us for 
 kings and law-givers to another use, we might obtain 
 blessings and honours of which our ambition to be 
 grand deprives us. 
 
 I am, however, very far from thinking that one of 
 the main uses of criticism is not to recover the illus- 
 trious men whom God has given us from the mis- 
 representations of opponents who hated them, or of 
 admirers who did not understand them. In every 
 case, I think we shall find that those who have 
 spoken of great men either as their men, those who 
 were doing their work, and propagating their opinions 
 or who have attacked them because they were not 
 doing their work and propagating their opinions, or 
 have overlooked them as if they were their inferiors, 
 and might receive a sentence of applause or disapproval 
 from them, have always done something to distort 
 facts, and to make their biographies false. And I 
 believe everyone who has affectionately, and in a 
 serious, respectful spirit, tried to understand what they 
 meant, and what they were living for, has found 
 apparently the most heterogeneous testimonies, help- 
 ing him to bring out the live man who had been 
 turned into a hero or a monster, or into a mere collec-
 
 294 OX CRITICS. [xiir. 
 
 ^,ioii of dried bones, which is something worse than a 
 monster. It is not, of course, possible to prove this in 
 all cases, because people write biographies from many 
 mixed motives ; and genuine affection, which is always 
 favourable to truth, may mix with party motives, 
 which are favourable to falsehood ; but I think that 
 our age has furnished abundant examples to prove that 
 biography may be the most worthless or the most 
 protitable of all studies. And in every case where it is 
 profitable, we owe it to a resolute determination on 
 the part of the biographer not to put himself in the 
 place of his subject, or above his subject. It is, I 
 know, very difficult indeed to avoid this temptation. 
 The thouo'ht will be suo-o-ested ag^ain and again to the 
 biographer by others, and it will rise up in himself, 
 " Ought not I to be morahzing upon this or that fact 
 of the life ? Am I right if I do not express my opinion 
 about it ? " And then comes the wish to see the thing 
 just a little different from what it was — the desire, if 
 possible, to make the facts tell a tale so that they shall 
 point the moral better. The temptation is great. But 
 if we are assured that it is a temptation to do an 
 immoral and a false thing we can resist it. Now, I 
 apprehend, the desire to moralize upon the acts of our 
 fellow-creatures rather than to exhibit them as they are, 
 arises from the very same motive which leads painters 
 to put into nature what they do not find there. I 
 know nothing of Pre-Raphaelite controversies, and am 
 too stupid about art to be able to say one word on the 
 criticism which has reference to it. But if any persons 
 say that we ought to look straight at Nature, hoping 
 that in due time she will reveal her meaning to us, if 
 it is ever so slow in coming, and that in the meantime 
 we are not to anticipate her lessons, or to put any of 
 our notions or fancies into her, by way of making her 
 look prettier and more agreeable : this seems to me 
 honest and true doctrine, which, I suppose, must apply 
 to that department, because I know no other connected 
 with human life to which it does not apply. In
 
 xiil] on CKITICS. 295 
 
 biogi'aphies I am afraid that religious men are often 
 the most prone to depart from it, though they have 
 the least excuse for doing so, and the most solemn and 
 encouraging warning to do otherwise. For in the book 
 which they regard as their rule and model, there is no 
 moralizing about the lives which are given to us. 
 They contain their own moral. We profane it and 
 destroy it when, instead of seeking to bring it forth, 
 we adorn it with additions of our own, 
 
 I have spoken more than once of the danger we are 
 in of judging other times by the standard of our own, 
 and of the correction of this tendency, which lies in 
 the true criticism that seeks to see ages and men just 
 as they were. But the judging, lordly temper may take 
 another and apparently opposite direction. We may 
 utterly scorn our own time, and set up some other time 
 against it. We may fill the air with wailings about 
 the decay of all heroism, the loss of all wisdom, in that 
 century in which it is our bitter misfortune to be born. 
 This is, no doubt, a reaction against the other tendency. 
 We may often oscillate between the one and the other ; 
 and when we have settled that we will like some 
 period in the world's history better than this, we may 
 often change our opinions which it shall be, — the 
 Classical Ages, or the early Christian Ages, or the 
 Middle Aofes, or the aofe of the Reformation, It is 
 scarcely possible that we should rest in any one of 
 these; we shall probably try them all in turn. For 
 each one will show us some bright image which we 
 feel that we have need of; and then each one will turn 
 its darkened side to us and will show us deformities 
 which we have never dreamt of. How can there be 
 any end of this ? Shall we ever come at the heroic 
 period, the golden age ? No, thank God ; that is not 
 in any one of the ages, but in all of them. The good 
 men, the heroes, whenever such appeared, sought for it 
 close to them and not at a distance. And they were 
 able to see it because they were not going up into the 
 heaven or down into the deep to discover it. We
 
 296 ON CRITICS. [xm. 
 
 want a criticism which shall do justice to the time in 
 which we are born, to the men who live in it, just as 
 much as to any time gone by, — which shall do justice 
 not to its modes and fashions, which are worth just as 
 much as the modes and fashions of any other age and 
 no more ; not to its inventions, though we may rejoice 
 in them, and do all honour to the patient toil and 
 thought which has produced them ; but to that in it 
 which is most common, most human, to that which 
 does not separate us from other times but unites us to 
 them. May not our work to find out this common 
 bond of fellowship give it a higher dignity than all 
 those peculiar treasures that we think others had and 
 we have lost ? If we are driven in our weakness to 
 ask how all may be men, can we not leave the heroes 
 to the elder generations ? Is it not possible, after all, 
 that a man may be more glorious than a hero ? that to 
 be on a level with all, and to feel that the lowliest is 
 the highest, may be better than to vaunt of some great 
 champions and representatives, who make us think 
 even more highly of ourselves than of them ? 
 
 It appears to me that this may be the function of 
 that criticism which I said, in the beginning of my 
 lecture, our age was in some especial manner bound 
 to cultivate. When it takes that form, which I have 
 endeavoured to show is its only reasonable form, it 
 puts us in commerce with all generations and with all 
 human beings. It may enable us to make all their 
 possessions our own while we are most ready to ac- 
 knowledge them as theirs. The true critical discern- 
 ment which separates that which is capricious and 
 transitory from that which abides, that which belongs 
 to all from that which may be the rightful and proper 
 inheritance of some here and some there, must make 
 everyone richer. That criticism which distinguishes be- 
 tween the substance and the shadow, the reality and 
 its counterfeit, must bring us into nearer connection 
 with truth, and therefore with freedom. That criti- 
 cism which leads us to humble ourselves that we
 
 XIII.] ON CRITICS. 297 
 
 may see a beauty, and a goodness, and a glory which 
 are not ours, must be a great dehverance from the 
 frivolity and vanity which are so natural to us, and 
 which the false habit of criticism is continually fos- 
 tering. 
 
 Whether this is the style of criticism which prevails 
 most among us in the present day, whether it is this 
 which has given popularity to our periodical litera- 
 ture, whether it is this which guides the judgment of 
 our newspapers respecting books, or art, or men, I do 
 not take upon myself to decide. I am not a judge, 
 either to absolve them or to condemn them. I am not 
 afraid of being judged for not judging. But I am 
 sure, that whether it has established itself or not into 
 a rule and habit, the impulse to prefer this kind of 
 criticism to the other is gi'owing amongst us, and that 
 some of our best writers of books, if not of periodicals, 
 have done much to encourage it, and to show us excellent 
 examples of it ; and that wherever such examples are 
 presented to any class of our countrymen, especially, 
 if I may be allowed to say so, to the largest and most 
 important class of all, there is a cordial response to 
 them. I might repeat many names which it would be 
 an honour to me to speak and which you would hear 
 with respect and gratitude. I will allude to but one, 
 which in this town I could hardly pass over, and yet 
 which it is unnecessary and somewhat bold in me to 
 refer to in your presence. There was a lecture de- 
 livered between four and five years ago, — I do not 
 know whether it was in this hall or to this society, — 
 which most of you will have read and all will have heard 
 of. It was a lecture on the influence of poetry, ad- 
 dressed especially to the working classes.^ It appears 
 to have been called forth by a particularly vulgar 
 criticism upon one of the greatest poems of our day, or 
 of any day. It is itself a specimen of that best kind 
 of criticism which delights to draw forth the sense and 
 beauty of a book, and is able to do so because the heart 
 ^ Lecture by the Rev. Frederick Robertson.
 
 298 ON CRITICS. [xiii. 
 
 of the critic is in sympathy with the heart of the 
 writer. Though with much rarer opportunities than 
 you had of being acquainted with the speaker, I can 
 bring before myself the look of scorn which must have 
 been on that beautiful countenance when he de- 
 nounced the low wit of the reviewer, and that look of 
 genial, cordial appreciation which spoke of the sorrow, 
 the conflicts, and the hopes of the poet. He knows, as 
 we do not, what is the full explanation of such sorrows, 
 and the fulfilment of such hopes. But this we may 
 know, — no instance can more feelingly remind us of it, 
 — that the words which come forth out of lips that 
 have been touched with a fire from heaven spread 
 furthest, and exercise the mightiest power, when those 
 lips are closed ; that he who is severest to himself is 
 the most tolerant of others ; that there is no criticism 
 which reaches our follies and our sins like that of a 
 warm-hearted and loving man. 
 
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