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The Table -Talk of Shirley 
 

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The Table -Talk of Shirley 
 
 Reminiscences of and 
 Letters from Froude 
 Thackeray Disraeli 
 Browning Rossetti 
 Kingsley Baynes Hux- 
 ley Tyndall and Others 
 by John Skelton C.B. 
 LL.D. 
 
 " I have far more dead friends than living." 
 
 Dr John Brown. 
 
 William Blackwood <2f Sons 
 Edinburgh and London 1895 
 
 All Rights reserved 
 
ffi- 
 
 -^^ 
 
 EXPLANATORY. 
 
 CfHIS little venture does not owe its genesis or its exodus 
 to a public demand, or " the entreaties of friends." A 
 spell of indifferent health last spring {iSg4) was the origo 
 mali. Unfit for any exacting exercise of the brain during 
 the evening (my only leisure for literature, other than blue- 
 books), some half-dozen bidky bundles of old letters were 
 taken from obscure pigeon-hole and secret drawer, and when 
 the dust had been wiped off, and the cobwebs cleared, each 
 bundle was untied and its contents drilled into some sem- 
 blance of order — personal and chronological. Since Spring, 
 Death has been busy — busy as on a battle-field ; and here- 
 after from more than one of the writers no more pleasant 
 
 M706069 
 
vi EXPLANATORY. 
 
 epistles will bring, as they were wont to bring (in these 
 gloomy winter days), a glimpse of sunshine into our glen. 
 But many of the letters (though yellow with age) are yet so 
 fresh and animated, and so characteristic of the men who 
 wrote them, in one or other of their many moods (moods 
 pensive or whimsical it might be, but never unbecoming or 
 unworthy), that it seemed a pity to put them back on their 
 shelves. I may be mistaken in thinking that they disclose 
 new traits of tenderness, fidelity, or generosity ; but even if 
 I am in error, the publication can do no harm to the living 
 or to the dead ; and I am happy to find occasion to say that 
 some at least were life-long friends. So with such comment 
 as is needful and such omissions as are fitting, with kindly 
 greeting to Those who remain and a fair Goodnight 
 
 To Those who have left us, 
 
 they are now in Mr Blackwood's most convincing and per- 
 suasive type presented to the more or less indulgent reader. 
 
 S. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 i. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE .... I 
 
 II. 
 MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY . . . . .25 
 
 III. 
 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES . . 38 
 
 IV. 
 MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS . . . 60 
 
 V. 
 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI ..... 74 
 
 VI. 
 MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL ..... 95 
 
 VII. 
 MAINLY ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH . I07 
 
 VIII. 
 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE . . I 19 
 
Vlii CONTENTS. 
 
 IX. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE . . 1 67 
 
 X. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED . . .225 
 
 XL 
 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI . . . . 241 
 
 XII. 
 MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS . . . 26l 
 
 XIII. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON . . . 273 
 
 XIV. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD 
 
 DON ....... 306 
 
THE 
 
 TABLE-TALK OF SHIRLEY. 
 
 I. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 A GOOD many of our friends, English as well as 
 Scotch, know the Castle Hill. It is part and 
 parcel of the famous ridge on which Edinburgh Castle 
 stands. The castle from a military point of view has 
 ceased to be of service ; I suppose modern weapons 
 of precision could pound it into a jelly in the course 
 of a forenoon ; though as an impregnable keep it played 
 no mean part in our national history. From the artist's 
 point of view, however, it is still intact, or nearly so. 
 Rude hands have been laid upon it, no doubt ; it is no 
 longer reflected in the Nor' Loch, and huge barns have 
 been built for barracks ; but, somehow, it won't spoil. 
 Even the barns, looming dimly through the smoke- 
 
 A 
 
2 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 cloud which still hangs over " Auld Reekie," become, 
 if not too closely watched, august and venerable. The 
 site impresses its own distinction upon them. But the 
 outlook from the Castle Rock is quite as striking as 
 the rock itself; and it is possibly for this that I mainly 
 value it. The amateur architects of the War Office 
 may build unsightly barracks, but they cannot vulgarise 
 that spacious amphitheatre. The Lothian plain, and 
 the Pentlands, and the blue Firth from Inchkeith to 
 the Isle of May, and Arthur's Seat, and the Lomonds, 
 and the Ochils, and far-off Ben Ledi, are to mortal 
 weapon absolutely invulnerable. And then the busy 
 city at our feet, and the murmur of its multitudinous 
 life ! There is no such coign of vantage elsewhere ; 
 no eminence where the past and present are so closely 
 mated ; or whence a wider bird's-eye view can be had. 
 " He lives very high up in Gordon's Court," Sydney 
 Smith said of the grave Francis Horner, " and thinks 
 a good deal about mankind." But the Castle Hill is 
 quite as commanding as Gordon's Court, and even 
 better suited for the contemplation of mankind. Here, 
 then, let us rest a bit — the modest tea-kettle meantime 
 singing sedately on its hob — for such brief and occa- 
 sional discourse as befits a rambler, — here, in the upper 
 story of this old grey house, which has seen much 
 famous company in its time, and round which the 
 December twilight is closing in, as ages ago it closed 
 in round Mary Stuart during that bitter and fateful 
 December of 1566. "Ages ago;" but the primitive 
 passions do not grow out of date ; and indeed to those 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 3 
 
 who have counted their sixty winters, and seen them 
 fall away as softly and silently as the snow-flakes fall, 
 five times sixty is but the other day. " Thus we play 
 the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit 
 in the clouds and mock us." But to-day they must 
 not mock. For to-day the marriage bells are clashing 
 merrily, and the fair young bride goes forth on the 
 well-trodden road with hope in her heart and a new 
 light in her eyes. There are flowers, and wedding 
 favours, and troops of friends, and the winter sun 
 shines kindly on old and young who have been bidden 
 to the feast. 
 
 " Nor count me all to blame if I 
 Conjecture of a stiller guest, 
 Perchance, perchance, among the rest, 
 And tho' in silence, wishing joy." 
 
 I wonder sometimes if Mary Stuart, when within the 
 Castle walls, cared much, or at all, for the fair land- 
 scape which was spread out before her, as on a map. 
 The taste for the picturesque, we are now told, is 
 distinctively modern. Some highly artistic people 
 indeed appear to hold that it is not older than Mr 
 Ruskin, just as some political people appear to hold 
 that English history is not older than the Reform Bill. 
 It was the " Oxford Graduate," they tell us in effect, 
 who first opened our eyes to the fact that mountains, 
 and valleys, and waterfalls, and Swiss chalets, produce 
 
4 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 a pleasant impression on the senses. While we may 
 admit that the passion for mountaineering is of com- 
 paratively recent growth, there are passages in Hebrew 
 poetry and Greek drama which seem to show that 
 the writers were not insensible to natural beauty. I 
 am rather inclined, however, to think that about the 
 time of the Reformation, the great mountains and the 
 deep valleys between them, in which we rejoice, were 
 regarded with repugnance by cultivated people. The 
 highways, even in the level parts of Europe, were 
 indifferent, and the Alpine tracks were wellnigh im- 
 passable. So that the mountains themselves came to 
 be regarded simply as obstacles to traffic, — places which 
 honest wayfarers, lay and clerical, found unnecessary 
 and inconvenient. That, at least, was the view taken 
 by the Bishop of Ely and Lord Montagu, who were 
 sent as an embassy, by " bloody Mary," to the Pope, 
 and who visited Mary Stuart at Fontainebleau, in the 
 year 1555. They crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis. 
 " Passing over the great Mountain Cenis I was fain to 
 hire one to lead my horse up before me, and I to come 
 after him, holding by the tail, for fear of falling back- 
 wards, it was so steep to the top. There was such 
 a noise of water beating upon the rocks, and such 
 monstrous mountains to behold, of a huge height, 
 being always in danger of some stone falling upon 
 us, that it seemed rather a hell than a highway to pass 
 in." But the taste for the wilder aspects of nature 
 had begun to revive a century at least before Mr 
 Ruskin was born ; and even the poet Gray, to whom 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 5 
 
 the trim lawns of England were dear, would spend 
 his holidays among the lakes and mountains of the 
 North — just as we do. Some of the descriptive pas- 
 sages in his letters indeed might not have been quite 
 out of place in Modem Painters. He paid a visit to 
 Lord Strathmore, at Glamis Castle, during the summer 
 and autumn of 1765, where he saw something of the 
 Perthshire Highlands. Here are a few scraps from 
 a letter to Dr Wharton : " The ground now grew 
 unequal ; the hills more rocky seemed to close in upon 
 us, till the road came to the brow of a steep descent, 
 and (the sun then setting) between two woods of oak, 
 we saw far below us the river Tay come sweeping 
 along at the bottom of a precipice, at least 150 feet 
 deep, clear as glass, full to the brim, and very rapid 
 in its course. It seemed to issue out of woods thick 
 and tall, that rose on either hand, and were overhung 
 by broken rocky crags of vast height ; above them to 
 the west the tops of higher mountains appeared, on 
 which the evening clouds reposed. . . . Next day 
 we set forward to Taymouth, twenty - seven miles 
 further west ; the road winding through beautiful 
 woods, with the Tay almost always in full view to 
 the right, being here from three to four hundred feet 
 over. The Strath-Tay, from a mile to three miles or 
 more wide, covered with corn and spotted with groups 
 of people then in the midst of their harvest ; on either 
 hand a vast chain of rocky mountains, that changed 
 their face and opened something new every hundred 
 yards, as the way turned, or the clouds passed. In 
 
6 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 short, altogether it was one of the most pleasing days 
 I have passed these many years, and at every step I 
 wished for you. . . . The road is excellent, but 
 dangerous enough in conscience, the river often run- 
 ning directly under us at the bottom of a precipice 
 200 feet deep, sometimes masqued indeed by wood, 
 that finds means to grow where I could not stand ; 
 but very often quite naked and without any defence ; 
 in such places we walked for miles together, partly 
 for fear, and partly to admire the beauty of the country, 
 which the beauty of the weather set off to the greatest 
 advantage. . . . But my paper is deficient, and I 
 must say nothing of the Pass itself, the black river 
 Garry, the Blair of Athol, Mount Beni-gloe, my return 
 by another road to Dunkeld, the Hermitage, the Stra- 
 Brann, and the rumbling Brigg. In short since I saw 
 the Alps, I have seen nothing sublime till now." 
 
 Gray had been among the Alps themselves with 
 Horace Walpole in 1739, and from his description of 
 the ascent to the Grande Chartreuse we may learn 
 how he regarded them : " It is six miles to the top ; 
 the road runs winding up it, commonly not six feet 
 broad ; on one hand is the rock, with woods of pine- 
 trees hanging overhead, on the other a monstrous preci- 
 pice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls 
 a torrent, that sometimes tumbling among the frag- 
 ments of stone that have fallen from on high, and 
 sometimes precipitating itself down vast descents with 
 a noise like thunder, which is still made greater by 
 the echo from the mountains on each side, concurs to 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 7 
 
 form one of the most solemn, the most romantic and 
 the most astonishing scenes I ever beheld ; add to 
 this the strange views made by the crags and cliffs 
 on the other hand ; the cascades that in many places 
 throw themselves from the very summit down into the 
 vale and the river below ; you will conclude we had 
 no occasion to repent our pains." 
 
 All this is quite modern in a way; and yet, in 
 another way, it is a world away from us. Is it the 
 insistent note of sadness that is wanting ? Compare 
 it with Matthew Arnold's Stanzas from the Grande 
 Chartreuse : — 
 
 " Knock ; pass the wicket ! thou art come 
 To the Carthusian's world-famed home ; " 
 
 or even with this extract from an old letter by Mr 
 Ruskin, now lying before me : " I climbed the Old 
 Man yesterday in curiously sunny and sweet air — 
 staying half an hour at the top. It is two miles as the 
 bird flies from the lake shore, and 2400 feet up — which 
 means a very fair walk, and I find myself a good deal 
 better for it this morning. Only I'm always good for 
 nothing in the evenings, and I find them rather sad, 
 all alone." One cannot help feeling that the easy- 
 going comfort - loving eighteenth century had some- 
 times rather the better of us to whom " the something 
 that infects the world " is an ever-present burden — of 
 which, unlike Christian, we cannot divest ourselves. 
 
 *- 
 * 
 
8 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 We appear to have lost the taste for Prologues. 
 Yet the prologue was once considered the most 
 interesting part of the play. A prologue by Dry- 
 den drew the whole town ; it was talked of at every 
 coffee-house where the wits gathered; some of his 
 best -known lines are to be found in his prologues; 
 those, for instance, in which he indicates his preference 
 for the loyal Oxford : — 
 
 " Oxford to him a dearer name shall be 
 Than his own mother-university. 
 Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage ; 
 He chooses Athens in his riper age : " 
 
 or those in which he pays a courtly compliment to the 
 Duchess of York on her return from Scotland : — 
 
 " When factious rage to cruel exile drove 
 The Queen of Beauty and the Court of Love, 
 The Muses drooped, with their forsaken arts, 
 And the sad Cupids broke their useless darts. 
 But now the illustrious nymph returned again, 
 Brings every grace triumphant in her train." 
 
 A collection of the prologues of the last century 
 would furnish a sparkling commentary on the social 
 life of the time, and one wonders that it has not been 
 made. But fashions change, and we have now only 
 Prefaces and Prospectuses. The change is hardly to 
 be commended ; the press is more exacting and harder 
 to please than the pit ; it must have been a treat be- 
 sides to listen to the most trivial or stilted verse de- 
 claimed with charming animation by a Wofiington or a 
 Bracegirdle. We must learn, however, to be content 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 9 
 
 with what is left us, and the unspoken prelude is not to 
 be despised. The overture to a musical piece is some- 
 times more suggestive than the completed work. It is 
 an intimation of what is coming, though the promise is 
 not always fulfilled. A finer note is occasionally struck 
 at the outset than is ever afterwards " recaptured." 
 And as youth is glorified by the pleasure of anticipa- 
 tion, so the prologue to poem or romance — nay, even 
 the prospectus of a limited company — has something of 
 the same attractive uncertainty. Will the promised 
 harvest be reaped, or will it end in insolvency and 
 liquidation ? I have a note of the prologues which 
 have most impressed me since I began collecting thirty 
 years ago'; Thackeray figures in the list, as does Mr 
 Ruskin, Lord Dufferin, the author of Mark Rutherford, 
 Rudyard Kipling, and many others who have only this 
 bond in common. There are epilogues too ; but the 
 epilogue is too often the confession of failure and de- 
 feat, as indeed the preludes themselves sometimes are. 
 Here, for instance, is the first edition of Mr Ruskin's 
 Notes on his Turner drawings. The epilogue breaks off 
 abruptly — " left by Mr Ruskin in an incomplete state 
 at the time when he was taken ill," we are told ; but he 
 had been able to finish the prelude before the cloud 
 came down, and these are its closing words. Sadder 
 words I think were never written. The date and place 
 are given — " Brantwood, 12th February 1878 " : — 
 
 " Morning breaks as I write, along those Coniston 
 Fells, and the level mist, motionless and grey beneath 
 the rose of the moorlands, veils the lower woods, and 
 
IO MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 the sleeping village, and the long lawns by the lake- 
 shore. 
 
 " Oh, that some one had but told me, in my youth, 
 when all my heart seemed to be set on these colours 
 and clouds, that appear for a little while and then van- 
 ish away, how little my love of them would serve me, 
 when the silence of lawn and wood in the dews of 
 morning should be completed; and all my thoughts 
 should be of those whom, by neither, I was to meet 
 more." 
 
 The contribution of another great master of "our 
 English " to my collection is now almost as rare as the 
 books printed in Scotland three centuries ago, and 
 which for the most part have been read out of exist- 
 ence. It is the leaflet in which Mr Thackeray 
 announced that he was about to commence the publica- 
 tion of a Magazine, to be called The Cornhill. The 
 date is " Nov. i, 1859." ° nl y Thackeray could have 
 written this delightful "foreword," — in fact, it is 
 Thackeray all over. I suppose the copyright (if it 
 ever existed) has long ago expired, and that it may be 
 reprinted without fear of interdict or inhibition. How 
 characteristic is such a passage as this : — 
 
 "Our Store-House being in Cornhill, we date and 
 name our Magazine from its place of publication. We 
 might have assumed a title much more startling: for 
 example, 'The Thames on Fire' was a name sug- 
 gested ; and placarded in red letters about the city 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. II 
 
 and country, it would no doubt have excited some 
 curiosity. But, on going to London Bridge, the ex- 
 pectant rustic would have found the stream rolling 
 on its accustomed course, and would have turned 
 away angry at being hoaxed. Sensible people are 
 not to be misled by fine prospectuses and sounding 
 names : the present writer has been for five-and-twenty 
 years before the world, which has taken his measure 
 pretty accurately. We are too long acquainted to try 
 and deceive one another ; and, were I to propose any 
 such astounding feat as that above announced, I know 
 quite well how the schemer would be received, and the 
 scheme would end. 
 
 " You then, who ask what The Cornhill Magazine 
 is to be, and what sort of articles you shall supply for 
 it ? — if you were told that the Editor, known hitherto 
 only by his published writings, was in reality a great 
 reformer, philosopher, and wiseacre, about to expound 
 prodigious doctrines and truths until now unrevealed, 
 to guide and direct the peoples, to pull down the 
 existing order of things, to edify new social or political 
 structures, and, in a word, to set the Thames on Fire ; 
 if you heard such designs ascribed to him — visum 
 ieneatis ? You know I have no such pretensions : but, 
 as an author who has written long, and had the good 
 fortune to find a very great number of readers, I think 
 I am not mistaken in supposing that they give me 
 credit for experience and observation, for having lived 
 with educated people in many countries, and seen 
 the world in no small variety ; and, having heard me 
 
12 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 soliloquise, with so much kindness and favour, and 
 say my own say about life, and men and women, 
 they will not be unwilling to try me as conductor of 
 a concert, in which I trust many skilful performers 
 will take part." 
 
 Lord Dufferin has done much since he wrote his 
 Letters from High Latitudes, but he has done nothing 
 better. While, among great books of travel, it cannot 
 compare with Eothen (which is indeed a finished work 
 of art, entitled to rank with the classics of our litera- 
 ture), its fresh and brilliant gaiety is still undimmed. 
 The lines addressed To the Figurehead of the Foam, 
 with which it opens, are as nimble and graceful as 
 the little craft herself, and quite in character. This 
 " sculptured image of as sweet a face as ever lighted 
 up an English home" smooths, as Aphrodite herself 
 might have smoothed, their path before them : — 
 
 " What marvel then if — when our wearied hull 
 In some lone haven found a brief repose, 
 Rude hands, by love made delicate, would cull 
 A grateful garland for your goddess' brows ? 
 
 What man-el if their leader, too, would lay 
 
 His fragile wreath of evanescent rhyme 
 At her dear feet whose image cheered his way, 
 
 And warmed with old home thoughts the weary time ? 
 
 When as he watched that sculptured lifelike smile, 
 Through many an anxious hour of arctic gloom, 
 
 Its magic influence would half beguile 
 The bleak and barren ocean tracts to bloom — 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 1 3 
 
 With well-remembered woods, and Highland hills 
 That cluster round a castle's stately towers ; 
 
 And gleaming lawns, and glens, and murmuring rills, 
 Where Edith plays amid the summer flowers ! " 
 
 It is a tuneful and graceful prelude (with its ripple 
 
 of laughter and touch of tender trifling), and ranks 
 
 with the best. Who " Edith " may be we dare not 
 
 venture to guess, any more than we can guess to 
 
 whom Mr Rudyard Kipling addresses the dedicatory 
 
 lines : — 
 
 " The long bazar will praise — but Thou — 
 Heart of my heart, have I done well ? " 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 "Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm," 
 would have made a fit motto for Lord Dufferin — 
 the Lord Dufferin of 1857. But in the remarkable 
 books of the author of Mark Rutherford the " bloom 
 of young desire and purple light of love " have no 
 place. In them there is no room for the play of 
 animal spirits. Though this sombre and powerful 
 writer is in his own bleak and unlovely domain without 
 a peer, it is difficult to account quite satisfactorily 
 for the impression that he produces. To what is the 
 fascination of his relentless inquisition into the spirit- 
 ual ailments of unlettered nonconformity to be attrib- 
 uted ? The light that falls upon the squalid company 
 is not exactly lurid (" lurid " is rather too suggestive 
 of stage-fire, if not of the pit), but it has a gloomy 
 
14 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 intensity. There can be no doubt of the reality of 
 the conflict — a conflict as strenuous as Christian's 
 with Apollyon ; and the record is drawn with uncom- 
 promising directness and pitiless simplicity. Had 
 John Bunyan lived in our slums among free-thinkers 
 and socialists, his story might have taken some such 
 turn. The prelude to Mark Rutherford is as striking 
 as the book itself, and may be regarded, indeed, as 
 its epitome. It strikes the note which is preserved 
 throughout. 
 
 " 'There is no deed which I have done, 
 There is no love which I have won, 
 To make them for a moment grieve 
 That I this night their earth must leave.' 
 
 Thus, moaning at the break of day, 
 A man upon his death-bed lay ; 
 A moment more and all was still ; 
 The Morning Star came o'er the hill. 
 
 But when the dawn lay on his face, 
 It kindled an immortal grace ; 
 As if in death that Life were shown 
 Which lives not in the great alone. 
 
 Orion sank down in the west 
 Just as he sank into his rest ; 
 I closed in solitude his eyes, 
 And watched him till the sun's uprise." 
 
 * 
 
 Let me close these selections with one taken from 
 a bright little volume which came to me the other 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 1 5 
 
 day. It is the prelude to Miss Symonds's A Doges 
 Farm, which she was writing when her father, who 
 had been her companion in year-long wanderings by 
 Alp and Apennine, died suddenly at Rome. 
 
 To 
 
 MY FATHER, 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 
 
 " O Love, we two shall go no longer 
 To lands of summer across the sea." 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 That is all ; but it is admirably effective and touching, 
 though, of course, the prelude to The Ring and the Book 
 has not yet been matched, nor is like to be : — 
 
 " O lyric love, half angel and half bird, 
 And all a wonder and a wild desire." 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 To-day, when, for good or for evil, the account of 
 the Nineteenth Century is about closed, the century 
 of prologues and epilogues begins to look remote. 
 I am not sure that, at the bar of history, the pre- 
 eminence, the literary pre-eminence, of our own sixty 
 or seventy or eighty years will be admitted without 
 protest or challenge. I have been reading a very 
 admirable book by Mrs Oliphant, which somehow 
 neither public nor critic has adequately appreciated, 
 in which the douce and shrewd Eighteenth Century 
 gets, as I think, scant justice. But indeed Mrs 
 
l6 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 Oliphant's view is not singular ; is on the contrary 
 shared by many to whose judgment I readily defer — 
 when I agree with it. 
 
 It has been said that its poetical style and methods 
 were stilted and artificial : and it is condemned accord- 
 ingly. No ridicule can be too keen for a generation 
 which went into raptures over Pope's balanced couplets. 
 But if we regard it as an age in which the rational as 
 opposed to the romantic temper was skilfully and 
 sedulously cultivated, it seems to me that a good deal 
 may be said for the defence. The English literature 
 of the Eighteenth Century reached its highest level 
 in its prose. Hardly before the reign of good Queen 
 Anne, had Englishmen obtained a perfect mastery of 
 their mother tongue. Of course there were great prose 
 writers before her time — the prose of Jeremy Taylor 
 and Sir Thomas Browne is luminous and splendid — 
 but in the mere elementary matter of constructing 
 sentences they are often (if not as a rule) cumbrous 
 and involved. They want ease, simplicity, and direct- 
 ness. Now the prose of Swift, of Addison, and of 
 Goldsmith, is eminently easy, simple, and direct ; and 
 I do not think that we can be said to have made any 
 appreciable advance, in these respects at least, since 
 they wrote. The tracts which Mr Gladstone discharged 
 at Lord Beaconsfield are not to be compared for fin- 
 ished invective with those which Lord Bolingbroke 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 1 7 
 
 directed against Walpole. But what of its poetry ? 
 The finest poetry of Pope, it may be admitted at once, 
 is just the finest talk of the day, done into epigram- 
 matic invective and epigrammatic eulogium. It is the 
 didactic and rationalistic spirit of the time presented 
 to us in a new form — the metrical. I cannot think 
 however, that poems which, though utterly destitute 
 it may be of the true lyrical movement, yet represent 
 in a not ignoble fashion, but on the contrary with the 
 brilliant distinction of a brilliant and potent pen, the 
 great movements of a great age — its soldiers and its 
 statesmen, its philosophy, its politics, and its social 
 life — are unworthy of our admiration. On the other 
 hand, let it be frankly recognised that the substance 
 of this poetry is prose, and that it seldom or never 
 ascends into the pure heaven of the imagination. 
 That the poetical style of Wordsworth is more natural 
 and unaffected than the poetical style of Pope, may 
 be admitted even by those who doubt whether it is as 
 natural and unaffected as (let us say) the prose of 
 Swift and Goldsmith. So that the change which 
 Cowper and Burns and Wordsworth effected, by sub- 
 stituting a more direct simplicity of speech for the 
 French polish of their predecessors, does not go very 
 deep — if that were all. But the change of style was 
 only a symptom, — a symptom of a change of spirit. 
 The romantic idealism which Puritanism and the Whig 
 Revolution had crushed into country parsonages and 
 Border peels was once more to make itself felt — not 
 in Border ballads only. The nation which had been 
 
 B 
 
1 8 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 feeding itself for fifty, or sixty, or seventy years upon 
 the arid husks of Whig constitutionalism, was suddenly 
 roused by the first Pitt into the conception of a warmer 
 and more ideal patriotism. It has been said that Lord 
 Chatham was almost the only man of his time who 
 read The Faery Queen; and it would not perhaps be 
 over-fanciful to maintain, that to him and to what he 
 did the renewal of our poetical life can be not remotely 
 ascribed. But the genius of modern poetry, sole sit- 
 ting by the shores of old Romance, did not draw her 
 inspiration exclusively or even mainly from the past. 
 She was taken possession of by a fiercer spirit, which 
 gave fire to her dreams and intensity to her music. 
 She represents the modern democracy as well as the 
 medieval minstrelsy. This child of the Revolution, 
 who might have preached a Crusade, belongs to neither 
 age, or rather to both. She has the mystical aspira- 
 tions of the one and the passionate directness of the 
 other. What would the contemporaries of Pope have 
 thought of such a verse as this ? — 
 
 " This song was made to be sung at night, 
 And he who reads it in broad daylight 
 Will never read its mystery right, 
 And yet— it is childlike easy." 
 
 Of all that is here implied they knew nothing, — they 
 were absolutely ignorant of those dim and obscure 
 pathways of the spiritual life on which the light of 
 common day does not shine. Yet without its mystery 
 and its gloom, without its ideality and its romance, 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 1 9 
 
 modern poetry would cease to be characteristic. But 
 then a revolutionary gospel, such as democracy is, 
 insists upon a solemn and almost monumental sim- 
 plicity of feeling and directness of expression. A rotten 
 dynasty of kings and poets might be permitted to 
 invoke the Loves and the Graces and the Muses ; but 
 those who proclaimed that human nature was always 
 and everywhere the same, and who saw in the meanest 
 hind a man and a brother, had no patience for labori- 
 ous trifling. The tragedy of life could play itself out in 
 a hovel as in a palace ; and the characters in which it 
 was recorded should be such as all could read. From 
 these contrasted but interwoven influences none of the 
 new poets escaped. The romantic force might be 
 stronger in one, the revolutionary in another ; but 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott, as well as Byron, 
 Shelley, and Keats obeyed, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, and each in his own fashion, the inevitable 
 impulse. 
 
 They are all great names to us still, however the 
 tide of fame may ebb or flow hereafter. Mrs Oliphant 
 has said many true and admirable things about each of 
 them ; but it strikes me that she is less than just to 
 Scott and Keats. Scott became as rapidly popular as 
 Byron ; but whereas Byron's is complete and lasting, 
 " Scott's can hardly be called a genuine poetical fame." 
 Don Juan is, I admit, the most plastic, brilliant, and 
 
20 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 vigorous " criticism of life " in our language, and Sir 
 Walter certainly could not have written Don Juan. 
 In that tremendous outbreak of the cruelly wounded 
 spirit we have, unfortunately, Byron at his best, and I 
 cannot at all agree with Mrs Oliphant when she says 
 that " according to all the laws of growth and develop- 
 ment Juan should have come first and Childe Harold 
 later." Compared with the mature art and the bitterly 
 incisive insight of Don Juan, Childe Harold is abso- 
 lutely boyish ; and so also are the Giaours, and the 
 Laras, and the Corsairs, and the Parasinas who took 
 the world by storm. If Mrs Oliphant means to maintain 
 that this sickly and monotonous refrain upon a single 
 string is superior in any way to Marmion, and The Lord 
 of the Isles, and The Lady of the Lake (with their bright 
 and varied life and their high and martial music — as of 
 the sound of a trumpet), I can only say that I do not 
 agree with her. Byron like Shelley was one of the 
 distinctly revolutionary forces of the age — a mighty 
 elemental force ; and after a period of neglect we are 
 again beginning to admit that he is also one of our 
 greatest singers ; but in the placid strength and gar- 
 rulous simplicity of Sir Walter there is something 
 of the Homeric calm to which Byron, restlessly and 
 recklessly egotistical, never attained. 
 
 * 
 
 Nor do I think that Mrs Oliphant has formed any 
 quite adequate conception of the immense greatness of 
 Keats. That this apothecary's apprentice should have 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 21 
 
 given us, before he was well out of his teens, some of 
 the most absolutely faultless poems in the language — 
 faultless as a shell or a crystal — does not seem to 
 strike her as very wonderful. It is hardly too much 
 to say that not one immature line came from his pen ; 
 that his lyrical perfection of style and form has never 
 been excelled ; that the unfinished Hyperion moves on 
 in nobly sustained majestic march, until the pen is 
 dropped with an unavailing sigh, and the poet disap- 
 pears into darkness like his own dejected King of 
 Day;— 
 
 " Then with a slow incline of his broad breast, 
 Like to a diver in the pearly seas, 
 Forward he stoop'd over the airy shore, 
 And plunged all noiseless into the deep night." 
 
 Of those extraordinarily mature and finished poems 
 Mrs Oliphant remarks that they are " more preludes 
 and overtures in poetry than anything else ; " and 
 that their author is specifically " the favourite of young 
 readers." Take any stanza of the Ode to a Nightingale, 
 and the inadequacy of such an estimate will be appa- 
 rent at once. 
 
 " Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird ! 
 
 No hungry generations tread thee down ; 
 The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
 
 In ancient days by emperor and clown : 
 Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
 She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
 The same that oft-times hath 
 
 Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." 
 
22 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 That is not the sort of poetry popular with "young 
 people " only ; that is not " more a prelude or over- 
 ture than anything else ; " that is performance of 
 a kind which the most skilful and consummate art 
 in the old world or the new has never very much 
 surpassed. 
 
 Mrs Oliphant is of opinion that Shelley's work is 
 more mature than Keats's, and many critics (especially 
 at the present moment when Shelley is being raised 
 to a higher pedestal, and a copy of the original edition 
 of Adonais brings fifty guineas) will be ready to agree 
 with her. In one sense the observation is just enough. 
 Shelley, I fancy, had written his best before he died. 
 His nature was passionate, not contemplative ; and 
 such poetry as he was capable of ripens early. But 
 there were still vast possibilities for Keats. Had Keats 
 been permitted to live on, it is almost certain that 
 he would have gained steadier constructive force, and 
 a mellower and more meditative insight. Hyperion, 
 the last and greatest of the " astonishing remnants of 
 his mind," is the best proof that his poetical powers 
 were still growing. Though each is perfect in its way, 
 there is an immense distance between his earlier and 
 his later work, — the famous colour picture in The Eve of 
 St Agnes, for instance, being to my mind mere surface 
 work when compared with the pure intellectual majesty 
 of Hyperion. Shelley, on the other hand, however long 
 he had lived, would have changed little. He was too 
 fervid, too eager, too oratorical, too passionate, too 
 unstable, to learn how to utilise his gifts. Whether 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 23 
 
 his poetry might have gained greater definiteness and 
 a more distinctly human interest, — whether he could 
 by-and-by have descended from the too rare air which 
 he habitually breathed to the common earth and the 
 common people — is also open to grave doubt ; for the 
 vagueness and obscurity of this " beautiful but ineffec- 
 tual angel " were constitutional, and he would probably 
 have gone on to the end " beating in the void his 
 luminous wings in vain," as Matthew Arnold has said 
 with equal truth and beauty. 
 
 The emotional wave which, so to speak, bore these 
 men on its crest has not yet entirely spent itself. Most 
 of the writers at least whose names occur in this book 
 could not have been what they were but for its in- 
 fluence. Even Thackeray would not have been the 
 Thackeray we know had he been a contemporary of 
 Esmond. The Romantic School in a measure still 
 maintains its ascendency ; how long it may do so, who 
 can tell ? The younger men have really more in com- 
 mon with Pope than with Wordsworth. Belinda is 
 resuming her airy empire, and honest Peter Bell is 
 dismissed, if not with derision, yet with a pretty dis- 
 tinct intimation that he had better try his hand at 
 steady work. The rising generation is falling away 
 from the prophets ; we are gently and daintily (for of 
 course anything like violence is bad form) putting 
 Carlyle and Ruskin aside. An age of Epigram and 
 
24 MAINLY ABOUT THE PROLOGUE. 
 
 Table-talk, of Little Comedies and Ballades in Blue 
 China, is before us. The modish Cupid of the day 
 will shrill his tinsel shaft, and the rustle of Belinda's 
 brocaded petticoat sound sweeter in courtly ears than 
 song of thrush or skylark. 
 
25 
 
 II. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 
 
 I DO not know to what cause it is due ; possibly to 
 the almost morbid reticence which his family have 
 thought fit to preserve ; 1 but it seems to me that the 
 current ideas about Thackeray require to be revised. 
 The notion that he was an utterly heartless worldling, 
 curt, cynical, unsympathetic, finding his chief joy in 
 eating and drinking and the assiduous cultivation of 
 social " swells," must be dismissed. But a false im- 
 pression once formed has a malignant vitality which 
 time does not impair. I should say that Thackeray 
 was constitutionally a shy man, and that his shyness 
 accounts for a good many traits (foibles, if you like) 
 which have been gravely rebuked by superior moralists. 
 For myself, I can only testify that on the rare occa- 
 sions when I met him in the snuggery at Onslow 
 Square, or elsewhere, I found him one of the gentlest 
 
 1 Silence since partly broken in Chapters from some Memoirs, by 
 Miss Thackeray (that was) herself; but we want more, much more, and 
 from the same hand. 
 
26 MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 
 
 of satirists. At the same time he was extremely out- 
 spoken ; he had a childish inability to conceal, and, 
 like a child, he sometimes repeated what was not in- 
 tended for repetition. In an old Diary I find it 
 written : " I found him sitting in his den at the top of 
 his house in Onslow Square. He has suffered much 
 and long, and the traces of suffering are visible in 
 his face. I fancy that even in his brightest moods it 
 is possible to detect these traces, sometimes in the 
 eyes, more frequently about the grave curves of the 
 mouth. Of course I was ushered into his den — of 
 course he told me how and from what he was suffering. 
 This perfect unreserve, this almost infantile openness 
 of nature, is characteristic of Thackeray. He is willing 
 that his whole life should be laid bare and looked 
 through. The clear, transparent simplicity of the boy 
 at the Charterhouse never deserts him. In fact, there 
 is much of the boy about him, in spite of the grey hairs 
 and the spectacles. On this very day he wore an old 
 shooting - coat much too short for him ; it fitted the 
 giant as a boy's jacket would fit an ordinary mortal. 
 Yet, with all his boyishness of manner, there is some- 
 thing leonine about Thackeray." "And there came 
 up a lion out of Judah ! " Charlotte Bronte said when 
 she first saw Lawrence's picture. So we know now ; 
 and to the mass of silvery hair — the lion's mane — the 
 impression was possibly due. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 2J 
 
 After Lord Macaulay died, leaving his prescribed 
 task unfinished, I had vaguely thought of writing a 
 history of the reign of Anne, for which, in connection 
 more especially with the political career of Henry St 
 John, I had accumulated a mass of material — rare 
 Jacobite pamphlets and the like. Then an intimation, 
 more or less authoritative in form, appeared in a 
 literary journal, that Thackeray proposed to under- 
 take the work. Of course, if the work was to be done 
 at all, the author of Esmond was the right and the only 
 man to do it ; and I wrote to him inquiring if the 
 report was true. I was barely known to him at the 
 time (it was the year the Cornhill was started, when 
 his spare minutes were few and precious), and yet a 
 courteous reply, in which he apologised for his tardi- 
 ness, was penned within a day or two : — 
 
 "36 Onslow Square, S.W., Dec. 14, i860. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — I ask pardon for delaying to answer 
 your note. Frequent illness, constant business, and 
 want of system send my letters often deplorably into 
 arrear, and I lose even more time in finding them 
 than in answering them. 
 
 " Queen Anne has long been my ambition ; but she 
 will take many a long year's labour, and I can't ask 
 any other writer to delay on my account. At the 
 beginning of this year I had prepared an announce- 
 ment stating that I was engaged on that history ; but 
 kept it back, as it was necessary that I should pursue 
 my old trade of novelist for some time yet to come. 
 
28 MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 
 
 Meanwhile her image stands before St Paul's for all 
 the world to look at, and who knows but some one 
 else may be beforehand with both of us and sketch her 
 off while we are only laying the palette ? 
 
 "Is all your spare time given to Fraser, and have 
 you any subject which you think would suit us at 
 Cornhill ? I should be glad to have any suggestions 
 from you. — Truly yours, W. M. Thackeray." 
 
 It was through the author of Rab and his Friends 
 that I came to know Thackeray. " Doctor John," 
 for whom Thackeray had a warm regard, gave me 
 an introduction and pressed me to call on him — which 
 I did. I lunched with him, I remember, at the Gar- 
 rick, and he had other hospitalities in prospect. But 
 I was obliged unexpectedly to leave London ; and the 
 notion that a friend of " Dr John " had not been more 
 abundantly entertained gave him really acute dis- 
 quietude — expressed thereafter on more than one occa- 
 sion with almost humorous insistence. Dallas, among 
 others, was commissioned to apologise. " My dear 
 Shirley," Dallas wrote, "just read your Fraser article. 
 ... It is not to say this, however, that I write, but 
 to convey a message, or a quasi -message from Thack- 
 eray. I was dining with him at Greenwich and talking 
 about Edinburgh. He asked me if I knew you. I 
 owned the soft impeachment, and he wanted your 
 address, fancying you were still in town. When I 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 20. 
 
 told him you were gone he could scarcely believe it, 
 and seemed cut up. Several times he recurred to the 
 subject, and lamented his not having had you at his 
 house in such a way that, although he sent no direct 
 message, I fancy he wished his feeling on the matter 
 to be reported to you and to John Brown. I am in 
 hopes that, in these days of Carlton Club bribery, 
 you have been committing some awful political crime, 
 and we shall soon again have you in London to answer 
 for your sins before a committee of the House of Com- 
 mons. — Ever yours truly, E. S. Dallas." 
 
 There was no one of his standing so quick to ap- 
 preciate what he held to be a really sincere and kindly 
 greeting as Thackeray. He was essentially a humble- 
 minded man who was rather astonished at the fuss 
 the world was beginning to make about him. I had 
 made the most casual allusion to him in a Fraser 
 article ; here, indeed, are the very words : " Men, 
 therefore, whose writings owe their fascination to the 
 ' wise sad valour ' which lies at the root of all true 
 humour, and to the mellow autumnal hue which falls 
 like the golden lights of harvest aslant the page ; the 
 moralists who take Vanitas! for their theme — Mon- 
 taigne, Charles Lamb, William Thackeray — appear to 
 gain a new force and faculty as they grow old. That 
 tender sagacity and gentleness of touch which charm 
 us so is long in being learned ; 'tis a second nature, 
 
30 MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 
 
 scarcely quite formed until the head is grey and the 
 brow furrowed," — and I had no thought that they 
 would meet his eye. But within a week of their pub- 
 lication there came a letter to " Dr John " — the ever 
 dear "J. B." — in which grateful allusion was made to 
 the half-dozen lines. Even now one wonders how he 
 came to light upon them, or how they should have 
 made the most fleeting impression on his mind. One 
 cannot help contrasting the modesty of the author of 
 Vanity Fair with the " gude conceit o' themselves " 
 which the New Generation cultivate so successfully. 
 There is no tribute, however florid, which our Homeric 
 Smith, or our Horatian Brown, or our Shakesperian 
 Jones, or our Miltonic Robinson would consider unduly 
 laudatory. 
 
 The Cornhill Magazine, 
 Smith, Elder, & Co. 
 
 "36 Onslow Square. 
 
 "My dear J. B., — I see Mr Skelton has been 
 saying kind things about me in Fraser. Is he 
 full of work ? Could he do something for 
 If you know his address will you send him this line 
 on from yours, W. M. T." 
 
 I was unable to comply with the request at the time ; 
 by-and-by came another invitation still more urgent, to 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 3 1 
 
 which response was duly made. [I took advantage of 
 the opportunity thus offered to introduce to the readers of 
 the Cornliill a volume of translations recently published 
 — surely among the most perfect in our language — a 
 volume of which the title-page ran somewhat as follows 
 — The Early Italian Poets in the Original Metres, together 
 with Dante's Vita Nuova. Translated by D. G. Rossetti. 
 London : Smith, Elder, and Co., 1861.] 
 
 " Wednesday, 36 Onslow Square. 
 " My dear Mr Skelton, — Many thanks to Shirley. 
 I like his writing so much, that I long to know whether 
 we can't have some of it in the C. H. M. ? About that 
 Winter article ? Will Winter stay if you don't hold it 
 by the beard ? If you have it, do send it to Cornhill, 
 and write a line to my house warning, — Yours very 
 faithfully, W. M. Thackeray." 
 
 How the friendship between Thackeray and John 
 Brown took its rise has been told by the latter ; the 
 whole incident, from the purchase of the silver "Punch" 
 with eighty half-crowns collected from Edinburgh ad- 
 mirers until it was duly packed and sent off with the 
 inscription, — 
 
 GULIELMO MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 ARMA VIRUMQUE 
 
 GRATI NECNON GRATVE EDINENSES 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 D. D. D. 
 
32 MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 
 
 has been charmingly narrated ; the narrative is printed 
 as Dr Brown's contribution to a volume of essays and 
 reviews by the late Henry Lancaster, where also will 
 be found Thackeray's fine and characteristic reply. 
 I am afraid that Mr Lancaster's clever essays were 
 not so widely read as they deserved to be ; and many 
 who know their Thackeray well are ignorant that such 
 a letter exists. So I venture to reprint it here, for their 
 benefit. " The arms and the man arrived in safety 
 yesterday, and I am glad to know the names of two 
 of the eighty Edinburgh friends who have taken such 
 a kind method of showing their good-will towards me. 
 If you are grati I am gratior. Such tokens of regard 
 and sympathy are very precious to a writer like myself, 
 who have some difficulty still in making people under- 
 stand what you have been good enough to find out 
 in Edinburgh, that under the mask satirical there 
 walks about a sentimental gentleman who means not 
 unkindly to any mortal person. ... I assure you these 
 tokens of what I can't help acknowledging as popu- 
 larity make me humble as well as grateful, and make 
 me feel an almost awful sense of the responsibility 
 which falls upon a man in such a station. Is it de- 
 served or undeserved ? Who is this that sets up to 
 preach to mankind, and to laugh at many things which 
 men reverence ? I hope I may be able to tell the truth 
 always, and to see it aright, according to the eyes which 
 God Almighty gives me." 
 
 * 
 # 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 33 
 
 The volume from which this letter is taken fails 
 to convey (let me say in passing) any adequate im- 
 pression of the inextinguishable vitality, the force and 
 vivacity, of Henry Lancaster. He ought to have 
 survived us all ; and yet he died early. Death lays 
 his hand on the most unlikely subjects ; why were 
 such athletes as Tulloch and Lancaster taken when 
 so many withered old fogies are left ? Jowett con- 
 tributed the Preface ; but it hardly did justice to the 
 " Rabelaisian Lancaster," as Dr John used to call 
 him. Yet this story is told very prettily. " The 
 last time I saw him was two years ago at Loch 
 Kennard. His two little girls, children of seven and 
 nine, went with us to the station, where we arrived 
 half an hour before the train started. This gave 
 occasion to a childish remark made by one of them 
 which greatly pleased him. The elder child had said, 
 ' It was better to be too early than too late.' But 
 the younger one thought that ' It was better to be 
 too late than too early, because if you loved your 
 friend very much you went back and saw him again.' " 
 A really delightful remark ; yet one is afraid that the 
 little lady may have learnt in the interval that to go 
 back after you are once fairly off (the boxes all packed, 
 and the farewells all said) is a doubtful experiment. 
 
 When over the tea-table one turns to old letters one 
 is apt to grow garrulous, if not egotistic. To be grace- 
 
 c 
 
34 MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 
 
 fully, or even innocently egotistic, is a gift which 
 belongs to few ; I could count on my fingers those 
 who during the last three centuries have succeeded. 
 So I shall only add that on the 23d of December 1863, 
 I called at the fine new house in Kensington Gardens. 
 The man who opened the door told me that his master 
 was in his bedroom, " lying down," or something to 
 that effect ; nothing seriously amiss, only he could 
 not see visitors that afternoon. " I would come 
 another day," I said, and left. But that other visit 
 was not to be paid ; for next morning I heard that 
 he was dead. He had been a sufferer for years ; but 
 he treated his sufferings with a touch of humorous 
 exaggeration that was apt to mislead ; and his friends 
 had looked forward with confidence to an Indian 
 summer. Possibly with due vigilance he need not 
 have died at fifty-one. He knew " Syme's method 
 and high reputation," he wrote me ; but he shrank 
 from the cruel knife, however deftly handled. "We 
 shall see," he added, writing on the last day of 1861. 
 Perhaps the old year was dying while he wrote ; for 
 there is a brief postscript which seems to belong to 
 1862. " What a sad New Year with war to open it ! " 
 In these last months I fancy he was taking a silent 
 farewell of much. "And oh, the delightful passages, 
 the dear, the brief, the for ever remembered ! " he 
 exclaimed in almost his latest writing. The January 
 Comhill was on the bookstalls the day he died ; Dallas 
 was deputed to ask Charles Dickens to write a few 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 35 
 
 pages for the February number ; and the tribute from 
 the great rival, " the old comrade and brother in arms," 
 was happily expressed. But when I think of Thackeray, 
 the lines I associate with him are taken from his own 
 poetry ; these from The White Squall — 
 
 "And when its force expended, 
 The harmless storm was ended, 
 And as the sunrise splendid 
 
 Came blushing o'er the sea, 
 I thought as day was breaking, 
 My little girls were waking, 
 And smiling, and making 
 
 A prayer at home for me ; ; ' 
 
 and these from The End of the Play — 
 
 " Come wealth or want, come good or ill, 
 
 Let young and old accept their part, 
 And bow before the Awful Will, 
 
 And bear it with an honest heart. 
 Who misses or who wins the prize, 
 
 Go, lose or conquer as you can ; 
 But if you fail, or if you rise, 
 
 Be each, pray God, a gentleman." 
 
 These were the texts on which in his works and in 
 his life this " cynic " discoursed ; and he, however 
 famous or however humble, who leaves a legacy of love 
 and gentleness behind him, cannot be said to have lived 
 in vain. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
36 MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. 
 
 Glancing through the Roundabout Papers, in the early 
 numbers of The Comhill (since this Table-Talk was in 
 type), I came upon a few lines — perfectly finished as 
 flower or shell, but tender, gracious, solemn as twilight 
 — which are perhaps even more characteristic of the 
 writer's habitual mood towards the end than either 
 of the passages I have quoted. I cannot resist the 
 temptation to copy this unconsidered masterpiece of a 
 great literary artist : — 
 
 " It is night now : and here is home. Gathered 
 under the quiet roof, elders and children lie alike at 
 rest. In the midst of a great peace and calm, the 
 stars look out from the heavens. The silence is 
 peopled with the past ; sorrowful remorses for sins 
 and shortcomings — memories of passionate joys and 
 griefs, rise out of their graves, both now alike calm 
 and sad. Eyes, as I shut mine, look at me, that 
 have long ceased to shine. The town and the fair 
 landscape sleep under the starlight, wreathed in the 
 autumn mists. Twinkling among the houses a light 
 keeps watch here and there, in what may be a sick 
 chamber or two. The clock tolls sweetly in the silent 
 air. Here is night and rest. An awful sense of thanks 
 makes the heart swell, and the head bow, as I pass 
 to my room through the silent house, and feel as 
 though a hushed blessing were upon it." 
 
 The ease, the simplicity, the sincerity of these lines 
 are, to my mind, wonderful. The art is perfect (if 
 it be art, it is the art which nature makes); the cadence 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THACKERAY. tf 
 
 dwells upon the ear. I know not where, in contem- 
 porary writing, they can be matched, except perhaps 
 by the closing lines of Tristram of Lyonesse : — 
 
 " But peace they have that none may gain who live, 
 And rest about them that no love can give ; 
 And over them, while death and life shall be, 
 The light and sound and darkness of the sea." 
 
38 
 
 III. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT 
 THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 OF all men I have known, Thomas Spencer Baynes 
 was (I am tempted to use a word frequently 
 misused) the most saintly. I knew him intimately for 
 nearly forty years ; so I had probably better oppor- 
 tunities for forming a judgment than any man now 
 living ; and I can say with confidence that his friend- 
 ship was one of the "mercies" for which I am most 
 grateful ; and for which I never cease to return thanks. 
 To have known him was not a liberal education only — 
 it was that, and much more. After being with him a 
 little, one came to comprehend what self-sacrifice and 
 renunciation meant. Not that he was an ascetic ; far 
 from it ; he had a keen enjoyment of life, and a hearty 
 welcome for whatever tended to sweeten and beautify 
 it ; but his greatest happiness, at whatever apparent 
 temporary cost to himself, was to serve a friend. In 
 his pure idealism, in his eager quest after the true and 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 39 
 
 the good, in the absence of all self-seeking, he was the 
 Galahad of our society. 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 Baynes and Dallas were in the early fifties (and long 
 afterwards) bosom friends : but no friends could be 
 more unlike. One cannot look back now on Dallas's 
 meteoric career without recognising that his was one 
 of the cases in which fine natural gifts have been reck- 
 lessly and foolishly squandered. Baynes, on the other 
 hand, was one of the most scrupulous and chivalrous 
 of men. He was never weary in welldoing — in true 
 sympathy, in unaffected kindness. He was very keen, 
 satirical, intellectually incisive ; quite a man of affairs, 
 and accustomed to mix with all sorts and conditions of 
 men — newspaper editors, literary ladies, stolid farmers, 
 college dons ; but he was one of those rare characters 
 which, in the best sense, are without guile. He was 
 not rich (not rich even as Dallas was — and Dallas was 
 often in deep waters), but he was vigilantly honest and 
 exact, and never owed any man a penny. He was all 
 his life an invalid ; he had a weak heart and only half 
 a lung ; he knew that he might die at any moment ; 
 but his spirit was so intrepid, so indomitable, that he 
 never lost his habitual cheerfulness, but looked at the 
 dread shadow that haunted him with an eye that kept 
 a pleasant — I might say, a humorous — twinkle to the 
 last. He was really a considerable, if not a great, 
 metaphysician ; he had a rarely catholic taste in 
 
40 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 letters ; and his critical apprehension was singularly 
 subtle. But he was unduly modest ; while he admired 
 his friends, and praised them far more than they de- 
 served (and yet his enthusiasm was perfectly genuine), 
 he made little of his own accomplishments, and kept 
 himself habitually in the background. A nobler char- 
 acter in all ways it has not been my lot to meet in this 
 world — the simplest, the gentlest, the manliest — the 
 one in which self had least place. Those who knew 
 him as I knew him know what "moral beauty" 
 means, and are the better for the knowledge. 
 
 A selection from his writings, to which a too brief 
 memoir of his life, by Mr Lewis Campbell, is prefixed, 
 has been quite lately published by the Longmans. It 
 does not appear to me that the selection has been en- 
 tirely fortunate. What has become of the bright and 
 animated sketch of Sir William Hamilton which ap- 
 peared in the volume of Edinburgh Essays ? What of 
 the subtle and ingenious essay on Shelley's poetry 
 which was published in the Edinburgh Review, and is 
 constantly referred to by Shelley experts as a con- 
 tribution of permanent worth to the Shelley literature ? 
 What of the witty papers with which "Juniper Agate" 
 enlivened the Edinburgh Guardian ? The Shakespeare 
 studies are good in their way ; very good ; but they 
 fail to convey any adequate impression of the various 
 gifts of an all-accomplished man. The Shelley text is 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 4 1 
 
 notoriously corrupt ; we have such astounding mis- 
 prints as "The blue ^Egean girls,'''' for "The blue 
 /Egean girds " ; and Baynes's suggested readings were 
 dictated by sound judgment and taste, and the finest 
 critical discrimination. 
 
 When I first knew Baynes (about 1850, it must have 
 been), he was assistant to Sir William Hamilton, and 
 the Port Royal Logic, and The New Analytic, had 
 already secured reputation for him in philosophical 
 circles. The fame of Edinburgh as a school of meta- 
 physic and the belles lettres was then at its zenith ; and 
 to Sir William Hamilton, " Christopher North," and 
 William Edmondstoune Aytoun, the University mainly 
 owed its more than European distinction. At all 
 events, Wilson, Hamilton, and Aytoun were the three 
 most potent personalities of our college life. Wilson 
 almost to the end was a grand athletic figure ; in those 
 days, when though age had crept upon him, the old 
 man eloquent had lost none of his fire, one used to 
 think of Mrs Browning's Homer : — 
 
 " Homer with the broad suspense 
 Of thund'rous brows, and lips intense 
 With garrulous God-innocence ;" 
 
 but Sir William Hamilton, before I ever saw him, had 
 been stricken by paralysis. The massive brow and 
 the calmly observant eye were clouded ; the articula- 
 
42 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 tion was defective and laborious ; but he struggled 
 bravely on ; and the moral effect on the students of 
 that shattered body sustained by an indomitable will 
 was immense. Aytoun was cast in a lighter mould ; 
 but his plain face was bright with humour ; and his 
 wit, his badinage, his fine taste, his common-sense, 
 his admirable lucidity, did us all a world of good. 
 Bombastic pretence or inflated rhetoric had no chance 
 with the author of Glenmutchkin and the Fairshon. 
 Yet — a poet himself — he liked to encourage any spark 
 of imagination there might be among us ; and the 
 weekly exercises he set us tried our metal. The Edin- 
 burgh rhetoric class-room in the 'forties and 'fifties 
 might have been a school of the sophists. We were 
 generally invited to write on some classical theme — 
 Leonidas at Thermopylae, the speech of Aristides to 
 the Athenian people, Dionysius and Damocles, Glad- 
 iators in the Roman arena, and suchlike. The worst 
 was that the best of these imaginative diversions were 
 generally read to the class ; the honour was great no 
 doubt, but it was somewhat trying to the nerves, as 
 there was always a good deal of rather boisterous 
 comment, in the way of cheers and laughter, from a 
 crowd of students. Among all these men Baynes 
 held his own — modestly, manfully — as friend and 
 colleague. 
 
 Besides his work at college, Baynes had undertaken 
 to edit the Edinburgh Guardian, a literary, artistic, 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 43 
 
 and political paper which had been started about 1850, 
 and in which much good work was done by men who 
 afterwards attained considerable eminence. Among 
 others, I remember E. S. Dallas, Sidney Dobell, 
 Alexander Smith, Alexander Nicolson, Patrick Alex- 
 ander ; x and it was in the Guardian that a friend of 
 my own, under the nom-de-plumc of " Shirley," made 
 his first literary venture. But the goodly company 
 broke up about 1855. Baynes went to his native 
 Somersetshire, Dallas to London, some of us (in poor 
 David Gray's words) to " other kingdoms of a sweeter 
 air," on the shores of the Mediterranean ; and for 
 ten years thereafter Baynes was my most constant 
 correspondent. His letters were real letters ; some- 
 times of many pages ; capital letters ; bright, animated, 
 intensely sympathetic, picturesquely descriptive. I 
 came upon a bundle of them the other day (they had 
 somehow fallen out of sight, and were only accidentally 
 recovered), and I read them over after all these years 
 with an interest that never flagged ; for they convey 
 a wonderfully vivid impression of a time which is 
 divided from the present day by a great gulf. No 
 letters of any note are given in the Memoir; and 
 yet, to his early friends, Baynes's most characteristic 
 and personal convictions found expression in his let- 
 ters, and in his letters only. They ought, for these 
 
 1 All these college contemporaries (except Professor Caldenvood) are 
 gone, — Nicolson and Veitch the last. For many a day among the Border 
 dales and the Dandie Dinmonts the memory of Veitch will be cherished ; 
 and they have called one of the Coolins after Nicolson, — Sgurr Alasdair, — 
 a monument more enduring than brass. 
 
44 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 and other reasons, to be preserved in some permanent 
 form (possibly in an enlarged edition of the Memoir) ; 
 meantime a few selections may be made for the bene- 
 fit of the audience I am privileged to address. The 
 earliest that I quote is dated August 1854, when 
 Baynes, living in Edinburgh, was still editing the 
 Guardian. Most of the others are from the South ; 
 from Rumhill House, near Taunton, which the family 
 to whom it belonged had occupied since the close of 
 last century ; thereafter from London, where, with 
 Walker and Pigott, 1 he conducted the Daily News 
 up to the time of his return to Scotland — a not alto- 
 gether congenial occupation which he was glad to 
 exchange for the lighter labours of a professor. 
 
 * 
 
 "23 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, August 14, 1854. 
 "There is no news. How can there be here after 
 the 12th, when street-porters are the population, and 
 shopkeepers represent society ? Yes, by the way, 
 there is some news — Firmilian was published last 
 week. . . . You will find some capital passages and 
 scenes in it. Perhaps the chief fault is that it is too 
 good, too poetical. Some of the lines are remarkably 
 fine — those about the moon, for instance ; and what 
 
 1 Edward Frederick Smyth-Figott was appointed Examiner of Plays in 
 1874, and died 23d February 1S95, — one of Baynes's warmest and most 
 cherished friends. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 45 
 
 could be more happy in expressing the action than 
 
 these : — 
 
 ' Fling bullying Mars, 
 With all his weight of armour on his back, 
 Down with a clatter on the heavenly floor.' 
 
 The rattling fall is given in the very accent of the line. 
 However, here is the book, and you will enjoy it for 
 yourself. 
 
 " By the way, I must not forget when you come to 
 town on your way to the West — I have a mask of 
 Shakespeare's face that I want to show you. It is 
 taken in plaster from the bust in Stratford Church, 
 which Chantrey believed to have been executed from 
 a cast taken after death. However this may be, it 
 is to me self-identifying — the authentic Shakespeare. 
 In the busts and engravings we see about there are, 
 you know, two types of the Shakespeare head — one 
 with a broad, square, somewhat heavy brow, and an 
 expression almost coarse ; the other with a high, 
 smooth oval brow, mild features, and a Grecian, god- 
 like calm upon the face — no strong individuality ex- 
 pressed, but infinite possibilities — the calm mirror of 
 all individuality — the universal poet. This is given in 
 the Stratford mask more perfectly than I have seen 
 it in any engraving. I have no place to hang it up 
 here, and, lying on the side-table, I can hardly tell 
 you the strange effect it has in different lights. Above 
 all, at midnight — more than once, when on raising 
 my head from a book, my eye has casually fallen upon 
 it lying pale and still in partial shadow, the calm face 
 
46 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 has become as it were a presence, and I have been 
 filled with a momentary awe in the consciousness that 
 I was not alone. Positively the only ghost I have 
 ever seen. You must see it too. . . . All are well, 
 all heartily glad to hear of your arrival, and all ear- 
 nestly hoping that, since you have come back, ' Shirley ' 
 has returned too. None more earnestly, I assure you, 
 my dear S., than yours very faithfully, 
 
 "Thos. S. Baynes." 
 
 * 
 * 
 
 " Rumhill House [near Taunton], Feb. 2, 1855. 
 "Now good-night; I will write again — I will not 
 say when, but very soon, and tell you what I am 
 thinking about and doing. I have not the sea here, 
 as you have in the North, but I have all the glory 
 of the midnight heaven — the unveiled moon, the clear 
 blue depths of the frosty sky, and the winter stars 
 glittering like gems amidst the leafless boughs. And 
 I am continually struck afresh with the refined beauty 
 and power of the winter landscape." 
 
 "Rumhill House, Feb. 26, 1855. 
 
 " I confess I felt a certain malicious satisfaction in 
 hearing that the influenza had got hold of you at last, 
 for you were always in a severe state of riotous health 
 that was offensive, not to say absolutely insulting, to 
 a dyspeptic and bilious-minded man. Yet to do you 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 47 
 
 justice I must say you bore the visitation of severe 
 and long-continued health with as much modesty and 
 resignation as most men — 
 
 ' Wearing all that weight 
 Of haleness lightly like a flower.' 
 
 " With regard to myself — my occupation and way 
 of life — I hardly know what to say. I found a pleasant 
 kind of busy idleness for some days in unpacking and 
 arranging some boxes of old books which were sent 
 on here. Though I knew in general that they were 
 books collected while I was cracking stones on the 
 old scholastic road, yet it was so long since I had 
 seen them that I was quite aghast at the mass of 
 medieval lumber heaped up in dusty piles before me. 
 Vanitas vaniiatiim ! Yet it was not all vanity either ; 
 it was useful and instructive to get a good peep into 
 that strange medieval monastic life, into the world 
 of the school and the cloister. Every epoch of real 
 mental activity is worth looking into, and among many 
 epochs that of scholasticism is not the least interest- 
 ing. It was, in fact, the feudal system established in 
 the domain of thought, the scholastic doctors being 
 the Great Barons, with Aristotle at their head as the 
 Suzerain, or supreme lord. . . . But I have cut out 
 for myself a wider course of investigation — the critical 
 study of Early English history, language, and litera- 
 ture, which, with health for the work, I hope to pursue 
 and make something of, having already made a begin- 
 ning in the Anglo-Saxon period." 
 
48 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 "Rumhill House, Taunton, March 14, 1855. 
 
 " I send you a couple of newspapers containing the 
 Alfred and Guthorm paper. ... I have found it in- 
 teresting to get an introduction to the old Chronicles, 
 and through them an insight into the old Saxon way 
 of life ; all the more so as definite traces of this life 
 yet exist in the neighbourhood round — all through West 
 Somerset, in fact. 
 
 "That display at the Opera was most indecent — 
 quite the savage side of civilised life ; and, perhaps, 
 of all the barbarities connected with the war, the most 
 barbarous. 1 It surely is not seemly to exult in the 
 presence of death, even though the victim stricken be 
 a foe, and an imperial one. For even while the 
 crowned head that was a name of terror sinks, the 
 King of Terrors stands before us vaster and more 
 terrible from this conspicuous instance of his asserted 
 power. And in the death of the Emperor there was 
 a desperate calmness, a vast and terrible desolation 
 of soul, which one can scarcely think of without an 
 emotion of sadness and awe." 
 
 "London, May 25, 1S55. 
 " Dallas was not at home ; and, though I called again, 
 and he was twice here yesterday, we missed each other 
 till the evening, when I met him at the Standard 
 Theatre, where Miss Glyn is now acting. I was late, 
 but saw her in Taming the Shrew, as " Catherine," 
 
 1 The Czar died suddenly during the Crimean war. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 49 
 
 which she acted with great spirit, throwing into the 
 character so much of thoroughly human — nay, woman- 
 like — petulance and contradiction as to make it essen- 
 tially credible, which in the comedy it scarcely is. 
 
 " I went in for half an hour to the Royal Academy 
 yesterday, but, as I was almost too tired to stand, and 
 did not stay any time, I shall say nothing about it — 
 save only this, that the face and form of that woman 
 on the stairs of the burning house are — if not, as I am 
 disposed to think, beyond all — quite equal to the best 
 that Millais has ever done, not forgetting the look of 
 unutterable love and life-deep yearning in the Hugue- 
 nots. And those children — ah me ! — I can hardly bear 
 to think of it yet ; the agony is too near, too intense, 
 too awful, for present rejoicing, even at the deliverance ; 
 and that smile on the young mother's face has struggled 
 up from such depths of speechless pain, and expresses 
 such a sudden ecstasy of utter gratitude and over- 
 mastering joy, that it quite unmans you to look at it. 
 It is the most intense and pathetic utterance of pure 
 human love I have ever met with." 
 
 "Rumhill House, June 16, 1855. 
 " I got here a fortnight past on Monday, having 
 spent four days in London, and a few hours at Oxford 
 on my way down. Nothing has happened since I ar- 
 rived here, except storm and sunshine, sheep-shearing, 
 and local agricultural shows, with fat pigs awful to 
 behold, and lean after - dinner speeches mournful to 
 listen to. 
 
 D 
 
50 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 " I have still unaltered my first and fresh impression 
 of the only picture at the Academy I went to see or 
 really looked at — ' The Rescue.' That impression I 
 shall not lose, and those faces are to me as much 
 realities — real, living, human facts — as any faces I ever 
 looked on almost. There is a good deal about that 
 large picture of Leighton's x that I like, something of 
 the unconscious poetry of Italian, and especially of 
 Florentine, life — at least as I fancy it. There is a lazy 
 splendour about the men, a dreamy light and moving 
 grace about the maidens, that has in it nothing akin to 
 sluggishness, but is rather the perfect bloom of a free 
 and finely tempered life. Then, too, everything around 
 is in keeping ; — the blue sky, the flowers, the tall trees 
 rising in the distance over the wall, and suggesting 
 shady walks and stately terraces, the fair street, the 
 rich dresses, and the music, harmonise perfectly with 
 the poetic ease of the people — people already instinct 
 with the grace and genius that soon made their city for 
 beauty the capital of the world — " Firenze la bella." 
 Of course, I am aware that I am utterly unintelligible, 
 but that is, you know, the great characteristic of all 
 art-criticism, the privilege and prerogative of all art- 
 critics. You have seen Ruskin's Notes, by the by ? 
 They at least are plain and tolerably pungent ; but his 
 condemnation of Maclise's picture is most just." 
 
 1 Cimabue's Madonna carried in procession through the streets of 
 Florence. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 5 I 
 
 "Rumhill House, Oct. 15, 1855. 
 " I suppose you know all about Dallas — his marriage 
 and literary engagement. He is likely to succeed on 
 The Times, I should fancy. Those articles of his have 
 great spirit, breadth, and dash about them. Have you 
 been able to move at all in the Working Man's College, 
 of which we talked a little ? I should be most glad to 
 hear that something could be done in that direction. 
 I feel more and more how important, how imperative 
 some such movement is." 
 
 "Rumhill House, Nov. 22, 1855. 
 " I saw, when in London, a good deal of Masson, 
 something of Pigott (editor of The Leader), as also of 
 Lewes, who is now living at Richmond, not in very 
 strong health, but in good spirits at the completion of 
 Goethe's Life, on which he has been occupied so long. 
 He proposes to write a Biographical History of Science, 
 after the fashion of his ditto of Philosophy. The tale 
 might very well be told so, for the history of science is 
 far more, even than that of philosophy, the history 
 of individual men and their discoveries." 
 
 "Rumhill, May 3, 1856. 
 "We have birds in these parts in whose doings I 
 take some little interest, especially at this season ; but 
 their character and ways are not half so wild and varied, 
 so rich and picturesque, so thoughtful, yet so courageous 
 and so gay — in a word, not half so striking and indi- 
 
52 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 vidual as those sailor and sea - shore birds you talk 
 about. Ours at best are mere barn-door fowls in com- 
 parison. I am glad you quote Hiawatha. It is per- 
 fect. Most marvellous, what music he brings out of 
 that dull, straitened, unused, monotonous metre. Full 
 of fire too, simple, fresh and vast as the woods, the 
 rivers, and the mountains it reflects." 
 
 " Rumhill, July 16, 1856. 
 
 " While in London I went down to Cambridge for 
 three days on a visit to Brimley, who is in wretched 
 health, but fighting bravely on, and doing his work in 
 The Spectator every week as usual. I saw Frank Rus- 
 sell several times, and one night met at his rooms Dr 
 Carlyle (the translator of Dante), who looks and talks 
 wonderfully like his brother, only just a little milder." 
 
 [Towards the close of 1856 Baynes removed to Lon- 
 don, where he remained, as assistant editor of the Daily 
 News, till appointed, in 1864, to the Chair of Logic at 
 St Andrews.] 
 
 " 18 Princes Street, Hanover Square, New Year's Eve, 1856. 
 
 " It is the last night of the old year, and I cannot 
 let it pass without asking you to forgive my too long 
 silence, and receive from me the good wishes of the 
 season — a happy new year. I send it speeding across 
 the Border in the silence and darkness of this cloudy 
 night, hardly knowing where it may find you, whether 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SrENCER BAYNES. S3 
 
 watching the old year out in Edinburgh, or afar on the 
 Northern Coast, 
 
 " Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung ship-wrecking roar, 
 Now to the scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the 
 wave." 
 
 But wherever to-night you may be smoking the pipe of 
 peace, I say, in shaking hands over the grave of 1856, 
 God bless you." 
 
 " 18 Princes Street, Hanover Square, Feb. 5, 1S57. 
 " I am very glad you like the essay on Sir William 
 [in the Edinburgh Essays], Smith's essay is delightful, 
 and shows poetic power sufficient to crush all the Z's 
 in the world. His prose is quite peculiar for its con- 
 densed poetic strength. That essay of Andrew Wil- 
 son's is very striking — too obviously Carlyleish, but 
 containing capital stuff notwithstanding. Only he 
 ought to have included Satan among the Infant i Per- 
 duti, as he certainly made a powerful attempt (if we 
 may believe Milton and others) to reconstruct the 
 world on an imaginative basis. St Thomas Aquinas' 
 earnest prayer for his restoration would have come in 
 well, too." 
 
 "98 Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, June 12, 1857. 
 
 " Dallas is mad with Mrs Gaskell, and will hear no 
 
 good of her. So he thought you praised her too 
 
 highly. He has reviewed the life for Blackwood, and I 
 
 suppose it will appear next month. Mrs G. does seem 
 
54 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 to have made rather a mess of it in that story about 
 
 , but her friends say it is all true, notwithstanding 
 
 the public contradiction. 
 
 " I met Maurice the other day, and Mrs B. Stowe, 
 and heard a long talk between them on the drama, 
 which Mrs S. seems strongly disposed to revive — on 
 Christian principles. Only a day or two ago in look- 
 ing over some papers I met with the note I received 
 when with you last year from poor Brimley, in which 
 he speaks so calmly, yet so despondingly, about his 
 health. He died last week, you know. This was to 
 be expected at any time, and I knew he was worse ; 
 still it came like a shock. It was no surprise to him. 
 For a long time he had worked on at his post in the 
 immediate presence of death, waiting calmly amidst 
 pain and toil for the moment of release and rest. This 
 week Jerrold is gone, after only two or three days' ill- 
 ness — a most sincere and noble-hearted man, whose 
 loss will be sorely felt. So the days pass and the tale 
 is told." 
 
 "Owens' College, Manchester, July 19, 1S60. 
 
 " I will send you a copy of the Somersetshire Dialect 
 as soon as I get my number. Many thanks for your 
 inquiries after a Scotchman that knows his own tongue. 
 We can't resist the inevitable, but it does seem a pity 
 that the old expressive and picturesque Lowland tongue 
 
 should be dying out so fast. How is dear me, 
 
 what is his name ? — the smallest of men and of advo- 
 cates, the distracted and most rapid of speakers, the 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 55 
 
 subtle, discriminating, analytic — you know who I 
 mean, the name has escaped me and won't come back 
 in time." 1 
 
 " 16 Wilton Place, Regent's Park, Dec. 24, i860. 
 " Nine years ago my sister, with whom I had grown 
 up, died. How earnestly we look into the darkness, 
 and ache over the mystery of death, and how vainly. 
 We can only trust in " the dear might of Him that 
 walked the wave." Love is the only link that binds us 
 to those who are gone, the only link that binds us to 
 those who remain. Surely it is the spiritual world, the 
 abiding kingdom of heaven not far from any one of us. 
 There is the verse of an old hymn, often sung at home, 
 which runs in my head, and seems rudely to embody 
 this truth — 
 
 " The Church on earth and all the dead 
 But one communion make ; 
 All join in Christ their living Head, 
 And of His life partake." 
 
 " It is Christmas Eve, and I am here alone in my 
 room. I am not much given to days and seasons, 
 but there is something hallowed and gracious in the 
 time, and it is good to be alone and fill an evening 
 hour with thoughts of the absent. There is none I 
 think of with truer, tenderer regard than yourself. 
 Let me send you, dear S., across the frozen land 
 lying white beneath the stars, the best wishes for 
 the new year." 
 
 1 Can this refer to my old friend Lord K — n — y? 
 
$6 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 " 1 6 Wilton Place, Nov. 9, 1S61. 
 
 " We have been taking holiday for rather more than 
 a month, part of the time on the Continent, in Den- 
 mark, and a day and a half at Elsinore, where we 
 visited the old castle and the traditional scenery 
 connected with Hamlet. Amongst others we went 
 to see the 'grave of Hamlet,' which the old man in 
 attendance informed us had been recently made ' for 
 the convenience of visitors.' The scenery in the island 
 of Zealand is very like that of Scotland — large woods, 
 bare uplands, and extensive inland lochs." 
 
 " 16 Wilton Place, June 15, 1864. 
 
 " I had not heard the sad news of Ferrier's death, 
 and though it might at any moment during the last 
 six months have been looked for, it took me by sur- 
 prise and was a painful shock. . . . He had talked 
 of the South of England. He has taken a far quieter, 
 a much shorter journey, and is better off than he 
 could have been on any of our mortal shores. One 
 of the noblest and most pure -hearted men I ever 
 knew, a fine etherial intelligence, with a most gallant, 
 tender, and courageous spirit. Hawthorne, too, has 
 just gone ; slept the peaceful sleep of the just and 
 true ; done with the veil of time and the mystery of 
 incarnation." 
 
 It was in the autumn of this year that Baynes went 
 to St Andrews, — where he was greatly beloved by 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 57 
 
 young and old, where he did much excellent work, 
 and where his memory is still cherished. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 Principal Tulloch died in the spring of 1886 ; and 
 the latest letters that I had from Baynes related to 
 the Memoir of the Principal, which he had asked 
 me to write for the Encyclopedia Britannica. (Baynes 
 was editor of the last edition of that exhaustive and 
 monumental work — a work which brought him into 
 pleasant editorial relations with all our best writers, 
 from Swinburne to Huxley.) 
 
 "St Andrews, %th Sept. 1886. 
 " I have been rather exercised in mind as to the 
 notice of our dear friend Tulloch for the Encyclopedia. 
 At first I had thought of attempting it myself, but 
 I have virtually relinquished this ; and you naturally 
 occur to me as one of his most intimate lifelong 
 friends, who would be able to do justice to his 
 character, position, and especially to his historical 
 and literary labours. I daresay, if you needed any 
 help with regard to the Principal's ecclesiastical posi- 
 tion and church work, Story would gladly give it. 
 Mrs Oliphant, as you know, is writing the Principal's 
 life, and she will be in possession of all the needful 
 materials, and would supply you with any facts you 
 might wish to use. . . . The Water-hens are old 
 friends of mine, and the moral (or rather morals) 
 
58 MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 
 
 you draw from their simple history is most salutary 
 and seasonable. As the years increase upon me, I 
 love more and more this quieter kind of literature, 
 sweetened and enlarged by direct contact with nature 
 and natural influences." 
 
 "University, St Andrews, 2zd Sept. 18S6. 
 
 " By all means take a week or two to consider the 
 matter. I am delighted to think there is a prospect 
 of your undertaking the work. What you say of the 
 difficulty of sketching the Principal's character is most 
 true. The charm of a personality so large and vital, 
 so strong and tender, so manly, and yet so exquisitely 
 sympathetic and humane, is not easily conveyed to 
 others who never saw his face, or heard his voice, or 
 felt his noble presence." 
 
 Baynes passed through Edinburgh in the spring 
 of 1887, when I saw him and persuaded him to write 
 the Memoir himself. But it was not to be. Three 
 weeks after we parted the news came that he had 
 died suddenly in the night. His life for long had 
 hung by a thread ; he constantly realised that at any 
 moment he might be called away ; and now it seemed 
 to those of us who had known him best that death 
 had only made his communion with the unseen world 
 somewhat closer. But, as I have indicated, he was 
 no speculative recluse ; he liked to mix with his 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. 59 
 
 fellows ; he was keenly interested in politics ; his 
 appreciation of excellence of any kind, especially of 
 a joke, was prompt and decisive ; and he combined 
 an almost feminine delicacy of sympathy with the most 
 perfect manliness, and (where principle was involved) 
 a courage as resolute as it was modest and unde- 
 monstrative. 
 
6o 
 
 IV. 
 MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 WE have been blown away from our perch on 
 the hillside. The yellow leaves are careering 
 wildly before the November blast ; mists hang about 
 Benledi and Benvenue, and even the Lomonds are 
 invisible ; it is time for us to retreat into some more 
 sheltered haven, and fortunately for us such a haven 
 is at hand. Here, by the burnside, where the water- 
 hens are waiting for their crusts, and with ivy-mantled 
 rocks on either hand to shut the winter out, shall we 
 abide until the spring returns. 
 
 Anything but unanimity prevails, I believe, among 
 the people who make books as to the most propitious 
 season of the year for composing. There are some 
 men and women who work best in summer, whose 
 ideas unfold with the leaves, and ripen with the straw- 
 berries. Their imaginations are nipped by the frost ; 
 
MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 6l 
 
 whereas when the thermometer is at 70° in the shade, 
 when the July breeze sighs softly through the half- 
 closed Venetian blind, and the shimmer of the sea 
 through the open window is as a glimpse of Paradise, 
 they shake off the intellectual torpor of the dark months, 
 and grow busy as bees in the sunshine. But there 
 are other writers to whom the long winter evenings 
 are very precious. The keen nor'-easter, which heaps 
 the snow round the doorways and hushes the tumult 
 of the streets, braces their minds as it braces their 
 bodies, stimulating their industry and sharpening their 
 wits. Such people, indeed, are good for nothing in 
 the way of intellectual work after the middle of March. 
 With the first balmy breath of spring they throw aside 
 their pens. The spirit of the gipsy takes possession 
 of them, and thenceforth, till the days draw in and 
 the leaves begin to yellow, they expend a vast amount 
 of energy in going to and fro upon the earth. Some- 
 thing, to be sure, can be urged on behalf of the literary 
 vagabond. Is it not shameful to waste the priceless 
 summer days among musty books ? " Better than all 
 treasures that in books are found " is the fresh morning 
 air upon the hillside or the pregnant silence of evening 
 among the woods. The moods of Nature are incal- 
 culable ; age cannot wither her nor custom stale her 
 infinite variety; and we shall have to bid her a final 
 adieu long before we have exhausted her surprises. 
 This, I suppose, is substantially what the poet meant 
 when he declared that Nature never did betray the 
 heart that loved her. But though the love of Nature, 
 
62 MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 when assiduously cultivated, is the most enduring of 
 passions, yet, like other divinities, male and female, 
 she resents a divided allegiance, and unless summer 
 after summer we keep our hand in (as they say at 
 golf) she is apt to disown us as we grow old. So 
 that, for my part, I agree with those who maintain 
 that for a steady spell of literary work the dead season 
 of the year, when the leaves, and the squirrels, and the 
 dormice are asleep, and the spirit of life has retreated 
 to its innermost sanctuary, is unquestionably the best. 
 Whatever is done in the dog-days is light, fugitive, 
 ephemeral — -pieces volantes, as they say in France. 
 
 I once ventured to prefer a plea for Winter — winter 
 in the country — on which a trenchant critic observed 
 that winter in the country was all very well when you 
 lived within hail of the town, and could see your 
 friends daily to enlarge upon the charms of solitude. 
 Cowper, in a sly, humorous aside, had long ago made 
 a similar reply : — 
 
 " How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude — 
 But grant me still a friend in my retreat, 
 Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet." 
 
 And it must be allowed that there is a certain aptness 
 in the retort. The same delightful poet, however, has 
 elsewhere indicated the precise terms on which the 
 deep seclusion of the country in winter may be truly 
 and thoroughly enjoyed : — 
 
 " 'Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat 
 To peep at such a world — to see the stir 
 Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd." 
 
MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 6$ 
 
 I am willing to admit, therefore, that the student 
 should select a winter hermitage to which the noise 
 of the city may come to him across the fields. The 
 fierce pressure of the crowd is certainly unwholesome, 
 but a man who lives all the year round among hedges 
 and ditches is apt to grow mouldy. A little of both 
 is best. If you spend your afternoon at your club 
 in town, you will enjoy all the more the walk home 
 beneath the leafless trees in the starlight, when the 
 owls are hooting from the ivy ; will listen with even 
 keener zest to the narrative of winter adventure from 
 eager lips — how a woodcock has been flushed in the 
 copse, how a flock of wild-duck have pitched in the 
 burn, how the water-hens have fraternised with the 
 poultry, how the kingfisher and the water-ousels have 
 been angling below the bridge, how the footprints of an 
 otter have been seen upon the snow. 
 
 I must frankly own that there are seasons when I 
 regard with possibly unchristian envy a sportsman and 
 naturalist like Mr Harvie-Brown, who is watching wild 
 creatures, the fercz natures of our moors and lochs, all 
 day long and all the year round. Yet possibly my own 
 brief peep into Arcadia, while the dew is still on the 
 grass, is by reason of its brevity an even finer joy. 
 There is only a single field between us and a great 
 city ; but our ivy-clad glen is still populous with the 
 shy tenantry of the woods, and as I stroll up the 
 
64 MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 avenue on my way to the day's work I hear the wild- 
 fowl splashing in the burn, and bright eyes look at me 
 through the leaves. I do not allude merely to winter 
 days, when the frost is so hard that woodcock and 
 mallard are driven from inland copses and marshes to 
 the open springs beside the sea. Woodcock and 
 mallard are our rare occasional visitors ; but we have 
 lots of poor relations who never leave us. When I 
 came down this morning I found the water-hens wait- 
 ing below the dining-room window for their crusts. 
 Robins and torn -tits, and blackbirds and thrushes, 
 gathered round them while they ate, and appropriated, 
 not without controversy, the unconsidered fragments. 
 On the bridge below the dam a pair of keenly alert 
 water-ousels (their clean white bibs tucked under their 
 chins) were bowing and bobbing as we passed. A little 
 farther on a majestic heron rose stealthily from the 
 margin of the stream ; and close to the lodge a couple 
 of squirrels at work among the acorns (what a year for 
 acorns it has been !) seemed loath to be disturbed at 
 their morning meal. 
 
 Happy the man who can find solace and refreshment 
 in this innocent company ! But with the fever of the 
 nineteenth century in our blood, how can you or I pose 
 as an Izaak Walton or a Gilbert White ? "I too have 
 been in Arcadia," you will say. Very good ; but 
 (between ourselves) did you not find it just a trifle 
 dull? 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 65 
 
 The touch of cynical candour in the last sentence 
 is, let us hope, partly or wholly affected ; at any rate, I 
 am bound to confess that I have hitherto found my own 
 Gall inula chloropus a most agreeable and entertaining 
 companion. This green hollow between the hills is, as 
 Mr Courthope might say, "The Paradise of Birds." 
 Our wood indeed is hardly so thick and tangled as that 
 which enclosed the Sleeping Beauty ; but, within the 
 charmed circle, all these shy, sensitive, bright -eyed, 
 flighty creatures feel that they are safe. Safe at least 
 from the " auld enemy"; but whitrets, and water-rats, 
 and hooded crows, and tabbies in whom the feline in- 
 stinct is quite too keen for tranquil domesticity, cannot 
 be excluded from a merely earthly Paradise. (One might 
 as well try to exclude original sin from a theological 
 treatise.) These however are the invariable incidents 
 of bird-life, — mysteries which may be explained here- 
 after, but which, in the meantime, the mild-eyed Mavis 
 and the philosophical Robin are prepared to accept as 
 inevitable. We don't worry ourselves because we live 
 in a world where there are hurricanes and thunder- 
 storms and waterspouts and Radicals and railway 
 accidents; and habit is as strong with birds as with 
 men. 
 
 My own particular pair of water-hens are, as I have 
 indicated, excellent company. The more we see of 
 " our poor relations," the better we like them, — the 
 intrinsic and inherent superiority of the unfeathered 
 biped becoming, as time passes, more and more pro- 
 blematical. Wherein consists the coveted pre-emin- 
 
 E 
 
66 MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 ence ? We live together in families — so do the water- 
 hens. We feed and educate our offspring — so do the 
 water-hens. We vegetate in winter and migrate in 
 summer for change of air — so do the water-hens. It is 
 tolerably clear that the social and domestic economy of 
 the coot is not inferior to our own. Then they have 
 as sharp an ear, as quick an eye, as a Red Indian ; and 
 it may be said of them as of the swallow, that " where 
 they most breed and haunt, I have observed the air is 
 delicate." They are shy and sensitive, and reticent 
 when it is judicious to be so ; but, in defence of their 
 little ones, they are as brave as the bravest warriors, 
 and will attack a hawk or a rat without counting the 
 cost. They have, it is true (so far as we know), no 
 parliamentary debates, or ecclesiastical controversies, or 
 late dinners — no telegraph, no telephone ; but then, 
 odd as it appears to us, they don't seem to miss them, 
 or to feel that life without the evening paper, and a 
 pretty matrimonial scandal in the Divorce Court, is 
 vapid and colourless. In so far, therefore, as the chief 
 ends of rational existence are involved, I really fear 
 that our claim for precedence must be dismissed. To 
 obey the laws of health ; to rise at daybreak and go to 
 bed with the sun ; never to over-eat or over-drink or 
 over-sleep themselves ; but to lead in all respects a 
 sober, vigilant, righteous, and cleanly life to the best 
 of their ability — which of us can say as much ? A 
 water-hen two days old is incomparably cleverer than 
 a year-old infant ; before they are a month out of the 
 shell they can wash and dress themselves ; and at an 
 
MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 6j 
 
 age when the human baby is absolutely helpless, these 
 water - babies are keenly alive to the stratagems of 
 fraudulent magpies and felonious rats,' — have begun 
 in short to adapt themselves with marvellous readiness 
 to the world in which they find themselves. 
 
 Our water-hens (the male, I suppose, strictly speak- 
 ing, should be the water - cock) began their house- 
 keeping in April. We had some lovely days during 
 the month, and they took advantage of the fine weather. 
 Their architectural education has been rather neglected; 
 they have little of that delicate sense of colour and 
 proportion which the wren and the linnet manifest ; 
 but they know exactly what they want, and they work 
 with a will. If they are inclined to be somewhat more 
 fussy and excited over their work than is absolutely 
 necessary, it is the way of the world ; and in the 
 spring-time the flood of new life in the veins needs 
 to be worked off somehow ; and this is as good a way 
 as any. The nest is built under the great Portugal 
 laurel across the burn (where the ferns have been 
 splendid this year), and you might see the cock any 
 morning tugging frantically at the tough leaves of 
 the iris, or racing up and down the bank with great 
 bits of stick trailing behind him. Their round tower 
 (it is round as an O) rises rapidly until it is a foot 
 or two from the ground ; then on the summit they 
 spread a soft bed of moss and fern-leaves, where the 
 spotted eggs are laid. The birds at that season come 
 up to the window for their accustomed crumbs with 
 a preoccupied air, — they say as plainly as possible, 
 
68 MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 — " We are so furiously busy that we have really no 
 time to eat." The cock condescends to aid the hen 
 in the process of incubation, and is (be it said in 
 passing) a model husband and father from the first. 
 One or other is never long absent ; but when both are 
 away the eggs are deftly hidden. The nest, though 
 visible enough, is not calculated to excite the curiosity 
 of the passing tramp ; its very roughness is in its 
 favour ; any spate might have deposited that tangled 
 mass of rotten twig and withered sedge. During the 
 last day or two before the great event comes off the 
 birds are rarely visible, and for a day or two afterwards 
 the cock only appears for the matutinal crust, which 
 he carries along with him, soaking it in the water as 
 he crosses, so that it may be soft and pulpy for the 
 tender young bills of the little chicks who have 
 not yet quitted their cradle. These seven or eight 
 hair)'' little balls are eager, however, to try the water, 
 and one by one they scramble out of the nest, to 
 which they never return. There are few prettier sights 
 in this bad world than these tiny creatures gathered 
 round their mother, when, having plucked a mouthful 
 of the water-weed which they love, she holds it aloft 
 over the eager little heads. How daintily they peck 
 the dainty morsel from her bill ! When quite young 
 the water-hen has a thoroughly aristocratic air, a Lady 
 Clara Vere de Vere tone of high breeding and delicate 
 upbringing : most young creatures have indeed ; the 
 glories of the descent from aboriginal royalties not 
 being as yet obscured by plebeian surroundings and 
 
MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 69 
 
 vulgar cares. The old bird herself quivers with ex- 
 citement ; she jerks her head, she flirts her tail ; it 
 is a St Vitus' dance, in which the movement, though 
 characteristically abrupt and nervous, is not ungraceful. 
 During this time the cock is constantly on the watch ; 
 for an ugly lot of vermin are about — hawks, hooded 
 crows, weasels, magpies, — and the little mites are juicy 
 mouthfuls. One day we saw him engage a great grey- 
 brown rat ; he went at him in a fury of passion, and 
 routed him ignominiously. A bird, in a panic of parental 
 anxiety, becomes a formidable antagonist ; the flapping 
 pinions, the strong beak and claws, do wonderful exe- 
 cution. But unhappily his unwearied vigilance is 
 rewarded with only moderate success. Night by night 
 the covey grows smaller ; we hear through the open 
 window in the summer darkness an occasional chirp of 
 fright from the other side of the burn — a weak, in- 
 effectual appeal ; and then, as Hamlet says, " the rest 
 is silence." Next morning another member of the 
 little breakfast party is absent, and in the end not more 
 than two or three attain maturity. 
 
 But the old birds have little leisure for the indul- 
 gence of grief. Before the brown feathers of the first 
 brood are grown the hen is again hard at work, a new 
 nestful of eggs is ready to hatch, another lot of black 
 hairy mites are taking to the water. Then comes 
 an unexpected and altogether singular denouement — the 
 prettiest scene of all. The survivors of the first brood 
 become the nurses and foster-mothers of the second ! 
 They sit beside them ; they follow them about ; they 
 
yo MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 fetch them food ; they build new nests for them in the 
 sedge (these birds, young and old, have a passion for 
 nest-building) ; they are altogether as jealous and care- 
 ful of their comfort as the parents themselves could be. 
 This premature development of the maternal instinct 
 leads to all kinds of unusual combinations and beauti- 
 ful surprises. It is like a picture by John Leech or 
 Thackeray, — Mary Anne, aged five, with the baby in 
 her arms, out for a walk. 
 
 One poor little brat of the second brood was obvi- 
 ously regarded with special tenderness by its nurse. 
 When it was about a fortnight old it had somehow 
 hurt its leg. It had been bitten by a rat possibly ; 
 anyhow, it could only limp painfully after the rest, and 
 clearly did not thrive. A fine wealth of affection was 
 lavished upon the tiny invalid. The parents, to do them 
 justice, did not neglect it ; on the contrary, so far as 
 appeared, they were quite as fond of it as of the others; 
 but they were already making ready for a third family, 
 and divided duties naturally distracted their attention. 
 But the close friendship between the little fellow and 
 his big brother or sister was really touching. They 
 were constantly together ; they slept in the same nest 
 — a new one, which the elder bird had constructed 
 among the long grasses on the near bank ; if the 
 wounded chick moved away ever so little, the other 
 took alarm, and was forthwith at its side. But though 
 the leg seemed to mend a bit, so that the little thing 
 could swim quite deftly at last, it did not grow like the 
 rest. Had it gone to the hospital, the doctors, I dare 
 
MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 7 1 
 
 say, would have made it out to be a case of blood- 
 poisoning — the large category to which all diseases that 
 do not admit of easy definition are at present referred. 
 A rat's bite is an ugly wound, and even such a com- 
 plete course of hydropathic treatment as a water-hen 
 must be able to command may fail to effect a cure. 
 By-and-by the nurse went away on her travels — as they 
 all do sooner or later. Her little charge had disap- 
 peared (or died?) the day before she left us, and we had 
 a fancy — I suppose it was only a fancy — that she had 
 gone to seek the truant. Sunt lacrymcz rerum — to such 
 a case of dumb devotion, of dimly recognised loss, Virgil 
 might have applied the never-to-be-forgotten words. 
 
 I need not pursue this true history further. But, 
 at the risk of repeating in substance what I have 
 said before, I venture to add one other sentence. 
 When I consider the really beautiful traits of char- 
 acter in these birds, I am absolutely filled with amaze- 
 ment when I find persons of no particular distinction 
 talking with supercilious condescension of " the lower 
 animals." The lower animals, indeed ! Where will 
 we find sweeter manners or purer laws than in these 
 unlettered communities ? They rebuke our pride of 
 station, our Pharisaic assumption of superiority, as, 
 with apostolic energy, it had been rebuked before. 
 " I have not found such faith, no, not in Israel." 
 I do not pretend, of course, that our feathered friends 
 are faultless. Even the "lower animals," though 
 controlled by natural piety and guided by inevitable 
 instinct, are not perfect. The water-cocks, especially, 
 
72 MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 are by nature jealous and irritable, while, during the 
 courting season, it must be frankly admitted, they 
 fight like demons. They are, besides, extremely con- 
 servative, and have the dimmest and most confused 
 notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The theory 
 of "ransom" is not one that commends itself to their 
 intelligence. The cock who intrudes himself into the 
 territory which his rival has acquired by usage or 
 prescription fares badly. They are so exclusive, in- 
 deed, that even their own young, within a month or 
 two of birth, are turned into the wide world to shift 
 for themselves. Water-birds, as a rule, do not divide 
 their forces ; but the coot is an exception. That the 
 old birds " throw themselves on their backs and strike 
 each other cruelly with their claws," is, let us hope, 
 a vulgar calumny ; but, as I have said, I am not an 
 out-and-out or indiscriminate partisan ; I am content 
 to maintain only that the moor-hen (as the Borderers 
 call him) has many intrinsically charming and winning 
 ways. Funnier young things than these black, hairy 
 little trots (about the size of a moderate-sized mouse), 
 with their big bills and their big feet, are not to be 
 met with anywhere ; and to see a group of all ages 
 gathered on a mud-bank in mid-stream, sending the 
 water over their heads in jets of spray, or preening 
 their feathers after a swim, is to gain a glimpse of 
 simple domestic felicity which the matrimonial ex- 
 periences of mere men and women sometimes fail 
 
 to furnish. 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
MAINLY ABOUT OUR POOR RELATIONS. 73 
 
 But what of the " Moral " ? I remember when, on 
 a similar occasion, I ventured to moralise a little after 
 the manner of Wordsworth, being taken to task by 
 our most brilliant man of science. Nature never did 
 betray the heart that loved her. " An egregious mistake," 
 he replied. "Why, Nature is the most arrant jilt." 
 Nor did Moral No. 2 fare any better. " I wish," he 
 said, "that I could accept your Moral No. 2; but 
 there is amazingly little evidence of ' reverential care 
 for unoffending creatures,' in the arrangements of 
 Nature that I can discover. If our ears were sharp 
 enough to hear all the cries of pain that are uttered 
 on the earth by men and beasts, we should be deafened 
 by one continuous scream ! And yet the wealth of 
 superfluous loveliness in the world condemns pessim- 
 ism. It's a hopeless riddle." So we won't, if you 
 please, have any Moral to-day. 
 
74 
 
 V. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 THE publication of Mr William Bell Scott's rem- 
 iniscence of his contemporaries has been the 
 occasion of much painful, and more or less indignant, 
 comment. Into the more general controversy I do not 
 desire to enter ; it is being fought out elsewhere ; and 
 the living are well able to take care of themselves. 
 But another sufferer — Dante Gabriel Rossetti — is 
 dead ; and as I knew him intimately during the years 
 to which Mr Bell Scott specially alludes, I may be 
 permitted to record, as briefly as may be but to the 
 best of my recollection, the facts on which a con- 
 siderable superstructure of misunderstanding and mis- 
 representation, if not of absolute calumny, has been 
 raised. The passages to which attention has been 
 directed need not be quoted here. There are many 
 details of which, of course, I am ignorant, and in 
 regard to which, I presume, his nearest relative is 
 now the only competent authority. I believe that 
 Mr William Rossetti is scrupulously within the mark 
 
MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 75 
 
 when he observes in a studiously restrained and 
 temperate letter that Mr Bell Scott's statements are 
 "unkind, unhandsome, inaccurate, and practically 
 incorrect and misleading." But in respect of my 
 own intimacy with a poet and painter of rare if 
 unequal powers, I am entitled and possibly bound to 
 say that the general impressions conveyed by the 
 reminiscences — viz., that Dante's temper was jealous 
 and ungenerous, as well as moody and uncertain, and 
 that he resorted to illegitimate methods to advertise 
 himself and his works, are ludicrously and grotesquely 
 unjust. 
 
 It is now many years since I made Rossetti's ac- 
 quaintance. In the spring of 1859 I went with tne 
 late Alexander Sellar to Oxford, and after a forenoon 
 in the company of two illustrious professors (who 
 continue to "pipe as though they would never grow 
 old"), they took me to see the hall of the Union 
 Debating Society, which had then been newly decor- 
 ated by certain members of the Pre-Raphaelite brother- 
 hood. The frescoes (if they were frescoes, but I have 
 since been told that they were drawings in distemper) 
 have long since mouldered away ; then they were 
 vivid and splendid — fresh from brush and pencil. 
 Rossetti's contribution was by far the most striking; 
 and for moral force and spiritual impressiveness I don't 
 think he ever afterwards did anything much better. 
 He had taken for his subject that vision of Guinevere 
 
y6 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 which arrests Lancelot in his quest for the San Grail ; 
 and the face of the queen was simply wonderful. 
 
 Next morning I went to London to stay with Dallas 
 of The Times, and it turned out that he had already 
 met the artist, who, except to a select circle, was 
 then quite unknown. But it was clear that the man 
 who had drawn that unforgettable Guinevere must 
 be a man worth knowing ; and in the course of four- 
 and-twenty hours — high up in an airy studio above 
 Blackfriars Bridge — I had been introduced to him, 
 and to the works on which he was engaged. 
 
 Rossetti's figure was not imposing ; — short, squat, 
 bull-doggish, he belonged to the Cavour type ; but 
 the sallow face was massive and powerful. The 
 impression of solidity is somehow toned down in 
 Watts' portrait, and the face is thinner and more 
 worn than it was when I knew him. Sleepless nights 
 and protracted pain may possibly have changed him 
 in later years, and made the ideal Rossetti more mani- 
 fest. Except for the tranquil, meditative, ruminating 
 eye (one thought of the ox - eyed Juno) there was 
 nothing ideal about him then ; he was intensely 
 Italian indeed ; but it was the sleek and well - fed 
 citizen of Milan or Genoa that he recalled — not the 
 slim romantic hero of Verdi or Donizetti. For several 
 years thereafter, detained in London by Scotch Appeal 
 Cases and other business, I saw much of him. I 
 
MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. JJ 
 
 would call for him in the afternoon when the House 
 of Lords had risen, and we would ramble about the 
 river until it was time to dine at some homely restaur- 
 ant in the City ; and then, if we did not go to the 
 theatre, we would knock up Dallas in Hanover Square 
 for a rubber — Rossetti liked a rubber, though he was 
 a poor player, and rather addicted to abstruse specu- 
 lations on the reasons which had induced him to play 
 the wrong card — and finish the evening with whisky- 
 and-soda and poetry over the fire. 
 
 Rossetti, as I have said, was in the early sixties 
 little known either as painter or poet outside the circle 
 of his friends. Yet some of his very finest work had 
 been finished years before. The Pre - Raphaelite 
 brethren were then regarded in many quarters with 
 unreasoning hostility ; and Rossetti, who was very 
 sensitive to ridicule, had sedulously shunned publicity. 
 It was only by accident that I came to know that 
 he was a poet. He gave me some sheets of MS. 
 one day, and asked me to look at them. I found 
 among them more than one of his most perfect son- 
 nets. He had a good memory, and at times he would 
 declaim in his slow deliberate manner scraps and frag- 
 ments of verses which he would attribute to writers 
 of whom no record remains. When brought to book, 
 and obliged to confess that they were his own, he 
 would tell us that the pieces from which they were 
 taken had been unfortunately lost. (We came by- 
 and-by to understand what " lost " meant.) The Early 
 Italian Poets was published in 1861, and, of course, 
 
?8 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 from that time forward his wonderful facility for 
 turning into English the most delicate and idiomatic 
 felicities of a foreign tongue was pretty widely re- 
 cognised. But of his own inspiration (though the 
 true poetic faculty in some of its highest and most 
 intense moods was unquestionably his) little was 
 known till later. 
 
 It is difficult for us, in this year of grace 1894, to 
 realise the vehemence of the hostility with which 
 what was called "the Rossetti school" was regarded 
 somewhere over thirty years ago. John Parker, though 
 he could be righteously fierce at times no doubt, was 
 one of the sweetest-tempered and mildest-mannered 
 of men. Yet I came upon a letter of his the other 
 day which curiously illustrates what I say. Parker 
 was editor of F reiser, and he had good-naturedly com- 
 plied with my request to be permitted to extend re- 
 cognition, more or less cordial, to a young writer 
 named William Morris, who had recently published a 
 volume of poetry entitled The Defence of Guinevere. 
 But he would only do it under protest ; and this was 
 his protest (which, after all these years, may be printed 
 without offence to any one), of date May 14, i860. 
 
 " I saw Morris's poems in MS. He wanted us to 
 publish them. I confess I could make nothing of 
 them. Nor could a very able man who looked at the 
 MS. for me. Surely ig-2oths of them are of the most 
 obscure, watery, mystical, affected stuff possible. The 
 man who brought the MS. (himself well known as a 
 
MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 79 
 
 poet) said ' that one of the poems which described a 
 picture of Rossetti was a very fine poem ; that the pic- 
 ture was not understandable, and the poem made it no 
 clearer, but that it was a fine poem nevertheless.' For 
 myself, I am sick of Rossetti and his whole school. I 
 think them essentially unmanly, effeminate, mystical, 
 affected, and obscure. You ought really to say more 
 as to Morris's obscurity and affectation. Please to 
 return the proof at once.'" 
 
 The world has decided that Parker was wrong ; and 
 yet it must be admitted that he had a vast mass of 
 authority on his side, and a grain of truth at least. 
 
 To return to the present controversy. 
 
 If I am not much mistaken, all Rossetti's surviving 
 friends will admit without qualification that his admira- 
 tion of the genius of his contemporaries was spon- 
 taneous and unstinted ; and that while singularly 
 modest and reticent about his own poetic work, he 
 was eager to secure recognition for the younger men. 
 If he erred at all, it was in the persistency and impera- 
 tiveness with which he urged their claims. I have 
 preserved a number of his letters, and there is barely 
 one, I think, which is not mainly devoted to warm 
 commendation of obscure poets and painters, — obscure 
 at the time of writing, but of whom more than one has 
 
80 . MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 since become famous. As Rossetti was an admirable 
 letter-writer, no apology for printing one or two of the 
 most characteristic is needed. This from Paris is 
 among the earliest I can lay hand on. I may explain 
 that he had given me a copy of Mr Swinburne's first 
 volume — The Queen Mother and Rosamond — with a 
 view to a review x : — 
 
 "Paris, \y.h Nov. 1864. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — You see your letter has been 
 sent on to me here, where I expect to be for a week or 
 so longer, — not more, as I find it impracticable after 
 two or three weeks' stay to set to work, though I 
 brought some work with me. 
 
 " I think I agree in every word you have said of 
 Swinburne's first volume ; but no doubt you, with me, 
 are astounded that, with all its faults, it should have 
 hitherto had no justice whatever done to its beauties. 
 It was published when he was not much more than 
 twenty, and mostly written even earlier. He has since 
 written abundance of things of many kinds, and of 
 quite another order from these early ones as regards 
 perfection. His principal fault now is perhaps abun- 
 dance — exuberance it hardly is, for no one has more real 
 command of style than he has now acquired, and is 
 daily further acquiring. Among the mass of work he 
 has in MS. is a tragedy on the subject of Chatelard 
 and Mary Q. of Scots, which, I believe, you would 
 admit went far to answer your requirements, having 
 
 1 Which afterwards appeared in Frascrs Magazine, June 1865. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 8 I 
 
 been written and rewritten to avoid the faults of the 
 two early plays. But he finds the greatest difficulty, or 
 indeed hitherto impossibility, of getting his work ac- 
 cepted by a publisher. M took them into some 
 
 consideration, but ended by funking it. Every one 
 finds them too outspoken on the passionate side. I 
 think nothing could serve him or please him better 
 than such an article as you would be likely to write in 
 Fraser, giving the first full recognition he has obtained 
 in print — though, of course, not slurring the short- 
 comings of this early volume, of which he himself is 
 well aware. In private he has made so large a circle 
 of ardent admirers, that I cannot doubt his public re- 
 ception would eventually be a most enthusiastic, though 
 not a universal one. If you have a file of the Spectator 
 anywhere attainable in Edinburgh, you would find 
 (about summer and autumn of 1862, I think) the only 
 short pieces he has printed yet ; and also thereabouts, 
 or rather later, various prose articles by him — such as 
 several on Victor Hugo's Miserables — which are worth 
 your reading. There is no present prospect of his 
 fresh works appearing, but an article might help him 
 on. My sister will bring out a new volume before long, 
 I believe, but is of the unready order. She has it 
 nearly got together, however. 
 
 " As for myself, I should really have published when 
 I announced a volume at the end of my Italian poets, 
 having it all fairly copied out — a big lump, and quite 
 ready. However, I lost the fair copy by an accident, 
 and do not know if I could ever recover the matter 
 
 F 
 
82 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 now from imperfect scrawls, even had I the patience. 
 Here is a rigmarole from Yours very truly, 
 
 "D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 The next letter refers to some sketch which had dis- 
 appeared — " if it ever existed it must long ago have 
 reached the general gully-hole of things " — and to an 
 illness from which Sir Noel Paton, whose noble aims 
 in religious art he warmly appreciated, had not en- 
 tirely recovered. Later on in 1865 (a copy of the 
 Madox Brown Catalogue and a card for the private 
 view on nth March, filled in by Rossetti himself, 
 having been previously forwarded), he writes : — 
 
 "16 Cheyne "Walk, Chelsea, 13/^ March 1865. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — I shall be very happy to see 
 your friend whenever she is able to call. My best hour 
 is towards dusk when the day's work is over, or else at 
 about 11 a.m. But then or not then I shall welcome 
 her visit. 
 
 " I fear I have given you reason to think me obtuse, 
 and not sharp-sighted enough to see through a ' West 
 Highland' fog. But I did though, — indeed it was 
 ' Isabel ' who tipped me a wink through the mist. 
 Only I have been so busy lately that I have not had 
 time to acknowledge your kind present of the little 
 volume. 
 
 " The said Isabel is among my favourites. I am not 
 sure, but she almost seems shorter to me than when I 
 saw her last, and, strangely enough, not to her detri- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 8$ 
 
 ment ! Easter Bells is one of the most striking pieces, 
 and Whither ? one of the most sustained in measure 
 and manner. My Dovecot and Rosamond are, I think, 
 equal to these ; and I do not know that there is any- 
 thing better in the gathering than (in their own way) 
 A Song for May and Soap-Bubbles for Baby. I am glad 
 you have collected all these, and am sure it is the way 
 to do more. 1 
 
 " Do write something concerning Swinburne. You 
 will find his Atalanta a most noble thing, never sur- 
 passed to my thinking. I hope you will be in town 
 during Madox Brown's admirable exhibition, and 
 should like to visit it in your company. I am sure 
 his Catalogue Raisonnee must interest you much. 
 
 " My sister Christina will soon have a new volume 
 out. — With kind remembrances, I am, yours ever truly, 
 
 " D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 Then in 1866 he was much occupied with the 
 George Cruikshank Memorial Fund. " Will you let 
 
 1 This is the little poetry book to which allusion is also made in Charles 
 Kingsley's Life and Letters ; but both Rossetti and Kingsley were in error 
 in attributing the collection to a single writer. To one of the reputed 
 authors Kingsley wrote, — " You have given me a great pleasure. I knew 
 most of your things through Fraser, and delighted in your drawing of West 
 Highland shore scenery ; but I did not know till now that you were the 
 author of the little poetry book with the bull on it which was Mrs Kings- 
 ley's delight last year. Her especial favourites are The Reply, and The 
 E'en brings a' Hame ; and her praise is worth having. For I have never 
 known a critic who combines so much common-sense and appreciation of 
 good art with so much rich humanity and refinement and tenderness and 
 purity." 
 
84 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 your name appear on the Committee List," he wrote 
 on 17th April, "for the Cruikshank Testimonial? We 
 in London hope so, and I need not remind you how 
 invaluable the co-operation of a member able and will- 
 ing to work the effort in Edinburgh to any possible 
 extent would prove." I have an impression that the 
 privately issued appeal was drawn by Rossetti, and it is 
 now an interesting document. The President was 
 "John Ruskin " ; Thackeray had written, "Before the 
 century was actually in its teens, we believe that George 
 Cruikshank was amusing the public. Is there no way 
 in which the country could acknowledge the long ser- 
 vices and brave career of such a friend and benefac- 
 tor ? " and Rossetti (if it was Rossetti) continued : 
 "There can be few men who on reaching, as George 
 Cruikshank has now reached, the advanced age of 
 seventy-three, can look back with a clearer conscious- 
 ness of great abilities used in more directions than one, 
 laboriously, fruitfully, honourably, and well." 
 
 The first series of Mr Swinburne's Poems and Bal- 
 lads (1866) was withdrawn by Moxon shortly after 
 publication. Rossetti (who had wished, however, 
 on various grounds to exclude one or two of the 
 pieces, as he told me when I was engaged in writing 
 the protest against the irrational violence of the critics 
 which appeared in the November Fraser) was extremely 
 indignant : — 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — Swinburne's book has been 
 withdrawn by Moxon, quite unjustifiably from a busi- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 85 
 
 ness point of view. It will immediately be reissued 
 (unaltered, I regret to say) by another publisher. The 
 attack in the press has been stupid, for the most part, 
 and though with some good grounds, shamefully one- 
 sided. — Very truly yours, D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 In Frascr for February 1869 I had a paper on Mr 
 William Morris, which was promptly followed by the 
 following letter, and a few weeks later by a parcel of 
 admirable photographs of some of the artist's best 
 known sketches : — 
 
 "16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 7th Feb. 1S69. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — The Fraser containing your 
 article on Morris has been sent me, — doubtless through 
 the same kind remembrance of me on your part which 
 is apparent in the article itself. 
 
 " I think all you say of Morris is very completely 
 and excellently said. It indicates, I should say, on 
 the whole, the same estimate of him which I have long 
 entertained, as being — all things considered — the great- 
 est literary identity of our time. I say this chiefly on 
 the ground of that highest quality in a poet — his width 
 of relation to the mass of mankind ; for, in inexhaustible 
 splendour of execution, who can stand beside Swin- 
 burne ? — not to speak of older men. 
 
 "You know Morris is now only 35, and has done 
 things in decorative art which take as high and exclus- 
 ive a place in that field as his poetry does in its own. 
 What may he not yet do ? The second volume of the 
 
86 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 Earthly Paradise is getting forward, but will not be 
 ready, I should think, till the spring of next year. In 
 some parts of it the poet goes deeper in the treatment 
 of intense personal passion than he has yet done. 
 After this work is finished, I trust his next step will be 
 in dramatic composition, in which I foresee some of 
 his highest triumphs. 
 
 " What you say of me comes curiously at a moment 
 when a spell of ill health has limited my painting, and 
 thrown me back a little on old poetic ideas. I fear I 
 shall find on examination that there is not much of the 
 MSS. I lost (a biggish vol. ready for the press) which 
 can be got together again. There will be some sonnets 
 of mine in the Fortnightly Review next month. I shall 
 probably write some new things, and see whether they 
 seem worth anything among such poets as we have 
 now. — Ever yours, D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 The extracts I have made are sufficient to show that 
 Rossetti was constantly and warmly interested in the 
 success and welfare of his friends, and that any in- 
 sinuation of indifference or jealousy ought not to be 
 listened to for a moment. 
 
 The specific charge that he employed illegitimate 
 methods to promote the circulation of his poems admits, 
 I think, of a complete answer. But to arrive at a just 
 
MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 87 
 
 conclusion, the whole circumstances attending their 
 publication must be known. 
 
 I have already alluded to the fierce and persistently 
 hostile criticism which had been directed against the 
 Pre-Raphaelites and their works. The opposition had 
 grown more feeble and less bitter before the end of the 
 sixties ; but there can be no doubt that it had told upon 
 Rossetti. The aversion to publicity had increased ; 
 so much so that the mere rumour that one of his 
 pictures was being exhibited would make him uneasy 
 for days. He had grown morbidly sensitive to praise 
 or blame. He was convinced that if he ventured to 
 publish he would be pitilessly and wantonly assailed. 
 The entreaties of his friends were for long disregarded. 
 I ventured at length to appeal to him in public. I had 
 said something to the same effect in an article on The 
 Winter Time which had appeared in the Cornhill, 
 Thackeray's Cornhill (" About that Winter article ? " 
 Thackeray wrote, " Will Winter stay if you don't hold 
 it by the beard ? "), but the passage to which Rossetti 
 refers in his letter of 7th February 1869 appeared in 
 Fraser for that month. Ten years, I wrote, had passed 
 since Dante in Verona was promised, and the work was 
 still unpublished. " It is said that an accident befell 
 the manuscript ; but surely from the rough drafts that 
 Mr Rossetti must possess the poems might even yet 
 be recovered and put together. Even in this prolific 
 age the world can ill afford to lose a volume which would 
 undoubtedly prove a substantial addition to its poetic 
 literature." It was about the time the article appeared 
 
88 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 that he said to me that if his friends would stand by 
 him he would run the risk. He would consent to 
 publish because his friends had assured him that his 
 poems ought not to be hidden away ; would we say to 
 the world what we had said to him in the confidence of 
 friendship ? To this of course there could be only one 
 reply ; we were eager to get them on any terms ; and I 
 cannot see that there was anything undignified, any- 
 thing that reflects injuriously either on Rossetti or his 
 friends, in the assurance that we would be early in the 
 field. It is easy of course to say that Rossetti was un- 
 duly disquieted, and that no man should be so morbidly 
 sensitive as he was ; and I am quite willing to admit 
 the validity of the reply. As it happens, however, we 
 are forced in this world to take men as we find them ; 
 and although Rossetti was the most variously gifted 
 man it has ever been my privilege to know, he had his 
 weak points like the rest of us. 
 
 The letters which follow relate to the publication of 
 the poems, and must be read in connection with what 
 has been said. 
 
 " 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 3^ February 1S70. 
 " My dear Skelton, — I am going to publish some 
 poems, as you have, I think, heard from M'Lennan, 1 
 and have been meaning to write you thereanent. After 
 your public premura about them, I daresay I may reckon, 
 without too much conceit, on an intention on your part 
 to review them fully in Fraser. I am anxious that some 
 
 1 J. F. M'Lennan, the author of Primitive Marriage. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 89 
 
 influential article or articles by. the well-affected should 
 appear at once when the book comes out, for certain 
 good reasons. If you thought you could secure the 
 appearance of a notice all the sooner by my sending you 
 proofs of the things as far as printed, and had time to 
 think about it, I could do so very soon. If you then 
 let me know how early you could secure the appearance 
 in Fraser I would take this into consideration as to 
 precise date of publishing. I suppose I cannot get out 
 till April. I want to add a thing or two yet, if possible, 
 but am much taken up with painting. Did you see 
 some sonnets of mine in the Fortnightly nearly a year 
 ago ? I had tried to make them as perfect as in me 
 lay, and have a good number in the volume. 
 
 " Swinburne wishes to ' do ' my book in the Fort- 
 nightly, and Morris elsewhere ; and if these and yours, 
 with perhaps another or so, could appear at once, 
 certain spite which I judge to be brewing in at least 
 one quarter might find itself at fault. ... A model 
 just come in. Farewell in haste. — Yours very truly, 
 
 " D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 Then the proofs came, — there was a good deal of 
 revision and alteration later on : — 
 
 " 16 Cheyne Walk [5th March 1S70]. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — I'm sending you the proofs 
 
 at last to-day — couldn't get them before. If too late, 
 
 it will have to be put off to the June number, as I 
 
 know the calls on your time must be many, and now 
 
90 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 the thing does come out, should be specially sorry if 
 you were forced to hurry your notice. I'm going into 
 the country for three weeks, and may possibly add a 
 little more. I publish in April. — Ever yours, 
 
 " D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 "SCALANDS, R.OBERTSBRIDGE, HAWKHURST, 
 
 "Friday [20th March 1870]. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — Your note has only just come 
 to me here. The picture you ask about must be a 
 'Venus' (now at Manchester). There is a sonnet 
 written for it in the book ; but I did not get the roses 
 and honeysuckle into the sonnet. 
 
 " I am glad you like my book as well as any of its 
 size. This point of size is just the thing that I think 
 last finish concerned in rigorously limiting. Thus a 
 good deal has been excluded altogether from my 
 volume, and among other things included some had 
 originally been written to twice their present length. 
 
 " I judge that your article is to deal with my book 
 alone, which I shall much prefer if so, as studied work, 
 where unity is specially kept in view, suffers I think 
 by the associated plan of criticism, and the com- 
 parative treatment seems to me never quite a sound 
 one. — Very truly yours, D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 " I have added a sheet more to the book, and shall 
 send you this soon — before fitting the things into their 
 places as a whole. I am now shifting the first poem 
 (Troy Town) further on, and opening with the Blessed 
 Damozel. I shall be out for certain by end of April." 
 
MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETT1. 9 1 
 
 The book itself (in its lovely binding of green and 
 gold — what ails Sir Herbert Maxwell with the bind- 
 ing?) quickly followed. It was published towards the 
 close of April, and in little more than a fortnight a 
 thousand copies had been sold. The rapid success 
 was very pleasant to Rossetti. 
 
 "SCALANDS, ROBERTSBRIDGE, SUSSEX, 4//1 May 1S7O. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — Let me thank you for being 
 so early in the field with your friendly article on my 
 poems. You will be glad to hear that the result of 
 a few such timely notices has been that my publisher 
 is already going to press with the second thousand. 
 
 " I have been out here for two months now, re- 
 cruiting after a spell of queer health, and have bene- 
 fited greatly. I shall return to town almost immedi- 
 ately, and get to my painting again ; but it is pos- 
 sible that, after making a good start with a picture 
 I am beginning, I may bring it to this neighbourhood, 
 and go in for a summer's working and walking to- 
 gether, of which I still stand in much need. — Very 
 truly yours, D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 I saw little of Rossetti after the sixties. Between 
 1870 and 1880 my annual holiday was spent in Italy 
 or among the Alps, and I was seldom in London ex- 
 cept for a night in passing. I fancy that after the 
 severe illness of 1872, Dante aged quickly. He was 
 
92 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 surrounded till the end by many attached friends ; 
 but, with one notable exception, they belonged to a 
 later generation. Though the occasional letters he 
 wrote were still frank and cordial, they had hardly 
 the earlier brightness (in the latest I had from him 
 he said, somewhat sadly, that he could now make 
 no new departure in art, " finding myself, as I grow 
 older, more than ever at the mercy of my first sources 
 of inspiration "), and one fancied, perhaps wrongly, 
 that the step was less elastic, the spirit more weary, 
 than of old. 
 
 My contribution to the debate is the merest frag- 
 ment. When Mr Theodore Watts' Memoir appears 
 we shall see Rossetti as he was, and any lingering 
 shred of cloud will be dispersed. But when are we 
 to have it ? 
 
 One or two of the later letters may be added. 
 
 "Aldwick Lodge, Bognor, 26th March 1S76. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — Yours of 22d has been sent 
 on to me here, but your book so kindly sent still lies 
 at Chelsea. When I have made acquaintance with it, 
 I hope to write again, but need not wait to thank you 
 for it. I have no foregone conclusions about Mary 
 Stuart, and could have no others, as I have never yet 
 gone into the involved subject. Your book will enable 
 me to do so. 
 
 Plenty of pictures do I paint (or at least I never do 
 
MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 93 
 
 anything else, though they are far from getting out of 
 hand in a mighty hurry), but never a photo gets taken. 
 I am so sick of them when they turn their backs at 
 last, and go to weary somebody else. Thus their de- 
 parture is always a hurried one. If ever I have a record 
 of any tolerably worthy one, be sure I shall not forget 
 an old well-wisher like yourself. Another I should not 
 forget is Noel Paton. Indeed I will try to get some- 
 thing of the kind done, just for a few friends, from 
 some of my latest and only tolerable things. What 
 you tell me of Paton's having some picture of mine 
 by him makes me fidgety, as I know not whether it be 
 something (probably vile if so) offered him by some 
 dealer, or else some picture sent by an owner for the 
 R.S.A. exhibition. In either case I should like to 
 write him a line. I think his address is St George's 
 Square, but had better enclose the note with this, if 
 you will kindly post it. — Ever yours sincerely, 
 
 "D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 " igt/i Oct. [1880]. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — Thanks for still remembering 
 me when issuing The Crookit Meg. Even a first glance 
 shows me that it is full of the old spirit of your work. 
 I too jot a little now and then, though the brush is 
 oftenest to the fore. — Yours very truly, 
 
 " D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 * 
 * 
 
94 MAINLY ABOUT ROSSETTI. 
 
 I have spoken of the brief visit to Oxford in 1859, 
 when I first saw Rossetti's handiwork. The impres- 
 sion then made was ineffaceable ; but the first fine 
 careless rapture found voice in Thalatta. Were it not 
 that Oxford — " steeped in sentiment as she lies, spread- 
 ing her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from 
 her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age " 
 — has since been touched by an incomparable pencil, I 
 might have ventured to reprint a passage which is asso- 
 ciated with some charming memories, — now memories 
 only. 
 
95 
 
 VI. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 
 
 I SOMETIMES fancy (when one is inclined to be 
 dismal) that the conventional associations with 
 the seasons are curiously misplaced. There is some- 
 thing inquisitorial about the searching blaze of summer. 
 It is like the fierce light which beats about the throne, 
 striking pitilessly into the dark corners and obscure 
 recesses of the conscience. Heine saw the young 
 Spring God, — radiant, adorable, — standing on the 
 summit of an Alp. A lovely picture ! Yet many 
 of us, who will not own that we are cursed by any 
 over-morbid sensibilities, find ourselves willing, nay, 
 eager, to delay his coming. One would put a drag on 
 every month of the waning year if one could. Winter 
 may be grim and inclement ; but it does not take 
 us to task, does not require us to examine ourselves, 
 does not mark a new departure, as the spring does. 
 The opening buds are the saddest moralists, the 
 severest critics. To the very young, indeed, they 
 may whisper of a good time coming, but to the old 
 
9<5 MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 
 
 they speak of the departed year. The 25th of March 
 used to be the first day of the year, and it had a real 
 and not a merely arbitrary claim to the distinction. 
 The old year had truly passed away, and a new one 
 was being ushered in. Under our present classification 
 there is an awkward interregnum. The old year dies 
 in December, but the new year makes no sign till long 
 after the 1st of January. That is why the Spring is 
 sad ; it is a true Anniversary, reminding us with pain- 
 ful distinctness of duties unfulfilled, of work unfinished, 
 of ambitions more or less modest ungratified. The 
 25th of March is the great annual Day of Reckoning, 
 when we are called before the inner tribunal to render 
 an account up to date. We speak to the wayside flowers 
 of oily love, and to the fading leaves of our ambition. 
 So Mr Ruskin says. For the russet leaves of autumn, 
 I would, for my part, be inclined to substitute the 
 firstlings of the Spring — the violet, the wood-sorrel, 
 the anemone. Here is another year visibly dead 
 and gone, and we are no further on than we were at 
 its birth. It is no wonder that a sort of hopelessness 
 should take possession of the man who feels at fifty 
 that he can do no better than he has done, and that 
 every new year now must diminish the vigour of mind 
 and body. 
 
 It is a matter of immense moment to retain as we 
 grow old a varied hold upon life. When we have 
 entered the fifties we get, as it were, a new horizon. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 97 
 
 The comparative values are so completely altered that 
 a fresh currency is needed. What used to seem solid 
 ground becomes phantasmal — the stuff of which 
 dreams are made. The uprooting of old associations 
 and early limitations is often a perilous process. 
 " Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas." If we would not 
 lapse into sheer cynicism it is very necessary that we 
 should keep some of our illusions. When we find the 
 walls of the universe, the mcenia mundi, as we esteemed 
 them, falling around us at every turn, a sense of 
 immense uncertainty and insecurity assails us. Our 
 confidence is shaken — as in a city riddled by earth- 
 quake. Whether it is better for us or worse (as 
 creatures accountable to a Supreme Judge whose 
 verdict will be given hereafter — under quite other 
 conditions) I do not stay to inquire; I am looking 
 at the matter only from the homely standpoint of the 
 merely mundane critic. But there can be no doubt 
 that the man of fifty or sixty, whose attention is con- 
 centrated with eager curiosity upon any inquiry how- 
 ever microscopical or whimsical, is the man who, during 
 what remains of life, will extract most good out of it. 
 It has been said that whoever has no knowledge of 
 whist is laying up for himself a miserable old age. This 
 is only putting the fact with a somewhat truculent 
 directness. The man who allows his interests to drop 
 away from him when he begins to feel that he has 
 taken the downward turn (which leads inevitably to 
 
 what we know) will be very much in the same 
 
 predicament as the man who allowed his friends to 
 
 G 
 
98 MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 
 
 drop away from him when he fancied that he would 
 not need them any more. We can hardly make new 
 friends after middle life, nor can we strike out new 
 lines of work or enjoyment. There are elderly people 
 I meet every day who excite a gentle ripple of laughter 
 among the younger members of our Society when they 
 begin to discourse upon what is known as their fav- 
 ourite fad. For my own part (though some of them 
 are ten years older than I am) I cannot look at them 
 without envy. These hale old gentlemen are so fresh ! 
 — age does not wither them nor custom stale. Un- 
 fortunately the rest of the quotation is inapplicable — 
 their " infinite variety " being confined to one foible 
 apiece. Jones's craze (as the youngsters irreverently 
 term it) is the Jones pedigree ; — there is only one break 
 in the chain which takes his family back in a direct 
 line to an early Welsh ragamuffin ; and this he is 
 always on the very point of supplying. Poor old 
 fellow, he will go down to the grave without finding 
 the missing link, and probably without learning that 
 it is well for him that he does not find it. His occupa- 
 tion gone, life would become utterly colourless. Brown 
 has no personal ambition to gratify, but he nurses a 
 highly abstract theory about the necessary connection 
 between a comes and a comitatus, and he has gone 
 through half the manuscripts in the Rolls House and 
 the British Museum to prove that the single adverse 
 decision (it is unfortunately dead against him) might 
 be explained away, if we could only recover certain 
 documents which were certainly destroyed (if they 
 
MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 99 
 
 ever existed) not less than three centuries ago. Robin- 
 son, who believes that Mary Stuart (in Mr Huxley's 
 words) "blew up her husband only a little more 
 thoroughly than other women do," and that Darnley 
 committed suicide to compromise her, — who button- 
 holes you in the middle of the street to inform you 
 that that miscreant Smith (who classes her with Eve, 
 Helen, Cleopatra, Delilah, and sundry other wicked 
 sirens, who have lured men to their destruction) is 
 hopelessly mad, and has been removed to a lunatic 
 asylum, — what would become of him were he to solve 
 the riddle ? Ever to seek and never to find — the quest 
 still retaining its attraction — that, I take it, is about as 
 good a definition of human happiness as it is possible 
 to hazard. Dear, dusty, dried-up mummies ! I figure 
 you to myself sometimes under the similitude of the 
 lusty lover on Keats' imperishable urn : — 
 
 " Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 
 Tho' winning near the goal — yet do not grieve ; 
 
 She cannot fade, tho' thou hast not thy bliss, 
 For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair." 
 
 But the old (one is thankful to say) are not all dusty 
 and dried - up mummies ; and there is no pleasanter 
 sight in this world than that of the profound philo- 
 sopher or brilliant man of science who, spite of his 
 threescore years and ten, is as bright, as alert, as 
 keenly interested in the search after truth, as he was 
 
100 MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 
 
 in the vigour of his manhood. Of such men, I have 
 known more than one ; and they serve to show us 
 that old age does not necessarily imply or involve 
 that failure of intellectual faculty, that exhaustion of 
 the soil of the mind, which we are apt to associate 
 with advancing years. I believe that Professor Tyn- 
 dall, for instance, was really younger at seventy than 
 the severe moralist of five-and-twenty whose ripe ex- 
 perience assures him that life is vanity and happiness 
 a mirage. 
 
 I have said, in an earlier paragraph, that the passion 
 for mountaineering is of comparatively recent growth : 
 even while I write I learn that Professor Tyndall 
 has passed away ; and Professor Tyndall was one of 
 the earliest, if not the earliest, of the great Alpine 
 climbers. What will the Aletsch glacier hereafter be 
 to those of us who have enjoyed the homely hospitality 
 of Alp Lusgen — what will it be without Professor Tyn- 
 dall ? He was the most conspicuous man of science 
 of his time ; but it is as a mountaineer that he will 
 be most widely and affectionately remembered. A 
 week on the Bel Alp, with Tyndall as guide, philo- 
 sopher, and friend, was an era in a life. He was 
 familiar with all the secrets of the wonder-world 
 that lies above the snow-line, and he had a rare 
 power, which he freely and graciously exercised, of 
 imparting them to others. Those summer nights, 
 when, from the terrace in front of his chalet, we heard 
 
MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. IOI 
 
 the thunder-cloud break over Italy, and saw the light- 
 ning play round Monte Rosa, are not to be forgotten. 
 It pleases one to think that he was able the autumn 
 of his death to revisit the altitudes which he loved so 
 well, — to pass, indeed, almost without a pause, from 
 the august company of the "silent summits" to "the 
 infinite azure " beyond. 
 
 " Thither our path lies ; wind we up the heights ; 
 
 Wait ye the warning ? 
 Our low life was the level's and the night's ; 
 
 He's for the morning. 
 Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 
 
 'Ware the beholders ! 
 This is our master, famous, calm, and dead, 
 
 Borne on our shoulders." 
 
 I daresay you may remember some Swiss and Tyro- 
 lese sketches which appeared a good many years ago 
 now. One of the incidents in Alpine Resting-Places 
 (so they were named) I had from the Professor himself 
 — an incident in which he was the leading actor — 
 an incident, I may add, attended with the happiest 
 results. It occurred on the Aletsch glacier, not far, 
 fortunately, from the refuge, which was afterwards 
 known as the " Concordia Hut." May I, without im 
 propriety, transcribe the letters he then wrote me ? — 
 
 " lyik December 1882. 
 
 "We still retain a very pleasant memory of your 
 visit to the Bel Alp. A slight amount of resentment 
 
102 MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 
 
 I confess survives when I remember the obvious dis- 
 trust with which Mrs Skelton regarded my leadership 
 on the glacier. It was, I take it, this want of faith 
 on her part — the fear of being engulphed while in my 
 charge — which caused her to run away so rapidly from 
 the Bel Alp. We have chosen and succeeded in pur- 
 chasing a scrap of heather-land within less than two 
 hours of London — a spot surrounded by scenes of the 
 wildest beauty — for the building of a little nest in 
 England which will constitute a respectable set - off 
 to our eyrie in the Alps." 
 
 "2d February 18S3. 
 " We were both charmed to see our little Alpine nest 
 depicted in Good Words, and surely could not be 
 otherwise than gratified with the friendly manner in 
 which you spoke of us. We ought to have been with 
 you on that occasion when you lunched at the foot 
 of the Aletschhorn. When breaking my crust there, 
 and drinking my glass of wine, I have often thought 
 of the words of Emerson, — ' Give me health and a 
 day, and I will make the pomp of Emperors ridicu- 
 lous.' On one occasion especially, when the guns 
 were thundering in France in honour of Louis Na- 
 poleon, I thought of the unspeakable glory of my 
 surroundings as compared with his." 
 
 "id Febniary 1883. 
 
 " When I wrote to you I had not read your Alpine 
 letters through. I have now done so, and found them 
 bright and pleasant from beginning to end. But was 
 
MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 103 
 
 your escapade at the Concordia Hut a real event ? 
 If so, I shall begin to entertain the possibility of 
 miraculous coincidences. 
 
 "Most of your scenes are familiar to me, — Stachel- 
 berg, the Pantenbriick, the Sand Alp, and the Clariden- 
 Grat. Over the Todi I intended to go, but was turned 
 aside by an attempt at extortion. 
 
 " We are now again upon our moorland, having spent 
 the last two days in London. The storms were wild 
 here yesterday, and almost equally wild in the earlier 
 part of to-day ; but they are now hushed, and instead 
 of flying scuds we have ' stars keen glancing from the 
 Immensities.' " 
 
 This letter supplies the keynote. 
 
 " To sit upon an Alp as on a throne : ' 
 
 was the master-passion ; and even in England, even 
 in level England, he found such a home as he desired, 
 — where, high above the smoke of the great city, a 
 trifle nearer the stars, among furze, and bracken, and 
 heather, and Scotch firs on which the sunset lingered, 
 he could breathe freely, — almost as freely, indeed, as 
 on Dom or Weisshorn. 
 
 " 1 si April 1884. 
 
 "On this free moorland, with an outlook of incom- 
 parable beauty, we are building a house. By the end 
 of summer we hope to have it pretty complete. At 
 some future day I hope we shall enjoy the opportunity 
 of showing you and Mrs Skelton how nearly, within 
 
104 MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 
 
 forty miles of London, we have reached the wild- 
 ness of our Alpine home." 
 
 Nor can I forget that it was to one who writes the 
 most charming letters in the world (long may he write 
 them !) that we owed our introduction to the famous 
 mountaineer. Huxley was Tyndall's lifelong friend, 
 and when he wrote — " So go boldly across the Aletsch, 
 and if they have a knocker (which I doubt) knock, and 
 it shall be opened unto you " — we felt that we had in 
 our possession a charm which would act as the " Open 
 sesame ! " to Alp Lusgen. As, indeed, it proved — 
 the little joke about the primitive simplicity of the 
 domestic arrangements being keenly appreciated. 
 
 * 
 * 
 
 But how, you ask, did this brilliant, busy, versatile, 
 eagerly - inquisitive man contrive to spend so many 
 months during each year on a remote Alp, in almost 
 absolute seclusion, without intolerable weariness ? 
 Well ; it was a really beautiful life that was led at Alp 
 Lusgen — simple, pastoral, actively beneficent. Here 
 is a slight sketch of it — again in his own words : — 
 
 "315/ August 1S81. 
 " Huxley, for once in his life, was right when he 
 prophesied that you and Mrs Skelton would meet a 
 
MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 105 
 
 welcome here. Our only regret was that your visit 
 was so short. Her first performance on the glacier 
 caused me to hope that Mrs Skelton would return 
 to Scotland a finished mountaineer. It is something, 
 however, to have given her her first lesson among 
 the crevasses. 
 
 "We went down to see you on the day of your 
 departure, but were half an hour too late, which we 
 regretted much. 
 
 " I have been mainly occupied since your departure 
 in treating the wounds, bruises, and general sanitary 
 shortcomings of the population here around me. They 
 cut themselves and require plastering ; they scald 
 themselves and require swathing ; and though clasped 
 by this splendid air, they breathe the noisome emana- 
 tions from their stables and cowhouses, and re-breathe, 
 God knows how often, the exhalations of their own 
 lungs. Hence premature age and debility. Gregory's 
 powder, the virtues of which are known to Mrs Skelton, 
 has in many cases done good, and in no case harm. 
 
 " One poor little boy, who had the skin of his leg 
 removed from thigh to instep, and the muscles of the 
 calf deeply attacked, by the overthrowing of a caldron 
 of boiling water, I have managed to set completely on 
 his legs. For a couple of days I had the invaluable 
 assistance of a young surgeon from St Bartholomew's 
 Hospital. His sudden departure made my position 
 an anxious one, but, happily, all has turned out well, 
 and the boy, who showed more fortitude than nine out 
 of ten of our philosophers would have shown under the 
 
106 MAINLY ABOUT TYNDALL. 
 
 circumstances, is now among the herds upon the hills. 
 He is a fine, intelligent little fellow, with a drunken 
 father and a good-for-nothing mother. I must keep 
 my eye upon him. 
 
 " My wife's mother has come, and we are very cosy 
 together. This morning we had bright sunshine. At 
 six p.m., which is the present hour, we are swathed in 
 fog. I wish you bright skies in Arran. Good-bye ! " 
 
107 
 
 VII. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN 
 THE NORTH. 
 
 THERE was a good deal about the Jowett worship 
 that was incomprehensible to men who had not 
 been at Balliol. It was only the initiated, indeed, who 
 were permitted to penetrate the mysteries of the cult. 
 That it was a real and not a sham religion cannot be 
 denied by those of us who remember with what pious 
 horror the unwary scoffer was regarded. For him 
 
 " The lifted axe, the agonising wheel, 
 Luke's iron crown, or Damien's bed of steel," 
 
 was too light a punishment. The author of The New 
 Republic, for instance, fared badly ; he could not have 
 fared worse had he assailed a hornets' nest. His Doc- 
 tor Jenkinson, to be sure, was cruelly clever. The weak 
 points of the Master's theology were emphasised with 
 really malignant enjoyment ; but, in spite of the hostility 
 which it provoked, one is bound in fairness to admit 
 that it was a work of art of rare merit. The medium 
 
108 ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. 
 
 may have been meretricious, and the author unscrup- 
 ulous ; but I do not know that there is any work in 
 English satirical literature, since the Dunciad, which is 
 worked out with the same industrious and felicitous 
 animosity. 
 
 Jowett had a great talent for silence. I have seen 
 him sit for hours (once, at Miirren, for days) without 
 uttering a word. The discomfiture of the unhappy 
 undergraduate, invited to join the Master in a country 
 walk, has formed the theme of many legends. It is 
 very difficult in this age to know what we are to believe 
 — much more difficult indeed than it was before the 
 invention of printing. The reporter of the penny or 
 halfpenny paper lives habitually in the region of con- 
 jecture ; and most of his stories of the living, as of the 
 dead, are made only to be contradicted. Jowett could 
 not have been consciously discourteous — even to an 
 undergraduate ; and the legend may safely be disre- 
 garded. Yet we can partly understand how the myth 
 grew. A shy lad might have been driven entirely 
 desperate (not to say fatuous) by that bland but in- 
 vincible taciturnity. As no one could have been as 
 wise as Lord Thurlow looked, so no one could have 
 been as mild as Jowett looked. His face at the time 
 I used to meet him (and, indeed, there were few lines 
 to the last) was extremely like the faces we find on 
 Titian's famous canvas of the ascending: Madonna. It 
 
ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. IO9 
 
 was the face of a cherub — a chubby cherub, to whom 
 the inconveniences that attend and accompany a mortal 
 childhood are unknown. We were assured by those 
 who knew him best that there was a very bright and 
 virile intellect behind the infantile mask (as, indeed, 
 there was) ; but we had to take it mostly on trust. 
 The brilliant talkers — Sydney Smith in the last gener- 
 ation, Froude and Huxley in ours — carry their creden- 
 tials with them : Jowett did not. One characteristic 
 evening I have not forgotten. After dinner — it was 
 midsummer — we carried our glasses and the decanters 
 out to the lawn. The " Book-Hunter " was one of the 
 party, Sir Alexander Grant another. We got upon old 
 Scottish ecclesiastical scandals, and of these Burton 
 had an inexhaustible store, some of them barely fitted 
 for ears polite. The decanters were occasionally re- 
 plenished, but the summer night came down upon us 
 before he had exhausted his budget. Jowett was ob- 
 viously entertained (hugely entertained, as we learned 
 afterwards) ; it was a new experience to him, — these 
 queer reminiscences of the Cameronian pulpit, these 
 samples of Presbyterian eloquence displayed ; but dur- 
 ing the whole evening he never opened his lips. 
 
 Those summer nights upon the slopes of the Pent- 
 lands were often magical. There was always a light 
 in the North, so that till midnight one might read the 
 smallest print. One such evening I walked with "the 
 
110 ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. 
 
 Principal," * across the fields to dine at the cottage 
 which our friends from Heriot Row then occupied 
 during the dog-days. It was from this cottage that 
 possibly the most charming of our younger Scottish 
 writers went out into the world to try his luck. He 
 was only a lad at the time (he was not at home that 
 night), and hardly any one except his mother guessed 
 as yet what was in store. But she was prescient, as 
 mothers are ; and she lent us, I remember, a volume in 
 which juvenile contributions to local journals had been 
 carefully put together and preserved. We read them 
 next morning — the Principal in his bedroom before 
 breakfast, as was his way — and we then agreed that, 
 whatever came of it, here was a fresh voice with a note 
 delicate and unborrowed as the lark's. And, indeed, 
 I am not sure that " Robert Louis " (as he was in 
 these days) has ever done anything much better than, 
 or possibly quite so good as, one or two of the trifles 
 in that cherished volume of scraps. 2 
 
 It is a thousand pities that the Nodes Ambrosiana: 
 are now so little appreciated. Fashion is incalculable ; 
 
 1 For a quarter of a century, over broad Scotland, "the Principal" was 
 Principal Tulloch. 
 
 2 To the end (for the end has come since the text was written) " Robert 
 Louis " never forgot the country, which he knew so well as a lad, between 
 Edinburgh and the Pentlands ; — 
 
 "The boyish rapture still survived the boy, 
 And Lochnagar with Ida looked o'er Troy." 
 
 The outlook from "topmost Allermuir" or "steep Caerketton" is pic- 
 
ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. I 1 1 
 
 but I cannot think that they will be permanently for- 
 gotten. I tried once to disengage what was fugitive 
 and local from the perennial comedy, but I am afraid 
 the experiment failed — financially, at least. (John 
 Blackwood, I see, wrote me six months afterwards, 
 when, on finding that it had not proved remunerative, 
 I returned the cheque he sent me, — " I can now say of 
 you as Don Dugald said of his friends of the Mist, ' I 
 have even known them to refuse coined money, a tale 
 seldom to be told in a Christian land.' ") And yet it 
 was well spoken of at the time ; and I am pleased to 
 remember that one of Louis Stevenson's earliest Essays 
 in Criticism was directly due to the publication of the 
 Comedy. His appreciation was singularly sound and 
 discriminating ; and I cannot but feel that the " inter- 
 locutor " of so competent a judge ought to be affirmed. 
 If it is just (and, coming from a great master of style, 
 he would be a bold man who would dissent), what are 
 we to think of the critical insight of a generation to 
 which this perfect fooling is mere foolishness ? 
 
 This is the substance of Mr Stevenson's judgment : 
 " Of the more perennial part of the Nodes we have 
 here what is perhaps the most durable monument to 
 
 tured with Homeric force and breadth in the lines "To S. C. " ; and the 
 road to the cottage at Swanston by Braid and the Boro'muir (where the 
 Scottish nobles and their men gathered for Flodden) inspired his latest 
 
 lyric : — 
 
 " I gang nae mair where ance I gaed, 
 By Brunston, Fairmilehead, or Braid ; 
 
 But far frae Kirk and Tron ; 
 O still ayont the muckle sea 
 Still are ye dear, and dear to me, 
 Auld Reekie, still and on ! " 
 
112 ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. 
 
 Wilson's fame. In it we find the immortal trio at 
 their best throughout. From beginning to end their 
 meetings are inspired and sanctified by Bacchus and 
 Apollo. North can always lay aside his crutch ; Tick- 
 ler is always six feet high ; and the Shepherd is always 
 the Shepherd. For how is it possible to praise that 
 adorable creation but in terms of himself? He is the 
 last expression of sophisticated rusticity ; at once a 
 poet, a journalist, a Scotchman, and a shepherd ; oscil- 
 lating between Burns and the Daily Telegraph in things 
 literary ; and in things moral occupying all sorts of 
 intermediate stations between a prize-fighter and Peden 
 the Prophet. If it were lawful to marry words of so 
 incongruous a strain, we might classify him as a Pres- 
 byterian Faun. . . . And this book is not only welcome 
 because it takes us on a visit to Wilson when he is in 
 his best vein, but because Wilson in all his veins is the 
 antidote, or at least the antithesis, of much contem- 
 porary cant. Here is a book full of the salt of youth ; 
 a red-hot shell of animal spirits, calculated, if anybody 
 reads it, to set up a fine conflagration among the dry 
 heather of present-day Phariseeism. Touch it as you 
 will, it gives out shrewd galvanic shocks, which may, 
 perhaps, brighten and shake up this smoke-dried and 
 punctilious generation." 
 
 There were others, however, besides Stevenson who 
 held that the venture should have succeeded — the 
 
ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. II3 
 
 author of Rab and his Friends being among them. 
 " Dr John," indeed, welcomed it in a characteristic 
 letter. "Let me thank you for the Nodes Comedy; if 
 the execution is half as good as the idea (as doubtless 
 I'll find it to be all that), you have done a thing for 
 ever, and have saved Wilson from being ' strangled in 
 his waste fertility.' The portraits are excellent ; Wil- 
 son's by far the best thing of him ; and the coarse and 
 fine (strange mixture) Shepherd genius is very good — 
 from its pawky e'en to its plaid." 
 
 But a " smoke-dried and punctilious generation " 
 would not listen to the Shepherd's piping. John 
 Blackwood, a fine critic and a staunch friend who 
 had been bred in the traditions of the house, fancied, 
 rightly or wrongly, that the old sores were not healed. 
 The ghosts of the Cockneys who had fallen in the fight 
 were not yet appeased — Hinc illcz lacrymce ! " There is 
 a strange hatred and want of appreciation of Professor 
 Wilson in the London press. Cockney venom is very 
 long-lived. I took the Comedy of the Nodes with me in 
 the Flying Scotsman, and it kept me laughing all the 
 way to London, except when old recollections almost 
 moved me to tears." 
 
 * 
 
 From the familiar letters of Sir Walter Scott (which 
 have been so admirably selected by Mr David Douglas, 
 that Prince of Editors), I gather that the wild animal 
 spirits of the Free Lances of Maga, in consule Planco, 
 
 H 
 
114 ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. 
 
 rather startled the douce clerk of Session. He appre- 
 ciated the excessive brilliancy of the assault ; but was 
 it safe ? The erudite if rather ponderous respectability 
 of the Quarterly was more to his mind. And yet the 
 Quarterly could be coldly and icily bitter ; whereas 
 North's "bark was aye waur than his bite." Chris- 
 topher, at the worst, was a generous savage, who did 
 not scalp his foes — except when the provocation was 
 excessive ! I do not know that these letters throw 
 much light upon what must still be regarded as the 
 unsolved problem of Scott's life. Here is one who was 
 at once a wizard and a simple country gentleman ! He 
 built, he planted, he drained, he married his son to an 
 heiress, he wrote fairly interesting letters to persons of 
 quality, as country gentlemen have done before and 
 since. But, withal, his imagination was peopled as 
 Shakespeare's was peopled, and over the creations of 
 his brain he exercised a hardly less high and absolute 
 supremacy. How is the riddle to be read ? For my own 
 part it seems to me that every new contribution to the 
 solution of the problem only renders it more obscure. 
 The evidence that goes to show that the laird of 
 Abbotsford could not have written the Waverley Novels 
 is absolutely overwhelming ; and we are driven to say 
 with Tertullian and Sir Thomas Browne, Cerium est 
 quia impossibile est. 
 
 The perfect sanity of Scott is hardly consistent with 
 that land hunger from which, in common with the 
 
ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. 115 
 
 Irish Celt, he suffered. It is a passion that, like dram- 
 drinking, cannot be indulged with impunity. It grows 
 with what it feeds on ; and Scott, who started modestly 
 with a summer cottage and a couple of fields on Tweed- 
 side, was ready ere many months had passed to pay a 
 fancy price for every acre of land in the neighbourhood 
 that came into the market. Had it not been that they 
 ministered to the master-passion, Scott would have 
 looked more narrowly into his accounts with printer 
 and publisher, and the financial crash might have been 
 averted. Miss Jobson appears to have been a sing- 
 ularly silent and reticent young person ; but she was 
 an heiress ; and Scott lost no time in securing her for 
 his eldest son. Lochore was clearly the attraction. 
 Yet no one would venture to say that Scott was 
 mercenary in the baser sense of the word. He wanted 
 to be a laird himself; he wanted his son to be a laird. 
 To be Scott of Abbotsford was a much finer ambition 
 for a Borderer by birth and breeding than to be Scott 
 the poet or Scott the novelist. I believe that the true 
 reason why he did not wish to be known as the 
 " Author of Waverley " was that he did not regard 
 the novelist's craft as entirely respectable. Among 
 Lords of Session and territorial magnates the writer 
 of mere stories in verse or prose was little better than 
 a tramp or a gipsy. Had it not been that the amazing 
 profits of the novels enabled him to add acre after acre 
 to Abbotsford, one doubts whether he would have con- 
 tinued to write. The motives that put that magnificent 
 imagination in motion were not consciously sordid ; 
 
Il6 ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. 
 
 but they were of the earth, earthy; and it is foolish 
 to maintain that they were not. It is because Sir 
 Walter was so weak that he was so human ; and his 
 follies only make him more lovable to those who are 
 not afraid to recognise that their idol had feet of clay. 
 
 * * 
 
 The day is nearly over, and the birds in our narrow 
 glen are singing their Evensong. The Woodland 
 Vespers are as pure as any that ascend to heaven, 
 and I should feel it a greater compliment to be on 
 good terms with these feathered minstrels than with 
 a good many of my fellow-creatures. The exquisite 
 croon of the wood-pigeon is better than the best of 
 old ballads. It is a note that must have been learnt 
 before envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness first 
 visited our planet. The pitiful plaint of the curlew 
 is the wail of a lost spirit ; x but the coo of the cushat, 
 in its pure and confident tenderness, is even yet not 
 unmeet for Paradise. Then there are two or three 
 
 1 My poor little comparison (ten years old) has been since ridden to 
 death ; e.g., in a volume published this year I find ; — " Far on the moors 
 a curlew cried out that its soul was lost." " It sounded mysterious and 
 unknown, the cry of a lost soul." " But only the wild bird wailed like a 
 lost soul, too bad for heaven, too good for hell." (The first of these is the 
 worst— fancy a curlew crying out that its soul was lost !) I sometimes 
 wonder why Mr Samuel Butler's writings are not better known and liked. 
 He at least is a true artist. Whilst others are painfully striving, he says 
 the right thing with more than papal infallibility. "Plaintive creatures 
 who pity themselves on moorlands" is clearly unapproachable. 
 
ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. 117 
 
 timid water-hens among the sedges by the burn-side, 
 who are now nearly tame, and with whom I hope to 
 cultivate a still closer intimacy when they have got 
 their little ones fairly started in life. They have had 
 a hard fight to bring them up so far. There were 
 eight to begin with — downy little brats, black as coal, 
 with great patches of red on their prodigious bills. 
 They insisted on leaving the nest before they were 
 well out of the shell, and got stuck in holes and washed 
 away by spates, so that their numbers were quickly 
 reduced. To see the old ones rushing into the water, 
 fishing up weeds and insects, and feeding the little 
 mites on the bank, was one of the prettiest sights 
 imaginable. And to add to his worries, the male 
 bird had forthwith to begin the construction in mid- 
 stream of a new nest for the reception of the young- 
 sters — a work which ought to have been completed 
 at an earlier date, I suspect, and before the little 
 ones had been allowed to get scattered about a bad 
 world where rats and magpies abound. Now the 
 owl begins to declaim from the ivy (the poet must 
 have had a singularly unmusical ear who first formu- 
 lated that weird expostulation into the conventional 
 " Tuwhit, tuwhoo ") — why or wherefore who can tell ? 
 Does he hoot the impostor and the charlatan, or, like 
 our popular assemblies, is his unmusical protest directed 
 against those only who are honest enough to speak the 
 truth ? " What song the Sirens sang, or what name 
 Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, 
 
Il8 ABOUT A SUMMER NIGHT IN THE NORTH. 
 
 though puzzling questions, are not beyond all con- 
 jecture." But the Bohemia of the woods and fields 
 is still almost a terra incognita to us, and we have as 
 little real communion with these " poor relations " who 
 have been placed on our own special planet as if they 
 occupied Arcturus or Orion. There must be a mistake 
 somewhere. 
 
U9 
 
 VIII. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 I FANCY that I shall always hereafter associate 
 the plaintive strains of Gluck's Orpheo with the 
 fatal illness of one of my dearest friends. I was 
 on my way to hear Julia Ravoglio at a morning per- 
 formance of the Orpheo, when I learnt that Froude 
 was dying. Julia Ravoglio, as Orpheus, has always 
 been and is still (as I think) without a rival ; but that 
 day it seemed as if the news I had just received added 
 a keen, a poignant, pathos to music which I never hear 
 unmoved. While one was being recalled from Hades, 
 another high and pure spirit was passing away ! Some- 
 how the tender appeal, the exquisite pain and passion, 
 the lofty consecration of a love stronger than death, 
 elicited a responsive echo. Were it possible to revoke 
 the sentence that had gone forth ! Might not Death 
 be appeased once more ? Even at the eleventh hour 
 might he not be persuaded to relent ? 
 
120 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 But in our prosaic modern world (where even the 
 piping of an Orpheus would be unregarded) there is 
 no relenting. Science has felt her way too surely : 
 when she tells us with impartial composure, with cruel 
 serenity, that there is no hope, we ask in vain for a 
 reprieve. Froude, if we count by years, was an old 
 man ; yet it was wellnigh impossible to believe that 
 he could be dying. Until a year or two ago he had 
 retained much of his youthful vigour. His eye was 
 not dim, nor his natural force abated. He could still 
 land his salmon ; and he had been a famous angler. 
 He could still handle a gun ; and he had been a crack 
 shot in his time. When aboard the tidy little craft 
 that he kept at Salcombe, especially if the waves ran 
 high, he was almost boyishly elate. Sometimes, no 
 doubt, he was sad ; but it was the sadness of one who, 
 looking before and after, has found that the riddle 
 is hard to read. He had indeed an ever-present sense 
 of the mysteries of existence, and of the awful responsi- 
 bility of the creature to the unknown and invisible 
 lawgiver. I have heard him described as " taciturn " 
 and "saturnine." No two words could be less de- 
 scriptive. He was a singularly bright and vivacious 
 companion ; his smile was winning as a woman's ; 
 possibly he did not always unbend, but when he un- 
 bent he unbent wholly. In congenial society he was 
 ready to discourse on every topic in the heaven above 
 or on the earth beneath ; and when at his best he 
 was not only a brilliant and picturesque but a really 
 suggestive talker. I would not have it thought that 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 121 
 
 he was not sometimes severe. He had a very high 
 standard of right and wrong. He hated all shams, 
 religious, literary, political. The casuistry of the 
 rhetorician, the sophistical make-believe of the worldly 
 ecclesiastic, he could not abide. In public as in private 
 they were abhorrent to him. But while he had a 
 passionate scorn of meanness and truckling, he had 
 an equally passionate reverence for truth, as he under- 
 stood it, whatever guise it assumed. The mask might 
 be sometimes as impassive as Disraeli's ; but behind 
 it was an almost tremulous sensitiveness — a tenderness 
 easily wounded. His presence was striking and im- 
 pressive, — coal-black eyes, 1 wonderfully lustrous and 
 luminous ("eyes full of genius — the glow from within," 
 — as Dr John Brown wrote 2 ) ; coal-black hair, only 
 latterly streaked with grey ; massive features strongly 
 lined, — massive yet mobile, and capable of the subtlest 
 play of expression. For myself I can say without any 
 reserve that he was, upon the whole, the most inter- 
 esting man I have ever known. To me, moreover, 
 
 1 Coal-black they seemed, yet I am assured that they were the rare 
 brown of the "ox-eyed Juno." 
 
 2 " I greatly fear I shall not get to you to-night. I am never sure of 
 Monday, owing to my Insurance work, which cannot be gainsaid. So if I 
 do not appear at seven, you will know how sorry I am for myself. Give 
 my best regards and admiration to your friend. What a noble utterance 
 that was and is — as full of genius as are his eyes — the glow from within. 
 He and Carlyle are our only Rectors of Genius. I shall be very vex'd if I 
 don't see him." — Letter from Dr John Brown, 1S67. On another occasion 
 " Dr John " writes that he is afraid he will not be able to come, as possibly 
 old Mrs Brewster is to dine with him. "But I hope to learn to-day the 
 will of that beautifullest and oldest of women." 
 
122 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 not only the most interesting, but the most steadfastly 
 friendly. I have fished with him in the English 
 Channel, have yachted with him on the Kenmare 
 river, have acted as his assessor in University courts, 
 have been his guest and his host for five-and-thirty 
 years ; and I found him ever the same, — the most 
 loyal and lovable of friends, the frankest but most 
 genial of critics. 
 
 That what may be roughly called the popular im- 
 pression is very different I am well aware. That this 
 silent, reserved, cynical, sardonic Timon held aloof 
 from his fellows, and regarded them with tacit or even 
 Swiftian disapprobation, we have been assured again 
 and again. Against such a confirmed misunderstand- 
 ing, the assurance of friends is comparatively valueless. 
 But even yet the true man is disclosed in his letters ; 
 and of his letters I have preserved many. He wrote 
 with surprising ease ; and the sunshine or storm of the 
 moment was reflected in them as in a glass. His "ver- 
 bal magic" was not an accomplishment but a natural 
 grace ; Carlyle might hammer away painfully at his 
 Frederick in the Valley of the Shadow ; but Froude, 
 however lofty or however lowly the theme, was never 
 embarrassed ; and the rhythmical rise and fall, the 
 musical flow, of his written words was as noticeable in 
 familiar epistle as in finished " study." I venture to 
 think that even a limited selection, a provisional instal- 
 ment, of his charming and characteristic letters will 
 serve to dissipate many prejudices. Some of them are 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 23 
 
 too intimate and confidential for publication. 1 There 
 are passages of flattering personal appreciation which 
 must, wherever practicable, be omitted, while on the 
 other hand there are humorously savage denunciations 
 of clerical impostors and political charlatans which 
 might be taken too seriously by the unwary. Froude, 
 though constitutionally good-humoured, could hit very 
 hard when roused. And there were occasions when he 
 did not hesitate to speak his mind to friend and foe, — 
 though I honestly believe that he never penned a line 
 which, so far as he was concerned, the world was not 
 welcome to read. His opinions might change — as they 
 no doubt did ; but he wrote always with the most 
 absolute sincerity. He did not pride himself on " con- 
 sistency," — which indeed is not seldom only a euphu- 
 ism for obstinacy or unteachableness. Of a certain 
 eminent politician he wrote to me long ago, that he 
 was " a man of the believing temperament, without a 
 single conviction that can stand a strain " ; but (though 
 sensitive as an aneroid to all the moods of the weather) 
 his own vital convictions were never lightly shaken. 
 There was an apparent fickleness, no doubt, about his 
 judgments of men ; but it was apparent only. He 
 judged them as — week by week, session after session — 
 they approached or fell short of his ideal. He had, for 
 
 1 As there is to be no "life" of Mr Froude, and no further publication 
 of his letters, I have retained a few sentences here and there, not of any 
 public interest it may be, yet without which this slight sketch of a singularly- 
 sweet and friendly nature would be incomplete. 
 
124 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 example, no confidence in the divine wisdom of demo- 
 cracies ; the vox populi was not the vox Dei — quite the 
 reverse indeed as a rule ; and just as the statesman 
 when he resisted ignorant popular clamour was blessed, 
 so when he yielded was he banned. 
 
 The letters cover a wide range — literature, history, 
 poetry, philosophy, and politics. Browning, Carlyle, 
 Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, Freeman, Disraeli, Glad- 
 stone, are among the men who figure most prominently 
 in this vivid record of five -and -thirty years. The 
 Russian troubles, the Irish troubles, the Carlyle 
 troubles, — there is hardly a single incident of our 
 time on which they do not touch. One page will be 
 devoted to the struggle between Moslem and Slav ; 
 the next to the contest between rat and water-hen, 
 or " the fate of the magpie's nest." A singularly 
 sensitive and receptive eye watches with unwearied 
 curiosity the game that is being played ! The watcher 
 sometimes becomes the worker ; and then — once at 
 least, and possibly more than once — the interest 
 deepens into tragedy. 
 
 I did not know Froude except through his books (the 
 first two volumes of the History of England had been 
 published in 1856) until, on John Parker's death in 
 i860, he undertook the management of Fraser's Maga- 
 zine. He had nursed Parker on his death-bed ; he was 
 with him to the end ; and it was to Froude that 
 Parker's aged father naturally looked for help when the 
 blow fell. For twenty years thereafter Froude, though 
 much occupied (till 1870 at least) on the successive vol- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 25 
 
 umes of his history, continued to edit the Magazine, — 
 Charles Kingsley and Sir Theodore Martin occasionally 
 taking the duty when he had to be at Simancas or 
 elsewhere abroad. It was in i860, consequently, that 
 our correspondence began ; and it did not close till the 
 summer of the present year. His last letter to me is 
 dated 22d June 1894. I need only add that I had been 
 a frequent contributor to Fraser for several years before 
 Parker's death ; and that the manuscript of a political 
 sketch (now dead and buried), entitled Thalatta, was in 
 his hands at the time. 
 
 "6 Clifton Place, Hyde Park, December 17 [1S60]. 
 " Dear Sir, — You must excuse the silence of the 
 Editor of Fraser ; when there was no editor, you could 
 receive no letter from such a person. . . . Am I ad- 
 dressing ' Shirley ' ? At present even the names of 
 most of the contributors are unknown to me. I hope, 
 however, that I may become better acquainted with 
 them in a little while. I have often heard John Parker 
 mention your name. — Faithfully yours, 
 
 "J. A. Froude." 
 
 " The papers are sent to me in handfuls from the 
 Strand. I get not what I wish to see, but what the 
 porter's hands happen to close upon when they dive 
 into poor young Parker's chest. Chest and all, I 
 believe, come to me to-morrow. I hope when you 
 come to London you will give me the pleasure of your 
 acquaintance, and will call on me." 
 
126 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 "6 Clifton Place, Hyde Park, Jan. 12 [1861]. 
 
 "I have read Thalatta; and now what shall I say? 
 for it is so charming, and it might be so much more 
 charming. There is no mistake about its value. The 
 yacht scene made me groan over the recollection of 
 days and occupation exactly the same. To wander 
 round the world in a hundred-ton schooner would be 
 my highest realisation of human felicity." 
 
 "6 Clifton Place, Hyde Park, W., March 27 [1861]. 
 
 " The Sphinx is a very interesting paper. I will put 
 it in gladly, or rather I will leave directions for it to 
 be put in. I go myself to Spain for two months and 
 leave on Saturday. Theodore Martin manages for me 
 while I am away. I return the first week in June, 
 when I hope to commence Thalatta.''' 
 
 "Bembridge, Isle of Wight, August 12 [1862]. 
 
 " We were driven at last to a shorter flight for our 
 summer than we had intended. . . . You will see me, 
 however, at Edinburgh alone before I begin to write 
 out my first copy. Even on so old and vexed a sub- 
 ject as Mary Stuart, I have much to tell that is new. 
 Alas ! that Knox's Kirk should have sunk down into 
 the thing which is represented in those verses. I dare 
 not print them. The horrible creed is not new. 
 Thomas Aquinas says much the same. And after all, 
 if it is once allowed that God Almighty will torture 
 poor Devils for ever and ever for making mistakes 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 27 
 
 on the nature of the Trinity, I don't see why any 
 quantity of capricious horrors may not be equally true. 
 Given the truth of what all English orthodox parsons 
 profess to believe, and Hephzibah Jones may believe 
 as much more in the same line as she pleases. Only 
 I think our opinion ought to have been asked as to 
 whether we would accept existence on such terms 
 before we were sent into the world." 
 
 "6 Clifton Place, May 18 [1862]. 
 
 " If it will not give you too much trouble, will you 
 tell me, quite briefly, the relation in which ' the Lords 
 of the Articles ' stood to a Scotch Parliament, and how 
 in theory they were chosen ? " 
 
 "6 Clifton Place, Hyde Park, May 22 [1862]. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — Thank you much. You tell 
 me exactly what I wanted to know. I fear my book 
 will bring all your people about my ears. Mary Stuart, 
 from my point of view, was something between Rachel 
 and a pantheress. — Ever sincerely yours, 
 
 " J. A. Froude." 
 
 " Ramsgate, Easter Monday, 1862. 
 
 "I know very little of Browning's poetry; but 
 Browning himself I admire extremely, and I have 
 often wished for leisure to read him. I tried Paracelsus 
 twenty years ago unsuccessfully, and this, I suppose, 
 has prevented me from exciting myself about him as 
 
128 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 I ought. By all means let me have your article. 
 Kingsley was very sorry not to see you." 
 
 "Bembridge, Isle of Wight, Sep. 13 [1S62]. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — I suppose you are right 
 about the Maclachlan story 1 — in some degree. But 
 in that the offence was treason and not creed (though 
 I incline to think the tradition true as to the public 
 execution), yet creed and treason ran inevitably one 
 into the other. The two metals, quite separate in 
 the cold days, fused together in the melting heat of 
 passion. I wish you or some competent person would 
 take a look at your Scotch history as a whole from 
 the Reformation downwards, showing how Queen 
 Mary's Catholics became the Montrose and the 
 Claverhouse of the next century. Men divide them- 
 selves into orthodox and unorthodox quite irrespective 
 of the special creed they profess. The types of char- 
 acter and the contrasts of character remain constant, 
 while the subject-matter is infinitely varied. Your 
 orthodox latitudinarian Sadducee joined in condemn- 
 ing our Lord, just as your orthodox latitudinarian 
 Doctor Lushington condemns the Essayists. No 
 mind could be further from a Covenanter's, judged 
 by its separate detailed opinions, than Macaulay's ; 
 yet the essential resemblance of sympathy was stronger 
 than the opposed views of which he was conscious. 
 The remarkable thing in Scotland was the intense 
 
 1 The article referred to was on the Wigtown Martyrs' controversy. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. I 29 
 
 hatred of the two parties for each other. It was 
 not altogether Highlander and Lowlander. It was 
 not patrician and plebeian, though in some degree 
 these divisions followed the religious division. 
 
 "All mankind, Coleridge says, are either Nominal- 
 ist or Realist. This was a metaphysical way of ex- 
 pressing two opposed classes which in one form or 
 other divide the world ; and which in your Scotland 
 took such picturesque and romantic forms. — Ever 
 faithfully yours, J. A. Froude. 
 
 " On controverted points I approve myself of the 
 practice of the Reformation. When St Paul's Cross 
 pulpit was occupied one Sunday by a Lutheran, the 
 next by a Catholic, the next by a Calvinist, all sides 
 had a hearing, and the preachers knew that they 
 would be pulled up before the same audience for 
 what they might say." 
 
 "December 13 [1862]. 
 
 " You will let me keep Browning till Feb. — will you 
 not?" 
 
 [Froude in his conduct of the Magazine followed the 
 " Reformation practice " ; though Browning, I am 
 afraid, was a hard nut to crack. But the prolonged 
 unpopularity of our great poet is now a common- 
 place.] 
 
 "6 Clifton Place, Jan. 3 [1S63]. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — I am very sorry about 
 Browning. The length has been the difficult}'. Were 
 
 1 
 
130 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 it made up of your own work it should have gone 
 in long ago, without a day's delay. But Browning's 
 verse ! — with intellect, thought, power, grace, all the 
 charms in detail which poetry should have, it rings 
 after all like a bell of lead. However, it shall go in 
 next time — for your sake. No doubt he deserves all 
 you say ; yet it will be vain. To this generation 
 Browning is as uninteresting as Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 were to the last century. In making the comparison 
 you see I admit that you may be right. I have no idea 
 of giving up Fraser unless it changes hands, and goes 
 to some publisher whose views about it may be different 
 from mine. Parker, as you know, wishes to sell it. 
 Thalatta came duly, very much improved, I think, 
 by the additions. Thank you most warmly for your 
 words about me in the Preface. I wish I could de- 
 serve them. I hope to be in Edinburgh the end of 
 the month. I suppose I had better go through at 
 once, and see Dunbar and Berwick on my way back. 
 Surely I shall be delighted with The Seaside Sketch. — 
 Faithfully yours, J. A. Froude." 
 
 "March 8 [1863]. 
 
 "The Magazine prospers. The circulation now ex- 
 ceeds 3000, and more copies must be printed." 
 
 " April 16 [1863]. 
 
 " I was highly complimented by Carlyle last night 
 on the management of FraMY" 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 131 
 
 " November 18 [1863]. 
 
 " I read the notice in the paper which you sent me 
 with deep regret for you — for I know what they were 
 to you. My memory does not distinguish sufficiently 
 between them to enable me to tell which you have 
 lost. I remember with greatest clearness one bright 
 sunny face, running over with intelligence and kindli- 
 ness. The other a genuine, true, but rather sadder per- 
 son. . . . The old familiar faces which we recollect from 
 childhood have a hold over us peculiar of its kind ; and 
 as they drop off one by one the roots of our own hold 
 on life seem shaken. . . . But somehow when successes 
 of this kind do come to us, they come at a time when 
 we have ceased to care for them, and are beginning to 
 think as much of the other world as the present." 
 
 "December 12 [1S63]. 
 
 " I want you some day to go with me to Lochleven, 
 and then to Stirling, Perth, and Glasgow. Before I 
 go further I must have a personal knowledge of 
 Lochleven Castle and the grounds at Langside. Also 
 I must look at the street at Linlithgow where Murray 
 was shot." 
 
 "December 22 [1S63]. 
 
 " I go to Ireland on the 27th for a few days' shooting, 
 but I shall be here again by the 5th or 6th of January. 
 As to Darnley. Yes, it was too certain that she would 
 kill him. He was a poor wretched worm ; but they had 
 better have let him crawl away to England, and the 
 
132 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 manner of it was so piteous. Still, considering the 
 times, there was nothing about a mere murder of an 
 inconvenient scoundrel so very wonderful. It was 
 made important by the political consequences. On the 
 ground that ' a blunder is worse than a crime,' it was 
 unpardonable." 
 
 " February 28 [1S64]. 
 
 " We have got into a sort of scrape by our Theologi- 
 cal misdoings. The world takes the message, but still 
 at the expense of the bringer of it. . . . Lord Stanhope 
 tells me that he [Joseph Robertson] has just brought 
 out for the B ami city ne Club a curious book about Queen 
 Mary. If you see Mr Robertson, will you kindly tell 
 him that if he will lend me the book I will take the 
 greatest care of it. . . . I send you a lecture which I 
 gave at the Royal Institution, and for which I was 
 called an Atheist." 
 
 "6 Clifton Place, June 29 [1S64]. 
 
 " I almost regret that I did not choose Scotland this 
 year, as local knowledge of many places is growing 
 more and more necessary to me. If we are alive next 
 year, you must take me to Lochleven. I want to make 
 out Carberry Hill, and to seat myself on Queen Mary's 
 stone. . . . The story grows wilder and grander the 
 more I know of it ; but like most wild countries it 
 has bad roads through it, and the travelling is dan- 
 gerous." 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 33 
 
 "Salcombe, August 14 [1864]. 
 " I am only sorry to hear that the Campaigner 1 is so 
 near his retirement. Let it be only on furlough, and 
 let us by all means hope for more of him by-and-by. 
 If your own travels bring you this way it will be most 
 delightful, only if you come let it be before this splen- 
 did weather ends. We have no grouse, but we have a 
 sea like the Mediterranean, and estuaries beautiful as 
 Loch Fyne, the green water washing our garden wall, 
 and boats and mackerel. I, alas ! instead of enjoying 
 it, have been floundering all the summer among the 
 extinct mine-shafts of Scotch politics, — the most dam- 
 nable set of pitfalls mortal man was ever put to blunder 
 through in the dark. Nothing but blind paths ending 
 each of them in a chasm with no bottom, and in the 
 place of guides with good horn lanthorns to show the 
 way, nothing but Protestant and Catholic Will-o'-the- 
 wisps. I believe still that the Regent Murray was the 
 honestest man in the whole island ; but there was 
 much pitch which he could not help handling. I 
 shall want you next May to show me Carberry Hill, 
 Lochleven, and Langside. Afterwards I must go to 
 Carlisle, and see Naworth and the Border-line to Ber- 
 wick. — Ever most truly yours, J. A. Froude." 
 
 "6 Clifton Place, Juned [1864]. 
 " My dear Skelton, — Thanks about the Cam- 
 paigner, which is quite faultless. If you care for praise, 
 
 1 A Campaigner at Home (Longmans, 1865) originally appeared in 
 Frasers Magazine. 
 
134 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 you will be satisfied with what is said by all whose good 
 word is valuable. You shall have your proof as soon 
 as possible. I did my work in Spain ; and except that 
 I found I should have to go there many times again, 
 I should be well satisfied. Just now my chief interest 
 is in a number of ballads in the Record Office on the 
 death of Darnley, and again on that of the Regent 
 Murray. The whole tragedy told in that wild musical 
 Scotch, which is like a voice out of another world. 
 There are ten or twelve of them, some written or nom- 
 inally written by Robert Semple, but there is more than 
 one hand. Will you ask any of your antiquarian friends 
 if the} 7 know anything about them ? They are printed 
 on loose sheets at the time — 1567 and 1570. There is 
 no doubt of their being the genuine expression of the 
 emotions of the time, and although strongly Puritan, 
 they are equally beautiful. I am having them copied, 
 and shall print them in a volume l if you or Laing or 
 some one will help me with the Scotch. — Most truly 
 yours, J. A. Froude." 
 
 " December 4 [1S64]. 
 
 "Theodore Martin will, I hope, undertake the life of 
 Maitland of Lethington, which I have been so long 
 wishing to have written. Will the trout rise in Loch- 
 leven in May ? Then, or about then, I hope for my 
 fortnight with you in the North." 
 
 1 Since this letter was written these poems have been issued by the 
 Scottish Text Society in a volume edited by Dr Cranstoun, entitled Satir- 
 ical Poems of the Time of the Reformation. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 35 
 
 "Westcliff House, Ramsgate, Augusts [1865]. 
 " Pam. cares for nothing but popularity; he will do 
 what the people most interested wish ; and he would 
 appoint the Devil over the head of Gabriel if he could 
 gain a vote by it." 
 
 "Westcliff, August 25 [1865]. 
 " If you have time, I wish you would write half-a- 
 dozen pages for October in review of two little books of 
 poetry — one Allingham's Fifty Modem Poems ; the other 
 another volume of our Devonshire Postman Capern, 
 whom I reviewed in Fraser seven years ago, when he 
 first appeared. Art has done nothing for him, but he 
 is a fine musician by nature, and found out his faculties 
 merely by being employed to write songs for the farmers' 
 festivities at Christmas, and sonnets or elegies for 
 despairing lover and friend. It is wildflower growth, 
 but real as far as it goes. Shall I send you the book or 
 books ? For Allingham I know not what can be said. 
 All he seems to me to have succeeded in is in proving 
 that with many fine faculties, which he certainly has, 
 he will fail to the end of the chapter." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, October 16 [1865]. 
 " I hope to be with you on the second. Pray do not 
 ask people to meet me. I am sorry about A. — on 
 public grounds as well as private. But he will make a 
 fair professor ; a leaden bottom and a wooden head 
 seem the established qualifications." 
 
 [This is the first letter from the pleasant house in 
 
136 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 Onslow Gardens, where Froude remained until he went 
 to Oxford in 1892.] 
 
 [In June 1865 I had reviewed Mr Swinburne's 
 earliest volume, The Queen-Mother and Rosamond ; and 
 on the appearance of the first series of Poems and 
 Ballads in 1866, Froude permitted me, after some 
 hesitation, and in spite of, or rather in consequence 
 of, the extravagant and irrational violence of the 
 critics, to insert a qualified "apology." He had at 
 first, having seen only garbled extracts, been rather 
 carried away.] 
 
 " Babbicombe, Torquay, August 15 [1866]. 
 
 "You are coming round to my opinion of Swin- 
 burne. ... I have looked at his late poems, but I 
 have not got a copy of them. Your difficulty will 
 be in choosing passages to justify your interpretation. 
 . . . What about Dallas ? Is the book ever coming 
 out, or is the article to be broken up ? — Most truly 
 yours, J. A. Froude." 
 
 "Babbicombe, Torquay, August 19 [1866]. 
 
 " Since I wrote you I have seen Swinburne's volume, 
 and also the Saturday and the Athenceum reviews of 
 it. There is much, of course, which is highly ob- 
 jectionable in it, but much also of real beauty. He 
 convinces me in fact for the first time that he has 
 real stuff in him, and I think, considering the fatuous 
 stupidity with which the critics have hitherto flattered 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 37 
 
 him, considering that he is still very young, and that 
 the London intellectual life is perhaps the very worst 
 soil which has ever existed in the world for a young 
 • poet to be planted in, — considering all this, I am very 
 unwilling to follow the crew of Philistines, and bite 
 his heels like the rest of them. The Saturday Review 
 temperament is ten thousand thousand times more 
 damnable than the worst of Swinburne's skits. Mod- 
 ern respectability is so utterly without God, faith, 
 heart ; it shows so singular ingenuity in assailing and 
 injuring everything that is noble and good, and so 
 systematic a preference for what is mean and paltry, 
 that I am not surprised at a young fellow dashing 
 his heels into the face of it. If he is to be cut up 
 for what he has done, I would lay the blame far 
 
 mnr e heavily on others than on him, and I would 
 ,ural Land ..... 
 md especially praise the many things which 
 
 deserve praise. When there is any kind of 
 ugh Rate . , J 
 
 nus, we have no right to drive it mad. We 
 
 lith?£ 19U>al with lt wisel y> J ustl y> fairly.— Ever yours, 
 
 "J. A. Froude." 
 
 gs, &e 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, December 15 [1866]. 
 tirely except to your view that there is no 
 Arrears., the country beyond what is occupying itself 
 Total £ n S' n £ WOI "ds together in prose or verse. I 
 
 iv- on the contrary, that genius intuitively 
 
 practical, and only by accident gets squeezed 
 
 )ad into book-writing. The ablest men in 
 
 the country at this time, I believe, are lawyers, en- 
 
 &c 
 
138 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 gineers, men of science, doctors, statesmen, anything 
 but authors. If we have only four supreme men at 
 present alive among us, and if Browning and Ruskin 
 are two of those, the sooner you and I emigrate the 
 better." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 6 [1S67]. 
 
 " Your paper is with the printers. I don't agree 
 with it ; but why should I ? Could you not prefix 
 to the proof two or three words intimating that you 
 don't agree with the line which we are taking, and 
 that you wish to say a little on the other side ? and 
 then I can put a note saying that I have the greatest 
 possible pleasure in acceding to the wishes of an old 
 and deeply valued contributor. I am grieved to hear 
 about your side. If I were you, and could manage 
 it, I would go right away to Algiers or some such 
 place. — Most truly yours, J. A. Froude." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, July 7 [1S67]. 
 " I had a pleasant time in Spain, finishing my work 
 there, I fear, for good and all. A great deal which 
 is curious and unlooked for comes out about the re- 
 lations between James VI. and Spain. They were 
 more intimate than anybody in Scotland knew, and 
 fresh vivid light is thrown by them on the Raid of 
 Ruthven. I have a weary time before me, however, 
 before I can begin to write. The book will be finished 
 in the next two volumes." 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 39 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, December 2d [1867]. 
 
 " I was on the point of writing to you to stir your 
 memory. You shall gather material in Kerry next 
 year for splendid ' Riverside ' papers. The likenesses 
 and the unlikenesses to Scotland will not fail to strike 
 you; also the remains of the Anglo -Franco- Scoto- 
 Hispano - Hibernico private establishments which 
 swarmed on those coasts in the 16th century. What 
 a subject for a novel ! " 
 
 [Froude was much gratified when the St Andrews 
 students in 1868 elected him their Rector, and his 
 Inaugural Address was delivered on 23d March 1869.] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 23 [1869]. 
 
 " If I can spend a day and night with you going 
 or coming I will ; but it will be infinitely more agree- 
 able, if Mrs Skelton will let it be so, to see you and 
 have a chat with you without company. Consider 
 what I shall just have escaped from, or shall be about 
 to undergo. I am writing my lecture, which I alter- 
 nately believe to be profoundly wise and absolute 
 nonsense. I suppose it is neither one nor the other, 
 but considerably nearer the last." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 26 [1869]. 
 
 " Matt, wishes your article on him to be postponed 
 till the appearance of the new edition of his poems. 
 He knows that he is strongest in criticism, and there- 
 
140 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 fore cares most to be praised for his verses. Enough 
 can be said justly in praise of this side of him without 
 flattery, and therefore it will be perhaps wise to confine 
 yourself to it ; but we can talk him over when I see 
 you. About my address. The subject will be modern 
 education ; the burden, that all education, high and 
 low, ought to be of a kind to help men to earn their 
 livelihood. The useful first, the beautiful, and the good 
 even, afterwards. Or if men choose to devote them- 
 selves to the beautiful and good, &c, it should be 
 with the conditions attached to that sort of thing by 
 the old scholars of prospective poverty. Indirectly 
 it will be a compliment to your system at the expense 
 of ours. After four years of Oxford or Cambridge, 
 and an expenditure of two or three thousand pounds, 
 we turn young fellows out unable to earn a sixpence, 
 and with habits of luxury which will be a misery and 
 temptation to them all their lives. Of course there 
 will be more in the lecture than this. I give you 
 merely a sketch of the main drift. . . . Faithfully 
 yours, J. A. Froude." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Jan. n [1870]. 
 
 " Thanks for your good wishes and a hearty return 
 of them. We were grieved to hear of your loss. It 
 was a cloud over your beautiful home which must have 
 thrown a heavy shadow there. I am glad you liked 
 what I said about the Colonies. It will be well if you 
 will work to the same purpose in Blackwood. Every 
 nerve ought to be strained, or it will be too late." 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 141 
 
 [From this time onwards, the policy of Imperial 
 Federation — or at least of a closer connection between 
 the mother country and the Colonies — was urgently 
 advocated by Mr Froude. There can be no doubt that 
 to his urgent advocacy the sounder views that now 
 prevail are in some measure due.] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 10 [1S70]. 
 
 "You might put Morris's last poem with Rossetti's 
 volume. Also, could you not throw a general retro- 
 spective glance over the last ten years' produce in this 
 line, — gathering some kind of unity of tendency from 
 it. The Ring and the Book requires mention. Clough's 
 Dipsychus I consider the most really remarkable con- 
 tribution we have had ; but the poetry, like all else, is 
 going post-haste to the Devil just now, and Alfred's 
 last volume is the most signal instance of it. He too 
 has been swept into the general stream. You might 
 say as much as this — much as I like and honour him. 
 
 " I have been among some of the Tory magnates 
 lately. They distrust Disraeli still, and will never 
 again be led by him. So they are as sheep that have 
 no shepherd. Lord Salisbury's time may come ; but 
 not yet. I am going in with Fraser for the reconsti- 
 tuting ' authority ' somehow." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, March 9 [1S70]. 
 
 " I am to lecture at Edinburgh next winter on 
 Calvin. . . . Hearty thanks for your invitation, of 
 
142 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 which I shall not fail to avail myself. Remember, on 
 the other hand, that you and Mrs Skelton promised 
 yourselves to us this summer at Derreen. It is our 
 last season ; we are to be evicted without compensation 
 at the end of our lease. ... I want a crusade against 
 party government. That lies at the bottom of every 
 mischief under which we groan." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, April 12 [1870]. 
 
 " Rossetti has gone to press. I was going to write 
 to you to ask if you would review Lothair for the June 
 number. It will be a labour of love to you, and you 
 
 may praise Dizzy as much as you please. G and 
 
 Co. deliberately intend to shake off the Colonies. 
 They are privately using their command of the situa- 
 tion to make the separation inevitable." 
 
 "Derreen, June 21 [1870]. 
 
 " Don't bother yourself. My only vexation was lest 
 S. and M. should construe the passage into retaliation 
 for their own good-for-nothing attack on me in the 
 
 Q . I never resented anything more than that 
 
 article. I felt as if I was tied to a post, and a mere ass 
 was brought up to kick me. Some day I think I shall 
 take my reviewers all round, and give them a piece of 
 my mind. I acknowledge to five real mistakes in the 
 whole book — twelve volumes — about twenty trifling slips, 
 equivalent to i's not dotted and t's not crossed; and 
 that is all that the utmost malignity has discovered. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 143 
 
 Every one of the rascals has made a dozen blunders of 
 his own, too, while detecting one of mine. Pray come 
 on here — we shall so much like to see you, and come 
 while the weather is fine and the sea moderate. After 
 October sailing becomes dangerous work." 
 
 [This is almost the only letter in which Froude 
 alluded to the charges of inaccuracy that were freely 
 brought against him by Mr Freeman and others. It 
 seems to me that the charge, even when stated in far 
 more temperate language than was used at the time, 
 rests on no sufficient basis. We must remember that 
 he was to some extent a pioneer, and that he was the 
 first (for instance) to utilise the treasures of Simancas. 
 He transcribed, from the Spanish, masses of papers 
 which even a Spaniard would have read with difficulty, 
 and I am assured that his translations (with rare ex- 
 ceptions) render the original with singular exactness. 
 As regards Scottish history, I could not accept his 
 conclusions, and I had more than once to examine his 
 statements sentence by sentence ; but I have seen no 
 reason to change the opinion I expressed in the Preface 
 to Maitland of Lethington : " Only the man or woman 
 who has had to work upon the mass of Scottish 
 material in the Record Office can properly appreciate 
 Mr Froude's inexhaustible industry and substantial 
 accuracy. His point of view is very different from 
 mine ; but I am bound to say that his acquaintance 
 with the intricacies of Scottish politics during the 
 reign of Mary appears to me to be almost, if not quite, 
 
144 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 unrivalled." And with this view, I may add, John 
 Hill Burton concurred. 1 ] 
 
 "Derreen, Azigust 24 [1870]. 
 
 " We expect you anxiously, and shall be most dis- 
 appointed if you and Mrs Skelton do not come. At 
 present the weather is most beautiful. Bring your gun 
 or not as you please. I can furnish you if you don't. 
 Our grouse have been a failure so far as we have yet 
 seen. . . . You misunderstand me about the [Calvin] 
 lecture. I don't mean to meddle with the metaphysical 
 puzzle, but to insist on the fact historically that this 
 particular idea has several times appeared in the world 
 under different forms, and always with the most power- 
 ful moral effect. The last reappearance of it in 
 Spinoza, and virtually in Goethe, is the most singular 
 of all. . . . They have believed in Election, Pre- 
 destination, and, generally, the absolute arbitrary 
 sovereignty of God ; and these, and not the moderate 
 Liberals and the reasonable prudent people who seem 
 to us most commendable, have had the shaping of the 
 world's destinies. In fact I suppose if there is such a 
 thing as a Personal God at all, this sort of theory is 
 the true one, and most consistent with facts." 
 
 "Derreen, Kenmare, Sep. 4 [1S70]. 
 
 " You will come from Killarney, and will therefore 
 be at Kenmare about one. If the wind is East or 
 
 1 An admirable letter by Sir Theodore Martin on the subject of the 
 alleged "inaccuracies" appeared in the Times of November 7, 1894. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 145 
 
 North, the yacht shall go up and meet you, and the men 
 will be at the Lansdowne Arms. If you do not find 
 them there, you will understand that it would not do, 
 and come on in a car." 
 
 [Of that memorable visit to the wild glens of Kerry 
 some record remains in an old Note-book, and the pages 
 devoted to the pleasant days spent on the bay of Kill- 
 mackillog still retain a touch of colour — though out of 
 all the rest it has faded. As the happiest of Froude's 
 later summers were passed at Derreen, those who knew 
 him only in London drawing-rooms may like to see 
 him in his shooting- jacket among the Paddies, for 
 whom, in spite of all political heartburnings, he retained 
 a warm liking to the last. Here, then, is one of these 
 pages : — 
 
 We were on our way to visit a friend whose name 
 has long been, and long will be, illustrious in English 
 literature ; and the week which we spent with him on 
 the bay of Killmackillog will not be quickly forgotten. 
 The " harbour " on which the house stands is sur- 
 rounded on all sides by lofty mountains, which shut off 
 the profane world. Their sides are bare of timber ; 
 but around the lawn forest-trees and rare shrubs, hollies, 
 laurels, hedges of fuchsias, the pampas grass, the 
 hydrangea, the myrtle, and the arbutus flourish 
 luxuriantly. The woods are carpeted with ferns in 
 autumn, and the loveliest wild-flowers imaginable are 
 found in spring. Great dragon-flies sweep across the 
 
 K 
 
146 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 heather, and the curious humming-bird moth flutters 
 among the roses and geraniums. Nor are more material 
 attractions wanting — the land flows, so to speak, with 
 milk and honey. There are real Scotch grouse on the 
 mountain-tops (2000 feet above us), where they find it 
 cooler than in the valleys. There are hares and rabbits 
 and wild-duck ; salmon lying by the score in the long 
 still reaches of the river ; an oyster-bed on the beach ; 
 plaice, soles, turbot, lobster in the bay. There are 
 water-birds, moreover, of various kinds ; but no one 
 cares to meddle with them : so that, at twilight, you 
 hear close at hand the wild plaint of the curlew, and 
 next morning, when you go down to bathe, the 
 cormorants gaze at you with the utmost composure. 
 On this side of the bay, for twenty miles, our host 
 has no neighbours except the Kerry cottars and fisher- 
 men ; but on the other side there are a few country 
 houses : Dromore, the residence of the last repre- 
 sentative of a great old Irish house ; Parknacilla, where 
 the most genial, tolerant, and learned member of the 
 Irish hierarchy enjoys his summer holiday ; and Gari- 
 nish, which the taste and munificence of a Catholic 
 peer have transformed from a desolate rocky island 
 into a veritable piece of fairyland. The Kerry cottars 
 and fishermen are an interesting study, and they are 
 best studied on Sunday. The Catholic chapel and its 
 vicinity on that day present a curious scene. The 
 people assemble on the highroad and in the neighbour- 
 ing fields. The donkeys and ponies are taken out of 
 the carts and tethered to the bushes. Through the 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 147 
 
 birch-trees that bend over the stream one sees young 
 women, who have walked without shoes eight or ten or 
 twelve miles, washing their feet in the running water. 
 (They don't wear shoes in rainy Ireland, on the principle 
 that it is dryer to wet their feet only, than their feet 
 plus shoes and stockings.) Men and women and 
 children are sitting about everywhere, a profusion of 
 bright reds blazing through the green. Within the 
 unfinished and unfurnished chapel the service is con- 
 ducted in the most primitive fashion. The hum of 
 voices comes in with the autumn sunshine until the 
 host is raised, when for a few seconds there is deep 
 stillness both within and without. Then the congrega- 
 tion leave the chapel — gathering into groups as at a 
 fair — eating, drinking, buying, selling, winding up with 
 a dance on the green. If you are looking on, some 
 pretty, swift-footed Kerry girl will insist on your dancing 
 with her — it is the custom of the country — and you 
 must submit with the best grace you can. Then, late 
 in the afternoon, the inhabitants of each district leave 
 together in a body, and the loneliest glens are startled 
 at dusk by the sounds of what always seemed to me 
 in Southern Ireland a harsh and discordant merriment. 
 Respecting the other incidents of that pleasant visit, 
 much might be written. How, in our host's yacht, we 
 beat up and down the wide estuary from one point of 
 vantage to another ; how we visited the old churchyard 
 where " The last remains of MacFinnan Dhu, Pater 
 Patriae ! " are deposited ; how we were lost in the mist 
 among the mountains ; how, aided by the most charm- 
 
148 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 ing of antiquaries (since Monkbarns), we opened a rath 
 (or underground dwelling of the old natives), and how, 
 on hands and feet, the great historian disappeared from 
 our gaze into the bowels of the earth, and reappeared 
 
 heavens ! if all the mud that the Saturday Review 
 
 has cast at him had stuck, he could not have presented 
 a more appalling spectacle ; how we ascended Knocka- 
 tee, and inspected the Holy Loch and its rude shrine 
 and ruder offerings ; how we walked and rowed and 
 sketched, and were happy in that glorious Kerry sun- 
 shine, will be known hereafter, perhaps, when A.'s 
 private diary is published by Mr Blackwood. 
 
 Mr Froude and his household remained at Derreen 
 till the beginning of November. " We leave Ireland 
 in a fortnight or three weeks. The weather has been 
 tremendous. No other word will do for it." 
 
 I return again to the letters.] 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, Jan. 12 [1871]. 
 
 " Carlyle has been angry too, — a strong Calvinism 
 
 lies at the bottom of his nature. He knows perfectly 
 
 that the life has gone out of modern Calvinistic 
 
 theology, but he likes to see the shell of the flown 
 
 bird still treated with reverence. . . . B is vexed 
 
 with me because I will not let him use Frascr to preach 
 up toleration of Ritualism. I grow more and more 
 intolerant of certain things ; and conscious humbug 
 in religious matters is one of them." 
 
 [Froude delivered his closing address to the St An- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 49 
 
 drews students on 17th March 1871. The subject was 
 " Calvinism."] 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, March 24 [1871]. 
 
 " I enjoyed my trip exceedingly ; you were all very 
 kind to me. I shall ever retain a grateful recollection of 
 the St Andrews students, from whom alone I have yet 
 received any public recognition. I suppose I shall as 
 usual be made a spread-eagle of by the Saturday, but I 
 have survived so many operations of that kind that I 
 have ceased to be curious about them, and do not even 
 look to see what has been done to me. The Yankees 
 have written to me about going out to lecture to them. 
 I am strongly tempted ; but I could not tell the truth 
 about Ireland without reflecting in a good many ways 
 on my own country. I don't fancy doing that, how- 
 ever justly, to amuse Jonathan. I liked the notice 
 in the Scotsman very much. It is a paradox to say 
 that old Calvinism was not doctrinal in the face of 
 the Institute ; but it is astonishing to find how little in 
 ordinary life they talked or wrote about doctrine. The 
 doctrine was never more than the dress. The living 
 creature was wholly moral and political, — so at least 
 I think myself." 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, June 8 [1S71]. 
 
 " I remain in office till December, so by all means let 
 me have the Mary Stuart. I shall be extremely in- 
 terested in reading it. ... I am working away at the 
 Irish book. I found vast stores of material of a curious 
 
150 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 kind in Dublin ; and at any rate I hope to produce 
 something readable. I fear, however, that it will not 
 conduce to the agreeableness of my future visits to 
 
 Celtic Ireland. If G could have his way, there 
 
 would be no Ireland but a Celtic one in a few years ; 
 but there are happy signs of approximation between 
 the Church and the Presbyterians, which may be the 
 beginning of a wholesome reaction. Protestants pull- 
 ing together may still hold out, and even recover the 
 reins." 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, Nov. 17 [1871]. 
 " I am to continue editor after all. Dasent declines 
 at the last moment, and the house of Longman petition 
 me to go on with it. I trust you will go on with me 
 also. Driven out of Derreen, I am thinking of trying 
 to get Garinish. Lord Dunraven is dead, and his 
 successor does not care to keep it." 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, April 11 [1871]. 
 " Don't you think the introduction into newspapers 
 of remarks upon our private affairs ought to be action- 
 able ? You are very kind to have so far noticed that 
 unnecessary paragraph as to write and ask about it. 
 All I hope is well at the Hermitage. St Andrews is 
 at last provided of a Rector, and well provided. I was 
 heartily glad of the choice. I have changed my politi- 
 cal mind about Dizzy, and shall be heartily glad of a 
 laudatory article upon him if you care to write it." 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. I 5 I 
 
 " Westcliff House, Ramsgate, Sep. 7 [1872]. 
 
 " I sail in a fortnight [for the States], and I know 
 not what I have before me. I go like an Arab of the 
 desert : my hand will be against every man, and there- 
 fore every man's hand will be against me. Protestant 
 and Catholic, English, English-Irish, and Celtic — my 
 one hope will be, like St Paul's, to fling in some word 
 or words among them which will set them by the ears 
 among themselves. ... I have been cruising with 
 Lord Ducie in a big schooner. We were for several 
 days in the Kenmare river, and I again walked over 
 Knockatee, with Campbell of Isla for my companion 
 — an extremely interesting man. Derreen was beautiful 
 as ever." 1 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 15 [1873]. 
 
 " Fmser no longer brings us into correspondence, 
 for you have found better encouragement, I fear, in 
 the rival firm. But that is no reason why I should 
 never hear from you. My American experience has 
 been more than interesting. They are good people — 
 very unlike what I looked for." 
 
 [This year I find he was looking out for a country- 
 house in Scotland, — " where we can have our three or 
 four months of gypsy life like the Irish one. A stream 
 
 1 Mr Froude did not return to Derreen again,— though I fancy that it had 
 a unique fascination for him. So late as the autumn of 1S88, he wrote 
 me, — "Derreen is offered me again. I wish— and I dread— for Derreen 
 has associations for me which I hardly dare to revive." 
 
152 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 with trout and an odd salmon would add to the 
 pleasure, or still better the sea or a salt-water loch." 
 But nothing came of it.] 
 
 "Athenaeum Club, April 2 [1S73]. 
 
 " Some time ago you offered to do a panegyric on 
 Dizzy. I declined, but I have come round to your way 
 of thinking. I am one of the weak - minded beings 
 who are carried away by the Conservative reaction. 
 
 Rather, I see plainly that G is driving the ship 
 
 into the breakers. ... I mentioned at a party of 
 M.P.'s the other night that throughout human history 
 the great orators had been invariably proved wrong. 
 There were shrieks of indignation ; but at last it was 
 allowed that facts looked as if it were true. Will you 
 write on Dizzy now? — Ever yours, J. A. Froude." 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, December 16 [1S73]. 
 
 " I am working hard to finish my Irish book, which 
 I have grown to hate. It will make the poor Paddies 
 hate me too, which I do not wish, as I cannot return 
 the feeling. . . . Anyway, I am satisfied to feel that 
 the great Revolutionary wave has spent its force, and 
 that the next fifty years will probably be more and 
 more Conservative." 
 
 [In the spring of 1874 a great calamity overtook Mr 
 Froude. Mrs Froude died suddenly early in March. 
 Sir James Stephen, writing to me on April 1, informed 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. I 53 
 
 me that he had been constantly with him since her 
 death. " It is a terrible blow for him, poor fellow, and 
 I think I am the only person (except Mr Carlyle) 
 whom he has seen since it happened."] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, March n [1874]. 
 
 " You will not expect me to say anything of what 
 has befallen me. Rigid silence is my only present 
 resource. ... I am unable just now to attend to 
 the Magazine work. We go in a fortnight to Wales, 
 to remain there till the end of the year." 
 
 [Early next year Lord Carnarvon requested Mr 
 Froude to visit South Africa, and ascertain the state 
 of political feeling throughout the colony. He re- 
 turned in December.] 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, December 24 [1875]. 
 
 "A word of thanks for your note, though I am over- 
 whelmed with business. Yes, I am at home again, 
 after strange adventures. We know what we are, but 
 we know not what we shall be. If anybody had told 
 me two years ago that I should be leading an agita- 
 tion within Cape Colony, I should have thought my 
 informant delirious. And though the world cannot 
 yet understand what has happened, I have picked the 
 one Diamond out of the rubbish-heap, and brought it 
 home with me. The Ministers have the appearance 
 of victory, but we have the substance. 
 
154 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 " Pray send your Essays. I shall delight in them. 
 I have seen your hand from time to time in Blackwood 
 — specially in praise of Green's book at my expense. 1 
 I will back my view to outlive Green's; though I 
 haven't had it, and don't know what he says. My 
 best regards to Mrs Skelton. — Yours most warmly, 
 
 "J. A. Froude." 
 
 [In 1876 Mr Froude and Professor Huxley were ap- 
 pointed members of the Scottish Universities Commis- 
 sion. For several years thereafter they paid frequent 
 visits to Edinburgh, — Mr Froude being my guest at 
 the Hermitage. Both of the English Commissioners 
 were brilliant talkers ; and while the shadows gathered 
 outside in the glen, there was the sparkle of keen wit 
 and ready repartee within. For these unconventional 
 festivities, the injunction was "not to dress"; and I 
 find the Professor, more suo, proposing to come in 
 a kilt, — " to be as little dressed as possible."] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, May 20 [1876]. 
 
 " I would not be an inconvenience to either of you 
 for the world. And least of all think of inviting 
 any one to meet me. An evening or two with you 
 in your beautiful glen will be better than any quantity 
 of idle dinner-party talk. Abana and Pharpar are 
 not better than the waters of Israel or the murmur 
 of Lothianburn." 
 
 1 Certainly not. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 55 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, May 27 [1876]. 
 " Some time ago, before I knew that I was to be 
 a Commissioner, I promised Henry Bowie that I 
 would open the annual course at the Philosophical 
 Institution by a lecture upon landlords and landed 
 property. I had been much interested by what Mr 
 Smith had done at Scilly, and I wanted to show 
 Radical Scotland how beneficent a fairy a landlord 
 still might and may be, in spite of battues and Deer- 
 Forests. It occurs to me that my being a University 
 Commissioner may be inconsistent with my perform- 
 ing on platforms. Will you think this over ? " 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, A T ovember 16 [1876]. 
 " After I left, you seem to have had pleasant weather ! 
 Here we had only frost and fog ; you had snow and a 
 gale of wind. To-day it is like summer." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, March 24 [1877]. 
 " This accursed Turkish business is still in the air. 
 I met Lord and Lady Derby last night. They lay 
 the blame on Ignatieff. I suppose, in fact, that the 
 Russians mean to go to war unless Europe will 
 efficiently back them in controlling the Turkish Gov- 
 ernment ; and that the object of all their diplomacy 
 is to put them in the right before Europe, and Eng- 
 land in the wrong. A few weeks must end the 
 uncertainty. When the roads in Bulgaria become 
 practicable, the Russian army will either advance or 
 show clearly that it does not mean to advance." 
 
156 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, March 29 [1877]. 
 
 " I cannot make up my mind to go to B . It 
 
 would be like being shut up in a cage with a benevol- 
 ent white bear. . . . The Essays come out to-morrow." 
 
 "Clarendon Hotel {April 2, 1877], Tuesday. 
 
 "The sacrifice has been thrown away. I ought to 
 stay for the Friday meeting of the Commission, but I 
 am so forlorn that if I continue in the Hotel the 
 temptation of the train will be too strong, and I 
 shall find myself in the Flying Scotsman before I 
 know it." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Sept. 17 [1877]. 
 
 " The Edinburgh duty is inconvenient, and if I 
 was certain that you would be absent, I might after 
 all resolve to shirk — but it would lie on my conscience. 
 
 "This Eastern business is very frightful, and will 
 bring an ugly train of mischiefs behind it, worse than 
 any which were anticipated. No European Govern- 
 ment can allow Moslem fanaticism to come off com- 
 pletely victorious. The Turk, I fear, is like the Bull in 
 a Spanish circus. However splendidly he fights, and 
 however many men and horses he kills, he is none the 
 less finished off in the end by somebody. Providence, 
 that ' loves to disappoint the Devil,' will probably 
 bring one good out of it all — a reform of the Russian 
 administration. That democracies should promote 
 the wrong man to high place is natural enough ; but 
 there is no excuse for an autocrat." 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. I 57 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, November 23 [1877]. 
 
 " I have never been in Scotland in mid-winter, and 
 am curious to see what it is like. Curling is one of 
 the Scotch mysteries in which I am still uninitiated, 
 and I may have a chance of witnessing it. Also, there 
 may be a woodcock or woodcocks in your glen. 
 But whether or no, there will be warm Scotch fire- 
 sides and warm friends whom I shall be glad to see 
 again, and who will perhaps be moderately glad to 
 see me. This Commission work, thanks chiefly to you 
 and Mrs Skelton, has been a real enjoyment to me." 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, December 4 [1877]. 
 " Anyway, pray order a frost. I have never seen 
 Scotland in her snow drapery and icy jewels." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, May 3 [1S78]. 
 " We will talk about Salcombe when we meet. Sea- 
 bathing, sailing, and fishing will do more to set you up 
 than the French doctors. What a nice temper we are 
 all getting into, and how delightfully the cards are 
 shuffled ! — Bradlaugh and Liddon shaking hands on 
 one side, and Lord Beaconsfield and General Cluseret 
 on the other. I have letters from the latter (who is 
 now in Turkey) on the text of ' il faut humilier le 
 Russie,' which explains the tenderness with which 
 the ' General ' is treated in LotJiaiv. ... I am read- 
 ing up Caesar and his times, with a view to writing 
 a book about him. Imagine a few years hence faction 
 growing hot here ; — England governed by troops from 
 
158 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 India, with Mr Hardy for Sylla ; and then, by-and-by, 
 Chamberlain and Bright for Cinna and Marius ! — 
 one's mouth waters at the prospect, and nothing less 
 is foretold by hot correspondents of the Radical 
 papers. Seriously, I believe things will end quietly. 
 The prospect on the Continent is so ugly on all sides 
 that all the Powers are frightened at the look of it." 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 7 [1S7S]. 
 " I was at the club this evening, took up Blackwood, 
 as you recommended, and found your kind handiwork. 
 Of course it is yours — no one else would say such 
 pretty things of me, or give Freeman a kick on my 
 behalf. But I was more pleased with your evident 
 liking for my poor little volume of Studies. It contains 
 things which have been on my mind these thirty 
 years, and could never get themselves uttered before. 
 A ' Tory ' ! I don't know what I am. Nobody rejoiced 
 more than I did when the Tories came in, or wished 
 them longer life. But they seem to me to be no wiser 
 than their predecessors, and to be working steadily on 
 the lines which will bring on the catastrophe, which 
 I fear as much as you. But what am I ? and what 
 do I know ? I have lived long enough to distrust my 
 own judgment beyond that of most reasonable men. 
 I have been often wrong before, and I hope I am 
 wrong now. And yet I hated the Crimean War, and 
 I saw every one (a few years ago) come round to my 
 old opinion. Now, the country seems to me to have 
 been bitten by the same mad dog." 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 59 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, April 29 [1878]. 
 " I congratulate you on your deserved honour. The 
 laurel is welcome when it comes ; and though, as with 
 Caesar, it serves sometimes to conceal the thin locks, 
 which tell us that we are older than we were, it is 
 evergreen, and defies age. I should like to hear a little 
 more of you and of the Glen, where I have spent so 
 many happy hours. How are you, and how is Mrs 
 Skelton, and May, and Jim, and the little fellow with 
 the round face ? . . . You may have seen Freeman's 
 papers in the Contemporary. The only answer which 
 I shall make will be to republish my own articles with 
 a few notes. . . . You will be glad to hear that he is 
 changing his mind on the Eastern question. That 
 / should be on the same side has satisfied him that 
 he must be wrong. Meantime I am undertaking a 
 Life of Cixsar. What do you think?" 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, May 9 [1878]. 
 "The political atmosphere has grown cooler. I 
 wrote to my Russian friends to warn them that the 
 Liberal party here was divided and powerless, and 
 that they must not count on the slightest help from 
 that quarter. I suppose I may have helped in con- 
 verting the Russian Press with which my correspond- 
 ents are connected. But I have got into Caesar, and 
 think no more of this storm in a slop-basin." 
 
 "The Molt, Sep. 19 [187S]. 
 " We have been very quiet ; a few visitors have 
 looked in upon us, among them Bret Harte, who 
 
l6o MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 charmed us all ; occasional yachts have come in with 
 glimpses of the outside world ; and as long as the 
 weather allowed I had a trawler, which gave us an 
 occasional sail and found us in fish ; but I cannot 
 respond to your encomiums on the season. August 
 was wet and stormy ; the harvest was ruined ; and an 
 incessant heavy sea, rolling in from the south-west, 
 interfered with our water amusements more than we 
 could wish. But I have been very happy and very 
 busy, . . . steadily at work on Caesar. ... I can 
 form no conjecture of what the world will say. I find 
 the kite rises equally well whichever way the wind 
 blows, if only there is enough of it. But, indeed, I 
 shall have trod on nobody's toes this time, unless it be 
 a few Republican fanatics — modern Catos like Frank 
 Newman." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, December 27 [1S7S]. 
 
 " My hearty thanks for your kind card of good 
 wishes. We make many acquaintances as we grow 
 old, but few or no new friends. Those that are left of 
 the old ones we cling to closer than ever, and you and 
 yours I look upon as among the nearest now belonging 
 to me. ... I have taken to my skates again, and I 
 should have enjoyed the change from the open winters 
 which we have had so long if it was not that so many 
 poor wretched creatures are starving, and that I have 
 to drive twice a-week with Carlyle in a fly with wide 
 open windows. The ten generations of his Annandale 
 ancestors have given him a constitution as hard as 
 granite. Disraeli's cards are still made of trumps. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. l6l 
 
 Even when his hand is bad he plays it so well that I 
 admire his skill, though I disbelieve in his foreign 
 politics. He is more popular than ever. You see how 
 well the people like him, in the absence of all com- 
 plaints against the Government in the midst of so 
 much suffering ; and after all I would sooner see him 
 Minister than G ." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 6 [1879]. 
 
 " I have been so busy up to this moment that I have 
 not had time to read the Essays in Romance as I wished 
 to read them. Yesterday I spent a delightful evening 
 with you over the Prelude and Martin Holdfast. The 
 Prelude is quite excellent, — your own Hermitage, with 
 the rocks and the trees, and the ivy and the owls, and 
 the cocks and hens. Can I ever forget poor blind 
 Bellerophon — eating his soul — can I ever cease to 
 feel for him ? The picture made me long to be with 
 you again. Martin Holdfast I of course remembered ; 
 but in the new good type it was fresh and young again. 
 
 "Those old times in Johnny Parker's room are wae 
 to think on — so many dead and gone ; — Whyte-Melville 
 went the last, and how characteristically ! The rest 
 of us will soon be over-ripened fruit ; but what is the 
 use of complaining ? We must go on and defy the 
 Devil as long as we can stand and speak. Whether 
 we shall have any more of that work beyond remains 
 to be seen. 
 
 "Tulloch takes Fraser — what will C say to this ? 
 
 I had an odd dream about Tulloch last night. I 
 
 L 
 
162 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 heard him say, with one of his jolly laughs, that his 
 breeks were bigger than my . May it prove pro- 
 phetic ! Anyway I am glad that Longman has settled 
 at last. I would not have given it up had you and 
 Melville, and Lawrence even, been willing and able to 
 help. 
 
 " Ccesar is in the press. I believe it is the best book 
 which I have ever written. But how can I know ? 
 You say so truly that as we grow old we hold our con- 
 victions conditionally, and lose the confidence with 
 which we stept out when we knew less and felt 
 more. 
 
 " I will write to you again when I have finished the 
 Essays. My warmest regards to Mrs Skelton and 
 the Boys and the little bright May. — Yours most 
 truly, J. A. Froude." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, June 2 [1879]. 
 " I have been building a large boat, and we could 
 have some sails, and forget that we are literary mor- 
 tals, subject to wrath and the Saturday Review. I 
 begin to think it is my fate to fly my kite against the 
 wind. If by any chance the wind came favourable I 
 should fall collapsed. Has Tulloch tempted you back 
 to Fraser ? " 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, July 28 [1879]. 
 " I am tired out with work and want of sleep. The 
 salt water will set me up again. The Short Studies 
 have done better than I had expected ; a large edition 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 63 
 
 is sold, and another is coming. But my poor Divus 
 Caesar falls flat : nobody cares about it." 
 
 [We were at The Molt this August, — a place almost 
 as lovely and romantic as Derreen. Then we went to 
 North Devon.] 
 
 "The Molt, Salcombe, September 2 [1879]. 
 " I am glad you have seen Clovelly and the Hobby. 
 I, as South Devon born, am fondest of our own coast ; 
 but I like the north of the county next best to my own 
 side, as I like Yankees next best to Englishmen. . . . 
 I have promised Morley an article on South Africa. 
 It seemed easy at a distance. Now that the time has 
 come to write it, I am like a pump which can draw no 
 water. It is painfully brought home to me that as we 
 grow old, the soil will not bear as it did." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, December 5 [1879]. 
 
 " The world has nibbled at my Railway Siding like 
 minnows round a worm, as if they were afraid there 
 was a hook inside of some kind. Francis Newman 
 seems morally shocked at my pretending to believe in 
 a day of judgment. It was just a fancy that came into 
 my head ; part of it was a real dream. . . . There 
 should be cock and wild -duck in your glen, though 
 you don't mention them. I have a fine preserve of 
 sparrows under my window. A London sparrow, if he 
 is aware of his advantages, should know that he is on 
 the whole the best off of all mortal beings." 
 
1 64 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 [Of one subject even Mr Freeman would have been 
 forced to admit that the historian of the Reformation 
 was a master. Froude was a born sailor, and could 
 manage a yacht or yawl in the ugliest sea as if he had 
 been bred to the business. So he was quick to detect 
 any slip that his friends, who were less expert, might 
 make. The workmanship of Crookit Meg, he was 
 pleased to say, was as good as could be — with one 
 exception. " If you mean to take us to sea in this 
 questionable little vessel, you must have your sea- 
 dialect looked over. The main sheet is a rope, not 
 a sail. The jib is ' loosed ' when you get under weigh, 
 and is the first sail taken in when you are coming to 
 your moorings " (January 30, 1880). The next letter 
 refers to a proposal to republish The Nemesis of Faith, 
 which (happily it may be) came to nothing. The 
 Nemesis as a psychological study is extremely inter- 
 esting; but it does not reach the high -water mark 
 of his more mature work.] 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, March 19 [1SS0]. 
 
 "My dear Skelton, — Your letter encourages a 
 half-formed purpose to ripen into Act. It seems that 
 there is a demand for the poor Nemesis. The Longmans 
 apply for leave to bring out a new edition of it. As 
 yet I have said No, — but why may I not change it to 
 Yes, and show the world for what slight cause they 
 expelled from Oxford and half ruined the now visibly 
 innocent author of the thing ? 
 
 " I am hard at work on Carlyle's Life. As soon as 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 65 
 
 the leaves are on the trees, I must make a little tour 
 about Dumfriesshire — chiefly in Annandale — looking at 
 places where C. lived and Irving lived. Don't you 
 think that you might meet me at Carlisle or Moffat, 
 and that we might do the investigation together ? If 
 the Annandale dialect is what it was sixty years ago, 
 I may want a construe now and then. Three days 
 would exhaust it all ; and if the Howards are at 
 Naworth Castle, as they perhaps will be, we could 
 give another day or two to that. 
 
 " I take M to Paris next Saturday ; we shall 
 
 stay a week. As to the elections, I had meant to vote 
 for Brown, a Conservative, but a stanch Colonist, who 
 shares my views on that subject. But as he must 
 support the Colonial Office about the South African 
 policy, and as I cannot induce Beach to do as I think 
 he ought, I shall not vote at all. 
 
 "I do not love Beaconsfield ; but I love Gladstone 
 less. — Ever warmly yours, J. A. Froude. 
 
 " I have a charming little cutter — 13 tons — building 
 at Salcombe. We count on you and Mrs Skelton 
 coming." 
 
 Here in the meantime I must pause. The fifteen 
 years that followed were not the least eventful in Mr 
 Froude's career ; and the letters belonging to them are 
 (to say the least) as direct and graphic as any of the 
 earlier. Sir George Trevelyan remarked at Dundee 
 the other day that Mr Froude had "a personal charm 
 
l66 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 and a personal force which were above anything that 
 he put on paper." The personal charm and the 
 personal force were unquestionably very great ; but I 
 would have been inclined to say that they were 
 reflected with quite exceptional felicity and faithful- 
 ness in his familiar Studies, and, still more so, in his 
 familiar letters. 
 
167 
 
 IX. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 I AM hopeful that the extracts from Mr Froude's 
 letters, which I made the other day, have sufficed 
 to convince the reader who is not incurably prejudiced 
 that this much-maligned " Timon " of dyspeptic Critics 
 and Dryasdust Professors was not so much of a Timon 
 after all, — except, it may be, in his love for the sea. 
 We have seen him in his " happier hour " ; clouds 
 gather in every life that temporarily obscure the sun- 
 shine, and Froude was not more fortunate than his 
 fellow-men. But these clouds passed away, as all 
 clouds do when we wait long enough ; and the closing 
 years of his life were among the peacefullest and the 
 most prolific. He died in harness (only taking to 
 his bed when he had corrected the last sheets of his 
 Erasmus), as he had always desired to die, being 
 indeed (if we are driven for comparison to poet and 
 playwright) rather a Ulysses than a Timon : — 
 
l68 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 " Come, my friends, 
 : Tis not too late to seek a newer world ; 
 Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
 The sounding furrows ; for my purpose holds 
 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
 Of all the Western Stars, until I die. 
 It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ; 
 It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 
 And see the great Achilles, whom we knew." 
 
 " / have more than half a mind" he wrote to me in his 
 last letter, " to accept an invitation from Sir George Grey, 
 and go back with him in the autumn to the Antipodes'"' 
 But there were to be no more voyages — on seas famil- 
 iar or unfamiliar. 
 
 One or two dates may be here given before I continue 
 these reminiscences. James Anthony Froude was born 
 on April 23, 1818 ; he died on October 20, 1894; so 
 that he was in his seventy-seventh year. He belonged 
 to a clever and brilliant family. His father, the Arch- 
 deacon of Totness, was an admirable though self-taught 
 artist — some of his pencil-drawings which I have seen 
 are highly esteemed by Mr Ruskin. To his elder 
 brother — Richard Hurrell Froude — Anthony was pro- 
 foundly attached; and he resented Mr Freeman's 
 insulting comments on their opposite views of the 
 Reformation with more than ordinary warmth : "I 
 look back upon my brother as on the whole the most 
 remarkable man I have ever met in my life. I have 
 never seen any person — not one — in whom, as I now 
 think of him, the excellences of intellect and character 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 69 
 
 were combined in fuller measure. Of my personal 
 feeling towards him I cannot speak. I am ashamed 
 to have been compelled by what I can describe only 
 as an inexcusable insult, to say what I have said." 
 
 The letters which immediately follow those from 
 which I have already quoted refer mainly to the Mary 
 Stuart controversy and the publication of Mr Carlyle's 
 remains. Of the Carlyle trouble I do not desire to say 
 a single word. Nor do I mean to enter again on our 
 protracted debate over the unhappy Queen of Scots. I 
 may string together a few sentences which will serve to 
 indicate what in Froude's view was the key of the posi- 
 tion ; but these will come in better later on. Mean- 
 while I take up the narrative where I left off: 1880 
 was the year — the year of Lord Beaconsfield's defeat 
 at the polling-booths. 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, April 28 [1880]. 
 " Let us say nothing of the election and its conse- 
 quences. Do not think I triumph in it. I was inter- 
 ested in the Eastern question for itself, but [not in the 
 men who have come in]. . . . My disliking extends to 
 the whole blessed system of government by party. You 
 are in the rapids in a two-oared boat, and your idea of 
 managing it is to pull one oar desperately and then the 
 other, or to back water with one while you pull with 
 the other. . . . The chief object of this is to tell you 
 that I am meditating a final flight from London into 
 the country. I stay only for Carlyle's sake, and when 
 
170 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 he is gone I shall turn my back on it. It suits none of 
 
 us in the matter of health. A must be going soon 
 
 to the University, and must have some better place to 
 spend his vacation in. I want to bring him up, as I 
 was brought up, to open-air life — boats, hills, rides, 
 guns, and fishing-rods in the old wild scratch way, 
 when the keeper was the rabbit-catcher, and sporting 
 was enjoyed more for the adventure than for the bag. 
 Could I not find some old place of this kind by a Scotch 
 lake ? — a house as big as The Molt or Derreen, and 
 shootings, all of the plain winter type which are over- 
 looked in the August letting. G has immense par- 
 liamentary dexterity, and is inevitable, at least for a year 
 or two. But I bother myself no more with politics, 
 and believe that in fifty years or sooner a vulgar Caesar 
 will be the outcome of it. Longman was here this 
 morning ; he gives an indifferent account of the health 
 of poor Fraser. The change of clothes, taking him at a 
 weak moment, brought on a chill from which he may 
 not recover. Sic transit Rcgitta." 
 
 "Onslow Gardens, October 16 [1SS0]. 
 " The Crookit Meg shall have an honourable place in 
 my own whatnot close to my arm-chair. She has not 
 arrived — owing to the long calm weather, I suppose : 
 but she will probably report herself before evening. 
 Trench is tempting me back to the Kenmare river, and 
 I have half decided to go there. If a Paddy shoots 
 me — well, it will be dying in harness, and I, for my 
 part, shouldn't so much care. The world will not move 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. IJl 
 
 to my mind for the next quarter of a century ; and by 
 that time I shall have done with it anyway. Ruskin's 
 letter has taken people's breath away. I have read 
 nothing with so much pleasure these many years. 
 We returned from Salcombe last night, and most of 
 
 us are settled in for the winter. M and I go for a 
 
 few days to Lord Carnarvon's on Monday, and towards 
 the end of the month I am going North to stay with 
 George Howard at Naworth, and examine the farm- 
 house at Ecclefechan where Carlyle was brought up. I 
 may be tempted to run on for the mere pleasure of 
 spending a night at the Hermitage. What should you 
 say if I turned up ? We had plenty of sailing in the 
 summer, though not under such fine conditions as 
 yours. I was not particularly well, however. Ireland 
 had got into my stomach and disagreed with me." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, November 16 [1SS0]. 
 
 " We had a very interesting day in Annandale, saw 
 all that we wanted, and made the necessary sketches. 
 We were favoured by the weather, nine fine hours in a 
 week of snow and storm. It was all very strange to 
 me and very pathetic. ... I cannot talk of what I 
 shall t do two years hence with the free confidence of 
 thirty. Like enough I shall have made a change of 
 lodging still more considerable, and have begun exist- 
 ence again the other side. ... I have read Endymion ; 
 quite unexpectedly the author expressed a wish that I 
 should review it. Loth air had so much delighted me 
 that I was rather pleased with the prospect ; but when 
 
172 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 I came to the reality I found it could not be. You will 
 understand why when the book reaches you. We had 
 two days' shooting at Naworth. A good many pheas- 
 ants and a fine sprinkling of woodcocks. Considering 
 how rarely I now take a gun in hand, I was rather 
 pleased with my performance. I am astonished at the 
 apathy of England and Scotland about this Irish busi- 
 ness. I try to hope that the wood is only damp, and 
 that it will kindle before long. Among educated 
 people the wrath is loud and deep against ' the very 
 worst Government that ever existed in this country.' ' : 
 
 [On December 23, 1880, Froude informed me that 
 he had begun to print Carlyle's Reminiscences. He had 
 allowed me to read the earlier sketches some years 
 previously, and I had been delighted by their idiomatic 
 force and freshness. The pictures of that old homely 
 Scottish life were, it seemed to me, racy of the soil. 
 Now he asked me to revise them as they went through 
 the press, with reference more particularly to various 
 Scotch names and idioms in the early sheets. " I 
 therefore venture to hope that you will look through 
 the pages, and mark anything that seems doubtful to 
 you." This I did, aided by Dr John Brown. Only 
 the proofs of the Scotch section of the book were cor- 
 rected by me : had I seen the others I might possibly 
 have suggested the omission of one or two passages ; 
 but surely the "ootbrak" of outraged decorum which 
 followed the publication was out of all proportion to 
 the offence, — if offence there was.] 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 173 
 
 " I am dreadfully busy,"' he continues, " bringing out 
 a new edition of The English in Ireland, with a supple- 
 mentary chapter on the present crisis. No one knows 
 what is to be done, — the Government, I believe, as 
 little as any one. The Whigs everywhere are kicking, 
 and so are those dear beings the Political Economists. 
 The worst symptom is the total absence of courage on 
 all sides. ... I am at home alone, tied fast by 
 work while my children are away for Christmas. I go 
 occasionally to the Athenaeum, but only meet doleful 
 creatures there who are worse than nothing. My 
 Christmas is not a bright one ; I wish — I wish — I 
 could pass it with you at the ever delightful Hermit- 
 age." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, December 26 [1880]. 
 " I send a few more sheets. I have marked one or two 
 words specially, which seem to me doubtful. Carlyle 
 himself is not in a condition to be asked questions. I 
 fear the end cannot now be very distant. Indeed one 
 can hardly wish it. I have said out my own mind on 
 this Irish business in a concluding chapter to my new 
 edition of The English in Ireland. This new business 
 in South Africa is almost as dangerous. I think we 
 shall lose that country. We are teaching every section 
 of the people to hate us there — English, Dutch, natives 
 alike — and unless we determine to hold the whole place 
 by force, there will soon be nothing for us but to take 
 ourselves off with shame." 
 
174 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 3 [1S81]. 
 
 " What can I feel but pleasure at your proposal ? 
 Small as the opinion which I have of my aspect (I 
 study it daily in the process of shaving), I should 
 like to have it remembered (if anywhere) in the house 
 of so old and warm a friend. I will do my part of the 
 business when the time comes, and I hope that I shall 
 not turn out quite so hideous as Sam Laurence made 
 me fifteen years ago. 
 
 " I was about to write you when your letter came. 
 I have waited, however, two days to answer it, that 
 I might tell you something authentic about Carlyle. 
 He is alive, I believe, at this moment, but will hardly 
 see another morning. His morning, if there is one, 
 will break elsewhere. He is to be buried beside his 
 mother and father in Ecclefechan kirkyard. The 
 funeral will be as private as possible. The family 
 particularly wish this, I believe, and the day will 
 purposely be kept unknown. But I am going down ; 
 and it strikes me that you, perhaps, might wish to be 
 present. If I am right, telegraph to me. During 
 his illness he has talked (when he has talked at all) 
 of his father and mother as if they were near him. His 
 niece he has called ' Jeanie ' — his wife ! Good-bye." 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 8 [1SS1]. 
 
 " I did not gather from your telegram that you 
 would be able to attend. The day has been left 
 undetermined purposely to prevent a crowd. It is 
 now settled for Thursday (the day after to-morrow) ; 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 75 
 
 but do not mention it to others. They will, I am 
 sure, be very glad that you should come as a friend 
 of mine ; but the time is short to enable you to make 
 arrangements. The funeral will be at 12. I, Tyndall, 
 and Lecky will sleep at Carlisle the night before, and 
 go over in the morning. If the weather is fine we 
 can walk up in the afternoon to Mainhill, where 
 Wilhelm Meister was translated (the last part of it), 
 and where it was read and wondered over by his 
 mother. . . . We had a storm here last night, and 
 I fear it will be all bleak and dreary." 
 
 [After seeing the Reminiscences through the press, 
 Froude, who had been ailing, took a sea voyage, 
 which as usual set him up. But he came back to 
 find " the heather on fire."] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, April 7 [18S1]. 
 " I had a pleasant idle month at sea and at Madeira, 
 but I came back to find such a complication of worries 
 that I have not yet felt equal to Mr Reid's studio. 
 When I am fit to be seen again I will go. I am more 
 surprised than I should have been at the reception of 
 the Reminiscences. It is Carlyle himself, — the same 
 Carlyle precisely that I have known for thirty years ; 
 and it seemed to me that my duty was to represent 
 him (or let him represent himself) as near the truth 
 as possible. To me in no one of his writings does 
 he appear under a more beautiful aspect ; and so, I 
 am still convinced, will all mankind eventually think. 
 
176 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 I cut out everything which could injure anybody. 
 To have cut out his general estimates of men and 
 things would have turned the book into a caput 
 mortuum." 
 
 [Sir George Reid, P.R.S.A., was good enough to 
 paint a portrait of Froude for me during April and 
 May of this year. It is an admirable likeness, and 
 a fine piece of work.] 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, June 17 [18S1]. 
 " If you like the picture as much as I like the painter 
 you will be very well satisfied. . . . The storm, which 
 broke over me, has pretty well passed. You were 
 wise and kind in taking no notice of it. In a year 
 or two every one whose opinion is worth having will 
 be grateful for having a true Carlyle before them, and 
 
 not a mutilated and incredible one. A has entered 
 
 at Oxford, and I expect will do well there. I have 
 been at Chenies with him for a few days' fishing. We 
 did little, though I succeeded in catching one big 
 fellow — 3! lb. In Norway I shall get enough to last 
 the rest of my life." 
 
 " Salcombe, Sept. 11 [1SS1]. 
 " Here I am at last, after ten weeks on the Fiords. 
 ... I have come back set up in mind and body, and 
 ready for such work as may offer. . . . We saw the 
 old Viking ship at Christiania. The identical old 
 timbers with marks of the caulking still in them ; 
 and the vessel itself, 80 feet long, an open boat with 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 77 
 
 as fine lines and laid as surely down for speed as 
 Thorneycroft himself could not beat. There was the 
 great copper caldron where they stewed their dinners 
 too — all very genuine and instructive. One sees why 
 the Normans took to the sea. In that country the 
 Fiords are the only roads. The mountains are im- 
 passable. But all this will keep. I was shocked to 
 
 hear of the death of poor Miss B , that bright 
 
 young creature with so fair a life opening out before 
 her. How the fruit drops off (the best first), ripe or 
 unripe ; while we old fellows are left scrambling on. 
 Burton gone — Stanley gone — Carlyle gone — all in this 
 last year. I care not how soon I follow, if I may only 
 live to finish Carlyle's Life. I have had a most hearty 
 letter from the one surviving brother in Annandale. 
 I will write again before long. Just now, as you 
 may suppose, I have endless little matters calling for 
 attention. This is only to report that I am at home 
 again. . . . The sketch of Burton is excellent." 1 
 
 "The Molt, October 7 [1SS1]. 
 
 "Ireland! Yes! More power to G 's elbow. He 
 
 has ripened the fruit. It will hang no longer on the 
 old terms ; and he will have to choose whether he 
 will fight the League at last or give up the country. 
 Sir Stafford Northcote was here the other day. He 
 
 1 Froude refers to the sketch in Maga. Burton, who with all his quaint 
 oddities of dress and manner was finely simple and sincere, was much at- 
 tached to Froude, and was always zealous in his defence, — no petty 
 jealousies disturbing their friendship. 
 
 M 
 
178 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 was not supremely happy at the prospect of things. 
 May the Devil fly away with Party Government. ' A 
 plague o' both your houses ! ' " 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Feby. 17 [18S2]. 
 
 " Five years ago I said to Lady R that the Eng- 
 lish constitution was now flying like a shuttlecock 
 between two adventurers. She was furious at me for 
 calling the one an adventurer ; you will not approve 
 of my using such a name for the other. . . . Carlyle's 
 Life — the Scotch part of it — will be out in three weeks 
 or a month. I shall perhaps go abroad till the tongues 
 have done wagging. . . . The end will be that C. 
 will stand higher than ever, and will be loved more 
 than ever. When a man's faults are not such as dis- 
 honour him, we are all the nearer to him because of 
 them, and because we feel the common pulse of human- 
 ity in him." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, June 15, 1S82. 
 
 " I saw the news of your father's death in the paper 
 which you sent me. He was full of years. . . . That, 
 if there be such a thing, is euthanasia. I did not write, 
 partly because you would know that I felt for you, 
 partly because I could not tell from your silence 
 whether you did not share in the feeling of disap- 
 pointment of Carlyle's Life, which Tulloch and Boyd 
 led me to suppose is general in Scotland. Judge then 
 if your letter has not given me pleasure. 
 
 "What motive could I have in writing as I have 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 79 
 
 done except to do what I believe Carlyle to have 
 wished ? It would have been idle folly to have kept 
 anything back. 
 
 "I shall be heartily glad to see you; but we leave 
 London for The Molt on 1st of July, and I fear we 
 shall be gone before you pass through. May we not 
 hope that you and Mrs Skelton will again find your 
 way to us ? My little yacht has now a lead keel, 
 sails well, and fears no weather. We can meet you 
 at Dartmouth, bring you round the Start, and spare 
 you the long Kingsbridge drive. Do think of it and 
 come while the days are long, before you go abroad. — 
 Ever yours most truly, J. A. Froude. 
 
 " The" fetish-worship continues. . . . More than ever 
 I regret Lord Beaconsfield's adventure into foreign 
 policy. He might have settled Ireland, or at least 
 might have made the present state of things impos- 
 sible. I can hardly write — my fingers are numbed by 
 this north wind — within a week of midsummer ! " 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, December 10 [1882]. 
 " Your volume has come, a pleasant Christmas re- 
 membrance of an old and very dear friend. I will 
 not argue about Mary Stuart. ... In return I send 
 you the concluding volume of my Short Studies. I 
 have brought my confessions to the Day of Judgment ; 
 and with our present means of information we can, 
 none of us, carry them farther. The rest of my work- 
 ing life, short or long, must be given to Carlyle. I 
 
l80 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 believe no biographer had ever a more difficult or 
 troublesome task bequeathed to him." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 20 [1883]. 
 
 " You will be more edified than surprised by the 
 Dublin revelations. There is nothing new in them 
 either to you or to me. Your friend Dizzy was the 
 only English statesman who knew anything about 
 Ireland. I had assured myself that when he came 
 into office in 1874 he would tackle the thing, and I 
 cannot yet forgive him for having rushed into an 
 ' adventurous foreign policy ' when he had such seri- 
 ous work cut out for him at home. It is sorrowfully 
 plain that as long as we are cursed with Parliamentary 
 Government, the Liberals only can hang Irish mur- 
 derers. If the Tories try it, the whole pack of idiots, 
 English and Irish, howl together. Still, Lord Beacons- 
 field would have stood higher as a statesman if he had 
 tried. A really wise man will put his hand to the 
 thing which ought to be done without minding much 
 what others say of him. He might have established 
 a just Land Court with the support of all the best 
 landowners in Ireland. Now who can say what will 
 happen ? " 
 
 [I paid a long visit to Froude during February and 
 March of this year, when I had the pleasure of reading 
 the proof-sheets of Mrs Carlyle's brilliant and remark- 
 able letters. From notes made at the time, I take a 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. l8l 
 
 few extracts, descriptive of the impression which a 
 first reading produced on my mind : — 
 
 "Their true and main interest is of the personal 
 kind ; — they are the letters of a strangely powerful 
 and brilliant woman, who expressed herself always 
 with absolute sincerity and the most relentless direct- 
 ness. She was singularly gifted, the humour and the 
 pathos being each unique in its way. She was the 
 companion of one of the most remarkable men of her 
 time : can we say that she was in any way his inferior ? 
 Nothing, indeed, can be more striking than the con- 
 trast between his involved and rugged commentary 
 and her sparkling lucidity. The play of her ready 
 and nimble wit is as incessant as sheet-lightning of 
 a summer night in the tropics, and it spares nothing 
 — not even her husband. Yet, on the other hand, her 
 heart was as tender as her humour was caustic and 
 incisive. She was not happy. Her marriage, it may 
 now be frankly admitted, was a mistake. I do not 
 know anything sadder or more touching than the 
 narrative of her return to Haddington after many 
 years of married life; a lost spirit revisiting the 
 glimpses of the moon might have indulged in just 
 such a strain of pathetic reminiscence. . . . This is 
 the story which, with wonderful spirit — with almost 
 cynical mockery and almost tremulous tenderness, the 
 tears and the laughter never being very far apart — 
 is related in these pages. It is a sad story, if you 
 will : but the ' bitter jests and bearing free ' of this 
 curious cross between the Calvinist and the gipsy — 
 
1 82 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 for she had the blood both of John Knox and Matthew 
 Baillie in her veins — gives it a piquant and original 
 charm that partly disguises its sadness." 
 
 So I wrote at the time ; and our literature, I still 
 believe, would have suffered an irreparable loss had 
 "little Jeanie Welsh's " letters, like Byron's Memoirs, 
 been reduced to ashes.] 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, April 14 [1S83]. 
 
 " Mary Austin, one of Carlyle's sisters, has written 
 me a most kind understanding letter. My German 
 Translator is driven wild by Scotch phrases. ' Malt in 
 shaft ' means 'Meal in the box,' does it not? 'Jook and 
 let the jaw gae by ' is intelligible enough, but what 
 is 'Jook' etymologically ? The Duke of Bedford has 
 written to ask on what days I would like him to reserve!! 
 his fishing for me — the best in England. I wish you 
 could be with me to enjoy it. You will see what it is 
 like in the last volume of Short Studies.'" 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, November 27 [18S3]. 
 
 " As to Lethington, I take him to have been in 
 everything a Scotsman determined to secure to a 
 Scottish Prince (Mary or James, as it might be) the 
 English succession. This was the ruling principle, 
 and explains all. As to religion, it was a ' devout 
 imagination.' In Calderwood, as you know, he is 
 always called Mitchell Wylie. It was a long time 
 before I could guess what it meant {Machiavelli). ,, 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 83 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Jan. 3 [1S84]. 
 
 " A word of the usual wishes of the season to you 
 and yours. I am your countryman in this, that I 
 dislike 'times and seasons,' and do not observe them. 
 You are always in a near corner of my memory, and 
 every day in one form or another I find myself think- 
 ing about you. . . . Carlyle in his Journal, speaking 
 of his foundation, 1 says very beautifully, ' It is his 
 Abbey of Cor Dulce for the burying of his loved one's 
 heart.' The Cor Dulce seemed familiar to me : so far 
 as I remember, it refers to Devorgilla burying John de 
 Baliol, but I can find nothing about it in any one 
 of the hundred books into which I have looked, and 
 I fear my memory must have played me false. Can 
 you help me ? I hope your pigeons and water-hens, 
 also the descendants of the poor blind (Edipus in 
 the farmyard, and all your other live stock, are pros- 
 pering in this charming winter. I am as well as 
 a man can be who is dining out nowhere, and work- 
 ing from morning to night. You will find you 
 have a fine portrait of Carlyle after all, which will 
 be a true one also." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, March 15 [1S84]. 
 
 " In two months, if I continue able to work, I shall 
 have written the last line of a business which has been 
 a perplexity and worry to me for the last fourteen 
 years. All however is well now. Arcturus is not 
 
 1 The bequest to Edinburgh University in memory of his wife. 
 
1 84 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 the less brilliant or beautiful because he flashes red 
 and green instead of shining pale and calm as angelic 
 stars ought to do." 
 
 [This was the year of the festivities in Edinburgh on 
 the occasion of the University Tercentenary. For 
 some reason Froude's name was omitted by the 
 University authorities from the list of those on whom 
 it was proposed to confer the honorary degree of 
 LL.D. I pointed out the omission to my old and 
 dear friend Professor Sellar, and one or two other 
 members of the Senatus, and at their instance the 
 blunder was rectified. But neither Froude nor 
 Tyndall, who were to have been my guests, were 
 able to attend.] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, April i [ii 
 " Of course I cannot but accept so 'distinguished an 
 honour,' &c. I owe it to you, and shall remember 
 that I do ; but I am very much obliged to the Senatus 
 too. A great part of the personal attraction in the 
 matter lies in your offer of hospitality. I shall be 
 delighted to see the old Hermitage again, and you and 
 Mrs Skelton and your little ones, now grown into big 
 ones. Your house, I am afraid, like every other, will 
 be crammed, and we shall have no pleasant saunters 
 in the woods." 1 
 
 1 Many of Mr Froude's favourite walks are no longer recognisable,— the 
 neighbourhood of the poor Hermitage having been badly disfigured of late 
 by the speculative builder. Ought not outrages on the landscape to be 
 punishable by Act of Parliament ? 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 85 
 
 [On April 5 he writes as to cap and gown for the 
 Tercentenary. " I am five feet eleven, and my head 
 is 23 inches round, about half as big as yours ! "] 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, May 2 [1884]. 
 " I cannot help you to a portrait of Carlyle, for none 
 was ever made of him fit to be seen. I found in a 
 letter an account of one in which the face, he says, 
 is ' a cross between a Demon and a flayed Horse.' 
 This, if it could be had, might be valuable, with 
 C.'s description attached to it. ... I am sleeping 
 better ; but go to bed each night in alarm how it 
 may be. The brain, however, must be in a more 
 quiet state, for my eyes, which were dark with soot- 
 spots, are clearing again. Edinburgh would have 
 done for me. Nor did I regret any part of the 
 business, except the loss of a sight of you and Mrs 
 Skelton. I creep more and more into my shell, love 
 my friends better every day, and care less for the 
 rest of mankind." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, May 16 [1884]. 
 "You will be glad to hear that yesterday I finished 
 the MS. of Carlyle. I really do think that when it 
 comes out certain persons will be ashamed of them- 
 selves. How ill A., B., and C. have behaved to me, 
 no one will know, and no one could conjecture. 
 
 "The Molt, Sept. 14 [1884]. 
 "This week the printing of Carlyle will be finished; 
 and now the thing is done, Carlyle himself will be 
 
186 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 more loved and honoured than ever. I do not believe, 
 and Sir James Stephen (who has read the proofs) does 
 not believe that there will be any more row. Stephen 
 in fact is complimentary . We came here at the begin- 
 ning of August, and have been basking and sailing 
 ever since in this most delicious of all remembered 
 summers." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, November i [1SS4]. 
 
 " Your letter does me good. It is not the sort of 
 letter which a man writes when he merely wishes to 
 pay a perfunctory compliment. You mean it all, 
 and it is a ' good joy,' as Mrs Carlyle used to say. 
 I have seen very few reviews. The Times, though 
 civil enough to me, is hard and unappreciative with 
 Carlyle. I do not think that the world, stupid as it 
 is, will accept such a view as that. ... As to the 
 politics, I know well how unavailing it will be. We 
 are to drink the cup of the Lord's fury to the bottom. 
 But when the drunken fit is over, and we are sick 
 and sorry again, amidst the fragments of a ruined 
 empire, it will remain to show that Carlyle was a 
 true seer. No quilting of vanity is thick enough 
 to keep out entirely an arrow from such a hand. 
 I hope God knows what is going to become of us. 
 If He does, it is all right ; but there is a wild time 
 before us." 
 
 [The winter of 1884-85 was spent by Froude in the 
 Australian Colonies. He came home by the States, — 
 crossing the Rockies he was caught in a blizzard. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 87 
 
 " It was as if some one had hit me in the face, 
 knocked me down, kicked me with mailed boots 
 about my head, and gouged out my right eye."] 
 
 "Onslow Gardens, May 28 [1SS5]. 
 " Yes — I have been ' the other side.' It is very much 
 like this side, except that it is warm and bright 
 and full of flowers and plums and peaches, and you 
 never see a discontented face or a hungry one. . . . 
 Our Reformed Parliament plays fine antics. This 
 has been the worst ever known in English history. 
 The next will be worse still ; and so on till the world 
 is weary of them, and they get their necks wrung. 
 Your account of Haddington is very interesting." 
 
 "The Molt, Salcombe, August 2 [1SS5]. 
 
 " M told me generally what was coming. 1 The 
 
 delightful Freeman too ! You will have given him 
 a stomach-ache. He will sit down and write another 
 article about the Bishop of Lexovia. From you, 
 my dear friend, who so widely differ from me on 
 the subject and on the person that beyond all others 
 exasperate controversy, these Good Words are doubly 
 grateful. ... Is it idle to hope that you and Mrs 
 Skelton may once again pay us a visit here ? It can 
 be but once, and this year, if it is to be at all, for my 
 
 1 M , I think, hits the nail on the head when he says in a recent 
 
 letter, — <; Poor Froude ! I loved him. A tender fine spirit finely touched 
 and often misunderstood. Historical grubs feeding on parchment may say 
 what they like as to inaccuracies ; but he had what a whole brigade of them 
 cannot furnish — the historical imagination. I believe his judgments are 
 in the broad correct." 
 
1 88 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 hard-hearted and tyrannical landlord wishes actually 
 to occupy his own house in future summers ! What 
 a detestable institution Landlordism is ! ! I am 
 writing my Colonial Notes — a book which I shall 
 call Oceana. I am in the extraordinary position of 
 having to speak nothing but well of everything and 
 everybody. Having nobody to abuse, I am like 
 trying to fly a kite without wind." 
 
 The Molt, Salcombe, September 3 [1885]. 
 " You have spoken good sound truth. It is taking 
 already, and will take more and more. The true fig- 
 ure of a true man will in the end interest all true men, 
 — and who else ought to be considered ? My little 
 Romsdal Fiord too ! That too you are picking up out 
 of oblivion. Do you observe that the special inspirer 
 of it has been sunbeaming it in those same quarters ? 
 I wonder what he thought of the Old Ganger ! . . . I 
 am working hard at my Oceana. We shall get it out 
 early in the winter. I will send you the sheets. I am 
 very glad indeed that you are at work on Maitland. 
 There is no figure in Scotch history more interesting 
 in the best sense. Mitchell Wylie, as they called him. 
 It was long before I could guess what the name meant. 
 The 4th thousand (I think) of the Life in London is sold, 
 and Longman writes that he must print again." 
 
 [The Romsdal Fiord to which Froude alludes appeared 
 in Maga 1 and was, I think, the only poem he ever 
 1 See Maga for April 1883. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 89 
 
 wrote. It is very spirited, and it inculcates his 
 favourite moral : — 
 
 " Yet men will still be ruled by men, 
 And talk will have its day, 
 And other Rolfs will come again 
 To sweep the rogues away." 
 
 Here, where we part finally with the Carlyle diffi- 
 culties, I may be permitted to extract from the old 
 Note-book, to which I have more than once referred, 
 an entry which, interesting in itself, lies outside the 
 region of controversy : — 
 
 "The reader of Thomas Carlyle will remember that 
 
 during the time he resided in 3 Moray Street, off Leith 
 
 Walk, he kept a Diary or Journal, occasional extracts 
 
 from which are given. Under date 31st December 
 
 1823, this entry occurs : ' December 31st. The year 
 
 is closing. This time eight-and-twenty years ago I was 
 
 a child of three weeks old sleeping on my mother's 
 
 bosom. 
 
 " ' Oh ! little did my mother think, 
 That day she cradled me, 
 The lands that I should travel in, 
 The death I was to dee.' 
 
 " This entry, on the publication of Froude's volumes, 
 attracted the attention of a respected citizen of Edin- 
 burgh. When a lad at College (some few years after 
 Carlyle had ' flitted ') he had lodged at 3 Moray Street 
 with his uncle, who still lives there. It at once recalled 
 to him that on a pane of glass in the window of the 
 
190 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 sitting-room the four lines quoted in the Journal had 
 been rudely scratched by some previous occupant. 
 Could the writer have been Carlyle ? He wrote to 
 Froude, and at Froude's request I have visited the house. 
 We were courteously received, and the writing minutely 
 examined. There were other scratches upon the glass 
 — mostly illegible, but made apparently by the same 
 hand. The writing is somewhat cramped and an- 
 gular ; but any writing on glass, I presume, must 
 be somewhat cramped and angular. But immediately 
 below the lines three significant words are added. 
 They are now barely legible, and had not been noticed 
 until I drew attention to them ; but they seem to me 
 to be essentially Carlylian. The words are — ' Oh ! 
 foolish thee ! ' The complete inscription then runs 
 thus : — 
 
 " ' Little did my mother think, 
 That day she cradled me, 
 What land I was to travel in, 
 Or what death I should dee. 
 
 Oh ! foolish thee ! ' 
 
 " Froude was satisfied that the inscription was genu- 
 ine, and would have liked to have had the glass removed 
 and preserved. ' I have not the smallest doubt,' he 
 wrote, ' that the lines on the window were scratched by 
 Carlyle ; and some means ought to be used to preserve 
 so precious a relic. Properly it should remain in the 
 house. In years to come perhaps the room will be a 
 place of pilgrimage. But if sufficient interest is not felt 
 at present to allow any steps to be taken, I will myself 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. IQI 
 
 gladly buy the pane (if the owner of the house will sell 
 it), and will preserve it, with a note of what it is, that 
 it may be restored if demanded hereafter.' " — (October 
 11, 1S82.) 
 
 I have scrupulously refrained from making any ex- 
 tracts from the papers beside me which could serve as 
 an excuse for reopening a bitter controversy ; but I 
 do not know any reason why the view I took at the 
 time as to the ultimate effect of Froude's treatment 
 of his subject should not be restated. For this pur- 
 pose I turn again to the old Note-book which I have 
 had occasion so frequently to consult. I find in it 
 the record of a discussion on board the " Gael " (one 
 of the steamers which then plied among the Western 
 Islands) with a " Scotch Professor," — who (if he was 
 not altogether a man of straw — set up only to be 
 bowled over) must by no means be identified with my 
 lamented friend, the late Professor Nichol of Glasgow. 
 John Nichol might have taken his motto from the 
 Faery Queen, — "Fierce warres and faithful loves" (a 
 motto, by the way, not altogether inappropriate for 
 Froude himself) ; and he did not hesitate to denounce 
 with characteristic ardour in the Preface to his Carlyle 
 (in his own words, " with a feeling akin to indignation "), 
 "the persistent and often virulent attacks" which had 
 been directed against the friend and biographer of their 
 common master. Time has been on our side. The 
 conclusions we then formulated now pass as common- 
 places. Though rather bluntly expressed, and deemed 
 rankly heterodox at the moment, they have come to 
 
192 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 be accepted without demur or serious protest by all 
 rational critics. 
 
 It would appear that the " Scotch Professor," as the 
 " Gael" steamed up the Sound of Jura, had entertained 
 his travelling companions by a comparison of Froude's 
 Carlyle with the biography or autobiography of a grave 
 ecclesiastical dignitary recently deceased — not to the 
 advantage of the former. Who the Priest or Presbyter 
 was is now of no moment, — the book has been long 
 laid on the shelf, and is utterly forgotten ; but, as a 
 model of " exemplary reticence " and discreet dulness, 
 it appears to have had its use at the time. Any stick 
 will do to beat a dog. The company are represented 
 to have listened in silence, until the patience (his stock 
 possibly was not large) of one of our party was exhausted. 
 It is to him that the speech which follows is attributed, 
 — a speech which might quite possibly have been spoken 
 by John Nichol, or some equally ardent and unconven- 
 tional controversialist. 
 
 " Look here, sir," he said, " I have read both books, 
 and I'll tell you exactly what I think. The one is 
 bright, vivid, incisive, vital ; the other wooden and 
 ponderous beyond belief. You say that Froude has 
 been indiscreet ; but, after all, what harm has he done ? 
 He has hurt Carlyle, you believe ; pray do not believe 
 anything of the kind. The Titanic force of the man 
 was never more manifest than at the end of the last 
 volume. In the fierce light that has been brought to 
 bear upon him the mud and clay drop off, and only the 
 pure gold remains. His head rises clear out of the 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 1 93 
 
 vapours, and touches the stars. I tell you frankly that 
 I had no conception of the massive and elemental 
 greatness of Carlyle — his immeasurable superiority to 
 every contemporary — till I had read these familiar 
 letters and journals, — letters and journals brimful of 
 humour, of pathos, of intense insight, of immense 
 tenderness. Out of harsh and jarring accompani- 
 ments, what subtlest, softest music is evolved ! A 
 sardonic humour, you say, that ought not to be 
 tolerated by a polite society ? Be it so ; yet observe, 
 my friend, there is nothing sardonic in the heart, and 
 every word is illuminating — a revelation. Verily this 
 whole world grows magical and hypermagical to me; death 
 written on all, yet everlasting life also written on all. — 
 Death ! the unknown sea of rest ! who knows what har- 
 monies lie there to wrap us in softness, in eternal peace ? 
 — The half-moon, clear as silver, looked out as from eternity, 
 and the great dawn came streaming up. Compare with 
 these grains of diamond dust the hard, pompous, 
 didactic platitudes of the Divine ! From the one you 
 have letters dull as ditch-water ; from the other letters 
 written in fire, and instinct in every line with life. To 
 be sure, everything of the D.D.'s has been removed (as 
 we are assured with the glow of superior rectitude) 
 which could hurt the feelings of any one — his own 
 included. Yet in spite of this ostentatious prudery, the 
 ' unseemly disclosures,' as you call them, of Carlyle's 
 domestic and other difficulties (mainly dyspeptic, — his 
 own mother admitting that he was ' gey ill to live wi' ') 
 strike me as intrinsically more wholesome. In short — 
 
 N 
 
194 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 begging your pardon, sir — to compare the one with the 
 other is sheer fatuity. A contemplative cuddy giving 
 utterance to the obscure feelings he has about the 
 universe is entitled to some consideration, for his bray 
 is genuine ; but what are we to say of critics who are 
 morally obtuse as well as mentally dense ? " 
 
 It was no wonder, perhaps, that after such an address 
 the Professor should have " landed at Lochmaddy " ; 
 and it is possible, I admit, that the deliverance, and 
 others to the like effect, may have been pitched in a 
 key somewhat too shrill, somewhat too aggressive. 
 But I fancy that no competent critic now ventures to 
 deny that the four volumes of Thomas Carlylc contain 
 one of the half-dozen great biographies in the English 
 language. Froude refused, and rightly refused, to 
 listen to the threats and appeals of fanatical devotees, 
 — though, in view of the storm they raised, he may 
 have been sometimes tempted to wish that the prophet 
 (whose love of silence was, as his wife said, purely 
 Platonic) had done his penance in person, and not by 
 proxy. But with unshrinking fidelity, which no 
 clamour could shake, he resolved to set, and did set, 
 Carlyle before us exactly as he appeared to him, 
 assured that he could do so safely, and that the 
 essential greatness of the man would only be brought 
 into clearer relief when the truth, the whole truth, and 
 nothing but the truth, was known. " She sleeps in a 
 pure grave ; and our peasant maiden to us who knew 
 her is more than a king's daughter." So Carlyle said 
 of his sister Margaret who died in girlhood ; so, with 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 195 
 
 the necessary variations, may we say of the brother 
 who earned a world-wide fame, and died in extreme 
 old age. " He sleeps in a pure grave." It is difficult 
 to determine what of the Victorian era will live or die ; 
 but I do not think that we shall greatly err if we 
 assert that Froude's Carlylc is one of its imperishable 
 bequests.] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Feb. 11 [1886]. 
 "I hope to be with you on the evening of the 22d. 
 . . . Oceana is selling fast. It has answered to a 
 particular condition of public feeling, and may, I really 
 hope, prove of some service. . . . The scene in the 
 streets last Monday astonishes people. Why should 
 they be astonished ? The Irish have been shown that 
 they have only to plunder and murder sufficiently to 
 be entitled to all that they please to ask. Could we 
 expect that the English rough would not take the 
 hint ? " 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Jan. 30 [1886]. 
 " Blackwood came duly, and the Scottish Church this 
 morning. Of course we recognised your hand in the 
 first. You have been a true friend to me through evil 
 and good in this world. Everybody is civil enough 
 now; but the gold sovereign is one thing, and the 
 farthing gilt is another. ... It is interesting to see 
 how the weighty opinions of our wisest men, so many 
 of which we have heard and read in the last three 
 months, pass for absolutely nothing. They considered 
 only the welfare of the country, and therefore shot 
 
196 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 entirely beside the mark. In the rigging of parties at 
 Westminster the welfare of the country is the last 
 matter that any one thinks about. Some day or other 
 the country will find this out, and will wring the necks 
 of the Parliamentary vermin. But it will be a long 
 day yet. John Bull will be an attenuated animal when 
 the fever leaves him, with barely strength to do justice 
 to his misleaders." 
 
 [While the fate of the Home Rule Bill hung in the 
 balance, Froude was keenly interested. " The ques- 
 tion," he wrote, " is whether there is still stuff enough 
 in the English and Scotch people to recover themselves 
 when they get their senses again." In the meantime 
 they appeared to him to be bewitched. Across the 
 Atlantic, too, the weather - signals indicated storm. 
 "Though all wise men there think as wise men do 
 here, these are the days of the mad majorities " (May 
 2, 1886).] 
 
 " Salcombe, September 14 [18S6?]. 
 
 " I had seen the advertisement, and was minding to 
 get a Blackwood for myself the first time I was at a 
 railway station. The post this morning brings me the 
 number from yourself, and of course I set to work on 
 Liddington with eager appetite. You are perfectly 
 right in taking a good large piece of canvas, and filling 
 in the surroundings with a free pen. . . . The imaginary 
 dialogue and Knox's part in it is new to me, and very 
 amusing. I do not recollect seeing it either in Banna- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 197 
 
 tyne or Calderwood. We are leaving Salcombe early 
 this year. Ruskin has been ill, and would like to see 
 me. ... I have not been very well this summer. I 
 had undertaken to write a sixpenny History of Ireland. 
 
 Lord was anxious about it, and I fully meant to 
 
 make it my summer work ; but when I tried, it was 
 like trying to walk with a ' sleeping ' leg, which doubles 
 up under one. I must get myself into condition some- 
 how, but my stomach has gone wrong, and refuses to 
 be comforted. The world outside looks wild ; but I 
 hope we shall do our proper work in setting that 
 wretched island in order before we meddle with Turk 
 or Russian." 
 
 " Knowsley, Prescot, October 17 [1886]. 
 
 " Elphinstone could not have us till the end of the 
 month, and by that time my holiday will have run out. 
 We shall probably be at Naworth in January, and 
 again within your reach. Inexorable fate now insists 
 on taking us home. We have been dropping about 
 in various houses. We spent four delightful days with 
 Ruskin, and four more with my cousins in Bassen- 
 thwaite. Since then we have been at Castle Howard, 
 and now we are with the Derbies, where I like to come 
 from time to time to learn the inner side of the work- 
 ing of political parties. I for my part have some kind 
 of a book beginning to grow up in me — happily not 
 about politics. I do not know whether it will come 
 to anything ; but I am anxious to get settled at home, 
 and see what I can do." 
 
198 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 "Highclere Castle, Newbury, Nov. 14 [18S6]. 
 
 " I am doing nothing; but I am thinking of spending 
 the winter in the West Indies. I want to see Crown 
 Colonies, niggers, &c., &c, and I am still capable of 
 getting intense enjoyment out of climate and scenery. 
 You won't get leave of absence and come with me ? " 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, December 21 [1SS6]. 
 " Yes ; I am going to the west Indies. 
 
 ' Mich wundert wenn Ich winderkomme.' 
 
 I wish to use what remains of strength in me for some 
 purpose which I know to be disinterested, and may, if 
 carried out, have a value. . . . The dinner was 
 pleasant enough. The Lord Chancellor, whom I did 
 not know, said pleasant things about me, and my 
 entertainers were all kind and gracious. Your glen 
 will be looking beautiful in the frost. My best regards 
 to Mrs Skelton and the Water-hens." 
 
 "Onslow Gardens, April 23 [1SS7]. 
 
 " I have come home, and the first thing which I 
 have done (after looking round me, and at a few West 
 India books) has been to read your Lethington. 1 . . . 
 You will have left behind a genuine portrait of a 
 remarkable man, to take its place in the Scotch His- 
 torical Gallery. Thank you warmly for your kind 
 
 1 Vol. i. of Maitland of Lethington and the Scotland of Mary Stuart. 
 W. Blackwood & Sons, 1887. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 199 
 
 words about myself. Had I written about Charles 
 the Fifth, it would have been to do for his memory 
 very much what you are doing, and to show that the 
 Protestant pictures, both of him and Philip and Alva, 
 are absurd caricatures. I hope you have passed the 
 winter as pleasantly as I have done. The climate out 
 there is delicious, the islands are beautiful beyond 
 imagination. The sugar-planters are almost all ruined. 
 The whites everywhere are selling their properties for 
 less than the value of the stock upon them. In Do- 
 menica, Rodney's Island, there are but twenty English 
 left. A French boat from Martinique, with a corporal's 
 guard, might take Domenica, and not a man there 
 would fire a shot to keep them off. Grenada, the most 
 charming and fertile of the Windward Antilles, is al- 
 ready a black island. The planters have disappeared, 
 and the whole island is divided among black free- 
 holders, — a gold mine to the Attorney- General, for 
 every nigger is at law with his neighbour. The state 
 of things is absurd, yet not past mending if we have 
 any sense left. The old days of the sugar millionaires 
 are gone, and black freeholds are inevitable; but the 
 poor children of darkness are not without sense, and 
 will respond well to rational government. I must try 
 to get something said about it." 
 
 "The Molt, Salcombe, October 1 [1887]. 
 " I have heard nothing of you for a weary long day. 
 . . . Tell me also what you think of The Bow of Ulysses 
 as a title for my West India book. Once upon a time 
 
200 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 we did grand things out there, as we did in other 
 places. Now all is going to the Devil. All our white 
 people there flung overboard like the Protestants in 
 Ireland, and the islands becoming Nigger Warrens. I 
 don't believe that we are any more degenerate than 
 Ulysses' bow was rotten. The bow was all right, but 
 there was no Ulysses to string it. Penelope's suitors 
 were not unlike the sort of fellows who court Britannia 
 now at the hustings. I have used the illustration any- 
 how, and I mended my pen to describe what came to 
 the said suitors with Pallas Athene looking on approv- 
 ing. The country will wake up some day, but I fear 
 not speedily. . . . The book is done now, and I 
 register many vows that I will never undertake another. 
 Indeed I believe I cannot if I would, for my eyes are 
 giving out at last, and as I don't want to go blind 
 before I die, I must save and spare what remains of 
 them." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, November 11 [1887]. 
 
 " I sent you the sheets of Oceana, and your report 
 was like the blessing of Abraham upon it. Bless my 
 West India book, even bless this also. Whether you 
 bless it or not, I despatch you a set of proofs (a very 
 few mistakes left uncorrected). They may amuse you 
 or put you to sleep ; or at worst you can make them 
 into pipe-matches." 
 
 [Many of the letters of 1887-88 refer to the Mary 
 Stuart controversy, which had again been opened by 
 the publication of my Maitland of Leihington. As the 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 201 
 
 substance of these letters subsequently appeared in the 
 sumptuous volume on Mary Stuart published in 1892 by 
 Messrs Boussod, Valladon, & Co., I need not refer to 
 them now. "The West India book," he wrote, "is 
 doing very well — much better than I expected. There 
 is a public even for sentiments so extravagantly hetero- 
 dox." And in another, — " I have been at work now 
 for a month, and have been very busy with an Irish 
 Novel of the last century. I can't tell yet whether it 
 will do to publish. Off one's regular lines one is curi- 
 ously unable to judge of the merits of one's own work " 
 — September 23. And again, — " I look eagerly for the 
 continuation of Maitland. ... I am myself reading De 
 Thou with great interest. There are details of Mary's 
 history in France, — some especially connected with the 
 conspiracy at Amboise."] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, December 28 [1SS7]. 
 " I have read Blackwood} You are more than fulfil- 
 ling all that I hoped and looked for when you took 
 Maitland up. You show him to be just what I con- 
 ceived ; a modern man of the highest intellect and 
 finest purpose — just answering politically, as you say, 
 to Erasmus — trying to steer the vessel of humanity 
 in a storm. I miss only what I suppose will come 
 in the next number — his Scotch pride and patriotism, 
 and his desire, above all things (in which he carried 
 Murray with him), to secure the English succession 
 
 1 Several chapters of both volumes of my Maitland of Lethington origin- 
 ally appeared in Maga. 
 
202 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 and Mary's recognition as heir-apparent. This it was, 
 and the assumption of the English arms by Mary, 
 which made the real difficulty in any agreement be- 
 tween her and Elizabeth. Whether Maitland could 
 have carried Mary with him into real tolerance, and 
 the adoption of the English system, is a question on 
 which you and I will think differently. I believe her 
 to have been too distinctly Guisian, too well satisfied 
 with the burning of the French heretics, which she 
 had witnessed before she came home. The passions 
 on both sides lay too deep, in my opinion, to be 
 controlled by reason and moderation. Even now I see 
 that actual work in the world only gets done by intense 
 and narrow people. The water spread over the ground 
 makes a morass ; gathered into a channel, it is a run- 
 ning stream and drives a mill. Smooth glass transmits 
 the sun's rays as it finds them. The lens gathers the 
 rays into a focus and lights a fire. I myself think as 
 Maitland did, and as Erasmus did ; but I think they 
 would have been nowhere in their own age (however 
 circumstances had favoured them), and but for the 
 fighting sort, the Luthers and Knoxes, you and I would 
 have been less comfortable to-day than we find our- 
 selves. I am not sure even that, with our toleration of 
 exploded lies, which, if they recover power, will not 
 tolerate us, our grandchildren may not have to fight 
 the old battle over again with the old weapons. I am 
 none the less grateful to you for giving us the other 
 side so skilfully, and with so much appreciation of what 
 in itself you dislike. For the first time you will have 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 203 
 
 made the story of the Scotch Reformation intelligible. 
 . . . My West Indies will appear in a fortnight. . . . 
 The next summer we are thinking of Scotland, and if 
 you hear of any place near a lake where there is fishing 
 and decent accommodation, kindly let me know." 
 
 : '5 Onslow Gardens, April 6 [iSSS]. 
 " Norway will be agreeable enough, and there is a 
 splendid river for us to catch salmon in ; but you would 
 have been in Mull ; we would have come there ; and 
 that would have been best of all. The summers 
 which I at least will be able to enjoy are growing few, 
 and should be made the most of. Perhaps next year 
 we may manage better. Already I feel past shooting. 
 I have a curious dislike to hunting warm - blooded 
 creatures. Fish don't count. I look eagerly for the 
 continuation of your Maitland. I would be grateful to 
 Blackwood if he would kindly send me the numbers 
 when they come out. I will repay him if he likes by 
 a little sketch or two of our life in the Fiords." 
 
 "The Molt, Salcombe, April 15 [1SS9]. 
 
 " I had so bothered myself over the book [The Two 
 Chiefs of Dunboy] that I could not tell whether it was 
 good or bad, and was humbly prepared to hear that it 
 was a dead failure. Now I can at least feel that you 
 (and Lord Derby, for he says the same as you do) can 
 find amusement in it, and what you feel may perhaps 
 be felt by a few other people. I wanted comfort, for I 
 have been out of condition all the spring — ever since 
 
204 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 Christmas indeed ; and when one can't sleep, and lies 
 tumbling about all night, the Devil has one at advan- 
 tage. I wonder whether there is any chance of your 
 coming down here in the summer. You know how 
 heartily we shall welcome you if you can, or either of 
 your young ones if you like to send them down. ... I 
 may say that the Morty of the Two Chiefs is nearer the 
 real article than the Morty of The English in Ireland. 
 I am almost certain that he actually was with the Pre- 
 tender. There were Irish officers on his staff — one Sir 
 Edward [Thomas ?] Sheridan, another a Colonel Sulli- 
 van. This is historical; as also their capture and escape. 
 There was no other Sullivan living of sufficient repre- 
 sentative rank to have held the place by the Prince 
 which a certain Sullivan undoubtedly had. Irish 
 officers in the Continental armies did uncommonly 
 well, and, of course, acquired a different way of looking 
 at things from their countrymen." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, Sept. 23 [1889]. 
 " About the Calvinists. Whatever was the cause, 
 they were the only fighting Protestants. It was they 
 whose faith gave them courage to stand up for the Refor- 
 mation. In England, Scotland, France, Holland, they 
 and only they did the work, and but for them the 
 Reformation would have been crushed. This is why I 
 admire them, and feel that there was something in 
 their Creed which made them what they were. In a 
 high transcendental sense I believe Calvinism to be 
 true — i.e., I believe Free Will to be an illusion, and 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 205 
 
 that all is as it is ordered to be. But leaving this, which 
 belongs to abstruse philosophy, the Calvinists practi- 
 cally, like the early Christians, abhorred lies, especially 
 in matters of religion, and would have nothing to do 
 with them. An idol, an image of Jupiter, or the Mass, 
 if it is not true, is a damnable imposture, which men 
 degrade themselves by affecting to respect. Knox was 
 the embodiment of this feeling, and I think Knox was 
 right. It has all gone to squash now, and likely enough, 
 in fifty years, we shall have Romanism back again when 
 we have rotted out the old stuff sufficiently. But it 
 remains in the English nature in other forms. The 
 two English sailors who refused to kiss a mandarin's 
 toe in China, and let themselves be killed sooner, had 
 the same mind in them. What was kissing a China- 
 man's toe but a mark of respect, a custom of the 
 country, a form of reverence for established authority ? 
 Yet one feels it was better for the poor men to die than 
 do so. I entirely agree with Knox in his horror of that 
 one Mass. If it had not been for Calvinists, Huguenots, 
 Puritans, or whatever you like to call them, the Pope 
 and Philip would have won, and we should either be 
 Papists or Socialists. Erasmus and Maitland saw more 
 clearly than any of their contemporaries ; but intellect 
 fights no battle, Reason is no match for Superstition, 
 and one emotion can only be conquered by another. 
 
 "... I hope at last I have got a subject when I 
 shall tread on nobody's corns : you alone of all my 
 friends have been able hitherto to differ from me with- 
 out flying into a passion. But, indeed, I care little 
 
206 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 what people say, — unless it be you and one or two 
 others. The pleasure to me is in writing the book. 
 We are counting on you for next summer, and I am 
 busy making plans for a boat which I intend to have 
 built for me — a large open rowing galley with a couple 
 of big lug-sails. That is, on the whole, the most useful 
 craft when there is both river and sea, and one does 
 not want to be out at night or in bad weather." 
 
 [During the winter of 1888-89 Froude was more or 
 less of an invalid, and left London in the early spring 
 for The Molt : " I had to give up Norway. I was told 
 that wet or cold might play mischief with me, and I was 
 afraid of spoiling Ducie's enjoyment. I had a constant 
 pain in my side, and unexplained aches which had no 
 visible cause suggested disagreeable possibilities." But 
 by November he had completely recovered.] 
 
 "The Molt, November 10 [18S9]. 
 "Your kind letter reproaches me with the long time 
 which I have let pass without communicating with you 
 — you who have always been the truest of my friends. 
 I suppose it is for that reason — as the country farmer 
 excused himself for sleeping under the Rector's sermons. 
 " Lord, sir, when you are in the pulpit, we know it is 
 all right." The newspapers as usual are better aware 
 of our doings than we are ourselves. I now feel better 
 than I have done for years ; and I am going back to 
 London next week into the old round of things, saving 
 that I have registered a vow to go to no more dinners. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 207 
 
 I don't know that I should have gone back after all. 
 Perhaps I should have stayed here, except for this 
 Beaconsfield undertaking. Ralph Disraeli promises to 
 help me, — indeed has already done so. The Duke of 
 Rutland will help me, and I must see and talk to a 
 good many people. I hesitated a long time before I 
 agreed to do the thing. . . . But it will give me an 
 opportunity of saying many things which I wish to say 
 about modern Liberalism and the universal disintegra- 
 tion which Lord B. saw clearer than any one was certain 
 to come of it. I admired him in spite of his affectation 
 and coxcombry, which I discovered to have been itself 
 affected, and to have been no more than a very valuable 
 suit of armour. I did and do entirely disagree with 
 his views on Russia, &c. I consider that we ought to 
 be good friends with Russia, and that a war between us 
 will shake Asia from the Dardanelles to the Wall of 
 China, and cause infinite misery to half the human 
 race. But I think he understood the social and politi- 
 cal condition of England more clearly than any other 
 living man (not excepting Carlyle), and Loth air I regard 
 as one of the most instructive and remarkable books 
 that has appeared in our time. This is what I mean to 
 dwell on. The Peace with Honour, and all that, I 
 shall pass over as lightly as I may. 
 
 " So there you have an account of this adventure 
 of mine which, if I continue able to work, I hope to 
 achieve in the course of the winter. If I break down 
 again, why I do, and there will be an end, and I shall 
 not achieve it. The world will not be much the worse. 
 
208 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 " In April I am due in Edinburgh, when the Uni- 
 versity is to give me a degree, and once more I shall 
 offer myself to Mrs Skelton's hospitality. The Philo- 
 sophical Society has petitioned for a lecture or lectures. 
 I said I would make no engagement, so uncertain I 
 was of my condition ; but if I was well, and if they 
 would give me an extra night, I would talk to them for 
 an hour about Carlyle. 
 
 " The summer here has been beautiful, and has 
 hardly yet left us. The orange-trees are in blossom ; 
 begonias brilliant ; geranium, heliotrope, and fuchsias 
 bright as they were two months ago. The winter at Sal- 
 combe is winter only in name, and we are hardly con- 
 scious of it except in the short days. Only the sea is 
 wild. The cutter lies in the mud dismantled, and I 
 am driven to walking (which I am now better up to) 
 or lounging about the garden. In July and August 
 we had yacht visitors in plenty, — dukes, earls, &c, 
 very sumptuous and splendid, but subdued in mind 
 compared to what they used to be. The last who 
 appeared was W. H. Smith in the Pandora, recruiting 
 from the session. He, I think it was, who finally 
 decided me to undertake Lord B., though I do not 
 think that he will be of much service to me. 
 
 " I suppose you know (I don't) who wrote that most 
 feeble and unintelligent article about Maitland in the 
 Edinburgh. It had a North-Country flavour, stupid as 
 it was, and came, I am sure, from your side of the 
 Tweed. He entirely fails to see that the ruling prin- 
 ciple in all the Scotch statesmen of all sides, Murray, 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 209 
 
 Maitland, Morton (even Knox to a degree), was to 
 secure the English succession to the Scotch line. 
 This is the single and simple explanation of all their 
 inconsistencies. Patriotism, Scotch vanity, whatever 
 you like to call it, was the strongest passion of their 
 lives. 
 
 " It will be very pleasant to see you and Mrs S. 
 in London. My friends that are left are few, and 
 I am grown too old to interest myself about acquaint- 
 ances. Let me know when to look for you. You 
 must stay with us, and nowhere else. — Ever with 
 warmest remembrances, your affect., 
 
 "J. A. Froude." 
 
 [The Life of Lord Beaconsfield was the last book 
 Mr Froude wrote before he went to Oxford. It is 
 a lively political sketch ; but the subject as a whole 
 was hardly congenial. It cannot compare with Oceana, 
 which for scholarly finish ranks with the inimitable 
 Eothen of Kinglake. In Oceana, Mr Froude as a man 
 of letters is seen at his best ; and at his best Mr Froude 
 had few rivals. No other writer of our day, not Car- 
 dinal Newman hinself, had, as I think, such an easy 
 mastery of our mother tongue, — in no other writer 
 were masculine vigour and feminine delicacy so blended 
 in the expression of, what may be called, intellectual 
 emotion. The thought was personal ; the personality 
 was unique. From the purely literary point of view 
 Oceana is indeed a masterpiece. Froude complained 
 in it, as he complained in his letters (as we have seen), 
 
 o 
 
210 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 of being an old man : but there is no trace of age in 
 the book. On the contrary — brimful of keen and 
 ardent life — it hurries us along from cape to cape 
 and from sea to sea, with brilliant dash and more 
 than youthful vivacity. And in it the rarer qualities 
 of Froude's genius were as manifest as in any of his 
 earlier writings — the imaginative light, the brilliant 
 definition, the play of Jacques -like humour, the touch 
 of latent tenderness, the severe ideal. It is vivid, 
 it is picturesque, it is immensely interesting — bringing 
 us into closer contact with the people on the other 
 side of the globe than any realistic romance could 
 do. And yet, after all is said of its literary excellence, 
 it remains in substance and pre - eminently a long, 
 eloquent, and impassioned plea for Imperial Unity. 
 Froude was a patriot to the core. He never forgot 
 that he was a citizen of no mean country. He loved 
 England and Englishmen ; and he never wearied of 
 praising her great statesmen and her great sailors and 
 soldiers. And if he spoke bitterly of the men who had 
 led her astray (as he fancied), it was out of the love 
 he bore her. 
 
 Froude had intended to be in Edinburgh for a week 
 in April 1890 to receive his degree, but he was pre- 
 vented by illness from coming. " I find that at sev- 
 enty-two one does not entirely recover from these things. 
 If I am to hang on at all, it will only be by resigning 
 myself to the conditions, and by henceforth living 
 under doctor's instructions. I have written to Muir 
 and charged him with my acknowledgments and apol- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 211 
 
 ogies to the Senatus ; but I had looked forward for 
 many years to the honours of Edinburgh, and I cannot 
 reconcile myself to the loss. I fear ' my inward parts ' 
 are full of wickedness, — liver and all the rest of it" 
 (April 8, 1890). But during July and August he was 
 again fishing with Lord Ducie in Norwegian rivers — 
 " fishing from morning to midnight in the wettest 
 season ever known in Norway."] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, April 12 [1890]. 
 "I am indeed sorry at the news which you send. 
 I will still hope to see the Hermitage once more under 
 happier auspices. The University generously offer to 
 give me the Degree in absentia. Cczsar has been brought 
 out again, and is doing very well. Carlyle's Life is to 
 follow. A Yankee asked me which of all my books I 
 thought most valuable. I said beyond doubt the Life 
 of Cavlylc. If value be measured by the cost to myself 
 it ought to be worth something." 
 
 "Yacht Monarch, August 3 [1S90]. 
 " We live in great luxury ; a steam-yacht of 360 tons, 
 with a crew of eighteen, and only our two selves to enjoy 
 it all. But I am too old for the work. The river mon- 
 sters are too many for me. I cannot any longer run 
 along the banks, and plunge among rocks, and wade 
 in deep stream to save fish which put their heads down 
 these furious streams. I lost one as big as a porpoise 
 only the day before yesterday, because in desperation 
 and confidence in my tackle I resolved to hold on and 
 
212 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 kill him in mid-stream, when of course the hook came 
 away, breaking the hold in his gills. I console myself 
 on these occasions by reflecting that he is better off 
 and I am no worse ; and meanwhile I wonder at my- 
 self at what I am still able to do. All my ailments 
 have disappeared, and I am extraordinarily well. 
 Work enough waits for me when I get back. My 
 own sketch of Dizzy was done and printed before I 
 came away. . . . Another edition of Carlyle's Life 
 is going through the press, of which I shall have things 
 to tell you which I need not write. That done, I have 
 to revise my History of England — a big job which will 
 see out the rest of my working powers. I am glad to 
 hear that you have had such a good time in the En- 
 chantress." 
 
 " 5 Onslow Gardens, November 3 [1890]. 
 
 " Of course I sent my book to you. To whom else 
 in the world should I send it ? — but I was especially 
 anxious that you should have this, because I knew 
 you suspected me of not sufficiently valuing Dizzy ; 
 and that you did not wholly understand what I thought 
 of him. . . . The interesting part of the business 
 has been the relation in which I found myself with D.'s 
 friends, who, as you may have concluded, have helped 
 me a good deal, specially Lord Rothschild. Lord R. 
 has the Brydges-Willyams correspondence. I wish 
 he would publish it. . . . We are in — I see plainly 
 — for an ultra- Democratic Parliament at the next elec- 
 tion. It must have come sooner or later; and better 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 213 
 
 sooner than later while the old traditions are not 
 hopelessly dead. I remain pretty well. I cannot 
 cure the incurable disease. I am seventy-three years 
 old, and have to avoid dinners and all kinds of follies 
 of similar kind. ... I was particularly delighted with 
 the Orkneys, — the sight of which has made a whole 
 chapter of Norse history intelligible to me. The West- 
 ern Islands were very interesting too ; but our weather 
 was wild, wet, and cold. — Ever yours affly., 
 
 "J. A. Froude." 
 
 [1890 ends with a letter of good wishes (December 
 19), in which, after remarking that speaking is not in 
 his line, — " I have been brought up to another trade," 
 — he goes on to relate how an old Protestant Irish- 
 woman, on hearing some one say that an eminent 
 politician of another generation deserved to be hanged, 
 replied, "Ah no; lave him to the Lard, and the Lard 
 will play the Divil with him." 
 
 I may add here that the type of mind most dis- 
 tasteful to Froude was what may be called the evasive 
 or casuistic. He loved candour. His friends could 
 not be too frank and outspoken. I remember an 
 application being made to him to subscribe to a 
 memorial to an eminent Catholic dignitary. "They 
 ask me to contribute," he exclaimed, "though they 
 know that I think he did more to hurt the English 
 regard for truth than any other man." Of the New- 
 man - Kingsley controversy, too, he did not hesitate 
 to speak with perfect plainness. Newman had made 
 
214 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 mince-meat of Kingsley ; and yet in substance Kings- 
 ley was right ; though the emotional fervour of the 
 English Churchman was no match for the deft dia- 
 lectic of the Catholic Priest. There were lay leaders 
 too whose beguiling words were false as Vivien's, but 
 which were accepted as Gospel by the enfranchised 
 democracy. Yet — after all — the subtle logical formulas 
 of medieval monks and schoolmen were arrows shot in 
 the air. They might perplex the unlearned and em- 
 barrass the timid for the moment ; but they failed 
 to secure the assent of the really influential class whose 
 verdict, if long delayed, was final. When the con- 
 juring trick was detected, as it always was in the end, 
 the conjuror was sent to jail, — if he did not abscond 
 in the interval. The interval, unhappily, was some- 
 times considerable. These were lessons, I presume, 
 that Froude had learnt at Chelsea ; but he had made 
 them his own. Between the " fatally supple and per- 
 suasive rhetorician," and the pupil of Carlyle who had 
 been "brought up to another trade," there could be no 
 fellowship.] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, December 19 [1S90]. 
 
 " My useless little life of Lord B has done well 
 
 enough. It is worth nothing, and I cared little about 
 it when I was doing the thing. Still I had a real 
 admiration of Lothair and Sybil, and for the man too, 
 who in all his life never condescended to cant. Also, 
 I bore him genuine good-will for having offered the 
 G.C.B. to Carlyle." 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 21 5 
 
 [We spent a week at Onslow Gardens early in 1891. 
 Save for a few hours later on, it was our last meeting. 
 Froude was well and happy. I had sent him a little 
 Christmas reminder of cloudless days among the Sum- 
 mer Isles. " I was myself over much of the same water 
 in August. We left the Sound of Hoy in a storm, 
 and forced our way against head -wind and sea all 
 the way to Cape Wrath. We can talk it all over 
 when you come" (January 17, 1891). It was a 
 delightful visit ; and the letters that followed made 
 it still more memorable. By-and-by, but still in the 
 early year, he went back to The Molt.] 
 
 "The Molt, Salcombe, A/>ril 3 [1891]. 
 " All is very quiet here, and would be pleasant if it 
 were not so unnaturally cold. The air has not recov- 
 ered from the great snow-storm of the first week of 
 March, which buried all this part of the country in 
 drifts 20 feet deep, and are not yet gone. Four ships 
 were wrecked almost in sight of our windows, and fifty 
 or sixty poor fellows drowned, or lost in the snow after 
 they had struggled ashore. The bodies are even now 
 being discovered as it melts off. Life is very tragic — 
 in spite of political economy and a reformed House of 
 Commons. The storm played wild pranks with our 
 garden. The great elm-trees are gone in front of the 
 house. Shrubs of all kinds torn up by the roots. 
 
 M used to say she could not breathe. She can 
 
 breathe well enough now when the South-Westers come 
 sweeping in. . . . My little yacht has been in Medea's 
 
2l6 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 Caldron ; has been cut in pieces and been restored to 
 life, larger and more beautiful. I told the builder I 
 wished he could do as much for me. I wonder whether 
 you and Mrs S. will ever come here again and let me 
 take you out sailing in her. — Yours ever affectly., 
 
 "J. A. Froude." 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, November 17 [1891]. 
 
 " The political pendulum is going far and fast on the 
 backward swing. Democracies always worship some 
 one leading individual, and Gladstone is the imposing 
 figure just now with the British voter." 
 
 ["We may look out for a spell of storms, with real 
 peace to follow," he wrote about the same time. Then 
 in January 1892 came a letter of congratulation. " One 
 of the pleasantest features in old age is the seeing such 
 of our friends as are not dead promoted to the honours 
 which they deserve" (20th January). Two months 
 later Lord Salisbury offered him the Chair of Modern 
 History at Oxford. After some hesitation the offer 
 was accepted.] 
 
 "5 Onslow Gardens, April S [1892]. 
 
 " In the tumult into which I have let myself be 
 thrown, the kind words and wishes of my real friends 
 are my best comfort. ' I was well, I would be better, 
 and here I am.' Good-bye to quiet days and quiet 
 work at my own fireside. The temptation of going 
 back to Oxford in a respectable way was too much for 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 217 
 
 me. I must just do the best I can, and trust that I 
 shall not be haunted by Freeman's ghost." 
 
 "Cherwell Edge, Oxford, November 5 [1S92]. 
 " So far the new element in which I find myself 
 floats me very comfortably. The old Dons are civil, 
 and the undergraduates come to my lectures in large 
 numbers. This will pass off with the novelty of the 
 thing. The pace generally is not hard, and I shall do 
 well enough : when the spring comes round, you and 
 Mrs S. will pay us a visit. Boyd had told me of your 
 Orkney adventures. I was there two years ago with 
 Lord Ducie. We were at Kirkwall, and then went 
 round to Stornoway (I think). We saw Maeshowe 
 and the Stones of Stennis. We drove along a lake 
 on our way there which was possibly Scapa Flow — 
 anyway it answers your description. Maeshowe in- 
 terested me immensely, and never shall I forget the 
 merits of the cod and haddock from the Pentland." 
 
 "Cherwell Edge, Oxford, Jan. 30 [1S93]. 
 "The Master of Gray never interested me particu- 
 larly, though I had to study and describe the outside 
 of him. You have let in daylight upon him, but not 
 much to his advantage. 1 ... I am sorry that Lord 
 Elphinstone is dead. I had promised him a visit at 
 Carberry to see the ' Holy Places,' and now I suppose 
 I shall never see them. I did once stand on the spot 
 
 1 Froude alludes to a sketch which appeared in Maga — Queen Mary's 
 Holdfast — February 1893. 
 
218 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 where Mary and Bothwell parted; but it was in a 
 storm of rain and mist, and I could make little of 
 it. . . . If you don't come here, I think I shall run 
 up to you in the Easter vacation." 
 
 i: Cherwell Edge, Oxford, February 28 [1S93]. 
 "The sight of your handwriting is always welcome, 
 specially here where, from the associations of the place, 
 all the long years' interval since I left Oxford seem as 
 if they belonged to another person, and as if I, like the 
 Seven Sleepers, had taken up the threads of my old 
 existence. When I left in 1849, I had never seen you; 
 I had never even seen Scotland. My time has since 
 been all my own. Now I have to fall into regulation 
 terms and vacations. Easter vacation comes near, and 
 I have various plans, one of which might bring me 
 down to the Hermitage. I want, if possible, to see 
 Ruskin again — at Coniston. I shall then be near the 
 Border, and may easily run on. . . . What a time we 
 live in ! It is like the breaking up of the ice on the 
 Neva, — great cracks opening, preliminary to the general 
 split up. Carlyle always said that the catastrophe 
 of the Constitution was very near ; and perhaps it is 
 well that it should come now before the character of 
 the people is further demoralised. But there will be a 
 fine shaking of the nations when the big central mass 
 bursts up." 
 
 [We were now on the eve of the second Home Rule 
 Bill, and the country was growing keenly excited. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 2ig 
 
 " The Protestants," Froude wrote, " will no more 
 stand it than they did in Tyrconnell's time. But 
 beyond this all is dark." Then he recurred to a 
 favourite topic. The supporters of Home Rule on 
 either side of the Channel were " equally unable to 
 understand the dour Calvinism of Ulster. Calvinism 
 at its highest was only a savage determination not to 
 be crushed by lies and Tyranny ; and in Ireland now 
 there is just the same feeling."] 
 
 " You have filled out the figure of the Master of Gray 
 — I daresay correctly. I could never make him out 
 very clearly. I have been, and am, reading De Thou 
 with immense interest. He lived through all that time. 
 He was greatly interested in Scotland, and lets us see 
 the feeling in France — very passionate and very mixed 
 as it was. I wish somebody would write a good book 
 on the House of Guise. All the Guises had immense 
 personality. They would be splendid subjects." 
 
 " Cherwell Edge, Oxford, April 22 [1S93]. 
 " On the whole, I am tolerably happy here — a great 
 deal better in health than I was in London ; and I 
 really like a few very young men who have come about 
 me. Some of the old Dons, too, have been rather 
 touchingly kind. . . . Lord Derby is a real loss. He 
 has been more than a kind friend to me. . . . There 
 are consolations — not in this, for the dead do not come 
 back, and cannot be replaced — but in Home Rule 
 Second Readings and other political madnesses. Let 
 
220 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 them do as they will with Ireland, it will be crushed 
 down again before ten years are out, and I shall not be 
 surprised if our Parliamentary System goes down along 
 with it. Lord Derby once said to me that kings and 
 aristocracies can govern empires, but one people can- 
 not govern another people. If we have to choose 
 between the Empire and the Constitution, I think I 
 know which way it will be." 
 
 "WOODCOT, KlNGSBRIDGE, SOUTH DEVON, August 31 [1S93]. 
 
 " I ought to have written to you weeks ago to thank 
 you for your Mary Stuart book. ... I do not know 
 why I have neglected so long what is both a duty and 
 a pleasure. Perhaps because on the rare occasions 
 when a duty and a pleasure go together, the sense of 
 duty interferes with the pleasure, and the sense of 
 pleasure diminishes the authoritative order of duty. 
 ... I am old, obstinate, and unconvinced ; but you 
 undoubtedly make a strong case out of Crawford's 
 Deposition. If it could be proved that Crawford's 
 Deposition was made before the letter was discovered in 
 the Casket, I should agree with you that the letter must 
 have been made up out of what Crawford had said. 
 But as well as I know, the Deposition was made after- 
 wards. . . . However that be, the book is charming 
 in itself, and excellently illustrated. Goupil 1 brought 
 it to me himself, and urged me to write a compan- 
 ion volume on Elizabeth, taking the opposite side. I 
 
 1 Or rather, I should imagine, the English representative of the French 
 house. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 221 
 
 absolutely refused, however, to get into any kind of 
 controversy with so old and dear a friend as yourself ; 
 and, besides, you were generous enough to print such 
 objections as I had made to your view in writing to you, 
 so that really I had no more to say, except that, accord- 
 ing to all the evidence that I met with, Scton did 
 accompany the Queen to his castle, and so did Both- 
 well. I wonder where you are this summer. I myself 
 drift lazily along at Salcombe, preparing lectures for 
 the undergraduates, and sailing when winds and waves 
 will let me. The professorship answers in providing 
 me with just so much occupation as keeps me from 
 being a plague to my family, and not too much for 
 my years." 
 
 "Cher\vell Edge, Oxford, November 9 [1S93]. 
 " I have to lecture on Tuesdays and Fridays. To 
 my sorrow I am popular, and my room is crowded. I 
 know not who they are, and have no means of knowing. 
 So it is not satisfactory. I must alter things somehow 
 — I can't yet tell how. But anyway we can have a 
 day to talk and enjoy ourselves. It will be ' a Good 
 Joy.'" 
 
 [Looking last night through the bundle of letters 
 belonging.to the year now rapidly drawing to a close, I 
 came upon the last which I received from Froude, — 
 the last letter of a correspondence extending without a 
 break over five-and-thirty years. He had more than 
 once asked me to visit him at Oxford ; and being in 
 
222 MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 London during June, I offered to spend a night at 
 Cherwell Edge. This letter was in reply. I was 
 struck at the time by its despondent tone ; but I had 
 no apprehension that I was not to see him again.] 
 
 "WOODCOT, KlNGSBRIDGE, SOUTH DEVON, fline 22 [1S94]. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — Alas ! I have few chances of 
 ever seeing you, and when a chance offers I cannot get 
 the good of it. I left Cherwell Edge a month ago, 
 having wound up my year's lecturing, and being myself 
 much the worse for the work. 
 
 "The teaching business at Oxford goes at high 
 pressure — in itself utterly absurd, and unsuited alto- 
 gether to an old stager like myself. Education, like so 
 much else in these days, has gone mad, and is turned 
 into a mere examination Mill. The undergraduates 
 come about me in large numbers, and I have asserted 
 in some sense my own freedom ; but one cannot escape 
 the tyranny of the system. I have been out of health 
 with it all for a good many months. I had hoped to 
 get right when I could go sailing, &c. ; but since we 
 came here it has been as cold as mid-winter. Fires 
 still and thick clothes, and we still shiver ; while out- 
 side there is nothing but rain, wind, and fog. 
 
 " I have more than half a mind to accept an in- 
 vitation from Sir George Grey, and go back with 
 him in the autumn to the Antipodes. At least one 
 could get a baking in the tropics again. Ducie wanted 
 me to go to Norway with him — salmon-fishing; but 
 I didn't feel that I could do justice to the opportunity. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 223 
 
 In the debased state to which I am reduced, if I 
 hooked a 30-lb salmon, I should only pray him to 
 get off. 
 
 " Is there no chance of your paying us a visit with 
 Mrs Skelton again, either here or in the winter at 
 Oxford ? I have the start of you in the world ; but 
 we have neither of us a very long spell to look forward 
 to, and we ought to use the time when we have it. 
 When, if ever, shall I see the Hermitage again ? 
 
 " Yours ever, with warmest remembrances to Mrs 
 Skelton, J. A. Froude." 
 
 "When, if ever, shall I see the Hermitage again?" 
 Coming from the tried friend of the better part of 
 a lifetime, the simple, wistful words of farewell (for 
 as such I read them now) have acquired a touching 
 significance. Sunt lacrymtz rerum; or (as he phrased 
 it in one of the letters I have quoted), " Life is very 
 tragic — in spite of Political Economy and a Reformed 
 House of Commons." Seldom more tragic, perhaps, 
 than when a strong, ardent, eager spirit leaves us, 
 with little warning, to go out into the darkness alone. 
 It was Edmund Burke who exclaimed the other day — 
 " What shadows we are, and what shadows we pur- 
 sue ! " but the burden of the complaint — All flesh is as 
 grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass ! 
 — is as old as Hebrew sage and psalmist, — as old 
 indeed as Death itself. 
 
 Had Arthur Stanley lived, a corner would have been 
 
224 MAINLY ABOUT TAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 found for Anthony Froude within the walls of the 
 Abbey; but probably it is better as it is. This son 
 of Devon will sleep the sounder "upon the beached 
 verge of the salt flood," within hearing of the surf 
 that beats upon Bolt Head and the Start. And pos- 
 sibly no more fitting inscription for his gravestone 
 could be chosen than the tersely monumental lines 
 which I take from the St James's Gazette : — 
 
 " Now, when heroic memories pass 
 Like sunset shadows from the grass, 
 When England's children cry and stir, 
 Each for himself, and few for her ; 
 
 We may think tenderly of one 
 Who told, like no unworthy son, 
 Her history, and who loved to draw 
 Champions a younger England saw. 
 
 We act no critic's part, and when 
 They rate him less than lesser men, 
 We feel the golden thread that goes 
 To link the periods of his prose. 
 
 Perhaps our busy breathless age, 
 That leaves unopened history's page, 
 Hath need of work like his to strike 
 Imperial chords, Tyrtaean-like." 
 
225 
 
 X. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 
 
 r^HEY are burying him to-day, while the snowflakes 
 -*- fall silently on the tombs, in the old churchyard of 
 St Andrews which overhangs the sea ; he has returned 
 in this fashion to his first and last love. Nor can I, 
 who knew St Andrews in the old time as a boy, mar- 
 vel at his constancy. 
 
 * 
 # 
 
 St Andrews was in those days a real academic city, 
 — a dark, sombre, ruinous, ill-lighted, badly-paved, old- 
 fashioned, old-mannered, secluded place. Then came 
 the era of Sir Hugh Playfair, who destroyed its schol- 
 astic repose and wiped away its classic dust. But in 
 those early ages a few noble fragments of ancient ruin, 
 which had resisted the fury of the Puritan iconoclasts, 
 — the massive walls of a feudal castle, the great tower 
 
 p 
 
226 MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 
 
 of St Rule, the lovely windows and arches of the 
 cathedral, — rose above an old-fashioned street, not 
 inconveniently crowded with old-fashioned houses, in 
 which old-fashioned professors and old-fashioned ladies 
 looked after keen-eyed threadbare students, who here, 
 in red and ragged gowns, like the early Edinburgh 
 Reviewers, cultivated the Muses upon a little oatmeal. 
 Very cheerful and homely was the life thus led, — a 
 life through which the shrill sea-wind blew healthfully, 
 and to which the daily round of "golf" on the links, 
 and the evening rubber of long whist in the parlour, 
 added the keen zest of physical and intellectual ex- 
 citement. Death has swept them all clean away, — 
 wonderful old Scotch ladies, wonderful old Scotch pro- 
 fessors ; and new streets, new terraces, new men, and 
 new manners have transformed modern St Andrews — 
 during the summer months at least— into a fashionable 
 watering-place for the lawyers of Edinburgh and the 
 traders of Dundee. But go to it during winter or 
 early spring, before the College session is over, before 
 the students in their red gowns have deserted the 
 streets, before the sociable academic society has taken 
 flight, before the links are crowded by golfers who 
 cannot handle a club, before the wild east wind has 
 abated, before the hoarse complaints of a sea often 
 vexed by storm are silence^, before the snow has 
 melted away from the distant Grampian range, and 
 you may even to-day understand the bleak charm that 
 thirty, or forty, or fifty years ago endeared this sea- 
 girt seat of early learning and piety, — this severe 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 227 
 
 mother of the intellectual Graces, Mater sceva Cupid- 
 mum, — to the most apathetic of her sons. 
 
 * * 
 # 
 
 Of all the denizens of a quite innocent Bohemia, 
 Pat, 1 for sheer original force, was among (if not) 
 the foremost. As a young fellow, his physique was 
 magnificent ; he positively towered above the other 
 golfers on the links of St Andrews (where he was 
 born) ; and in the remote ages when I knew him 
 first, few of the professionals even were better players 
 all round. He fell away from his game, indeed, more 
 quickly than most ; late sittings over metaphysics, 
 whisky, and tobacco are not favourable to steady 
 play. As the years went by he kept more and more 
 to his den in Broad Street, where any night he might 
 be discovered, dimly visible like an Olympian deity, 
 through the cloud of negrohead or cavendish. He 
 was not exactly sluggish by nature ; but he did not 
 care for fame, and he grew indolent as he grew old. 
 His most incisive and brilliant hits were either too 
 abstruse or too tart and bitter to suit the popular taste. 
 He would send a scrap of verse worthy of Clough or 
 Matthew Arnold to a provincial paper — and there an 
 end. Though at heart a man of the finest courtesy, he 
 was in certain superficial aspects a rough diamond; and 
 as he sauntered along Broad Street in threadbare 
 
 1 "Pat," I may say in a footnote, was the familiar and affectionate 
 abbreviation for " Patrick Proctor Alexander." 
 
228 MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 
 
 Inverness cape and battered old wide - awake, his 
 closest friends were shy to recognise him. The 
 general air of seediness was pronounced and undeni- 
 able. He was careless of the proprieties and con- 
 ventions ; and as the conventions and proprieties are 
 the gospel of our West End, he had no place in its 
 society. Pat was the dreadful sort of creature who 
 could quite calmly dine in a shooting-jacket ; I am 
 by no means sure, indeed, that he owned a dress- 
 coat. Then at times he could be savage and Swiftian. 
 He could tolerate no insincerity; in art, in letters, 
 in life, he demanded in highly peremptory terms that 
 a man should be neither hypocrite nor pharisee, 
 neither sneak nor toady. But the sardonic cynicism 
 of this humorous philosopher was entirely on the 
 outside ; the nature underneath, as I have said, was 
 singularly simple and tender. We all knew, those 
 of us who were his friends, that he had a genuine 
 gift of humour : but we hardly any of us, I think, 
 recognised that his poetical faculty was as genuine 
 as his humorous. If these waifs and strays of his 
 muse are ever brought together from the poet's corner 
 of obscure country newspapers, it will be found, I think, 
 that few poems more finished in form, more original in 
 suggestion, more charming in expression, have been 
 written in our time. The comparison is somewhat 
 trite; but I venture to assert that those short swallow 
 flights of song have the brightness, simplicity, unexpec- 
 tedness, and bird-like music of the Elizabethan masters. 
 In the latest there is, moreover, a pathetic hopelessness 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 229 
 
 — the pathetic hopelessness of a wasted life. Some of 
 the lines once read haunt the memory ever afterwards. 
 
 "Our Poet. 
 
 " I wander where the river strays 
 Through woods asleep in pearly haze, 
 With quiet nooks where earliest peer 
 The firstlings of the dawning year. 
 I feel, but scarcely seem to share, 
 This sense which haunts the happy air, 
 Of young life stirring everywhere ; 
 For ever at my heart of hearts 
 A pulse of nameless trouble starts. 
 I watch this tender April sky ; 
 I see its aimless clouds go by ; 
 I gaze, and gaze, and only think — 
 It would have pleased our poet's eye. 
 
 From his low nest the glad lark springs 
 And soars, and soaring ever, flings 
 Blythe music from the restless wings. 
 Though all the air be trembling pleased, 
 The unquiet soul is nothing eased ; 
 I hear with scarce the heart to hear 
 That carol ringing quick and clear; 
 I hear, and hearing, only think — 
 It would have pleased our poet's ear. 
 
 His ears are shut from happy sound; 
 
 His eyes are softly sealed ; 
 
 The oft-trod old familiar ground, 
 
 The hill, the wood, the field, 
 
 This path, which most he loved, that runs 
 
 Far up the shining river, 
 
 Through all the course of summer suns 
 
 He treads no more for ever." 
 
230 MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 
 
 "The pity of it, the pity of it, Iago ! " Here was 
 a man of the most perfect, and scrupulous veracity, 
 who had outgrown all formulas, whose life had become 
 aimless, whose lucid intellectual force had failed to 
 find any desirable or fitting " outgait." He sat in 
 his Olympian garret, with clouds of tobacco-smoke 
 about him, revolving many things. Thus occupied, 
 though his nature was as sweet and sociable as ever, 
 a fine scorn for the coin that passes current in the 
 busy world, for the impostor and the charlatan, took 
 possession of him. One saw latterly that he was 
 dying. The finely cut face showed worn and weather- 
 beaten ; he still walked firmly enough, but with a 
 slow, measured, deliberate gait ; the ragged Inverness 
 cape hung limply about him ; it was all too clear that 
 the splendid constitution had failed, and that life 
 had become a weariness to him. 
 
 I had known him more or less since I was a boy 
 at St Andrews — about the '43. He was then twenty 
 or thereby — just the age of the " Principal," whose 
 lifelong friendship he enjoyed. He was never, they 
 said, exactly the same man after the Principal's death ; 
 he had lost the friend who was closer than a brother, 
 who knew, as no one else did, his genuine and sterling 
 worth, who resented with large - hearted scorn any 
 allegation of moral or spiritual decline, and remained 
 to the end as frank and cordial and appreciative as 
 when they had been lads at college, with the future 
 all before them. We used to regard " Pat " in my 
 school-days with boyish curiosity and wonder, — this 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 23 1 
 
 stalwart giant, this handsomest of a handsome race, 
 who carried all before him on the links, and who 
 could swim from the harbour-mouth to the Witch's 
 lake. All his life his heart was in St Andrews ; it 
 was the playground to which he constantly returned 
 from his somewhat dreary lodgings, from the drudgery 
 of commerce, from the monotony of literature. Be- 
 tween the two periods when I remember him best, 
 he could not truly be said to have done much. 
 People in general, the outside public, would say that 
 he was a failure ; those who knew him best recognised 
 dimly that one who had retained, in spite of all super- 
 ficial reverses, the courage, the unblemished rectitude, 
 the fine courtesy, the modest reticence of the boy — 
 "the white flower of a blameless life" — could not in 
 the highest sense be said to have been born in vain. 
 He had lived a true life ; and such a life, under what- 
 ever forlorn conditions or unpropitious eclipse, cannot 
 be quite valueless. 
 
 " Men must endure 
 Their going hence, even as their coming hither; 
 Ripeness is all" 
 
 Pat had little to show, indeed, in the way either of 
 worldly prosperity or of fairly accomplished work. 
 He had failed in smoky commercial St Mungo ; it 
 was a pity, indeed, that he had adventured on a 
 career for which he had no aptitude. But he made 
 one or two fast friends in the West, — notably Alex- 
 ander Smith, the most amiable and modest of poets ; 
 
232 MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 
 
 and the two came east about the same time, and a 
 queer, happy, healthy, humorous, grotesque intimacy 
 sprang up between them, which continued, growing 
 always warmer and warmer, till Smith's untimely 
 death. Then what he had done in literature was for 
 the most part carefully hidden away. He did not 
 write very much at any time, and much of what he 
 did write could not now be recovered. But his serious 
 encounter with Stuart Mill (there is nothing in English 
 controversial literature quite equal to Pat's rapier-like 
 lunge, except, perhaps, Goldwin Smith's in the famous 
 assault on Mansel), and his exquisite mimicry of the 
 philosopher of Cheyne Row, are too inimitable to be 
 quite forgotten. 
 
 Around the cloudy Olympus where for ten years Pat, 
 the cloud-compeller, smoked his grimy churchwarden 
 and wielded his editorial sceptre, many notable men 
 gathered at intervals. Among them was the Principal 
 to whom I have referred, — the Principal of a Vener- 
 able Academy, who often came at the end of a week 
 with one or other of the Professors or Men of Letters 
 of that secluded seat of learning to spend the Sunday 
 with Pat. Two or three of the visitors were known 
 by name to a bigger world ; they made a pleasant 
 addition to the select society of our innocent Bohemia ; 
 and the Principal at least, divested of hood and gown, 
 enjoyed himself with boyish abandon. 
 
 Sometimes but not always, for, alas ! it was some- 
 times otherwise. This ruddy Apollo, who belonged, 
 as the blue eyes, the fair skin, the yellow locks unmis- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 233 
 
 takably declared, to the wholesome north-country folk 
 who have a dash of Norse blood in their veins, as 
 broad-shouldered as he was large-hearted, with the 
 great, hearty, uproarious, almost convulsive laugh that 
 shook him to the centre, and simplified so many pro- 
 blems, ecclesiastical and other, — the stalwart golfer, 
 the expert swimmer, the devout Christian, the tolerant 
 and statesmanlike churchman, the gracious and courtly 
 man of the world, — was on one side the healthiest 
 of human souls. Yet this fine, bright, frank, candid 
 intelligence was occasionally overshadowed and dark- 
 ened by a mysterious cloud which made him unutter- 
 ably miserable, even though he was sustained through 
 its deepest gloom by a high spiritual outlook, by a real 
 faith in the Divine goodness, and by the unwearied 
 ministrations of one of the sweetest of women. The 
 pitiful tremor in the voice, the pitiful entreaty, like 
 that of a dumb animal, in the eyes, were inexpressibly 
 sad, yet somehow not uncharacteristic of a man in 
 whom the physical and the spiritual had been un- 
 equally yoked. 
 
 Even when at his moodiest, however, it did him 
 good to be with Pat ; and the Sunday stroll down the 
 glen was better than doctor's drugs. An occasional 
 Professor — Baynes for choice — would come across with 
 the Principal, and then, in the upper chamber over 
 the writer's office, there were Noctes Ambrosianae and 
 Suppers of the Gods ! The fame of the punch, the 
 savour of the finnan-haddies, spread far and wide ; 
 and though of that good company but one remains, 
 
234 MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 
 
 the traditions of the logical sword-play, and the meta- 
 physical high -jinks that grew more and more abstruse 
 as the night waned, still linger among us. 
 
 * * 
 
 Pat's letters, as a rule, were extremely idiomatic and 
 quite unconventional ; one I remember descriptive of 
 a Border Meeting of Dandy Dinmonts at a rustic 
 hostelry on Tweedside where Pat had been fishing — 
 Dandies who would either fight with you or drink with 
 you ; but the bundle has been mislaid. Here, however, 
 is a scrap sufficiently characteristic : — " Something 
 which mayhap may interest you apropos of the main 
 incident in Nancy's Tryste — on the whole, I think, my 
 favourite of the Romance Studies or what you will. 
 An incident nearly identical happened this last spring 
 at Galashiels. A shepherd from the neighbourhood 
 of Stow had gone over to Galashiels ; got drunk as 
 is the manner of such ; and blundering towards mid- 
 night into the Gala, been treated to rather more water 
 than he needed for the purposes of grog. His dog 
 went in to save him ; and failing to do so presently 
 rushed up to a policeman dripping wet, and in such 
 a state of doggish agitation as you can imagine (the 
 thing has often happened). The policeman was im- 
 pressed to the effect that something was wrong ; one 
 or two people gathered ; and following the brute they 
 very soon came upon the poor devil drowned past 
 revival. Meantime his wife, seven or eight miles off, 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 235 
 
 had been sitting up waiting for her husband ; not in 
 any anxiety about him ; thinking only — as is like — 
 ' Jamie, puir man's got foil again ' ; when suddenly 
 she heard his voice outside crying as if in some dis- 
 tress, — 'Jeanie! Jeanie ! Jeanie ! ' Not doubting to 
 find him she opened the door, and found only night 
 and darkness. Naturally much troubled, at streak of 
 dawn she was afoot and over to Galashiels, where she 
 found Jamie waiting for her as before said. The dog 
 marked the time on the one side, she on the other ; 
 and so far as could be made out they almost exactly 
 tallied. Telling this to a friend the other day who 
 has a turn for such things, I was assured by him that 
 the story is current and believed all about Stow, where 
 in autumn he had been fishing for a week or two. In 
 order to your belief and mine, it might have been 
 desirable that some competent person should have 
 been on the spot to make very strict inquisition ; but 
 taking the story as it stands, I certainly cannot say 
 I dis-believe it. Do you ? " 
 
 * *- 
 * 
 
 Another of the Infanti Perduti who from the begin- 
 ning was bound to fail — failure was written upon garb 
 and gait — was Henry Westerley. I did not know him 
 till he was well on in life ; but up to the time we met 
 he had been failing with cheerful pertinacity. He came 
 to edit our Nonconformist Chronicle ; and from the 
 day he entered the editor's sanctum the health of the 
 
236 MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 
 
 Chronicle declined. Though well on in life, as I have 
 said, he always looked like a boy, and somehow we 
 treated him as such ; we could not help it ; he was 
 so frank, so impulsive, so delightfully foolish and irre- 
 sponsible. His Nonconformity was kept for the office ; 
 when with the Doctor, or the Principal, or myself he 
 was a staunch Tory and Churchman. They gave him 
 a fair salary I believe ; but he was perennially im- 
 pecunious. He delighted, like Fakredeen, in his debts ; 
 his creditors interested him keenly ; he would entertain 
 us with narratives of monetary adventures and moon- 
 light Sittings without the least reserve. He had a 
 marvellous faculty of borrowing, — his success in that 
 far from profitable calling being phenomenal ; but 
 whoever lent him a five-pound note might better have 
 cast it into the sea. It melted like snow in summer ; 
 and on his oath he could not have told how or where 
 it had gone. But in spite of squint and stutter, which 
 were trying to his friends if not to himself, he was 
 blest with the sunniest temper. Persistent ill - luck 
 could not sour it ; he took to the Court of Bankruptcy 
 as ducks take to the water ; and when he came out of 
 the Sanctuary for his Sunday dinner with us, he was 
 the gayest and least embarrassed of the company. 
 Though utterly irresponsible — irresponsible as faun or 
 satyr — he was yet — strange conjunction ! — the soul of 
 honour. He did not understand what meanness or 
 double-dealing meant. To save his life he could not 
 have lied. It was not in his nature. It never occurred 
 to him. He would have been the last indeed to claim 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 237 
 
 any merit for his transparent and guileless simplicity ; 
 and indeed I claim no merit for it ; seeing that it had 
 no moral basis, nor any connection, however remote 
 or accidental, with ethics. 
 
 Hope Leslie was another of the perennially im- 
 pecunious. When I first knew him (about 1850 it would 
 be) he was living in a corner house in Westmorland 
 Street — a delicate, emaciated, olive-skinned, secluded 
 student — very tall and very thin — with eyes and hair 
 black as jet — who just managed to crawl between his 
 bedroom and his study. He had not been out of the 
 house for months. No one expected him to recover, — 
 he looked at times the image of Death. All this time, 
 however, he was working away at Acrostics, — a won- 
 derfully bright, clever, and yet intrinsically fantastic 
 and unsubstantial book, which was published by a 
 London firm about 1852. There was a good deal 
 of the hothouse about both the book and its author, — 
 it had the tone of the sick-room and of the shy student 
 who had mixed little with men. And at that time 
 Hope was as innocent as a baby. He and his mother 
 and sister — all more or less invalids — had always lived 
 together very quietly — plain living and high thinking — 
 the thinking, a curious cross between Aristotle and 
 Sir William Hamilton, with a dash of the speculative 
 frivolities which occupied the Schoolmen thrown in 
 for condiment. Judge then of our surprise when his 
 
238 MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 
 
 health suddenly mended ; when he ceased to be gaunt 
 and cadaverous ; when he became the sporting oracle 
 of the Tomahawk, and fell in love with a not too coy 
 or reluctant Hebe, who was twice his age and long 
 past her prime. He wrote in the Tomahawk the most 
 subtle delicate refined fastidious criticism of her more 
 than robust art ; went to see her every night ; and 
 finally in mere foolishness and virginal ignorance 
 married her. Then he settled in London, where 
 suddenly, as the literary critic of the Morning Star 
 (at a time when a notice in its columns was worth 
 a moderate fortune), he became a celebrity. The 
 extravagance of that household knew no bounds. His 
 little dinners, his little suppers (in certain social circles, 
 artistic and theatrical), were all the vogue. He soon 
 tired of his wife ; his eyes were opened, as was perhaps 
 inevitable ; and he turned away to less lawful diver- 
 sions. Once or twice, on urgent entreaty, his old 
 friends gave him a helping hand — the money was 
 always to be repaid within the year ! — at his death 
 it was still outstanding. He was lavish in promises 
 to pay — a true Oriental magnificence of Castles in the 
 Air — when he was editing the Evening Star (just before 
 it set) he offered Dizzy (so it was said) ten thousand 
 pounds for a serial romance, and another eminent story- 
 teller was very sore about a princely bargain the Editor 
 had made with him, which of course never came off; 
 for Hope by this time was borrowing quite shamelessly 
 right and left, and the Evening Star was in articulo 
 mortis. He had determined to make a palace of his 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 239 
 
 house in Randolph Square, and the contractor he 
 employed brought it down about his ears. This was 
 the beginning of the end — an enormous loss — a blow 
 from which he never recovered. Then he left the Star 
 and started the Bugle (or the Big Drum), for which 
 an ecclesiastical publisher found the money. The 
 Bugle might have succeeded ; but there was something 
 in the third number which frightened the publisher out 
 of his wits, and he threw it up in a theological panic. 
 Then there were constant household bickerings about 
 a Lady Somebody, then Divorce, then deep and ever 
 deeper waters, and death at forty-five. It was all very 
 tragical ; but in spite of his fine-spun theories about 
 the true, the beautiful, and the good, there was a lack 
 in Hope of downright honest manliness ; a leaven of 
 charlatanism which was bound, sooner or later, to 
 spread and infect the whole lump. We may or we 
 may not extract a moral from his paradoxical career ; 
 that depends upon the individual taste ; but this at 
 least may be said with confidence, that few men of 
 such parts, of such undoubted attainments, have gone 
 to the bad with more startling rapidity. 
 
 I have been working all night at an ethical conun- 
 drum — the Infant i Pcrduti ! — which somehow will not 
 come right ; if I put it away now I may find the answer 
 to-morrow — or rather to-day. For the candle which 
 has been flickering for some time has at length gone out 
 
240 MAINLY ABOUT THOSE WHO FAILED. 
 
 with a final splutter, and I am writing by the uncertain 
 light of the dawn, in which one twinkling star looks 
 faint and pallid — like a belated ghost. Everything is 
 quiet and still ; the heavy dew lies thickly upon the 
 yellow bent ; and the sea — so motionless that it mir- 
 rors the phantom sickle of the waning moon — is dotted 
 here and there with the dark forms of fishing-boats wait- 
 ing lazily with outspread sails for the morning breeze. 
 The world is asleep — all save myself and an adventurous 
 rabbit who is nibbling the grass upon the lawn. Wasp, 
 who is curled up at the foot of the bed, growls in his 
 sleep — he sees a foumart in his dream no doubt — opens 
 a drowsy eye for a moment, and then expresses his 
 disapprobation of my untimely proceedings by turning 
 his back upon me. You are right, sir, — to bed, to 
 bed. 
 
 And so into dreamland, — with the haunting music of 
 the deep for lullaby or — dirge. It is a song without 
 words. Only Heine could have written them ; and 
 Heine is dead. 
 
241 
 
 XL 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 "TT^ROUDE, I see, disrespectfully alludes to a wild 
 -*■ parliamentary hurricane as " a storm in a slop- 
 basin " ; and many of us are beginning to think that in 
 this, as in other respects, Froude was not so far wrong. 
 So that I do not anticipate that our modest Table- 
 Talk will be sensibly agitated by the winds of doctrine 
 that stir the political duck-pond at St Stephen's. But 
 this bright and clever little book on Pitt — Lord Rose- 
 bery's eulogy of the great Tory Minister — is one in- 
 dication of a remarkable change in popular feeling 
 which is really interesting, and ought not to be over- 
 looked. 
 
 The great electoral contest at Liverpool, which took 
 place soon after Pitt's death between Mr Canning and 
 Mr Brougham, is still remembered by those who write 
 and by those who read political biographies. " To one 
 man while he lived," Canning declared, " I was devoted 
 with all my heart and all my soul. Since the death of 
 Mr Pitt I acknowledge no leader ; my political allegi- 
 
242 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 ance lies buried in his grave." To which Brougham 
 replied : " Gentlemen, I stand up in this contest against 
 the friends and followers of Mr Pitt, or, as they partially 
 designate him, the immortal statesman now no more. 
 Immortal in the miseries of his devoted country ! Im- 
 mortal in the wounds of her bleeding liberties ! Immor- 
 tal in the cruel wars which sprang from his cold miscal- 
 culating ambition ! Immortal in the intolerable taxes, 
 the countless loads of debt, which these wars have flung 
 upon us — which the youngest man among us will not 
 live to see the end of! Immortal in the triumphs of 
 our enemies and the ruin of our allies — the costly pur- 
 chase of so much blood and treasure ! Immortal in the 
 afflictions of England, and the humiliation of her 
 friends, through the whole results of his twenty years' 
 reign, from the first rays of favour with which a de- 
 lighted Court gilded his early apostacy, to the deadly 
 glare which is at this moment cast upon his name by 
 the burning metropolis of our last ally ! But may no 
 such immortality ever fall to my lot ; let me rather live 
 innocent and inglorious ; and when at last I cease to 
 serve you and to feel for your wrongs, may I have a 
 humble monument in some nameless stone, to tell that 
 beneath it there rests from his labours in your service 
 an enemy of the immortal statesman — a friend of peace and 
 of the people.'" 
 
 Mr Stapleton informs us that when riding one day 
 with Mr Canning near Brighton, they heard that 
 Brougham was dangerously ill. " Poor fellow ! " 
 said Canning, " I am sorry to hear it ; " and then 
 
MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 243 
 
 added, — " If he should be taken from the House of 
 Commons, there will be no one left to pound and 
 mash.'" Canning's satiric touch, like Disraeli's, was 
 much lighter, much more deft and dexterous than 
 Brougham's ; but the passage I have quoted is a fair 
 specimen of the elaborate invective — the pounding and 
 mashing — which was much esteemed in its day. 
 
 What may be called the Brougham -Jeffrey - John 
 Russell estimate of Pitt held the field for long. 
 Through the pages of the Edinburgh Review, a score 
 of brilliant essayists continued to give it a wide cir- 
 culation. The vehemence of their dislike indeed made 
 them at times not only grotesquely unscrupulous, but 
 insanely unpatriotic. While they damned Pitt, they 
 canonised Napoleon. Blessing the one, they banned 
 the other. Even the victorious progress of Wellington, 
 the triumphal march from Torres Vedras to the 
 Pyrenees, was either coldly condemned or bitterly de- 
 rided. About the year 1850, when Lord John Russell's 
 ' Memorials ' appeared, the Whig tradition of a desper- 
 ately wicked and incapable Minister was flourishing 
 vigorously. At the same time the Holland House 
 legend — the cult of a quite fabulous Fox, who was not 
 only the most charming of companions, but the most 
 sagacious of statesmen, and the most trusted of 
 leaders — met with very general acceptance. The dis- 
 sent of a few obstinate and obsolete Tories did not 
 count ; and Lord John Russell concluded his memorial 
 volumes with the portenous intimation, — " It will be 
 my business, if I should be able to continue this work, 
 
244 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 to point out the utter want of foresight by which the con- 
 duct of Mr Pitt was marked when he led the people of Eng- 
 land into a crusade against the people of 'France ." 
 
 Edinburgh was at that time one of the shrines of 
 the Whig faith; and it was "Shirley's" good fortune 
 as a lad (through James Syme, Andrew Coventry, and 
 other true believers who hailed from Fife and Kinross) 
 to see something of the priests who ministered at its 
 altars. It is pardonable sometimes to be generous as 
 well as just ; and even in a company of Tories I may 
 venture to say that, during the closing years of his life, 
 Jeffrey, at his pleasant villa of Craigcrook, with his 
 granddaughter at his knee, presented as charming a 
 picture of a serene but vigilant old age as one could 
 wish to see. Sydney Smith years before had said of 
 him when he went on the bench : " His robes, God 
 knows, will cost him little ; one buck-rabbit will clothe 
 him to the heels ; " and during the interval the wonder- 
 ful little man had grown even more transparently deli- 
 cate and fragile. His boyhood had been earnest and 
 passionate, his manhood energetic and distinguished ; 
 but there was a peculiar mellowness about his age. The 
 enthusiasm and the passion had not died out, nor the 
 keen and finely discriminating intellect been dimmed. 
 But now, besides and beyond the fastidious taste, the 
 playful irony, the dignified reserve, there was added 
 an admirable grace and simplicity, a peculiar sweet- 
 ness and gentleness, which it was difficult to asso- 
 ciate with one who had been an unsparing critic and 
 a formidable foe. " A man," Goethe said the year 
 
MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 245 
 
 before he died, " has only to become old to become 
 tolerant ; " and Jeffrey was a notable example of the 
 mellowing catholicity of advancing years. It was no 
 wonder that such a man should have retained his in- 
 fluence to the last. Outsiders who had found his col- 
 lected essays rather thin and jejune, might fail to under- 
 stand wherein the charm consisted ; but then, as Pitt 
 once said of his rival, " they had not been under the 
 wand of the magician." 
 
 It was about the year 1850 — the year of Jeffrey's 
 death — that some of us who were then preparing for 
 active life began to rebel against the prevailing super- 
 stition. The Whig tradition was still all-powerful in 
 the city where so many of its high-priests had been 
 bred, and from whence its sacred writings had issued ; 
 and John Wilson and his jovial companions of the 
 ' Noctes ' were regarded as outlaws and banditti by the 
 select and privileged caste to whom the true faith had 
 been revealed. Maga was then as ever true to her 
 colours ; but Maga appealed to a wider than a provin- 
 cial audience. Might not something be done, we 
 inquired tentatively, to mitigate the severity of the 
 sentence which a rather narrow, if austerely virtuous, 
 tribunal had pronounced against those who like our- 
 selves were outside the pale ? It was then that a highly 
 speculative friend, whose resources were as slender as 
 his projects were vast, audaciously declared that he 
 was prepared, if properly supported, to give the Dis- 
 senters, the rebels, the despised minority, a chance of 
 being heard. " We shall have a weekly paper from 
 
246 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 which the Whig, and the Whig only, shall be severely 
 excluded. The lion shall lie down with the lamb ; 
 ultra - Tories and ultra - Radicals shall work harmoni- 
 ously together ; and in fact, gentlemen, you are welcome 
 to ventilate any paradoxes, or heresies, or superstitions 
 you like, so long as you vigorously assail the common 
 enemy." 
 
 On the basis of this elastic confession of faith the 
 Edinburgh Guardian was established about the year 
 1852. It was published every Saturday, and it lived 
 for four or five years. There was certainly some 
 admirable writing in its columns — Dallas's critical 
 and artistic articles, and Baynes's weekly " Diary of 
 Juniper Agate" being really first-rate. To "Shirley" 
 the department entitled "Things in General" was in- 
 trusted, and in the audacity of one-and-twenty he 
 hit so hard all round that more than once the coach 
 threatened to upset. Edinburgh was then a strong- 
 hold of the Free Kirk as well as of the Whigs ; 
 and when, in addition to defending Disraeli from 
 the onslaughts of the Saturday, and Currer Bell 
 from the insults of the Quarterly, and Bribery and 
 Corruption (on the ground that if the franchise was 
 an inalienable natural right, a man was entitled to 
 do what he liked with his own) from the political 
 purists, we took to recommending the incomprehen- 
 sible heresies of Maurice and the muscular latitud- 
 inarianism of Kingsley, the paper and its editor began 
 to get into deep water. When even a pacific John 
 Brown — the dear and delightful friend of after-years 
 
MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 247 
 
 — was moved to warn us that it was positively sinful 
 to excuse or condone the political peccadilloes of a 
 "splendid scamp" like Dizzy, what mercy could we 
 expect from the successors of John Knox and Balfour 
 of Burley ? But I suspect that the direst offence we 
 committed against the code then of binding force in the 
 northern metropolis was a series of semi-historical, 
 semi - political articles designed to show that Fox 
 was from the beginning to the end of his career a 
 persistent failure, and that Pitt, on the other hand, 
 was the Pilot who weathered the Storm, and brought 
 the labouring vessel into port. 
 
 It was Disraeli himself who first pointed out that 
 the imposing figure of the Constitutional Whig — 
 a figure which had filled so large a place in the popu- 
 lar imagination — was stuffed with sawdust. Until 
 Coningsby appeared, the Whigs had used the parlia- 
 mentary history of England for the glorification of 
 their own political virtue. Hampden had died on 
 the field and Sidney on the scaffold to enable Mr 
 Macaulay 1 to write a series of brilliant essays in the 
 
 1 It is the fashion at present to belittle Lord Macaulay ; but I adhere 
 to the opinion I expressed long ago in Nitgce Criticce that at a time when 
 we were going to revolutionise our politics, our theology, and our morals, 
 it was an immense advantage to have at the head of our literature a man 
 who thought calmly, who spoke moderately, who wrote fastidiously, whose 
 enthusiam was never intemperate, whose judgment was never disturbed. 
 As a lad, I heard him deliver the Glasgow Rectorial Address in 1849, and 
 the impression of high and lucid intellectual force I then received was 
 never effaced. Again, in later life, I heard him deliver his last great 
 speech. It was when Edinburgh had repaired the wrong it had done him. 
 Already disease had begun its work. The burly figure was bent and at- 
 
248 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 Edinburgh. The Whigs ever since the glorious Rev- 
 olution of '88 had been the consistent and persistent 
 advocates of civil and religious liberty ; whereas Bol- 
 ingbroke and Chatham and Pitt had no claim, in respect 
 of the public services they had rendered, to the regard 
 of any enlightened patriot. Coningsby, which was 
 published in the Forties, pricked this " radiant 
 bubble." It then appeared that during the whole 
 or nearly the whole of last century England had 
 been governed by a Venetian oligarchy as unprin- 
 cipled as it was corrupt. The great Whig houses 
 had usurped the powers of the Crown and invaded 
 the liberties of the people. The monopoly of public 
 virtue on which they had prided themselves turned 
 out to be the merest sham. This novel version of 
 history was at first received with derision ; but it 
 made way — slowly but surely; and the claim of the 
 Whig to have been in evil times the one disinterested 
 guardian of civil and religious liberty has ceased to 
 be recognised — is in most quarters, indeed, flatly 
 denied. 
 
 The old superstition, however, died hard, and those 
 of us who had taken Mr Disraeli's view from the 
 
 tenuated ; but the eye was still full of light, and the silver voice, though 
 feeble, had lost none of its persuasive charm. He was visibly affected 
 when he rose ; and when he alluded to the men of Edinburgh who had 
 been taken away since he last stood among them, to the friendly faces and 
 voices that would greet him no more, the strain was almost painful. "And 
 Jeffrey too," he added, with a suppressed sob, as he finished the enumera- 
 tion. There he faltered and stopped short. The simple pause of feeling 
 was better than any rhetoric, — more touching and impressive than the most 
 laboured panegyric could have been. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 249 
 
 beginning found considerable difficulty in laying its 
 ghost. As late as 1864, indeed, I was moved to 
 write a reply to an article which appeared, I think, 
 in the Edinburgh Review of that summer. The Edin- 
 burgh held that the history of our legislation during 
 a hundred and fifty years proved, and proved con- 
 clusively, that the Whig Walpoles had always been 
 right, and that the Tory Pitts had always been wrong. 
 Any "liberal" measure passed by a Tory had, of 
 course, been stolen from a Whig. Mr Disraeli's 
 sarcasm against Sir Robert Peel was turned against 
 his own friends. They had found the Whigs bath- 
 ing and had run away with their clothes. This, 
 indeed, had been a favourite thesis with Macaulay, 
 who had ridiculed the opposite view on the occasion 
 of a controversy with Lord Mahon, afterwards Earl 
 Stanhope, — a sound if not a brilliant historian. As 
 the fallacy has still a certain currency, it may not be 
 amiss to restate as briefly as may be the substance 
 of the argument, more especially as two of the letters 
 which the discussion elicited — one from Mr Disraeli 
 and one from Lord Stanhope — were (and are) not 
 without interest. 
 
 The fallacy rests upon the assumption that politics 
 is one of the exact sciences. " I cannot but pause 
 to observe," Lord Mahon wrote, " how much the 
 course of a century has inverted the meaning of our 
 party nicknames — how much a modern Tory resembles 
 a Whig of Queen Anne's reign, and a Tory of Queen 
 Anne's reign a modern Whig." Mr Macaulay prompt- 
 
250 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 ly retorted. The modern Tories resembled the Whigs 
 of Queen Anne's reign, because the principles which 
 the Whigs recommended had been accepted by the 
 Tories. The Whig had remained consistent ; the 
 Tory had gone over to the enemy. The retort can- 
 not be regarded as conclusive. Is it fair to assume 
 that a party must be inconsistent because it adopts 
 a policy which ten or twenty or fifty years before it 
 had opposed ? During these fifty years the world 
 has changed. The conditions have altered. Truth, 
 in a political sense, is a relative term. Lord Bol- 
 ingbroke said quite truly to Sir William Windham, 
 " It is as much a mistake to depend upon that which 
 is true but impracticable at a certain time, as to 
 depend on that which is neither true nor practi- 
 cable at any time." Thus the party which votes 
 against an extension of the franchise during one cen- 
 tury, and which votes in favour of its extension during 
 the next, may be acting consistently as well as saga- 
 ciously. Everything depends upon the surroundings. It is 
 right to resist until it is time to give way. It would have 
 been folly for Somers or Walpole to have extended 
 the suffrage during the first half of the eighteenth 
 century. Had they done so, it is more than probable 
 that the Stuarts would have been restored. Until we 
 recognise that in the political world there is no ab- 
 solute right or wrong, and that the duty of a legislator 
 is to consider only whether it will be for the general 
 advantage of the community that secret voting (say) 
 or universal suffrage should be introduced under the 
 
MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 25 I 
 
 conditions that exist at the moment, we shall fail to 
 preserve the partition which separates, and ought to 
 separate, the province of politics from the province 
 of ethics. 
 
 Moreover, it was positively incorrect to affirm, as 
 Macaulay did, that during the early part of the eigh- 
 teenth century the Whigs represented an advanced 
 and the Tories a stationary policy. " The absolute 
 position of the parties has been altered ; the relative 
 position remains the same." But as matter of fact 
 the Tories of the first half of the century were the 
 advanced party. At least they advocated comprehen- 
 sive measures of reform which the other side refused 
 to adopt. And the anomaly, if it be an anomaly, is 
 easily explained. There is a great deal of human 
 nature in man. The Tories wanted power ; the 
 Whigs possessed it. The Whigs had attacked the 
 prerogative when it was directed against themselves ; 
 the Tories, when the Elector of Hanover was " brought 
 across in a storm," were willing to impose limitations 
 on the authority of a sovereign whom they detested. 
 So also with regard to the question of electoral reform. 
 As long as the Whigs corrupted the electoral bodies, 
 the Tories clamoured for change ; while the Whigs 
 did not become reformers until the electoral bodies, 
 under the second Pitt, had gone over by tens and 
 fifties to the Tories. 
 
 The comments of Mr Disraeli and Lord Stanhope 
 are, as I have said, interesting and characteristic : — 
 
252 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 " Grosvenor Gate, May 16, 1S64. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — I thank you for your article, which 
 I read this morning. I read your criticisms always 
 with interest, because they are discriminative, and are 
 founded on knowledge and thought. 
 
 " These qualities are rarer in the present day than 
 the world imagines. Everybody writes in a hurry, 
 and the past seems quite obliterated from public 
 memory. 
 
 " I need not remind you that Parliamentary Reform 
 was a burning question with the Tories for the quarter 
 of a century at least that followed the Revolution of 
 1688. Not only Sir William Windham and his friends 
 were in favour of annual Parliaments and universal 
 suffrage, but Sir John Hinde Cotton even advocated 
 the ballot. These were desperate remedies against 
 Whig supremacy. It appeared to me in 1832 that 
 the Reform Act was another 1688, and that influenced 
 my conduct when I entered public life. I don't say 
 this to vindicate my course, but to explain it. 
 
 "So also I looked then — as I look now — to a 
 reconciliation between the Tory party and the Roman 
 Catholic subjects of the Queen. This led, thirty years 
 ago and more, to the O'Connell affair; but I have 
 never relinquished my purpose, and have now, I hope, 
 nearly accomplished it. 
 
 "If the Tory party is not a national party, it is 
 nothing. 
 
 " Pardon this egotism, which I trust, however, is 
 
MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 253 
 
 not my wont ; and believe me, dear sir, with respect, 
 faithfully yours, B. Disraeli." 
 
 " Grosvenor Place, March 18, 1868. 
 
 "Sir, — I thank you for the address upon Lord 
 Bolingbroke which you have had the goodness to 
 send me, and which I have had much pleasure in 
 reading. It gives, I think, a very accurate sketch of 
 that ' all-accomplished ' man. 
 
 "Allow me also to assure you of the gratification 
 with which a year or two since I read the Campaigner 
 at Home. I was only sorry that you had omitted from 
 that interesting series of chapters the one which I had 
 read as an article in Frascr as to the transmutation 
 of the Whig and Tory parties — the controversy carried 
 on now thirty - five years ago between my lamented 
 friend Lord Macaulay and myself. Your discussion 
 of it was, I thought, very good, and it would have 
 been better still if you had followed it to its final 
 close. For if you will now refer to Lord Macaulay 's 
 second article on Lord Chatham, as published in the 
 Edinburgh Review, October 1841, and since collected in 
 his Essays, you will find from the opening passage — 
 enforced by a most ingenious illustration from Dante's 
 Malebolge — that Lord Macaulay's opinion of the point 
 at issue had come to be very nearly the same as mine. 
 
 " I ask pardon for having so long detained you ; and 
 I am, sir, your very faithful servant, Stanhope." 
 
 I have said enough to show that the political 
 
254 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 horizon has sensibly widened during the past thirty 
 or forty years. We live in a new world. The old 
 landmarks have been removed. Hampden has ceased 
 to die on the field, and Sidney on the scaffold. Fox 
 and Brougham and Jeffrey and Holland House and 
 the Edinburgh Review have fallen quite into the back- 
 ground ; while out of the mists of controversy, and 
 above the babble of the crowd, rise the great figures 
 of Pitt and Canning and Disraeli. And nothing can 
 bring the change more vividly home to us than to 
 compare the narrow and conventional prejudices of 
 Lord John Russell in his Fox with the manly and 
 vigorous independence of Lord Rosebery in his Pitt. 
 
 * 
 * 
 
 There has as yet been no complete biography of 
 Benjamin Disraeli, though Mr Froude's rapid summary 
 of his career was not ineffective as a sketch. I sup- 
 pose that when Lord Rowton (the indispensable 
 "Monty Corry" that was) has leisure to revise his 
 reminiscences those of us who survive will know all 
 about it. The letter which I have had occasion to 
 quote reminds me that in various old Note -Books 
 there are not a few passages in which my first and 
 fresh impressions of the most striking personality of 
 our time are recorded ; and as certain features of 
 which the public knew little then, and knows less now, 
 are faithfully reflected in these contemporary memor- 
 anda, they may not be without interest in the mean- 
 time. A few pages at least can hardly come amiss, — 
 
MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 255 
 
 though indeed the notion that Disraeli was a cynically 
 reticent and repellent "Sphinx" is already wearing 
 away. 
 
 * 
 
 "January 1863. — Old Parker writes me that Thalatta 
 has already done very well ; the edition is nearly sold 
 out, and a Frenchman wants to translate it. The 
 hero is a cross between Canning and Disraeli ; and 
 the words in the preface to the effect that had dedica- 
 tions been still in fashion I would have dedicated it to 
 the one English statesman of the day to whom the 
 conception of imperial duties to a world-wide Empire 
 appeals, brought me on the same morning two curi- 
 ously contrasted letters, — an amazing contrast indeed, 
 for the old leaven of the judicious Whig (which Dizzy 
 hates like poison) is still strong in ' Dr John.' This 
 is Dizzy's : — 
 
 '"Torquay, Dec. 28, 1S62. 
 
 "'Dear Sir, — I am honoured and I am gratified 
 by the dedication of Thalatta. I entirely sympathise 
 with the object of the work, which gracefully develops 
 a tone of thought and sentiment on which the con- 
 tinued greatness of this country depends. — Believe me, 
 your obedient servant, B. Disraeli.' 
 
 "This is Dr John's:— 
 
 "'23 Rutland Street, Edinburgh, Sunday. 
 
 " ' My dear Skelton and Shirley, — Thalatta has 
 come, and I am sure I will get much enjoyment from 
 it. Whaur gat ye that style ? and how I envy you 
 
256 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 your bits of verse, which seem to have had for their 
 final cause and end their being so embedded ! But 
 I don't envy you your worship of Benjamin. Do you 
 really and truly look upon that splendid scamp as 
 either a patriot or a politician. I think you must 
 lash yourself into all your Tory fury in some unknown 
 cavern, and thence issue into your besmoken room 
 in Alva Street. I admire Benjamin too, as a man 
 of genius and audacity and the author of Henrietta 
 Temple and of his own fortunes ; but as an English 
 Minister and the mouthpiece of the British will and 
 power it amazes me that with your bumps of causality 
 and comparison you can believe in him. Thanks 
 again for this beautiful book. I wish I were younger 
 and happier, and away in Rannoch in the Black Wood 
 with it at the end of June. — Yours ever truly, 
 
 '"J. Brown.'" 1 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 "July 1867. — Since he became Chancellor, Dizzy 
 has been cordially helpful ; his anxiety to do his old 
 allies a good turn has certainly been very marked. 
 People will not believe that behind that impassive 
 
 1 I had fancied that this poor little political trifle — which Sir William 
 Fraser, I see, attributes to an unknown author — had been long ago for- 
 gotten ; and it was a very pleasant surprise to learn the other day, from 
 one of the most capable members of the Unionist Administration, that 
 " many years ago my heart was charmed, and my ambition stirred and 
 quickened, by Thalatta." One cannot but prize such testimony ; it is a 
 "good joy," as Mrs Carlyle would have said, to know that the seed you 
 have sown has not fallen on stony ground. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 257 
 
 mask there can be any warmth of feeling ; but they 
 are much mistaken, as I have good reason to know, 
 and as indeed all the young fellows about him with- 
 out any exception or reservation are eager to acknow- 
 ledge." 1 
 
 " 1 November 1867. — We have had Dizzy here in 
 splendid form. I found a note from the Advocate 
 when I got home after the great speech, — ' Come 
 and meet Dizzy to-morrow.' So I went. Old Lady 
 Ruthven was there — a miraculous old woman. She 
 and Mrs Disraeli, sitting over the fire with their feet 
 on the fender, made between them the funniest pair, 
 — the witches in Macbeth, or what you will. And the 
 potent Wizard himself! — with his olive complexion, 
 and coal-black eyes, and the mighty dome of his fore- 
 head (no Christian temple, be sure) — is unlike any 
 living creature one ever met. I had never seen him 
 in the daylight before, and the daylight accentuates 
 his strangeness. The face is more like a mask than 
 ever, and the division between him and mere mortals 
 more marked. I would as soon have thought of sit- 
 ting down at table with Hamlet or Lear or the Wan- 
 
 1 Here is a later extract which may go in as a footnote. The date is 
 "March 10, 186S." "Dizzy has been indefatigable, and yesterday the 
 conclusive letter came from the House of Commons. It was Lord Advo- 
 cate Gordon who wrote : ' This evening Hardy told me that he was ready 
 to approve of your appointment. We spoke of it to Dizzy, who was next 
 us on the bench, and he said he was very glad to hear of it. You had 
 better however say nothing about it till you get the official intimation.' " 
 
 R 
 
258 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 dering Jew. He was more than cordial, — specially ap- 
 preciative of the Scotch allies — rari nantes in gurgite 
 vasto — who had stood by him through thick and thin. 
 ' I fancied indeed till last night that north of the Border 
 I was not loved ; but last night made amends for much. 
 We were so delighted with our reception — Mrs Disraeli 
 and I — that after we got back we actually danced 
 a jig (or was it a hornpipe?) in our bedroom.' 
 
 " They say, and say truly enough, What an actor the 
 man is ! — and yet the ultimate impression is of ab- 
 solute sincerity and unreserve. Grant Duff will have 
 it that he is an alien. What's England to him or 
 he to England ? There is just where they are wrong. 
 Whig or Radical or Tory don't matter much perhaps ; 
 but this mightier Venice — this Imperial Republic on 
 which the sun never sets — that vision fascinates him, 
 or I am much mistaken. England is the Israel of 
 his imagination, and he will be the Imperial Minister 
 before he dies — if he gets the chance." 
 
 " 10th June 1868. — It is certainly a very remarkable 
 alliance. That her heart, however, is as kind as her 
 taste is queer, everybody admits ; and she has splendid 
 pluck and illimitable faith in Dizzy. To this curious 
 old lady — ' the severest of critics, but a perfect wife ' 
 — the great man is apparently devoted ; but after 
 seeing her a little one cannot but wonder a little 
 what his feeling for her really may be. Is it true 
 
MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 259 
 
 chivalry ? or gratitude ? or what ? I am told that 
 he gallantly refers and defers to her critical judgment 
 whenever opportunity offers. ' Mrs Disraeli is reading 
 your Campaigner at Home, and gave me last evening 
 a most charming description of it.' Such references, 
 I believe, are frequent in his correspondence ; and 
 when visiting at the big houses, where the big ladies 
 fight a little shy of her, he won't stand any nonsense. 
 ' Love me, love my Mary-Anne.' People will laugh 
 no doubt when he is not looking ; but to my mind 
 there is something distinctly fine in this jealous 
 and watchful regard." 
 
 "April 1881. — There is a common impression that 
 Dizzy was not particularly anxious to acknowledge 
 literary service, or to maintain friendly relations with 
 his brethren of the pen. My own experience (and I 
 believe the experience of others) does not confirm 
 this impression, — on the contrary, tends to refute 
 it. The cordial little notes continued to be deftly 
 worded, — even when the ' B. Disraeli' of the earlier 
 had later on been exchanged for ' Beaconsfield.' Only 
 a month or two before the rout of last year, a politi- 
 cal jeu d'esprit appeared in Maga which pleased him 
 mightily. He made a guess at the writer, and next 
 morning a line of flattering appreciation arrived. ' It 
 is capital, and worthy of the good old days of the 
 Rolliad and the Anti-Jacobin.' This was the last letter : 
 
260 MAINLY ABOUT DISRAELI. 
 
 I did not see or hear from him again. I was told 
 that — after the blow fell — he aged rapidly : and though 
 he bore himself in public with characteristic calmness 
 and intrepidity he must have felt, I fear, that it was 
 hard to be beaten at the end. We had all hoped — 
 not his friends only — that he would have lived to 
 come back to Downing Street. But it has been 
 otherwise ordered ; and (though he would not be 
 laid in the Abbey) I keep repeating to myself Pope's 
 splendid compliment to Mansfield : — 
 
 ' Conspicuous scene ! another yet is nigh, 
 More silent far, where Kings and Poets lie ; 
 Where Murray long enough his country's pride 
 Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde.' 
 
 The last line is inimitable ; ' shall be no more than ' — 
 the Immortals ; no finer eulogy was ever penned.'' 
 
26 1 
 
 XII. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 
 
 T 
 
 HERE can be no doubt that what is called the 
 "grotesque" has obtained a recognised and 
 definitive position in art and literature. I fancy that 
 it was originally the form in which the grim humour of 
 the medieval architect found expression. I do not know 
 that it had any place in classical art or literature. I 
 cannot at the moment recall any Greek or Roman 
 work where we meet with it (except perhaps the Faun 
 of Praxiteles) ; and indeed one feels that the men who 
 built the Parthenon would have regarded it with a 
 dislike from which contempt was not absent. Now 
 that it is accepted as a legitimate factor in letters as in 
 art, it is very necessary to discriminate between the 
 true and the false or bastard grotesque. Which is the 
 coin from the Royal Mint, and which the counterfeit ? 
 The supremacy of a master of the craft like Heine and 
 Charles Lamb is willingly admitted ; but the claims of 
 the mob of modern " humourists " to enter the Calendar 
 will, no doubt, now or hereafter, be strenuously resisted 
 
262 MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 
 
 by the advocatus diaboli. And justly ? Of how many 
 of them indeed can it be said with truth that their use 
 of the grotesque is not ignoble ? We have exchanged 
 the mellow irony of Tancred for the boisterous horse- 
 play of The Innocents Abroad, and the ballads of Bon 
 Gaultier have been eclipsed by the Bab. 
 
 It may be asserted with confidence that, in the high- 
 est walk of the imagination, the personality of the 
 worker is never obtruded. We do not detect Shake- 
 speare in The Midsummer Night's Dream, nor Scott in 
 The Heart of Mid-Lothian ; for the medium in which they 
 work is colourless. In other words, they have no 
 mannerism. Mannerism infers limitation — the limita- 
 tions of caprice or eccentricity — and is therefore easily 
 recognised ; but the Masters are inscrutable. 
 
 " Others abide our question ; T/iou art free." 
 
 It is true of course, at the same time, that there is a 
 certain class of writers of whom it may be said that their 
 mannerism is their main attraction. But few, if any, of 
 these writers are in the first rank. It is not their in- 
 trinsic merit that keeps the Religio Medici and the Urn- 
 Burial alive ; it is because they were written by Sir 
 Thomas Browne. The perennial charm of his quaint 
 and engaging personality is impressed upon every line. 
 Hence their vitality. But a mannerism is not neces- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 263 
 
 sarily attractive ; sometimes it repels ; indeed, as often as 
 not it is a positive drawback. If The Ring and the Book 
 survive, it will be in spite of its mannerism. And the 
 same may be said of more than one of our prose writers 
 — especially of those, as it happens, in whom the im- 
 agination is most active. Meredith, Blackmore, Hardy 
 — each has his mannerism. In some cases it is more 
 pronounced than in others, affecting the substance as 
 well as the style. Where in Wessex will we meet with 
 those curious peasants of whom Mr Hardy dreams, and 
 whose dialect at least he so faithfully reproduces ? They 
 are not inventions, but they belong to " worlds not 
 realised " ; we see them through the stained glass of 
 a whimsical imagination. And it is to be observed that 
 in the case of each of the writers the mannerism has 
 grown. What was at first little more, it may be, than 
 a casual inadvertence, has become, as the years passed, 
 a confirmed and inveterate habit. George Meredith's 
 earlier works {Evan Harrington for choice) are to my 
 mind examples of the true grotesque in some of its 
 finest moods ; but of late years the eccentricity has 
 ceased to be artistic, or even intelligible. Blackmore's 
 Lorn a Dome, and Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes, are 
 absolutely faultless when compared with some of their 
 successors. Of these, as of The Ring and the Book, it is 
 true that if they live it will be in spite of their mannerism. 
 The mannerism itself is a dead weight ; the vitalising 
 element must be sought elsewhere. 
 
 * * 
 
264 MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 
 
 I sometimes fancy that in these waning years of the 
 Victorian era we have overdone, or are overdoing, the 
 freakish and the whimsical ; that a reaction is at hand ; 
 and that the simple transcript of life which we get 
 from a born story-teller like Mrs Oliphant will by- 
 and-by recover its high place in our regard. 
 
 Each of us has his pet ambition and his pet hero — 
 his Napoleon, his Goethe, his William the Silent, his 
 Cromwell, his Shakespeare. As we grow older our 
 tastes become simpler, and I sometimes fancy now that 
 the fame of Izaak Walton is that which I would most 
 covet. What a safe immortality his innocent prattle 
 enjoys ! Such fame as his is altogether pure and 
 lovely. One cannot perhaps entirely understand its 
 persistent vitality, — this fragile Nautilus on the stormy 
 boundless Atlantic ; but the conviction that it would 
 be a thousand pities if so much mildness, and sweetness, 
 and ineffable content with trifles were to be ship- 
 wrecked on the shore of oblivion, and lost to living 
 men, may possibly explain it more or less. Grata quics. 
 The turbid restless world is soothed and mollified by 
 this simple picture of goodness which never changes. 
 It is like those rustic pictures on the Urn which Keats 
 must have seen somewhere, — what would that Urn 
 bring at Christie's to-day, I wonder, if it could be found 
 in Borghese Palace or elsewhere ? 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 265 
 
 " Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 
 Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; 
 Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 
 Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve ; 
 She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
 For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair?" 
 
 But if Izaak Walton's is something unique and out of 
 reach, the fame of a writer like Mrs Oliphant, who has 
 done much in her long day's work to make our common 
 life brighter and sweeter, is surely very enviable. Just 
 think of the millions she has made happy — if for an 
 hour only ! I declare to you in all honesty, that the 
 reputation of the great Captains who have marched 
 with conquering banners across a continent seems to 
 me poor and shabby in comparison. Soldiers, like Poor 
 Laws and Prisons and the Hangman, are necessary 
 evils : but this is the finest bloom and blossom of life, 
 which suffices in itself and needs no justification. 
 What a debt we owe her ! How much pure pleasure 
 she has given us ! When we talk of the great benefac- 
 tors of our race, let not the poor story-teller be forgotten. 
 And during these many years of eager activity in our 
 service, how loyal and constant she has been to truth 
 and beauty and goodness. I do not suppose that Mrs 
 Oliphant is one of the writers who consciously entertain 
 or profess, what is called in the jargon of the day, 
 " high views of the literary calling;" but it may certain- 
 ly be said of her that she has never written a page which 
 she would wish unwritten, and which is not perfectly 
 sweet and clean and wholesome. The nastiness of some 
 
266 MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 
 
 of our female novelists is simply amazing ; it sins 
 against art as much as against good morals and good 
 manners ; it leaves a bad taste in the mouth for weeks 
 afterwards ; yet the most prolific and the most brilliant 
 of the Sisterhood, who has had the widest experience 
 and shows the clearest insight, never once fails to pre- 
 serve her womanly reticence, never hurts the most 
 shrinking modesty, never violates the finest code of 
 honour. The value of such an example is incalculable, 
 — it is to the England of letters what Queen Victoria 
 (might I not add Lord Beaconsfield ?) has been to that 
 other England which, in spite of craven counsels and 
 infatuation in high places, is still strong and of a good 
 courage. 
 
 Mrs Oliphant is of course specifically a story-teller, 
 — as Walter Scott and the Homer who wrote the 
 Odyssey were story-tellers. There is an air of almost 
 garrulous ease about her best work which is highly 
 characteristic. She is not a "painful" preacher; she 
 does not care overmuch for that curious felicity in the 
 construction of sentences to which the Thackerays and 
 the Matthew Arnolds attain ; she does not polish her 
 periods till they shine like old silver. We are told 
 nowadays that Scott was no poet, and that his prose 
 style was abominably ungrammatical. Mrs Oliphant 
 is never so slovenly as Scott can be when he likes ; 
 but we learn when we read her books, as we do when 
 we read his, that there is something better than style. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 267 
 
 The man who is sensitively and finically fastidious 
 about the arrangement of words is generally good for 
 little else. He grows weary before he gets to real 
 business. There are whole pages of The Antiquary and 
 Qucntin Durward where not a single erasure or correc- 
 tion appears on the manuscript. Would The Antiquary 
 and Qucntin Durward have been what they are if the 
 writer had been harder to please ? I doubt it ; and 
 even the style would have lost something. It would 
 have lost not merely its easy unstudied charm, but 
 something more — something that recalls the sough of 
 the wind, the murmur of the sea, the plash of the waves. 
 The Lord of the Isles is said by one eminent critic to be 
 no better than a big blunder ; but the breeze blows all 
 about it ; it sparkles as the waves sparkle ; and through 
 its spontaneous unsystematic natural music there 
 breathes the true spirit of the stormy Hebrides. Mrs 
 Oliphant's style at its best has something of the same 
 outdoor charm. It belongs to the conservatory and 
 the hothouse as little as Sir Walter's. It does not 
 surprise us therefore that in particular her description 
 of natural scenery should be brightly picturesque. She 
 does not know much of our brilliant West, with its 
 orange and purple sunsets across the wide Atlantic ; 
 but the bleak charm of the east of Scotland, of breezy 
 headlands and level links, is dwelt upon and emphasised 
 with the true artist feeling. An edition de luxe of Katie 
 Stewart with cuts by George Reid would be a book to 
 prize. Her English landscape too is admirable, — the 
 gracious wealth and richness of the midland summer — 
 
268 MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 
 
 " The moan of doves in immemorial elms 
 And murmur of innumerable bees " — 
 
 has seldom been rendered with more genuine joy and 
 sympathy. 
 
 All this of course belongs more or less to the outside ; 
 but in the essential elements of her craft, Mrs Oliphant 
 has few rivals. When we remember that, for at least 
 thirty years, not a summer has passed without its 
 romance in three volumes, its thrilling ghost-story, its 
 seaside ramble, we get some measure of the amazing 
 fertility of her invention. And take them all in all, 
 how good they are ! There may be no Uncle Toby or 
 Jonathan Oldbuck among the characters ; but what 
 variety, what delicate discrimination, what a keen sense 
 of the subtler lights and shades of human nature ! She 
 treats the male sex, it must be admitted, with habitual 
 tolerant good-humoured contempt, — these'big unwieldy 
 awkward creatures, who are so much in the way, who 
 don't know what to do with themselves of a wet morn- 
 ing, but stand about with their hands in their pockets 
 before the fire and yawn in your face, are apt to pro- 
 voke a soft breezy laughter, that after all has no malice 
 in it, — but the girls are invariably attractive. The 
 estimable Miss Marjoribanks (why not spell it March- 
 banks at once ?) who is so resolved to do her duty to 
 her dear papa, is in many ways, to be sure, little better 
 than a man, and is therefore regarded at first with a 
 certain implicit suspicion ; but Mrs Oliphant cannot 
 harden her heart for long against a woman, and even 
 Miss Marjoribanks is ultimately allowed to escape. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 269 
 
 They are none of them by any means faultless ; they 
 practise the engaging ruses, and are not superior to the 
 charming foibles of their sex ; but yet with infinite 
 diversity of superficial trait, how tender and gracious 
 and womanly they are. Mrs Oliphant's ideal of 
 English girlhood, kept constantly before us for so long, 
 has done a world of good to our girls, who begin to see 
 that to be loud and fast and risque is essentially bad 
 style. And the talk — how unaffected and natural it is 
 — no one saying what he ought not to say, but just the 
 right thing — never strained or rhetorical, though often 
 nervous and sparkling, and rising at a tragic crisis to 
 an almost monumental simplicity. There are whole 
 passages of dialogue in the more intense and dramatic 
 situations which for close sustained excellence of mere 
 writing could hardly be surpassed. 
 
 Love must always be, as it has always been (from 
 Helen of Troy to Hetty Sorrel), the main theme of the 
 story-teller. 
 
 " Of all the follies that I know, 
 The sweetest folly in the world is love," 
 
 says an old singer ; and though Mrs Oliphant some- 
 times treats the complaint more seriously, I fancy she 
 is half inclined to agree with him. She has hardly 
 ventured at least, except once and again, to touch 
 its deeper chords. On the other hand it must be 
 
2/0 MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 
 
 admitted that Love with her, even at its slightest, is 
 always a fine and noble pastime. It is never material- 
 ised into mere animal instinct, — never made cynical 
 sport of, as even a Thackeray could make cynical sport 
 of it. It may be fooling ; but it is tender and gracious 
 fooling — such as befits pure maidens and wholesome 
 lads. For none of her works appeal to the moody 
 satirist or the cynic whose text is Vanitas ! or only to 
 the very gentlest of the craft ; they are addressed to a 
 simpler audience — virginibus puerisquc ! 
 
 While I cheerfully recognise that the imaginative 
 force of Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot is in cer- 
 tain respects inimitable, I am often inclined to main- 
 tain that Airs Oliphant is the most remarkable woman 
 of her time. Charlotte Bronte wrote three novels before 
 she died ; a long interval separated Silas Marner from 
 Middlcmarch, and Middlemarch from Daniel Deronda. 
 Each of these great romance writers concentrated all 
 her faculties for months (I might say for years) upon 
 a single work. Mrs Oliphant has never had leisure 
 for this absorbing devotion, this almost fierce con- 
 centration. Many a year she has written three or 
 four novels at least, to say nothing of Essay, History, 
 and Criticism — the mere trifles of an unfrequent 
 holiday. Yet Tozer is not far below Mrs Poyser, and 
 pretty Rosa Elsworthy is just as naively natural and 
 foolish as Hetty Sorrel. Had Mrs Oliphant con- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 27 1 
 
 centrated her powers, what might she not have done ? 
 We might have had another Charlotte Bronte or 
 another George Eliot, with something added which 
 neither of them quite attained, — the soft gracious and 
 winning charm of mature and happy womanhood. 
 And this leads me to say that the pitiless and search- 
 ing anatomy of Adam Bcde and Romola — of Hetty in 
 the one, and Tito in the other — is not so much beyond 
 Mrs Oliphant's power, as outside her inclination. We 
 feel that she might try it — not without fair hope of 
 success ; but that she does not care to try it. I 
 hesitate to affirm that this modest restraint — the 
 womanly reticence and delicacy which refuses to probe 
 the festering sores of humanity — is, even from the ex- 
 clusively artistic point of view, an error to be con- 
 demned, though in the serene impartiality of a Goethe 
 or a Shakespeare, there is, I suppose, something of 
 the moral insensibility of the great surgeon who does 
 not shrink from vivisection. 
 
 The sustained and serious interest of The Chronicles 
 of Carlingford entitles them to a foremost place in the 
 long catalogue of Mrs Oliphant's writings ; but con- 
 sidered merely as the story-teller, she is at her best, 
 I think, in her shorter tales ; and among these The 
 Curate in Charge is one of the simplest but most 
 perfect. There is only the slightest scrap of narrative ; 
 but how fresh, how tender, how true to nature it is — 
 
272 MAINLY ABOUT THE STORY-TELLERS. 
 
 a village idyl, in which the simple English life and the 
 simple English landscape are touched with a softly 
 pathetic light. It is a distinct conception — absolutely 
 graceful because absolutely simple — like a soap-bubble 
 or a Greek play or a Raphael. There is nothing by 
 the way or out of the way ; nothing that does not 
 lend itself to the progressive development of the 
 history. If life could record itself as on a photog- 
 rapher's glass we know that this is the record which 
 it would leave ; there is the unambitious exactness, 
 the homely sincerity, the inevitableness. And yet 
 there is something more, — there is the imagination 
 which realises the immense pathos of human life, — 
 of life, that is to say, into which no special adventure 
 or misadventure enters, but which simply as life is so 
 fundamentally sad, so intrinsically a tragedy. For 
 what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for 
 a little time, and then vanisheth away. 
 
273 
 
 XIII. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 IN a letter from Thackeray to John Brown, which I 
 have had occasion to quote, the writer says : " I 
 see Mr Skelton has been saying kind things of me in 
 Fyciscy." To have said things which were deemed 
 kind by a great man is a lasting gratification ; and, 
 indeed, at the close of life (when the shadows at least 
 are beginning to gather) there is nothing on which a 
 writer of books can look back with more entire satis- 
 faction than the "kind words" which have helped 
 others on. I suppose we must be bitter at times, and 
 it is, of course, a public duty to expose the quack and 
 the mountebank. But one is never quite sure in such 
 cases where public duty begins and private feeling 
 ends ; and the executioner is not a popular function- 
 ary nor an acceptable companion. On the other hand, 
 the appreciation of excellence is twice blessed ; it 
 blesses him that gives and him that takes. A work of 
 true genius is stimulating; there is a certain inspira- 
 tion about it which affects the critic while he reads, 
 
 s 
 
 
274 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 as well as the author while he wrote. Some of the 
 pleasantest intimacies, some of the most valued friend- 
 ships, we make in this world are effected through the 
 relations thus established. The critic picks up at a 
 railway bookstall a volume which no one is inclined to 
 buy ; finds, as he is hurried along, that it has a dis- 
 tinctive flavour which suits his palate ; and thereupon 
 writes a notice, long or short, in which he gives ex- 
 pression to the enjoyment he has felt, and which is 
 perhaps quickened by the sense of discovery. The 
 Word in Season, let us call it. The author, on his 
 side, is gratified by the reception accorded him ; it is 
 possibly the earliest recognition he has received ; and 
 a mutual regard springs up which, thus begun, may 
 last a lifetime. 
 
 * 
 
 He must deem himself fortunate who has had a fair 
 opportunity of speaking his mind freely and honestly 
 on what he holds to be excellent ; and I cannot but 
 feel that in this respect (if not in others) my friend 
 " Shirley " has been exceptionally favoured. To have 
 had in " beginning life " two such friendly editors 
 as Thomas Spencer Baynes and John William Parker 
 does not fall to the lot of many. Of Baynes I 
 have spoken more at large in connection with the 
 volume of his essays which has been lately published 
 by the Longmans ; here let me say that it is difficult 
 for those of. his friends who survive — "the gleanings 
 of hostile spears " — to express without an air of ex- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 275 
 
 aggeration the debt of gratitude they owe to Parker. 
 Oblivion scattereth her poppies ; it is five-and-thirty 
 years now since the editor of Fraser died ; yet I venture 
 to say that not one of us has forgotten him. We keep 
 his memory green in our hearts ; and when, at long 
 intervals, we meet, it is of him that we speak. 
 
 Like the Apostle, his bodily presence was weak. 
 Yet though one of the most fragile of human creatures, 
 he could hold his own with the best. Alertness, rest- 
 less energy, unflinching loyalty, true courage, immense 
 tenacity — these are the qualities we associate with his 
 memory. The pale, worn, delicate, spectacled face — 
 how well one remembers it, and the rooms in the 
 Strand where he lived en garcon, and where one's 
 earliest and pleasantest hours in the vast solitude of the 
 great city were spent. Such pleasant days ! and then 
 such hospitable nights ! when round the homely but 
 well-appointed table, the " lad from the country " met 
 the famous men of whom he had been dreaming. And 
 yet life with Parker was always somewhat sad ; as the 
 little girl said of her relations with the clamorous 
 turkey-cock, he was " sair hauden down by the bubbly- 
 jock " ; sometimes oppressed, often depressed, it was 
 only at rare intervals that he escaped into the freer 
 and sweeter air that he loved. 
 
 * 
 •* 
 
276 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 Many of the best men of his time loved Parker as 
 they loved no one else. He was so loyal. A few 
 veterans still living, whose testimony would be ac- 
 cepted all over the world, might be cited as witnesses ; 
 and in old letters I find emphatic evidence to the same 
 effect. " Didn't you know John Parker ? " acted for 
 years as a spell ; and when one was able to reply, " I 
 met you at his rooms," an offensive and defensive 
 alliance against all comers was forthwith concluded. 
 Thus, Arthur Helps, recalling those pleasant dinners 
 in the upper chamber overlooking the Strand, " where 
 so many good fellows used to meet who will now per- 
 haps never see each other again," adds, " Poor John 
 Parker ! Your letter naturally reminds me of him ; not 
 that I need to be reminded, for who that rejoiced in 
 his friendship can ever forget him ? " And in one 
 of those eagerly friendly epistles which Charles Kings- 
 ley would dash off in frantic and fervent haste (when 
 he was making up his arrears of correspondence, or 
 had recovered the letter he had carefully mislaid — as 
 was his way), there is the glow of a still warmer 
 regard. " I trust that if you come to London," he 
 writes, " you will take courage to come forty miles 
 further to Eversley. You will meet here, not only for 
 your own sake, but for Parker's, a most cordial wel- 
 come. Before our windows lies the grave of one whom 
 he adored — Mrs Kingsley's favourite sister. He was 
 at her funeral ; the next funeral which her widowed 
 husband and I attended was his ; and Froude (her 
 husband) nursed him like a brother till the moment of 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 277 
 
 death. He was a great soul in a pigmy body ; and 
 those who know how I loved him, know what a 
 calumny it is to say that I preach ' muscular Chris- 
 tianity.' " 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 I have ventured to unloose, after many years, the 
 red tape which has kept together a packet of old 
 letters. The tape has lost its colour, being now of a 
 dingy yellow. So to a certain extent have the letters. 
 But it is a packet which has been jealously guarded — 
 as a lover keeps those of his mistress written in the 
 springtime of his wooing. For it is labelled, as you 
 see, " With thanks" ; and it is made up of the letters 
 which came from men and women (some of them 
 little known at the time) whom I had been permitted 
 by friendly editors to welcome. They go back a long 
 way ; 1849 brings a letter from Longfellow, and this is 
 1894. It is the earliest, I see; the first volumes of his 
 prose had only recently crossed the Atlantic ; and 
 Hyperion {Hyperion, I think it was) had fascinated us 
 all, and we were eager to greet its author. So with 
 considerable perturbation (for it was a liberty we would 
 not have taken with a countryman) a congratulatory 
 letter was penned and duly despatched. I noticed in 
 his Life the other day that the receipt of the letter — 
 coming as it did from this side of the water — had 
 pleased the poet ; but I am certain that when the 
 gracious answer arrived — the message from a new and 
 
278 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 unknown world, as it seemed to us — our gratification 
 was incomparably keener. 
 
 " Cambridge, October 3, 1849. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — Your most friendly letter has deeply 
 moved me. From time to time there have come to 
 me voices out of the dark — from persons before un- 
 known — but never one that has spoken so truly to my 
 heart. I thank God if I have been able to write any- 
 thing which can console and strengthen others ! The 
 poem you particularly allude to was produced in a 
 state of mind not unlike that which you describe, and 
 came from my inmost being, not from my brain ; and 
 it is, indeed, a very great satisfaction to know that 
 many accept it as a faithful expression and transcript 
 of their own deepest convictions. 
 
 " I sincerely thank you for writing to me. Too 
 often these feelings of sympathy perish where they 
 were born, and the writer of a song remains for ever 
 ignorant that far away in another country he has an 
 unknown friend, who listens with pleasure to his 
 words, and would fain say it, and yet does not. 
 
 " May I beg you to accept a small volume which I 
 published a few months ago, entitled Kavanagh. I 
 will send it by an early opportunity ; and in the 
 winter, if an opportunity offers, will send you also a 
 new volume of poems now in the press. I do not 
 know that you will find anything in these books which 
 will particularly please you, but it will be gratifying to 
 me to know that you have them. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 279 
 
 "Your name is an old name in the history of 
 English poetry. Are you descended from the Oxford 
 Laureate of Henry VIII. 's time? or do you disavow 
 an)' kindred with so fantastic a gentleman ? 
 
 " With sentiments of true regard and sympathy, I 
 remain, dear sir, yours faithfully, 
 
 " Henry W. Longfellow." 
 
 The poet promised to visit me if ever he came to 
 Scotland ; but when he did come — years afterwards — I 
 was unluckily abroad, and I only got his card, and a 
 little note which he had left for me, on my return. Long- 
 fellow, I understand, is quite out of date now — as much 
 out of date as The Traveller or The Deserted Village; and 
 I must admit that though Hyperion and Evangeline are 
 still as delightful to me as ever, I never venture to read 
 them, except when perfectly certain that I am not ob- 
 served. 
 
 The letter that follows — the ink, you see, of the 
 Haworth stationer was not of the best, and has faded 
 almost into illegibility — was written by Charlotte 
 Bronte. The acutely malignant article in the Quar- 
 terly, and its ponderously jocular rival in the North 
 British, had been taken as a personal insult by those 
 of us to whom Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette revealed 
 a force it was difficult to measure ; and an indignant 
 paper in the Edinburgh Guardian (then edited by 
 Baynes) was written to prove that " Currer Bell ? ' had 
 
280 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 been foully slandered. Dallas, who at the time was 
 our theatrical critic, sent a copy of the paper to 
 Messrs Smith and Elder, by whom it was forwarded 
 to Miss Bronte. You may be sure that what Jane 
 Welsh Carlyle would have called a "good joy" was 
 ours when we found that the vindication had served 
 to " refresh and cheer " the wonderful little woman — 
 " the austere little Joan of Arc " (as Thackeray called 
 her), who had been so wantonly assailed. 
 
 " Haworth, Keighley, Yorks, December gt/i. 
 
 " Sir — If you know the writer of the article on 
 Villette in the Edinburgh Guardian for December 3d, 
 will you offer to my kind critic the grateful thanks of 
 Currer Bell. 
 
 "A few words at once so friendly and so discrimin- 
 ating refresh and cheer inexpressibly. — Believe me, 
 yours sincerely, C. Bronte. 
 
 "E. S. Dallas, Esq." 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 " Rab and his Friends " are now known all over the 
 world ; but for a season the volume in which they 
 appeared hung fire. " Doctor John " was nervous 
 about its reception ; I don't think he was quite certain 
 that it was strictly professional ; and I suspect that he 
 introduced the medical biographies (which in truth 
 were a trifle dull) to appease the scruples of himself 
 and his brethren. " Rab" was the gem of the book; 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 28 1 
 
 and " Rab " was the eldest of a large and increasing 
 family. It was unquestionably the first of those 
 sketches of rustic life where (as in Mr Barrie's Auld 
 Licht Idylls, and Mr Crockett's A Stickit Minister 1 ) 
 pawky humour and homely pathos are happily blended. 
 How " Rab " was to be introduced to English friends 
 had been the subject of much discussion ; Parker had 
 been consulted, but Parker had doubts ; until at last 
 the suggestion that the Hora: might be made the text of 
 a discourse on " Professional Sectarianism " secured 
 his assent and co-operation. My impression is that 
 the article in Fraser was Doctor John's earliest re- 
 cognition on the other side of the Border ; and it 
 was greeted accordingly. He carried it off to Syme ; 
 he read selected scraps as he drove from patient to 
 patient ; before the day was over he had filled more 
 than one sheet with cordial thanks. There were only 
 two or three monthly magazines in existence at the 
 time ; and possibly the good word of Fraser (which 
 under John Parker had become a power in the critical 
 world) may have been useful. So at least Doctor 
 John thought, and it is pleasant to look again at the 
 old letters. 
 
 1 Here again the first is the best ; nothing that Mr Crockett has since 
 done can compare with the earlier work. The reader is now constantly 
 tempted to inquire, Is this a direct transcript from nature, or the copy of a 
 copy ? Faint reminiscences, pale reflections, of Sir Walter are possibly in- 
 evitable in a Scottish story-teller's story ; but what are we to think when 
 we find one of the most august passages in all literature incorporated in the 
 confession of a Marrow Minister? "One day they held a book together 
 till they heard their own hearts beat audibly, and in the book read 710 more 
 that day." This is not theft only ; it is sacrilege. 
 
282 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 "23 Rutland Street, 23 Dec. [185S]. 
 
 " My dear ' Shirley,' — Many thanks for all your 
 great kindness. I am not a little pleased at Mr Parker 
 being pleased ; and you may be sure few things will 
 gratify me more than having Shirley's word in Fraser. 
 The objection to reviewing the Hone substantively is 
 only half an one — nearly the half of the book is quite 
 new. However, this matters little, so that it be 
 spoken of, and you could give me no better companion 
 than the old Knight of Norwich. There is a very 
 readable and somewhat germane book by old Ferrier 
 of Manchester, Medical Histories and Reflections, which, 
 if you care to see, I can let you have. Are you the 
 author of the very neat mot about the words Horce 
 Subsecivce ? A little girl asks her father what is the 
 meaning of these Latin words at the top of Dr 
 Brown's book, and he replies, ' Brown studies, my 
 dear ! ' If there is anything else you would like to 
 learn, or to know, in reference to the Bye Hours of 
 the Doctors, let me know, or come and see me any 
 day between one and two ; but not till next week, as 
 I am hoping to get off for two days to the Mearns. — 
 Yours ever truly, J. Brown." 
 
 "23 Rutland Street, Friday morning. [1 April 1S59.] 
 
 " My dear ' Shirley,' — My very best thanks for 
 yours of this morning. It has made me very, perhaps 
 too happy ; praise such as this is always sweet, even 
 though known to be overpaid. In my small way I 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 283 
 
 have sent it off instantly to Mrs Brown, who is at 
 Ben Rhydding; it will please her not less than 
 'Brown' himself; and I mean to purchase a copy 
 to-day and present it to Syme. That is capital what 
 you say of him, and will rejoice his great and modest 
 (for he is modest) heart. Thanks again. I hope you 
 have seen Thackeray. Thank Parker also, for his 
 valuable kindness in this matter. — Yours ever, 
 
 "J. Brown." 
 
 Later in the same day : — 
 
 " 1 April, 2 P.M. 
 
 " Of course when I wrote you, a few hours ago, I 
 had read merely my own bit ; what other mortal man 
 could have done otherwise ? I have now read your 
 bit, and it will be a pleasant thing for me to remember 
 that such an honest, hearty, telling bit of sense and 
 spiritual virtue, aperl] — vir-tus, was read by me in 
 Princes Street, and down through the other streets to 
 Inverleith Row, &c, en route to my clients. It is 
 admirable, and there is one sentence, sententiola vibvans, 
 which I will assuredly print in my 2d edition among 
 my jacula prudentum, — ' In proportion to the power of 
 the whole mind is the power of its constituents ; narrow 
 the mind and we narrow its members.' It is full of 
 vital and strong truth, and much needed in these latter 
 days. So good-bye. I daresay you have had enough 
 of me to-day, but you know what day it is ! " 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
284 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 Some day I may put together a few of the bright, 
 cordial, picturesquely idiomatic letters which Doctor 
 John was constantly writing about the men and 
 women and dogs and books he liked. Nothing made 
 him happier indeed than hearty appreciation of a 
 favourite. Here, for instance, is a little note of thanks 
 which the eloge on The Scottish Probationer in Blackwood 
 elicited. He took the whole family of the " Browns " 
 under his wing ; but the dear and delightful Dr James 
 of Paisley, whose loss we never cease to deplore (the 
 Fates were unkind to us that autumn ; William Sellar 
 had died only a month before), occupied of later years 
 a first place in his regard : — 
 
 "23 Rutland Street, 31 Jan. 1878. 
 " My dear ' Shirley,' — You are excellent on the 
 Probationer. Poor fellow, your words would have 
 been nuts to him were he here ; who knows but 
 that he may take in Maga where he is ? One faithful 
 heart you will delight ; the homely-faced sweetheart's 
 in Brunswick Street to whom that (almost) Shake- 
 spearian sonnet was written. I am glad to get a 
 pleasant account of you and Placens from John. — 
 Ever yours and hers, J. B." 
 
 In another strain how entirely admirable is this 
 incisive sketch of an old Scottish gentlewoman (widow 
 of Lord Cunninghame, a Scottish Judge, and by birth 
 a Trotter of Mortonhall), whose kindly and caustic use 
 of the vernacular none who knew her are likely to 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 285 
 
 forget. The date is "Wednesday" only; but Mrs 
 Cunninghame died on 19th December 1877 : — 
 
 " My dear ' Shirley,' — It is good of you to think 
 of telling me. I needed it ; for I have been in such a 
 state of mental torpor all this year that I never thought 
 of putting the two things together. . . . Our great old 
 friend at Morton is gone — at seven this morning — the 
 last of the great race who were the meet companions 
 of our older gods ; no such women now. She was a 
 true Autochthon, a child of the soil ; Scotch in face, in 
 voice, in nature, in figure, in shrewdness, in humour, 
 in heart. All are going now. I have far more dead 
 friends than living. — With best regards and thanks, 
 (my love to mater pidchra), yours ever truly, 
 
 "J. Brown." 
 
 It was through Parker's good offices also that 
 Principal Tulloch's fine volume on the Reformers 
 was introduced to the readers of Fraser. Kingsley 
 had an unusual liking for Scotsmen : " I am afraid 
 I am a bad Englishman, for I like you Scots far 
 better than I do my own countrymen," he wrote me 
 once ; and Parker shared this curious and rather 
 unaccountable predilection. The owner of many well- 
 known initials had possibly opened his eyes to the 
 intrinsic superiority of the North Briton ; and when 
 a eulogium on the youthful Principal was proposed he 
 cordially responded. Tulloch, like Doctor John, was 
 
286 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 pleased, and with fine frankness thanked Parker and 
 Parker's henchman : — 
 
 "St Mary's College, St Andrews, Dec. i, '59. 
 " My dear S., — Parker has kindly sent me Fraser, 
 with your article. After reading it I cannot help 
 saying that you are a good fellow, and feeling as if 
 I were a bit of a swell. ' Such a certificate,' Sellar 
 says, ' I have nowhere got.' — Yours always, 
 
 "John Tulloch." 
 
 " Sellar says " — the words summon up a Past which 
 few of the survivors can recall without smiles and — 
 tears. In 1859 tne Society of St Andrews was at its 
 best, as were its links. Then it was possible for even 
 a duffer (like — what eminent man of letters shall I 
 name ?) to play the round with comfort. I remember 
 going over one spring — it was the early spring of 1857, 
 I think — and finding only George Condie (the younger) 
 and Lord Charles Kerr at the club. Condie had brought 
 his " caddie " with him from Perth ; he gave me " The 
 Rook " for partner in a foursome which lasted from 
 Monday till Saturday ; and during the whole of the 
 week we had the links absolutely to ourselves. One 
 or two old gentlemen played " pool " at the club in the 
 afternoon ; Tom Morris looked at us from afar, occasion- 
 ally descending to see us off; otherwise the isolation 
 was complete. But after the play was over, and we had 
 got back to South Street, where we lodged with the 
 baker, there was no lack of good company. So far as 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 287 
 
 gaiety and high spirits went, it was the Nodes A mbrosiance 
 over again. Most of us were young at the time ; the 
 world was all before us where to choose ; meanwhile 
 the men were brilliant and the women witty and well- 
 favoured. It was admirable while it lasted ; the pity 
 was that it did not last long enough. Ferrier was the 
 luminary round which these bright particular stars re- 
 volved, and with Ferrier's death much of the glory de- 
 parted. Tulloch, to be sure, was left; and by-and-by 
 a circle of not undistinguished men and women met at 
 St Mary's (is it not written in the Chronicles of the 
 Country Parson ?) ; but the ardour of youth was dulled, 
 and the high-jinks of the Fifties had ceased to be 
 possible. 
 
 The same freedom in the expression of opinion 
 which (within certain well-defined limits) Parker had 
 encouraged, was sanctioned by his illustrious successor. 
 So "Shirley" was permitted to fight the battles of 
 more than one eminent man to whom, as he fancied, 
 rightly or wrongly, fair play had not been accorded. 
 Our new Chief had prejudices — may I venture to call 
 them ? — of his own ; but he was ready to give a hear- 
 ing to those of the other side ; and whether it was 
 Disraeli, or Mary Stuart, or Rossetti, or Swinburne, 
 or Robert Browning, the virtue of unfettered discus- 
 sion was frankly recognised. Browning, I think, was 
 the main difficulty. In i860, he was comparatively 
 unknown. It was the fashion to ridicule his uncouth- 
 
288 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 ness and to resent his obscurity. The prolonged 
 unpopularity of our sincerest and most masculine 
 poet may perhaps admit of explanation ; and it is 
 easy to understand how to a master of " our English," 
 whose style is limpid as the mountain stream and lucid 
 as the dawn, the roughness of Browning may have been 
 a rock of offence ; yet the elaborate and protracted de- 
 fence was listened to with patience, and ultimately, I 
 believe, with some measure of assent ; and Browning 
 himself was satisfied that it had not been without 
 effect. Among these old letters none is more valued 
 than this : — 
 
 " 19 Warwick Crescent, 
 Upper Westbourne Terrace, W., March 31st, '63. 
 
 " My dear Sir, — I find your note, on returning to 
 London after a fortnight's absence ; you will have 
 guessed the reason of any delay in answering it. I 
 read your article last month. I am glad indeed of the 
 opportunity your kindness gives me of saying that I do 
 not think it ' weak ' or ' inadequate ' — but assuredly 
 generous, and in that respect not unworthy of you, how- 
 ever it may be undeserved by me. I do not often speak 
 about myself, but I think I feel your sympathy as 
 gratefully as you could desire. 
 
 " I am settled here for some years superintending 
 the education of my son ; if you ever come to London, 
 and care to call on me, I shall have great pleasure in 
 seeing you, face to face. 
 
 " In any case, I am yours very faithfully and 
 obligedly, Robert Browning." 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 289 
 
 Many years afterwards Sir Noel Paton sent me the 
 copy of a letter from the poet which a friend had made 
 for him that it might be forwarded to me. (The 
 "friend" was the late J. M. Gray, the curator of 
 the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, who died the 
 other day — a sad loss to us, and to Scottish art and 
 letters.) " It will not displease you," Sir Noel wrote : 
 as indeed it did not. It was plain that the cordiality 
 of the early greeting had left a pleasant warmth behind 
 it. " I think it a very generous piece of criticism," the 
 poet wrote, referring to the Fraser article, " and have 
 no doubt that it exercised much influence on the for- 
 tunes of my poetry." With such kindly words before 
 me, I thought that I might venture to ask him to ac- 
 cept a volume of Sketches at Home and Abroad which 
 the Blackwoods had recently published. 
 
 " 19 Warwick Crescent, Nov. 15, 1878. 
 
 " Dear Dr Skelton, — Your letter manages to 
 understate the truth on nearly every point. I was 
 not simply ' interested ' in the book which Mr Gray 
 so kindly sent me, but rendered abundantly grateful 
 for the notice of myself which it contained. I cannot 
 generally bring my mind to thank a judge when he lays 
 down the law, and it favours me ; but I may say that 
 the points wherein you pronounced for my poetry were 
 precisely those which I should wish made conspicuous. 
 I must naturally desire acquaintance with all you have 
 written or shall write ; consequently I more than coldly 
 ' accept ' — warmly welcome the present gift — which I 
 
 t 
 
 
290 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 thankfully acknowledge now that I can cordially praise 
 it — having finished my first reading. The paper con- 
 cerning Venice comes at the proper time to me who 
 renewed my love for her a few weeks ago ; but many 
 other matters have been a true delight to one who has 
 seen God's country as well as man's town — and still 
 enjoys both. — Pray believe me, dear Dr Skelton, yours 
 very sincerely, Robert Browning." 
 
 The Fraser paper, I may add, is referred to in the ex- 
 haustive Browning Bibliography prepared by Mr 
 Furnival (1881), where the reader will also learn 
 (possibly to his surprise) that " Shirley " is no other 
 than "Charles Lever." We know what we are, but 
 we know not what we shall be ; nor for that matter — 
 what we have been. 
 
 * 
 
 I have spoken of two of the editors to whose good 
 offices I owed much when I began to write ; I were 
 ungrateful if I failed to acknowledge my obligations 
 in later life to one possibly more widely known than 
 either of the others — John Blackwood. It is a good 
 many years now since he died ; but the pleasant 
 Sunday afternoons when among the woods of Braid 
 we discoursed of golf and politics and the forthcoming 
 number of Maga are not like to be forgotten. They 
 are very pleasant in the retrospect, they were very 
 pleasant at the time, — not least so to the poor Cabby 
 who thus got a whiff of country air, good for him after 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 291 
 
 his long hours of waiting at ball or theatre, and a 
 generously refreshing " tip " into the bargain. 
 
 * 
 * 
 
 Of John Blackwood's conduct of the Magazine, I 
 need hardly speak. He was its guiding spirit for 
 thirty years, and his unwearied interest and delight in 
 its wellbeing continued to the end. He had inherited 
 the traditions of " 45 " ; his very terriers— Ticklers and 
 the like — revived memories of the " Noctes " ; but 
 though never without a redeeming spice of devilry 
 (reminiscences of its earlier Bohemian or rather 
 Chaldean days), Maga under his rule became decorous. 
 It could never indeed, even when best behaved, abide 
 prigs and snobs ; but it ceased to flay them, as it had 
 done in the consulship of Plancus. Except his con- 
 tributors (with whom he maintained closely confiden- 
 tial relations) not many know how much of unity and 
 distinct personality the Magazine owed to its Editor, — 
 to his fine mother wit and native shrewdness. His 
 marginal notes on the proofs of articles— suggestive, 
 anecdotical, brightly conversational — were altogether 
 admirable. He did not, like Jeffrey, rewrite articles, 
 so that their authors did not know them again ; but 
 every article was so assimilated by him that any- 
 thing out of keeping or character, anything incon- 
 sistent with the traditions of the Magazine, was at once 
 detected by the practised eye and the fine sense of what 
 was fit. For though neither bigot in politics nor zealot 
 
292 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 in religion, he stuck to his convictions as a limpet sticks 
 to its rock. He was the great Tory editor, as Russel 
 of the Scotsman was the great Whig editor ; and the 
 two had a good deal in common. Both were sports- 
 men ; both were humourists ; both lived much in the 
 open air — one on the links, the other by the river-side ; 
 both were given to hospitality ; both were endeared 
 to their friends. But Blackwood's Toryism was indel- 
 ible — bred in the bone ; whereas Russel's Whiggism 
 was more or less accidental. 
 
 He bore discouragement and bad luck well — almost 
 gaily. From 1845 to 1874 he was almost constantly in 
 Opposition ; but he had a stout conviction that things 
 would mend before he died. It was somewhat late in 
 the day perhaps before he recognised the masterful 
 genius of Disraeli — some of whose moves in the 
 political game were distasteful to him ; but he came 
 ultimately to feel that the true determining forces of 
 Toryism — its devotion especially to a high ideal of 
 Government, of Empire — were safe in his hands. 
 
 A true simplicity (even to homeliness of speech and 
 gesture) characterised John Blackwood. None of the 
 men I have known, not even Professor Sellar, was 
 more simple and unaffected. He never resorted to 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 293 
 
 finesse; but on the other hand he detested swagger. 
 He saw through rogues and charlatans ; and though 
 by no means " glib at the gab," he could hold his 
 own against the noisiest pretender, — his quiet back- 
 handers being remarkably effective ; the slow deliberate 
 utterance, the pause, the hesitation, giving emphasis 
 and unexpectedness to the retort when it came at 
 last. (This was after the manner of Dizzy ; but what 
 in Dizzy was art, in John Blackwood was nature.) 
 The most distinguished men of his time were proud 
 of his steady friendship ; but he never lost his head, 
 his respect for his calling, his friendliness for smaller 
 men, his delight in doing a good turn to a young 
 fellow. Neither in play nor in business did any one 
 find him at any time mean or base or small or petty ; 
 his very hatred of Radicalism had in it a sort of 
 jocular breadth which kept it from becoming mere 
 bitterness. There was in all his pictures of his polit- 
 ical foes what art-critics call "atmosphere," — the 
 lines were not hard or obtrusive, but mellowed in 
 a soft light of humour and good fellowship. 
 
 * 
 * 
 
 As he reached middle life, the old circle dropped off. 
 His brothers, to whom he was warmly attached, died 
 early. One after the other, Wilson, and Aytoun, and 
 George Moir, and Lord Neaves, and Lord Lytton 
 were taken away. He began to feel lonely at times. 
 Younger men came about him : but he lived more 
 
294 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 and more within the family circle. Yet, in spite of 
 failing health, the ineradicable habit of hospitality 
 survived to the last. Only the month before his death, 
 a set of young fellows — some of whom he had trained 
 to letters — were gathered round the cheery Strathtyrum 
 hearth. Then came a brief period of restlessness and 
 disquietude, and he passed away from those whom he 
 had loved in the quiet, undemonstrative, loyal, constant 
 way that was natural to him. To him, indeed, loyalty 
 was everything, — loyalty to the political faith in which 
 he had been bred, loyalty to the good cause as he held 
 it, loyalty to his friends, loyalty to his own convictions, 
 loyalty to honesty, and fair dealing, and manliness. 
 
 * 
 
 Even while these last sheets are going through the 
 press, I hear with profound sorrow of the death of my 
 dear and admirable friend, Professor Huxley, — to the 
 whole world a thinker of brilliant faculty and immense 
 force, to his friends one of the brightest, bravest, and 
 cheeriest of men. 
 
 Huxley had probably the most trenchant intellect of 
 the time ; yet, on the emotional side he was extraor- 
 dinarily tender and sympathetic, — no woman more so. 
 He was one of the best talkers, if not the best talker, 
 I have known, — alert, swift at repartee, apt to respond 
 to badinage of any kind in kind. Yet his constancy to 
 his convictions, to his serious convictions, was pro- 
 verbial, — he was at all times honest as the day. The 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 295 
 
 John Knox of Agnosticism, it might be said of him 
 as Morton said of the Scotch Reformer, — " He never 
 feared the face of man." His letters, like his talk, 
 were delightful ; a mine of gay wisdom ; the wisdom 
 never pedantic ; the gaiety never forced or frivolous. 
 A score of those lying beside me are so characteristic 
 of the writer in his graver as in his lighter vein, that 
 I venture to string together a few sentences, taken 
 almost at random from their pages. 
 
 * * 
 
 " Being the most procrastinating letter - writer in 
 existence, I thought or pretended to think that it 
 would not be decent to thank you until I had read 
 the book. And when I had done myself that pleasure, 
 I further pretended to think that it would be much 
 better to wait till I could send you my Hume book, 
 which, as it contains a biography, is the nearest 
 approach to a work of fiction of which I have yet 
 been guilty. The ' Hume ' was sent, and I hope 
 reached you a week ago ; and as my conscience just 
 now inquired in a very sneering and unpleasant tone 
 whether I had any further pretence for not writing 
 on hand, I thought I might as well stop her mouth 
 at once." [London, January 1879.] 
 
 " I am not quite sure about giving up work — but 
 I am giving up pay, which is more serious. Not 
 that I have anything to complain of — H.M. Treasury 
 
296 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 having acted as generously as could be expected. 
 Age, bad health, and anxiety came arm in arm, and 
 marched straight over me this time last year — so 
 that there was nothing for me but to bolt to Italy 
 according to doctor's orders and try to get better. 
 
 "But all the king's horses and all the king's men have 
 not put Humpty Dumpty exactly where he was before. 
 I cannot stand the racket of the last twenty years any 
 longer ; and the only thing was to get out of all official 
 burthens. So I am absolutely relieved ; but I have 
 retained a certain connexion with my old school at 
 S. Kensington, and I have not yet renounced the 
 Presidency of the Royal Society. What I shall do 
 by-and-bye depends very much on what happens here. 
 We came ten days ago ; and I have so distinctly im- 
 proved that I hope by-and-bye to be fit for some- 
 thing." — [Filey, Yorkshire, August 16, 1885.] 
 
 " There is a paragraph in your preface which I 
 meant to have charged you with having plagiarised 
 from an article of mine, which had not appeared when 
 I got your book. In that Hermitage of yours you are 
 up to any codesicobuddhistotelespathic dodge ! It is 
 about the value of practical discipline to historians. 
 Half of them know nothing of life, and still less of 
 government and the ways of men. I am at present 
 engaged on a series of experiments on the thickness of 
 
 skin of that wonderful little windbag . 
 
 The way that second-rate amateur poses as a man of 
 science really ' rouses my corruption.' What a good 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 297 
 
 phrase that is. I am cussed with a lot of it, and any 
 fool can strike ile." [London, March 7, 1SS7.] 
 
 " I am going to read your vindication of Mary 
 Stuart as soon as I can. Hitherto I am sorry to say 
 I have classed her with Eve, Helen, Cleopatra, Delilah, 
 
 and sundry other glorious who have lured men 
 
 to their destruction. But I am open to conviction, 
 and ready to believe that she blew up her husband 
 only a little more thoroughly than other women do — 
 by reason of her keener perception of logic." [London, 
 December 31, 1881.] 
 
 " I have been in the Engadine for the last four 
 months trying to repair the crazy old ' house I live 
 in,' and meeting with more success than I hoped for 
 when I left home. ... I have been much interested 
 in your argument about the ' Casket Letters.' The 
 comparison of Crawfurd's deposition with the Queen's 
 letter leaves no sort of doubt that the writer of one 
 had the other before him ; and under the circum- 
 stances I do not see how it can be doubted that the 
 Queen's letter is forged. But though wholly agreeing 
 with you in substance, I cannot help thinking that 
 your language on p. 341 may be seriously pecked at. 
 My experience of reporters leads me to think that there 
 would be no discrepancy at all comparable to that be- 
 tween the two accounts ; and I speak from the woful 
 memories of the many Royal Commissions I have 
 wearied over. The accuracy of a good modern reporter 
 
298 mainly about the word in season. 
 
 is really wonderful. And I do not think that ' the two 
 documents were drawn by the same hand.' I should 
 say that the writer of the letter had Crawfurd's deposi- 
 tion before him, and made what he considered improve- 
 ments here and there." [London, November 2, 1888.] 
 
 " I took a thought and began to mend (as Burns's 
 friend, and my prototype (G.O.M.) is not yet reported 
 to have done) about a couple of months ago, and then 
 Gladstone's first article caused such a flow of bile that 
 I have been the better for it ever since. I need not 
 tell you I am entirely crushed by his reply — still the 
 worm will turn, and there is a faint squeak (as of a 
 rat in the mouth of a terrier) about to be heard in 
 the next 'XIX.'" [London, January 21, 1SS6.] 
 
 "Yes. I am sorry to say I know — nobody better — 
 ' what it is to be unfit for work.' I have been trying 
 to emerge from that condition first at Bournemouth 
 and then at Ilkley for the last five months with such 
 small success that I find a few days in London knocks 
 me up, and I go back to the Yorkshire moors next 
 week. We have no water-hens — nothing but peewits, 
 larks, and occasional grouse ; but the air and water are 
 of the best, and the hills quite high enough to bring 
 one's muscles into play. I suppose that Nebuchad- 
 nezzar was quite happy so long as he grazed and kept 
 clear of Babylon, — if so I can hold him up for my 
 Scriptural parallel." [London, June 4, 1886.] 
 
 " Seriously it is to me a grave thing that the des- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 299 
 
 tinies of this country should at present be seriously 
 influenced by a man who, whatever he may be in the 
 affairs of which I am no judge, is nothing but a 
 copious shuffler in those which I do understand." 
 [London, February 20, 1886.] 
 
 " Many thanks to you for reminding me that there 
 are such things as ' Summer Isles ' in the Universe. 
 The memory of them has been pretty well blotted 
 out here for the last seven weeks. You see some 
 people can retire to ' Hermitages ' as well as other 
 people ; and though even Argyll cum Gladstone powers 
 of self-deception could not persuade me that the view 
 from my window is as good as that from yours, yet 
 I do see a fine wavy chalk down and soft turfy ridges 
 over which an old fellow can stride as far as his legs 
 are good to carry him. The fact is that I discovered 
 that staying in London any longer meant for me a 
 very short life and by no means a merry one. So 
 I got my son-in-law to build me a cottage here where 
 my wife and I may go down -hill quietly together, 
 and ' make our sowls ' as the Irish say — solaced by 
 an occasional visit from children and grandchildren. 
 The deuce of it is that, however much the weary want 
 to be at rest, the wicked won't cease from troubling. 
 Hence the occasional skirmishes and alarms which 
 may lead my friends to misdoubt my absolute detach- 
 ment from sublunary affairs. — Perhaps peace dwells 
 only among the forked - tailed Petrels!" [Hodislea, 
 Eastbourne, January 13, 1891.] 
 
300 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 " I am happy to say I got the screws fairly tightened 
 up at the Maloija, and I hope the rickety old machine 
 will jog through the winter. But I must have done 
 with such escapades as that at Oxford. If ever there 
 was an egg dance, that was. Imagine having to talk 
 about Ethics when ' Religion and Politics ' are for- 
 bidden by the terms of the endowment ! — and to talk 
 about Evolution when good manners obliged one to 
 abstain from dotting one's i's, and crossing one's t's. 
 Ask your Old Man of Hoy to be so good as to suspend 
 judgment until the Lecture appears again with an 
 appendix in that collection of volumes the bulk of which 
 appals me. Didn't I see somewhere that you had been 
 made Poor Law Pope or something of the sort ? I 
 congratulate the poor more than I do you, for it must 
 be a weary business trying to mend the irremediable. 
 (No. I am not glancing at the whitewashing of Mary.) " 
 [Hodislea, Eastbourne, Oct. 17, 1893.] 
 
 One letter I may be permitted to quote entire, seeing 
 that I have somehow come to associate it with that 
 noble passage (one of the most perfect in our literature) 
 in which, vindicating himself from the charge of feel- 
 ing satisfied with a merely negative philosophy, Huxley 
 wrote, — " I venture to count it an improbable sugges- 
 tion that any such person — a man, let us say, who has 
 wellnigh reached his threescore years and ten, and 
 has graduated in all the faculties of human relation- 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 3OI 
 
 ships ; who has taken his share in all the deep joys 
 and deeper anxieties which cling about them ; who 
 has felt the burden of young lives intrusted to his care, 
 and has stood alone with his dead before the abyss of 
 the Eternal, — has never had a thought beyond negative 
 criticism. It seems to me incredible that such an one 
 can have done his day's work, always with a light 
 heart, with no sense of responsibility, no terror of that 
 which may appear when the fictitious veil of Isis — the 
 thick web of fiction man has woven round Nature — is 
 stripped off." 
 
 " 4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., 
 May 20, 187S. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — I would give a great deal 
 on all grounds to be able to welcome Mrs Skelton and 
 you here next Monday ; but I must be inhospitable, 
 and straitly forbid you the house. 
 
 " Last Monday evening my youngest child was 
 attacked by diphtheria. On Monday my eldest fol- 
 lowed, and on Thursday my son who came home for 
 his holiday from St Andrews to his sister's wedding 
 a fortnight ago. 
 
 " He and my youngest child have had the horrible 
 disease very mildly, and they are practically well. 
 But my poor Madge, the light of my house, has given 
 us a week of terrible anxiety. On Tuesday I did 
 not leave home, not knowing what the issue of the 
 day might be. On Saturday I hoped she was safe ; 
 but yesterday there was a relapse, and we had a 
 
302 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 weary night of anxiety. This morning I am glad to 
 say she is a little better, and I am hopeful again. 
 But her condition is very critical. 
 
 " Under these circumstances the house is tabooed 
 and our friends come no further than the gate. I am 
 sure I need not say how glad we should have been to 
 welcome Mrs Skelton and yourself, and I hope Froude 
 would have come with you as he sometimes does. 
 
 "You have children and will understand what life 
 is under these conditions. One sets one's back hard, 
 and lives from day to day. — Ever yours very truly, 
 
 "T. H. Huxley. 
 
 " Fanny Bruce was to have been with us, but of 
 course is not. Let us have another chance of seeing 
 you on your way back." 
 
 Here is the last letter I had from him — written in 
 January of this year, during the terrible frost which 
 none of us is like to forget : — 
 
 " Hodislea, Jan. 12, 1895. 
 
 " My dear Skelton, — I do not wonder that be- 
 tween my essays and the weather you are driven to 
 fly your home. Only the notion of bettering yourself 
 by coming here into the jaws (or at any rate jaw) of 
 the essayist — with the thermometer below freezing 
 all day on a south wall, and down to 20 or even 19° 
 at night, and with a violent N.E. gale, which brings 
 vividly to my recollection a ' coorse day ' in Edinburgh 
 — savours to my mind of eccentricity. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 303 
 
 " But a wilful man must have his way, and if you 
 like you shall feel how much reason you have to envy 
 our ' South Coast winter.' I don't wish to write 
 ' sarkastic,' but I should think there are plenty of 
 vacant houses just now. If we had not a son and his 
 wife and a couple of grandchildren filling up our cot- 
 tage at present, and if my poor wife were not laid up 
 with a complication of rheumatism and sore throat 
 from the horrid cold of last week, we could gladly find 
 room for you and Mrs Skelton here. But send me 
 word what accommodation you want, and I have not 
 the least doubt you may be suited. I am confound- 
 edly honest, considering how glad we should be to 
 see you, in warning you that our glacier may be as 
 bad as your snow-field. With kindest remembrances 
 and good wishes to Mrs Skelton, — Ever yours very 
 truly, T. H. Huxley." 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 There are some fine lines by Heine (admirably trans- 
 lated into English by Mr Leland, who has indeed a 
 real genius for translating Heine) which, with suitable 
 modification, might have been written by Huxley; for, 
 in the prolonged struggle for intellectual freedom, Hux- 
 ley was in the foremost rank, and fought with the best. 
 Would it be permissible to inscribe these lines under 
 the bust we are to have in the Abbey ? — 
 
 " I really do not know whether I deserve that a laurel 
 wreath be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have loved 
 it, has always been to me only a holy plaything, or a conse- 
 
304 MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 
 
 crated means whereby to attain a heavenly end. I have 
 never attached much value to a poetic reputation, and I 
 care little whether my songs are praised or blamed. But ye 
 may lay a sword on my coffin, for I was a brave soldier in 
 the War of Freedom for Mankind.'" 
 
 It is past midnight. The moon is high in heaven, 
 but on the wane. It casts a dim mystical twilight — 
 the twilight of the night — upon the land ; but on the 
 brow of the sea it brightens for a space, and strikes 
 keen and clear. " They cuist the glamour o'er her," 
 says the old ballad of the stricken maiden ; and a dark 
 barque, with drooping sails, lies listless and becalmed, 
 upon the enchanted water. Down below here, among 
 the lesser planets, it is very still ; yet aloft in the heaven- 
 ly places and near the eternal stars one hears the rust- 
 ling murmur of the winged hosts, who speed through 
 the noiseless night. On what mission are they bent — 
 what behests do they carry ? Very sad in this waning 
 light — so sad that one has scarcely heart to enjoy its 
 strange beauty — sad with the menace of the Death which 
 approaches. The earth is dead already ; and even the 
 heavenly lights begin to fail. What, then, remains ? 
 We will go down to the moonlighted shore, and wash 
 our hands and feet in the incoming tide, and wait on 
 the beach there for the black-stoled weeping queens, 
 who will take us with them to the land that is very far 
 off beyond the sea. 
 
MAINLY ABOUT THE WORD IN SEASON. 305 
 
 Ah, well ! the sea and the stars are fine things no 
 doubt ; but the night grows cold, and the winter breeze 
 shivers among the bulrushes on the bank. Very grand 
 are the infinite spaces, and the pale armies that mar- 
 shal their visionary banners along the northern sky ; 
 but right beneath Orion lies a little cosy nest. The 
 nestlings are asleep ; their twitterings have ceased ; the 
 peace of dreams is about them. A rosy fragrant 
 cheek presses the snowy pillow — a smile of sweet con- 
 tent rests upon the parted lips — one nut-brown curl 
 has escaped from the braided hair. Yes — the night 
 is cold. We will go Home. 
 
 u 
 
306 
 
 XIV. 
 
 MAINLY ABOUT A SCOTCH 
 PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 HERE these rambling reminiscences might have 
 closed. I am reminded, however, that two 
 eminently characteristic figures have been omitted — 
 one as typically English as the other was typically 
 Scotch. But the notes made at the moment having 
 been mislaid, anything I could now recall would fail 
 in freshness and vivacity. Yet without them the 
 gathering is incomplete ! So I am fain to turn to the 
 two little " chap-books " by my old acquaintance Mr 
 Andrew Lyell — Our New Candidate and The Sergeant in 
 the Hielans — which in their day and generation (18S0- 
 81) ran through many editions. I do not know that 
 they crossed the Border, and they will probably be 
 new to the audience I am addressing. Looking over 
 them in 1895, one is startled to find how the world has 
 changed in less than fifteen years. Oblivion scattereth 
 her poppies. The men who were associated either 
 
A SCOTCH TROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 307 
 
 officially or personally with the Great Heresy Hunt — 
 the Beggs, the Wilsons, the Macaulays — are already 
 wellnigh forgotten ; the Gaelic Chair is still occupied 
 (not by the Sergeant, alas ! who has been gathered to 
 his fathers), but where are the kilted Gaels who were 
 to sit at the Master's feet, listening intently to the 
 " hollow oes and aes " of Celtic chronicle and bard? 
 and even the mighty shades of an Arnold and a Blackie 
 grow dim in the distance. I do not believe that there 
 was any malice in Mr Lyell ; he did not mean to be un- 
 kind ; and his narratives, we may be sure, were not 
 conceived in a satirical spirit. Than the Scottish Pro- 
 fessor and the Oxford Don no two men could be more 
 unlike : and yet they had this in common, — a peren- 
 nial vivacity, an insistent and excessive vitality, which 
 readily lent itself to caricature. Caricature is not 
 necessarily misleading ; without a touch of exaggeration 
 it is often impossible indeed to convey a true impres- 
 sion ; Richard Doyle and Tenniel have sometimes suc- 
 ceeded when Watts and Millais have failed. Let us 
 hope that any exaggeration of which Mr Lyell may 
 have been guilty was at least artistic. The same, I 
 trust, may be said of his Doric. The Doric has of late 
 become a weariness to the flesh ; but for Mr Lyell's 
 I offer neither apology nor glossary. He who runs 
 can read. 
 
 * 
 
 * 
 
308 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 OUR NEW CANDIDATE. 
 
 AN ADVENTURE IN THE WINTER OF '79. 
 
 So you see, Mr Drumly, that oor place is a bit lonesome 
 in the winter-time ; and tho' this has been a rare winter, wi' 
 snaw and ice and skatin' and curlin' and beef and greens at 
 the Royal, we began to tire o' the weary thud-thud o' the sea 
 upon the rocks, and the everlastin' skirl o' the sea-maws. A 
 veecious clood o' sleet drove day after day across the loch ; 
 and the wind roared in the chimley a' nicht as if Hornie 
 himseP were lowse. The Captain wad pit on his blue pea- 
 jacket, and warstle doun to the pier thro' the drift ; but the 
 rest o' us keepit mainly to the Langate, where there was aye 
 a cheery blink in Mrs Catto's parlour ahint the bar. Then 
 the Captain wud come back in the gloamin', wi' his face 
 shining like a brass kettle, and clash wi' us aboot the brig 
 that was fechtin' wi' the storm ootside the skerry ; and Mrs 
 Catto wud bring ben the Glendronoch and the het water and 
 the rizzared haddies. There was the Doctor and the Minister 
 and the Captain and the Souter and the Shirra and a wheen 
 mair; and there was Sergeant Duncan MacTavish o' the 
 Fit Guards, wha is the stootest man in the coonty ; and 
 there was myseP, Andrew Lyell, head maister in the grammar- 
 school o' the burgh, and Inspector o' Nuisance under the 
 Act o' Victoria, chapter wan hundred and wan, section nine. 
 
 It was wan nicht aboot the end o' the year that we were 
 toastin' oorsels at the parlour fire whan the Captain walks 
 in wi' the Journal in his han' (and the snaw in his beard), 
 and says he, as he took his ain seat — 
 
 " Duncan," says he to the Sergeant, "here's your chance." 
 And he pinted to an adverteezment in the first page o' the 
 paper : — 
 
 "wanted, 
 
 "A PROFESSOR OF GAELIC. 5 ' 
 
 "There's not one man in one thoosand, Duncan," says the 
 Captain, " who can beat you at the Gaelic, — not one man in 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON, 309 
 
 Cawmeltoun, and it is known that the best Gaelic is spoken 
 in Cawmeltoun. So it is right that you should become a 
 Candidate, and, by George, you shall, sir, this very night, as 
 sure as my name is Dochandorris." 
 
 "It is ferry goot of you, Dochandorris," the Sergeant 
 replied modestly, polishin' his wooden leg as he spoke, 
 " it is ferry goot of you to speak so : and indeed it has 
 occurred to my own mind that it would be improbable to get 
 one who knows the Gaelic petter : but there are deeficulties 
 in the way. I am not so young or so soople as I wass, 
 Dochandorris." 
 
 " Come now, Duncan, that's arrant nonsense. You are 
 fresh as paint. Why, man, the girls are all setting their 
 caps at you, and the pretty lass up-stairs would take you 
 to-morrow, I believe, — wooden leg and all." 
 
 " You will be having your fun, Dochandorris," said the 
 Sergeant with a modest blush, " but I pelieve you might 
 not be so far wrong, if it wass not that I am a poor man, 
 having peen in the army." 
 
 " A poor man ! " shouted the Captain. " Bless my soul, 
 they will give you six hundred pounds to start on, and Plackie 
 will put you in his will, and leave you his kilt and his claymore. 
 And — to be sure, — I'll write you a letter to the Professor — 
 the Professor is my very good friend. What say you, Mr 
 Lyell ? Will you take the Sergeant up to town, and lend 
 him a helping hand with the big-wigs ? " 
 
 The schule had scaled for the holydays, and the smells in 
 the back-yairds which I had been direckit to inspec' by the 
 Boord were in the meantime keepit doun by the black frost ; 
 so I was free to accompany my freen, and moreover the 
 change o' air micht benefit my osecophagus, which is nate- 
 rally somewhat weak. So it was sattled that we sud leave by 
 the neist boat, — which was due on the Friday mornin'. 
 
 Indeed, Mr Drumly, we had a weary time or ever we gat to 
 Auld Reekie. The wind rose to a gale, and we ran to Loch 
 Ranza for the nicht ; and later the engine gaed aff the line 
 into a snaw-drift at Lenzie, and the Sergeant lost his leg, 
 which had been tied up wi' the rugs. We had designed to 
 
 
3IO A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 ludge at a tavern in the Fishmercat Close, what I had been in 
 use to ludge whan attendin' the sittin's o' the General Assem- 
 bly as ruling elder for Drumwhacket ; but deil a close cud we 
 find ; it had been clean sweepit awa' by the Ceety Improve- 
 ments — so they said — and whan we knocked at the door of 
 what used to be the auld "Crappit Heads," we were certified 
 by a puir-looking body on the stair that it was The Scotsman 
 Offisch. 
 
 " Might it be convenient to speak to the yeditor ? " asked 
 the Sergeant, who had got his leg back at the lost-luggage 
 place, and was steppin' alang verra blithely. 
 
 " Na, na," I interrupt, " dinna fash him. He's a desperate 
 Radical, and he'll be for pittin' some young chiel into the 
 chair wha swears by Gledstane and Roseberry and the Roo- 
 shians and the Society for the leeberation o' releegion frae 
 kirks and schoolmaisters ; and wha kens nae mair o' the 
 Gaelic than oor new Oxford Inspector kens, that canna read 
 Burns and Allan Ramsay in the vernacular, and disna like a 
 gude auld Scots tune whan he hears it ; but blethers aboot 
 Jowatt an' Swineburrin an' Max Miller an' comparative phee- 
 lology an' the evolution o' the species an' the emawncipation 
 o' the intellec'. Na, na, Sergeant, — we'll get beds at the 
 Temperance Hotel roun' the corner whar they keep gude 
 whusky, — an' the new water frae Muirfoot wi' its taste o' moss 
 is jist famous for punch — they tell me." 
 
 " Is it Ferintosh ? " said the Sergeant to the waiter a little 
 later, when we were seated cozily roun' the fire, wi' a Lammer- 
 muir farmer an' a brace o' bagmen frae Hawick an' Galashiels, 
 wha had been during the day at Mr Gledstane's fecht wi' the 
 faggots in the Corn Mercat. 
 
 O they Aveary politics ! For my ain pairt, I hould wi' the 
 side that's up : for it's only nateral to believe that Providence 
 jidges best ; but at the end o' the year, what wi' the Eerish 
 and Cawbuul and Gledstane, it was clean impossible to guess 
 which side was up and which was doun. 
 
 But the Lammermuir man wud na tak a freen'ly hint ; an' 
 aboot wan in the mornin' he an' the bagmen were fechtin' 
 veeciously; for the whusky — it was Ferintosh, Mr Drumly, 
 and Ferintosh is not a safe speerit except the water is good. 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 3 1 1 
 
 The bagmen waxed boastfu' an' opeenionative aboot the 
 policy o' the great Leebral pairty, and how the Leebral pairty 
 wud dae this, that, and the ither thing : but Tap o' North, as 
 they caed him in spite, was dour an' swear an' sateerical, an' 
 wud na lat a word they said pass him. 
 
 " The policy o' the great Leebral pairty at hame an' abroad 
 — that's it, is it ? And what's the policy o' the great Leebral 
 pairty at hame, Mr Pedlar ? " 
 
 "The aboleetion — o' Kirk an' — State — on the bassis o' — 
 releegion an' — pheelosophy," says the first bagman, wha had 
 been drinkin' varra steady throughout the evenin'. 
 
 " Ay, ay ! To be sure ! And what's the policy o' the 
 great Leebral pairty abroad ? " 
 
 "The policy o' maisterly inac-teevity," says the second 
 bagman, wi' a hiccup, for he had mixed his drink, and was 
 far gone. 
 
 " Ay, ay ! To be sure ! And what's maisterly inacteevity, 
 ye doited body ? " says Tap o' North, wha was jist able to 
 speak, an', savin' the Socratic interrogatory, had lost a' poo'r 
 o' argument. 
 
 " Steakin' the stable-door when the steed's stown," says I to 
 the Sergeant, in a jocose aside, as we slippet awa. 
 
 We were onquestionably somewhat deelatory at breakfast 
 the neist mornin' — at least I was — for the Sergeant declared 
 that he had been roun' Arthur Seat and the Blackfurd Hill 
 afore I was up. Indeed, Mr Drumly, I was no jist myseP for 
 twa-three hours, and I began to enterteen some doobts aboot 
 the quality o' the Muirfoot water, — there was a peaty flavour 
 in my mouth for which it was impossible to accoont by ony 
 ither hypothesis. Nevertheless a Strang cup o' tea and the 
 least taste o' speerits at startin' pued us thegither, and whan 
 we left to veesit the Professor we were crouse as twa corbies — 
 suppin' on sheep's-head. But the discreet and decent lass 
 wha opened the door (for he canna thole a man-flunkey, Mr 
 Drumly) tell't us fairly that it was clean impossible to say 
 whar the Maister micht be. If he wus na at the Hielan' 
 Society he micht be in the Parliament Hoose ; and if he wus 
 na in the Parliament Hoose he micht be at the Advocates' 
 
312 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 Library, or at the Colledge, or at the Pier o' Leith, or in Mr 
 Blackwud's back parlour, or in the pu'pit at the Tron, or on 
 boord the man-o'-war at the ferry. 
 
 " Noo, Sergeant," says I, " tho' I'm thinkin' we micht as weel 
 be chasin' Spunkie" — which is the vulgar, Mr Drumly, for 
 the ignis fatuus o' antiquity — " my opeenion is that we should 
 veesit the Parliament Hoose. Angus MacCraw o' Kilberry is 
 ane o' the Macers, and he'll be pleased to forgather wi' an 
 auld freen', specially frae Cawmeltoun, — for the Cawmeltoun 
 whusky is weel liket by the Lords. He kens a' the inns and 
 oots o' the place, and ye may depen' upon it that a gude word 
 from Angus MacCraw wull hae wecht wi' the Electors." 
 
 Weel, Mr Drumly, there's nae disputin' that it's a gran' Ha', 
 wi' its auld aik rafters, and its pented windows, and its picters 
 o' sharp-nosed lawyers, and its figures in plaister o' Paris, and 
 the lads wi' their horse-hair weegs. But as Angus said while 
 the Sergeant was inspecin' the pentins, — Icabod, Icabod, the 
 glory is departed ! 
 
 "They're puir, fushionless, feckless bodies," he continued, 
 lookin' roun' him wi' his nose in the air. " There's a great 
 fa'in' awa. Whar's Jaffrey and Cowburn and Rutherfurd and 
 Moncreiff and Colonsay and Peter Robertson ? Na, na, I ken 
 my place, and I mak' a pint o' being ceevil to the Bench ; 
 but it's God's truth I'm tellin' you — the College o' Justice is 
 far through. The Justice, 1 to be sure, is a too'r o' strength ; 
 and aften and aften, when on his road to the gowf, he'll turn 
 and say, — ' There's a kittle pint o' practice, Mr MacCraw, on 
 which I wud like to hear your opeenion. There's not a man 
 in Coort has your experience,' — and sae on. But to come to 
 your business, Sergeant MacTavish. I'm not to be a cawn- 
 di-date mysel', — tho' I've been sair pressed to gang furrit 
 by some o' the lads here. But as the Justice said whan I 
 spoke to him, — What could we do wi'oot you, Mr MacCraw ? 
 And what's mair to the pint, Mr Lyell, I have not much of 
 the Gaelic now, for it is fifty-wan years since I left Drum- 
 whacket. But indeed there's nae wale o' cawn-di-dates — jist 
 
 1 " The Justice," — John Inglis, of course, Lord Justice-General, the most 
 famous of Scottish Jurists and Judges. 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 313 
 
 a wheen doited gillies an' chairmen an' sic like — savin' auld 
 Doctor MacCloskie o' the Lews and a lad frae Skye. The 
 Skye man, they tell me, has a wechty backin'. But as you 
 know, Mr Lyell, the Skye Gaelic has not the purity o' the 
 Cawmeltoun, tho' I have heard it said at times by the young 
 Whig chiels in the hoose that the whisky is better." 
 
 " Neither the Gaelic nor the whisky is petter," the Sergeant 
 interposed decidedly. 
 
 " That is my ain opeenion, Sergeant MacTavish, and it 
 should be a great pint in your favour wi' the Electors. Noo, 
 as to what you should be doin'. You maun see the leeterary 
 Professors, — Dawvid Mawson is verra thrang wi' his Three 
 Deils, and Siller is ane o' the useless bodies that attend to ae 
 thing at a time, — but Plackie — that's of coorse. He's aff to 
 Hunter's Bog wi' his Volunteer corpse o' riflemen : but he 
 wull be in the College at wan. You maun be there in time, 
 and whan you have fand him you maun grip him siccar — like 
 the Leddy Jean wi' her sweetheart in the auld sang. Speak 
 him hooly and fairly, — he has a kind heart as weel as a glib 
 tongue, and if you could say a word or twa discreetly aboot 
 Homer and Ossian and John Knox and the Apocrapha and 
 the Egyptian mummies and his ain contributions to creeti- 
 cism and pottery, it might not come amiss. But the Kirk as 
 weel as the Professors maun be considered. Hech, sirs, the 
 black coats hae their fingers in maist pies — het or cauld — 
 that are cooked in oor toun. So you maun see Dr Giles o' 
 the Laigh Kirk wha wrote Tober-snore " — ("Whist, man, 
 whist," said I, for I kent the Doctor wudna like it — and in- 
 deed, tho' the buik is maist divertin', yet it canna be con- 
 seedered a solid contribution to deeveenity) — "ay, ay — to be 
 sure, — and if you come across the lad they ca' Hugh Jeames 
 (wha sees to the bawbees at the 'Piscopal), he micht get you 
 a word wi' the Bishop — mind ye ca' him My Lud, — for it's 
 weel to hae freens on baith sides o' the bar ; and then there's 
 
 Doctor Bagg, Gude be here ! you maunna forget the 
 
 Doctor. He'll mak' a spune or spile a horn, you may be 
 sure. But — be frank wi' me, Andrew Lyell — is the Sergeant 
 soun' in the essentials ? Is he safe on Moses ? And what 
 aboot instrumental moosic and human hymns and the dox- 
 
3 14 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 ology and the Te Deum ludamos ? And does he sit under a 
 judicious expounder o' the Word, wha follows the beaten track, 
 and disna loup ower the dyke, like a camsteerie tup, at ilka 
 turn o' the road ? — Troth, Mr Lyell, I'm rejoiced to hear it, 
 — Sergeant MacTavish, you have my best wishes on your 
 behalf. — But you'll prent your certeeficates and testimonials ? 
 — that maun be seen to. — Oh, jist a wheen lines frae your 
 freens — a scrape o' the pen from the Minister and the Doctor 
 and the Shirra and Mr Lyell here. ' It is Mr MacTavish who 
 has the good Gaelic' ' It is Mr MacTavish who is soun' in 
 the essentials.' ' It is Mr MacTavish who knows the whisky 
 that is pest.' And noo, my freens, there's the Deeveesion 
 bell, — his Lordship wants a word wi' me i' the robing-room, 
 — it's that kittle case o' the Hielan' stot they are preparin' to 
 advise — but come back at three, and tak pot-luck wi' Mailie 
 and me, — Mrs MacCraw will be prood to see ye." 
 
 We gaed roun' the Colledge Square, and into the empty 
 class-rooms : but the Professor was inveesible. At the far 
 corner we heard a strange bummin' soun', that seemed to rise 
 from the gruir, and the Sergeant, after listenin' a bit, was 
 clear that we should depart quam primum ; for he had heard 
 the same soun', he said, at Balmawhapple, before the great 
 earthquak o' saxty-wan. But a Colledge lad that met us at the 
 door tellt us that the manifestation was due to nateral causes. 
 
 "It's moosic," says he ; "it's Sir Herbert at the organ or 
 the piany. He plays the organ and he plays the piany. He's 
 trying desperate hard to catch the tune o' 'Scots wha hae' 
 (the Colledge porter, tho' a stoot lad, is fairly oot o' wind 
 blawin' the bellows), for Plackie has sworn by a' the thieves 
 that ever crosst the Scottish border " 
 
 " The Professor himsel' ? " I interjected. 
 
 " Her nain seP ? " said the Sergeant. 
 
 "The verra man," responded the Colledger wi' a suppressed 
 wink ; " Plackie has sworn by the bones o' a' his ancestors, 
 from Fin-ma-coul to Donald Bane " 
 
 " Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! " I exclaimed, 
 while the Sergeant (bein' Hielan' by birth) shook in his shoes 
 at the deadly poo'r o' the incantation. 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 3 1 5 
 
 that if Yokcley carina play a gude Scots tune — 
 
 'Scots wha hae,' or 'The Bush aboon Traquair' — by New 
 Year's Day, he'll ding the kist o' whistles aboot his lugs ! " 
 
 " And does the puir man no apply to the Shirra for a 
 caption or an inteerdict ? " I asked after a pause. " I wonner 
 if he kens Angus MacCraw ? " 
 
 " Weel, you see he's not sure aboot his locus standi. The 
 Professor will pit in a plea o' justification, and he'll mak a 
 speech on Aristotle and the Game Laws, and he'll cross- 
 examine the Plaintiff aboot the lectures on the science and 
 practice o' Moosic which were lost in the Flying Scotsman on 
 the road frae Lonnon (and were never recovered), and the 
 hail business o' the coort will be stoppit, and the Shirra, wha 
 comes from Aberdeen, is verra freenly with the Professor, and 
 so — and so " 
 
 " I understan'," says I, noddin' my head after the similitude 
 o' Lord Burleigh. " But Sergeant MacTavish, my freen here," 
 — wi' a boo — " to say naething o' myseP (Andrew Lyell, Head 
 Maister and Inspector o' Nuisance frae Cawmeltoun)" — anither 
 boo — " is verra anxious to consult wi' the Professor on a bit 
 business o' a private nature. Would you be pleased to tell us 
 whar we micht find him ? " 
 
 " It's nae gude," our freen replied, " nae gude ava ; his 
 head's jist fu' o' maggots — I mean, o' manure. He's leased 
 a farm o' a thoosand acres in East Lothian, near Dunse ; for 
 you see he's in favour o' freedom o' agriculture ; and he says 
 the rotation o' crops is an interference wi' the leeberty o' the 
 subjec', and to pit dung in the grun' a reflection on the 
 boontiful care o' the Almichty. Cincinnatus at the pleugh — 
 ye'll mind Cincinnatus, Mr Lyell — Cincinnatus at the pleugh 
 canna compare wi' Plackie at the Chaummer o' Agriculture. — 
 But try him in Hill Street, — he had posted his letter to the 
 papers on the acceleration o' the Greek Kalends in Leap Year 
 when I parted wi' him on the Mund." 
 
 Noo, wud you believe it, Mr Drumly, as we gaed doun the 
 Bridges whom should we meet but Doctor Bagg himsel' — the 
 Doctor in propria persona? He was elbowin' his way thro' 
 the crood, like an honest man wha had as gude richt as the 
 
316 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 Duke to the public causeway ; and indeed, apart from super- 
 ficial distinctions o' rank an' breedin', as Mr Gledstane has 
 weel remarked, the hail sons o' Adam are wan flesh and 
 blood, — tho' some o' us, to be sure, are maistly skin and bone. 
 
 " Hoo are you, Doctor?" I observed agreeably, for I had 
 met him in Cawmeltoun at Mr MacWhistler's Ordination 
 Soiree. "This is my freen Sergeant MacTavish, — the great 
 Celtic scholar an' pheelologer — of whom you have doobtless 
 heard. He's a cawn-di-date for the Gaelic Chair." 
 
 The Sergeant lifted his bannet, an' made ane o' his gran' 
 boos. 
 
 The Doctor regairded him suspiciously — as a toon cat 
 might regaird a foumart. 
 
 "A scholar? A pheelologer? I am sorry, Mr Lyell, to 
 find a decent body like you consortin' wi' scholars an' phee- 
 lologers. It is your scholars an' pheelologers that have brought 
 dispeace into oor Zion. It is your scholars an' pheelologers 
 that have dung doon the battlements o' Jerusalem. It is 
 your scholars an' pheelologers wha are infeckit wi' the de- 
 structive an' rationalistic speerit o' modern creeticism. It 
 is your scholars and creetics and pheelologers wha have 
 disowned the legislation o' Moses, the chronology o' the 
 Pentateuch, the morality of Dawvid, and the weesdom of 
 Solomon ! " 
 
 The Doctor paused oot o' breath. He spoke in a loud 
 vice : so that a crood o' students and idle limmers gathered 
 aboot us. 
 
 I explained to him, Mr Drumly, that Sergeant Duncan 
 MacTavish, late o' the Fit Guards, was ruling elder in Kil- 
 calmonell and Kilberry, as weel as deacon in the kirk at 
 Cawmeltoun ; that he had nae acquaintance wi' Strass, and 
 Renan, and Colenso, and the yeditor o' the Cyclopedia Brit- 
 annka, but spak the purest Gaelic, and was the best judge 
 of whusky, of any man in Mull. 
 
 "And he is not a comparative pheelologer?" said the 
 Doctor, beginning to melt. 
 
 " Comparative pheelologer ! " I exclaimed, wi' mair heat 
 than was seemly. " We hae nae comparative pheelologers in 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 317 
 
 Cawmeltoun. Every word o' English that's spoken in the 
 broch is translated straight oot o' the Gaelic. Na, na, Doctor 
 — the Sergeant is soun' in the essentials." 
 
 He turned to the Sergeant, and took him by the han' — 
 " You may coont on my vote," says he, with tears in his eyes. 
 " I have been over-hasty. But the backslidin' even amang 
 oor ain folk is fearsome, and it is weel-nigh impossible noo 
 wi' ony certainty to divide a sheep from a goat. But rejoice, 
 my freens," he continued, wi' the inspired air o' an auld 
 prophet cursin' the Caananites, "the day o' judgment is at 
 hand. We shall hew Agag in pieces before the Lord in 
 Gilgal, and burn the infeckit thing wi' fire upon the altar." 
 
 Then he dived into the crood, and as I looked anxiously 
 after him, the Colledger, wha had followed us doon the North 
 Bridge, advised me, in a confidential whisper, no to mind, — 
 it was jist the new complaint that Sir Hairy had invented — 
 it was only " Smith on the Brain." 
 
 "Sergeant," says I, pinting to the lad, "I begin to doobt 
 if that young man is in bona feedy." 
 
 Nevertheless he gaed alang Princes Street in oor company, 
 an' made himsel' verra agreeable and enterteenin'. 
 
 "Ye'll be a great eddition to Edinboro society, Professor 
 MacTavish (for between oorsels the appintment's as gude as 
 made), which is dreich, verra dreich. There used to be 
 constant high-jinks, they say, when Moir and Aytoun and 
 Russel and Neaves and Doctor John were to the fore : but 
 an Edinboro denner-pairty noo, wi' the flunkies, an' the heat, 
 and the gas, and the mock turtle, and the mixed drinks, and 
 the everlastin' Parliament Hoose hash, and Lord Fozey's jokes, 
 — a surgical operation, Mr Lyell ? — faith, it needs naething less 
 than a steam-crane to get a joke a yaird lang into the head, 
 — wi' a' this an Edinboro denner-pairty o' the preesent day is 
 a perfec' Black Hole o' Calcutta. And then the moosical re- 
 union, — the moosical reunion, wi' the sanwiches an' the sherry 
 negus an' the cauld tea, an' the Baarenet at the piany, an' 
 Miss This an' Miss That skirlin' like a demented solan at the 
 Bass, an' the deaf auld Cornel layin' doun the laa at the tap 
 o' his vice, an' the young leddies jammed into corners, an' 
 
318 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 the young lads sittin' on the stairs, — a moosical reunion, Mr 
 Lyell, is jist incredible meesery. — Yes, sir, ye'll be a welcome 
 eddition to the society o' the place : but tak my advice and 
 keep the length o' the table between yersel' and ane o' Lord 
 Fozie's jokes. — But here's the door o' his den, — see that 
 ye pit your pest fit foremost, Mr Sergeant," says he, winkin' 
 wickedly at the wooden leg, as he vanished roun' the corner. 
 
 Never, Mr Drumly, never to my dying day shall I forget 
 the pecooliar sensation I experienced when the curtain was 
 lifted, and we stood within the Sanctum Sanctorum. It was 
 a scene weel calclate to thrill the heart an' confoon' the 
 imagination. We had past at wan step, like Tammas o' 
 Ercildoune, from the mire and muck o' Auld Reekie into 
 the twilicht o' an enchanted Ian'. 
 
 A forest o' dirks darkened the wa's. Claymores by the 
 dizzen were heaped upon the rug. The carpet was littered 
 wi' spleuchans. A hail kist o' kilts stood in a corner. A 
 sporran made from the crest o' the Gowden Eagle served as 
 a pen-wiper, while the pen itseF had been seleckit frae the 
 tail-feathers o' the same royal bird. A gran' speeritual an' 
 meethological pentin' by Dawvid Scott, in which Ossian was 
 fechtin' wi' Fingal for the preevilege o' crooning wi' the thorny 
 symbol o' Scottish independence his gifted godson, hung 
 aboon the hearth, — before which a meeserable " West-ender " 
 (an abortive creature, hateful to gods and men) was slowly 
 roasting, — a muckle pair o' self-acting bagpipes being used as 
 bellows to keep the fire het. And there, Mr Drumly — there, 
 amid the coontless trophies of a mair than mortal acteevity, 
 — stood the kilted chief o' Hielan' sang and fable and 
 romance ; — 
 
 " He stood in simple Lincoln green — 
 The centre of the glittering ring 
 And Snowdoun's knight is Scotland's king ! " 
 
 "Stood," did I say, Mr Drumly? — he was pacing back an' 
 furrit — skeelfully avoidin' the spleuchans nevertheless — like 
 a Numidian Lioness that has tint her cubs. 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 319 
 
 " He's in a dwam," said the Sergeant, reverently liftin' his 
 bannet. " Disturb him not." 
 
 It was indeed a maist interestin' and instructive exhibeetion 
 o' that mysterious faculty (weel kent to this day in the Hielan's 
 as the second sight) which the illustrious Bard had inherited 
 from a barbawric ancestry — that irrepressible hoose o' primeval 
 Titans to which Modern Royalty is a Mushroom. 
 
 I carina deny, Mr Drumly, that I was affeckit ; but I lookt 
 in vain for my pocket-nepkin. Could the Doctor have oncon- 
 sciously appropriated it in the pressure o' the crood ? The 
 idea crossed my mind ; but it was instantly dismissed. I 
 drew the back of my han' across my nose, and murmured wi' 
 the Great Lexicographer — " Far from me and my freens be 
 such freegid pheelosophy as may conduct us indifferent and 
 unmuved over any grun' that has been deegnified by bravery, 
 virtue, or weesdom, et cetera, et cetera." 
 
 As he paced back and furrit, Mr Drumly, — seatin' himsel' 
 noo an' again in the agony o' composition on the aite suidhe 
 Fhin which occupied the centre of the apairtment — we be- 
 cam' involuntary spectators, so to speak, o' the veesion an' 
 faculty divine in wan o' its sublimest ootbraks. 
 
 " Aye, my Lords, upon the rugged ribs of Ben Macdhui, 
 amang the cloods and corries o' the Grampians, we shall in- 
 vest our Professor and anoint our Bard. The Lion will be 
 there, as weel as the original Scots eagle, wha will flap her 
 wings above our laurelled broos wi' a passion unfamiliar to 
 the degenerate eagle o' the democracy. Every piper in broad 
 Scotland, from the Minsh to the Mull, is summoned to oor 
 revel : and the music of ten thoosand bagpipes shall wauken, 
 wi' their roar, the virgin echoes o' Cairngorum. Seat your- 
 selves, my Lords, upon our primeval boulders, and, — Ho! 
 Heralds ! bring furrit the Cawn-di-dates. They shall toss the 
 caber — they shall rin wi' the red deer — they shall loup wi' the 
 wild cats — they shall recite the Sagas o' Fin-Mac-Dhui and 
 Ben-Mac-Nevis — and finally, my Lords, they shall trans- 
 late into oor Mountain tongue wan o' the gran' national 
 covenantin' hymns which was prented in the first an' only 
 edition o' my leerical pottery." (So far he had spoken in 
 
320 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 prose ; but, as his thoughts reverted to the Past, he munted 
 Pegasus, and, in a vice tremblin' wi' retrospective emotion, 
 proceeded — ) 
 
 "There's lads that lo'e Queen Mary, 
 
 And lads that lo'e Queen Bess, 
 And ithers lo'e Aspasia, 
 
 The quean o' Pericles. 
 But o'er a' the warld's braw hizzies 
 
 There's ane that bears the rule, — 
 The lass that stood the session, 
 
 And cuist the cutty stool. 
 Wi' a row-dow — at them now — 
 
 Jenny 
 
 Whence come these caitiffs ? " 
 
 Glowerin' veeciously, like a verra bul o' Bashan, at the 
 intruders, he paused a mument ^ "-«' s ~' 
 
 " Hon hoi theoi philousin apothneskei neos," he ex- 
 claimed in the purest Gaelic, an' then — then seizing his 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 32 1 
 
 claymore, an' swingin' it aboon his head, he cam stracht 
 at the Serjeant. 
 
 * 
 
 * 
 
 We gat hame neist day ; and, as the Professor is awa for a 
 week's pleasurin' in the Hielan's o' Abyssinia wi' the Queen 
 o' Sheba an' King John, the Election has been postponed 
 in the meantime, an' wull not be decided until he returns. 
 But the Sergeant — honest man ! — is verra hopefu'. 
 
 Paradise Regained does not rise to the height of 
 Paradise Lost. But though part two is as a rule a 
 rather risky experiment, the second part of Mr Lyell's 
 adventure is quite equal to the first. The School- 
 master's hand had not lost its cunning. If there be 
 greater breadth and freedom in the portrait of the 
 Scotch Professor, there are mellower lights and shades 
 in that of the Oxford Don. The reader who has 
 leisure may now proceed to compare them. 
 
 * 
 
322 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 THE SERGEANT IN THE HI ELANS. 
 
 Dear John Drumly, — It is our gude freen' Mr Lyell has 
 got me to write you a brief narrateeve of the strange adven- 
 tures which befell him and the Sergeant — Sergeant MacTavish 
 — when they went doun in the Dunara Castle to testify to 
 the Hielanmen for the pure word against Robinson Smuth. 
 He is lying in bed with his wife's mutch tied round his head, 
 and a tumbler o' water-gruel on the table ; for the cauld that 
 took him at Loch Boisdale sattled on his stamack, and he is 
 verra bad indeed, and has not drank wan glass of Farintosh 
 neat since Monday week. 
 
 Now, you see, we had been at Machrihanish for twa-three 
 roun's o' the links, and gran' links they are, and the bunkers 
 are jist uncommon. It had been a het afternoon, and the 
 Schoolmaister had been constantly in Hell : so we were 
 takin' a coolin' drink in front of the cozy bit inn at the Pans, 
 kept by that fine woman Mrs Rae, and you know her weel, 
 Mr Drumly. There was an east-country caddy hangin' aboot 
 the door, Ned by name, who had arrived that mornin' by 
 the boat. He had carried for the Captain in the great St 
 Andrews match, whan the Champion Cross had been won 
 by Fasnacloich against heavy odds, — tho', indeed, there is not 
 wan man on the green can beat Fasnacloich whan he is in 
 trim. But it had been a sair fecht, for Gilbert Innes was the 
 last man in, and a better player than Gilbert Innes never 
 handled a club. 
 
 " You'll tak' a dram, Ned," says Mr Lyell, pleesantly ; " it 
 has been het wark to-day." 
 
 " I'm beholden to you, Mr Lyell," says Ned ; " but it's 
 only the laste taste in the warld I can be takin' to-night ; for 
 the Minister, you see, has garr'd me jine the Ludge. Stop, 
 sir, stop — a thumlefu' disna coont — but — and here's your 
 gude health," he added, drainin' the glass wi'oot farther 
 ceremony. " It's Mrs Rae that keeps the gude speerits, I 
 reckon." 
 
 "That she does, Ned, that she does, — an exemplary woman 
 — an exemplary woman. But this single between Fasnacloich 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 323 
 
 and Mr Gilbert — I wish I had seen it, man — the fecht maun 
 hae been truly Humeric. Tell us a' the oots an' inns, Ned ; 
 and you may bring ben anither mutchkin, Mrs Rae, whan you 
 are not otherwise occupied." 
 
 " Weel, sir, you see they turned a' even — neck an' neck. 
 The first hole hame was halved — the Laird holin' a lang putt. 
 The Captain wan the neist an' the neist — twa holes to the 
 gude, and sax to play, — lang odds. But the Laird was cool 
 and keen, and he pit the heather hole in his pooch — the 
 Captain comin' to grief amang the stiff whuns on the brae. 
 At the hole across baith drove weel aff the tee, weel on to 
 Elysium ; but the Captain's second shot gaed slap into Hell, 
 an' that sattled him. A' even again, and fowr to play — a 
 teuch fecht, — the Laird as white as death, and the Captain 
 verra douce, but no canny to come across. Weel, the fourth 
 hole was halved — never seed it played better ; but the neist 
 finished the match — the Laird hookit his ba' into the Preen- 
 cipal's Nose, and the Captain lay snug on the green at the 
 like. After that, the Laird never lookit up, an' Fasnacloich 
 wan easy at the burn." 
 
 It was a bonny evenin' in August — the boom o' the Atlantic 
 in Machrihanish Bay was nae mair than the saftest lullaby — 
 we could hear the bag-pipes across the water in Jura. Weel, 
 Mr Drumly, just as Ned's story cam' to an en', there was a 
 rummle o' wheels on the road ahint the hoose, and presently 
 a pairty o' gentlefolk descended at the front door, — as far as 
 we could judge in the uncertain light, they were three o' them 
 — twa in black coats and white stocks, the third in a kilt. 
 
 "Gude be here ! " said Mr Lyell, whan he saw the kilt, "it 
 canna be Plackie, surely. Sergeant," says he in a whisper, 
 turnin' to Mr MacTavish, wha was takin' his drink quietly, like 
 the douce man he is, "it's the Gaelic chair, Sergeant — the 
 Gaelic chair, wi'oot doot. The appintment is made, and you're 
 the man. But no — that's the MacGregor tartan ; and it's the 
 Royal Stuart (for he is sib, you see, to the auld Kings) that 
 the Professor wears for choice." 
 
 They gaed into the hoose, and after a bit Mrs Rae cam' 
 oot to whar we sat. " They're seekin' you, Mr Lyell, you and 
 the Sergeant, and you're to gang ben directly." 
 
324 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 Noo, Mr Drumly, what I am aboot to relate is strickly 
 private ; on that Mr Lyell is positive ; and you maun gie your 
 word of honour that you will not divulge it — not even to Mrs 
 Drumly — this side the grave. Dr Wull and Sir Hairy are 
 men aboon suspicion ; sae are the Sergeant and Mr Lyell : 
 but there are ill tongues waggin' in the warld, and if it was to 
 get into the irreleegious papers, there would be the deevil to 
 pay — and mair. 
 
 " We've come to see you, Mr Lyell," said Dr Wull, oot o' 
 the partial darkness, for the can'les had not been lichted, 
 " aboot that unhappy lad Smuth — Robinson Smuth. We are 
 fairly seek o' him and his warks. It is clean impossible to 
 grup him — wan micht as weel grup the aurora borealis or the 
 ignis fatuus. He has nae respeck for age and infirmity — 
 mental or pheesical. Auld Dr Muddy is fairly worn aff his 
 legs — Shirra Cawmell is in the dead-thraws— there are times, 
 indeed, whan Sir Hairy himsel' is not sure if he's standin' on 
 his head or his heels. And what's waur, — they are beginnin' 
 to say that his laa is better than the liars', and that he has 
 mair deeveenity than a' the dee-dees. The pison o' asps is 
 under his tongue, and the elders o' Aberdeen and the deacons 
 o' Dunfermline are infeckit wi' the pison. There is not 
 wan Presbytery this side Strathbogie through which the 
 deadly venom has not spread. The demon o' rationalistic 
 creeticism, Mr Lyell, is stalkin' thro' the Ian' ; it waukens up 
 MacHowley in the dead o' nicht, sae that his puir wife canna 
 get a wink o' sleep : there is an end o' Presbyterian sim- 
 pleecity and domestic feleecity if the evil spirit is not laid. 
 Noo, you maun understan' that we had a bit conference last 
 week, — there was me, and Sir Hairy, and Dr Bagg, and Mac- 
 Howley, and a wheen mair ; and we have resolved, Mr Lyell, 
 to bring the business to a feenish. You see, the Commission 
 have appinted a Committee of Inquiry ; there are some raw 
 lads upon it — freens o' Smuth — (appinted perineurium, — tho', 
 indeed, we cud not help it) ; but the majority are discreet 
 and reasonable men, wha ken what belangs to Gospel truth 
 and is becomin' in a meenister o' the Word. The Report is 
 not yet prepared, and it wull not be prented till the Com- 
 mission meets ; for it is onsuitable to expose it to the ignorant 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 325 
 
 creeticism o' the ungodly and malignant. But it wull prove 
 that the articles in the Cycolpcedia are in fack an' laa a per- 
 nicious and detestable assault upon the infallibeelity o' the 
 Scripture narrateeve, inasmuch as thay contain divers passages 
 in which the saintly men o' the Auld Testament are treated 
 wi' unbecomin' fameeliarity, and in which the predictive aspect 
 o' the prophecies (and what is prophecy if it disna predick ?) 
 is disowned and discredited. I tell you this in confidence, 
 Mr Lyell, for it is right that you should know what the Com- 
 mittee — whan it deleeberates — will do. Noo, the Commis- 
 sion in hunc effectum (as Sir Hairy says) is convened to meet 
 on the 27th of October, and this is the 20th of August. It is 
 essential, Mr Lyell, for the peace and prosperity of our Zion, 
 that the Report should be adopted by an overpoorin' majority. 
 But, as I have said, there is a speerit of revolt abroad in the 
 Low country ; and the fack is, my freens, wi'oot further pro- 
 logue, that we maun get the Hielanmen to come and help us. 
 From the bleak hills of Judea the chosen people lookt doun 
 upon the Pheelistines ; and amang your hills and bogs, Ser- 
 geant MacTavish, the pure flame o' Gospel truth still burns 
 freely, undimmed by the fogs o' German pheelology and the 
 stour o' Oxford rationalism. It is not the first time, Sergeant 
 MacTavish, that the Hielanmen have sweept the plain ; it is 
 not the first time, Mr Lyell, that, wi' their Bibles in their 
 han's and their broadswords on their backs, they have testi- 
 fied for Kirk and Covenant ! Listen, Mr Lyell — this is what 
 Dr Bagg said at the Conference — his verra words ; — Go to 
 that understanding man, Mr Lyell, schoolmaister in Cawmel- 
 ton. He is weel acquaint wi' the great Gaelic scholar, Ser- 
 geant MacTavish, who is a cawndidate for the Gaelic chair. 
 Tell them that they are summoned and commissioned by the 
 Kirk to carry thro' this goodly matter. They maun gird 
 up their loins, and go doun in the Dunara Castle to the 
 Outer Hebrides. Amang the misty islands whar Columbus 
 introduced his papistical superstitions, they wull seek oot the 
 deacons and meenisters o' the true Kirk. The puir bodies 
 will be swear to come a' the road to Edinbro', — for the 
 haerst is late this year in the Lews ; but thay maun leave the 
 pleuch and the harrow and the reapin' heuk, and trust that 
 
326 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 Providence will keep the winter back a bit. The Sergeant's 
 Gaelic is known to be the best in the Hielans ; and if he and 
 Mr Lyell between them canna persuade the Hielanmen to 
 atten', it will be fairly impossible for either you or me, Doctor 
 — I tell you frankly." 
 
 Weel, Mr Drumly, the upshot o' the matter was, that the 
 Sergeant and Mr Lyell agreed to go. It was a serious re- 
 sponseebeelity undootedly ; but the gude opeenion o' the 
 Kirk was verra flatterin', and the weather was fine for the time 
 o' year, and the eatin' and drinkin' on boord the Dunara 
 Castle is o' the verra best, and beats the Clydesdale's fairly. 
 
 " And ye'll be pleased," says Dr Wull, turning at last to 
 the man in the kilt, wha was sittin' in an obscure corner wi' the 
 tail o' his kilt pued between his legs, " to meet the Laird o' 
 Fer " 
 
 " Whist, Doctor, whist," says Sir Hairy, kickin' his freen's 
 shins promiscuously under the table. 
 
 " The Man in the Mune," says Dr Wull, pu'in himsel' up, 
 an' winkin' pleesantly on the company. 
 
 " Is it possible ? " says the Sergeant, gettin' on his legs, 
 and glowerin' into the darkness ; " him that was taen up for 
 gatherin' sticks on the Sabbath " 
 
 " The Chancellor o' the Exchequer," the Doctor went on, 
 wi' a humersome chuckle, disregarding the interruption. 
 
 "Ho, ho!" says Mr Lyell, beginnin' to see how the land lay. 
 
 " There is a distressin' amount o' destitution in the Hielans 
 an' Eelands o' the Wast Country, Mr Lyell, especially amang 
 the elders and deacons and meenisters o' the Kirk " 
 
 " Exackly," says Mr Lyell, noddin' his head. 
 
 The Doctor nodded in seempathy ; but Sir Hairy had 
 turned his back, and was attentively regardin' the prent of the 
 Dook aboon the lum. 
 
 You have heard of the enchantments of the Arabian A T icJits, 
 an' have nae doot wutnessed the wicked devices o' the Wuzard 
 o' the North, — the late Mr Anderson ; but it's the truth I'm 
 tellin' you, Mr Drumly, — three wechty bags <?' Bank o' Scotland 
 notes and bullion appeared as if by magic on the table. 
 
 "And the Laird proposes that a decent an' conseederate 
 man should undertak the deestribution, wi' sic personal reinun- 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 327 
 
 eration for travellin' expenses an' subsistence-money as may 
 be deemed necessary an' reasonable." 
 
 " But the laa again' treatin', Doctor ? " Mr Lyell inquired 
 dootfully, after a pause. 
 
 " Hoots, Mr Lyell ! — the State may stick at trifles of that 
 kind ; but the Kirk, as you know, is not subject to Caesar. 
 Whar wud we have been in the '43 if we had permitted 
 oorsels to be hampered by the freevilous technicalities o' the 
 laa ? The Ceevil Coorts have nae jurisdiction within a releeg- 
 ious society ; for a releegious society is a laa unto itself, and its 
 title-deeds are in the Registry above." 
 
 " I was hearin' they were seen to by that glib lad Tyler 
 (an' indeed he is glib wi' the pen, tho' a yammerin' body on his 
 legs)," says the Schoolmaister, who can never resist his bit joke. 
 
 Sir Hairy leuch, but the Doctor was not pleased. 
 
 " For every idle word, Mr Lyell " 
 
 " Hoots, hoots, Doctor ! it was only a bit joke, and a bit 
 joke hurts neither man nor beast. But it's time we were 
 muvin'," says he. " The Dunara Castle, they were tellin' me, 
 is to stop at Arran this trip for twa muckle stots the Dook is 
 sendin' to Lochiel ; so we wull take the early boat to Loch 
 Ranza, an' meet the steamer at Brodick in the evenin', after 
 dinin' wi' my gude freen Mr Macdonald at the Douglas Arms." 
 
 Tho' the early mornin' was thick, the fog lifted wi' the sun. 
 We took a short cut across Ben Noosh, — sendin' the pock- 
 mankey (ivhich was wechty, as you may believe) roun' by the 
 Ivanhoe. The Mountain o' the Wun, steeped in thun'er and 
 racked wi' storm, stude up black as ink against the sky ; yet 
 at pints there were glints o' sunshine that pented the green on 
 the bracken and the purple on the heather ; and from the tap 
 o' Tarsuin we saw a streak o' silver in the west — which be- 
 tokened fine weather at sea. 
 
 " It will be a goot day to-morrow whatever," said the 
 Sergeant on the road doun. 
 
 " The boat is rather crowded to-night," says that fine man 
 Mister Donald, as he gaed us oor tickets, after seein' the stots 
 hoisted in wi' the landing -tackle. "We have the Grand 
 
328 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 International Social, Scientific, and Leeterary Congress (per- 
 sonally conducted) on board, and they occipy every corner o' 
 the cabin. But it's a nice warm evenin' whatever, and you 
 and the Sergeant, with your rugs, and a taste of Talisker to 
 keep the Clyde fog oot o' the stamack, will do fine on deck, 
 Mr Lyell." 
 
 " And this is Mr Lyell," says a tall, handsome, middle-aged 
 young man wha was smokin' a seegarette on the gangway. 
 " What an unlooked-for pleasure ! I was afraid I might have 
 to leave Scotland without meeting you and the Sergeant. 
 Sergeant MacTavish, I've written a book on the Gaelic my- 
 self, and I'm proud to make your acquaintance." 
 
 " I didna jist catch the name," says Mr Lyell, dootfully. 
 
 "To be sure — I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Matthew," 
 says he, liftin' his hat, " Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — all 
 the Apostles rolled into one — the subtler spirit and finer aroma 
 of their rather crude thaumaturgy, you understand, — but you 
 may call me Matt if you like — all my friends do — it's handier. 
 Come along — I've got Mr Donald to put some easy-chairs 
 on deck, and the steward is to bring us a venison pasty and 
 the hot water presently, and we'll make ourselves comfortable 
 for the night. What a balmy night, to be sure ! — with just a 
 tonic touch of salt from the sea. Your Scotch stars are 
 highly respectable, Mr Lyell ; but it's a thousand pities they 
 couldn't spare you a moon." 
 
 The fascination o' that lazy lang-legged English chiel, Mr 
 Drumly, was perfectly incomprehensible. Andrew Lyell is a 
 man o' the warld, and the Sergeant has seen service in ilka 
 quarter o' the globe ; but they were hand in glove wi' him before 
 the remains of the pasty had been removed. It was no gude 
 trying to be deefident and deeplomatic ; — he had learnt ilka 
 word aboot the Confidential Mission to the Hielanmen before 
 the third jug of punch was brewed. 
 
 " I'm a detective, a spiritual detective," says He, lauchin' ; 
 " don't you fancy you can keep anything from me. By the 
 way, Mr Lyell, that portmanteau which I lifted up the ladder 
 — its verra wechty" says he, lookin' the Schoolmaister stracht 
 in the face, and speakin' suddenly in the purest Scots. " Is 
 it the family plate, Mr Lyell ? " 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 329 
 
 " O Lord ! " said the Schoolmaister, lookin' as white as 
 death. 
 
 "Never you mind, Mr Lyell — I'm neither a thief nor a 
 constable — the family silver is safe for me. But this Smith 
 that you speak of — (I've heard the name before, I think — or 
 was it Brown ?) — he's clearly a desperate bad one ; and, were 
 I you, Mr Lyell, I would look well to the spoons. — And so 
 you are bound for the Hebrides like myself, — the farthest 
 Hebrides, as Wordsworth says in one of his forgotten 
 poems — 
 
 " ' Breaking the silence of the seas, 
 Among the farthest Hebrides.' 
 
 I'm not a Wordsworthian myself, mind you — though perhaps 
 the most remarkable and fruitful discovery of my life is con- 
 nected with the old man of Rydal. You have heard of it, Mr 
 Lyell? No? Most people have; but, to be sure, we are 
 here on the confines of civilisation. A little of Words- 
 worth goes a long way, — that's the text, Sergeant, which 
 I have elaborated with astonishing success in my recent 
 selection from his poems. To be recognised far and wide as a 
 great poet, Wordsivorth needs to be relieved of the poetical bag- 
 gage which now encumbers hint ; and until this is done, he has 
 not had a fair cha?tce before the world. That's what I said in 
 the Preface ; and I flatter myself that I divided the ore from 
 the baser metal, the wheat from the chaff, the heavy impedi- 
 menta from the more portable Gladstone bag, with true 
 critical fidelity. And by the way, Mr Lyell, can you furnish 
 me with the missing link ? The Gladstone bag ! What is 
 there in common between the copious rhetoric of St Stephen's 
 and this compact and unpretentious article? You cannot 
 explain it ; nor do I wonder at your inability. For our popu- 
 lar judgments are incalculable ! To establish an Academy of 
 Taste, to which questions of the higher criticism may be 
 referred, has ever been my ambition. But the Forty Thieves 
 — the Forty Immortals, I mean, — where are they to be found ? 
 
 You, and I, and the Sergeant, Mr Lyell " 
 
 They were aff the Mull by this time, and the conversation 
 was temporarily suspended. 
 
330 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 " Mr Lyell," says He, whan he had returned from the side 
 o' the ship, " this is my first (and last) experience of a per- 
 sonally-conducted party. The idea was good : it was intended 
 to bring the leaders of Light and Sweetness together in a 
 friendly way ; but it hasn't worked ; we started from Euston 
 three days ago, and to-night not a soul is on speaking terms 
 with his neighbour. Browning has done nothing but tear his 
 hair over Sordello ; he has clean forgotten what it meant, and 
 as not another soul ever knew, it is now an unfathomable 
 mystery, — like the Darnley murder or the song that Achilles 
 
 sang ; and Alfred — but hush — here he comes " 
 
 And a verra big man began to pace up and doun the deck 
 in front o' us, his lang elf-locks streamin' in the nicht-wind. 
 He was muttering uneasily to himseP. 
 
 " Poor old Alfred, — he is worrying himself about little Ally. 
 He can't at all make out, you see, where the dickens the boy 
 came from ? He is at it now, Mr Lyell, — it is really very 
 distressing, and one hasn't a notion what to give him, — we 
 should have brought Dr John, — ay, ay, there he goes again." 
 
 And oot o' the darkness o' the star-licht cam these mys- 
 terious words, — 
 
 " O dear Spirit, half-lost 
 In thine own shadow, and this fleshly sign 
 That Thou art Thou — who wailest being born 
 And banished into mystery, and the pain 
 Of this divisible-indivisible world, 
 Among the numerable-innumerable 
 Sun, sun, and sun, thro' finite-infinite space, 
 Infinite-finite Time — our mortal veil 
 And shattered phantom of that infinite One, 
 Who made thee inconceivably Thyself 
 Out of his whole World-self and all in all." 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! " observed a dreich-lookin' man, wi' his hair 
 pued across his nose, who had joined us unnoticed as we were 
 list'nin' to the geeberish. " It is clear that to Tennyson, as 
 to Carlyle and myself, it has become a quite utterly unspeak- 
 able business. Life and death, birth and begetting, the un- 
 known eternity of the past and the unknown eternity of the 
 future — have they not, one and all, become intensely incred- 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 33 1 
 
 ible ? And we are expected to unravel the tangled skein by 
 the rule of three and the fardels of political economy ! You 
 fancy, my foolish friends (some of you at least), that two and 
 two make four ; it is not so ; that two and two make four has 
 been to me for many years a proposition not only intrinsically 
 preposterous, but profoundly immoral. The shallow sophistries 
 of a servile logic, the degrading formulas of a mercenary 
 arithmetic " 
 
 He followed the ither into the darkness like a dream ; and 
 then Mr Matthew resumed, — 
 
 " Lively company, you will say, very lively company, for a 
 man rather hipped by London dinners and London fogs. 
 The fact is, Mr Lyell, that we English are all Puritans by 
 nature, — the Hebrew element comes out in us, the Hellenic 
 cheerfulness drops away from us, the moment we are over 
 sixty. Originally, no doubt, a form of dyspepsia, Puritanism 
 has by this time entered deeply into our moral nature, tainting 
 the conscience as well as affecting the stomach. And — but 
 what a shindy these fellows in the steerage are making ! — why 
 — God bless my soul ! — it's Tom Hughes and Froude trying 
 to pitch Swinburne overboard. Let us trust, Mr Lyell, that 
 the vile conspiracy will be frustrated : but of course," he 
 continued placidly, as he resumed his seegarette, " of course 
 it's no affair of ours; and if the unspeakable Swinburne should 
 follow the unspeakable Turk into the darkness, why, between 
 ourselves, Sergeant, there are one or two choice morsels of 
 
 rhyme, by a friend of my own, with the Publisher Well, 
 
 Mr Lyell, as I was saying, the gloom that hangs over modern 
 England is due as much to its religion as to its fog. Why, 
 then, should you and I seek to perpetuate the grotesque illu- 
 sions of its dismal and illiberal life ? That they are illusions 
 no one doubts ; for, except to some half-dozen old gentlemen 
 in the country, your precious Westminster Confession has be- 
 come absolutely antiquated. Indeed, Mr Lyell, the whole 
 of the anthropomorphic and miraculous religion of tradition 
 is ceasing to be credible even to our women. You may 
 make-believe for a little longer if you like ; but you had 
 much better bury it decently out of sight without more ado. 
 Nor is there anything surprising in this, — you are only reaping 
 
332 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 what you have sown. The Stream of Tendency by which all 
 things seek to fulfil the law of their being, the Eternal which 
 makes for Righteousness — and what more can we say? — the 
 temple of this August Idea has been materialised into an 
 English middle-class Olympus, from which all the joy and 
 grace of the Hellenic is withdrawn. It is only a superficial 
 antagonism, Mr Lyell, that exists between the man of science 
 and myself — a mere juggle on words. For if the promise and 
 potency of every form of life are to be found in matter, where 
 is the difference between us ? Call it matter if you like, Mr 
 Professor ; I call it spirit. No, Mr Lyell, the men of science 
 are not the materialists. The ideas which science appropriates 
 are intrinsically immaterial — rising above the fogs of sensible 
 phenomena into an ampler ether and a diviner air ; and noth- 
 ing touches the soul to finer issues than the contemplation 
 of the Sovereign Laws of Universal Life. Whereas those 
 grotesque and fantastic figures which middle-class misery and 
 
 madness and malice have painted upon the darkness 
 
 Ah, Mr Lyell, on a night like this, when innumerable worlds 
 are wheeling noiselessly through the void, can you not for one 
 brief moment divest yourself of a too obtrusive and clamant 
 personality, can you not lose yourself for one moment in the 
 Mellow Stream of Universal Being, content to have it said for 
 you, as your sole title to immortality — He lived in the Eternal 
 Order, and the Eternal Order never dies ? " 
 
 There was a curious fire in his eyes — veesible in the dark- 
 ness — as he uttered the last words, and for some minutes 
 no wan spake. Mr Lyell had a creepin' feelin' aboot his 
 back ; he looked at the Sergeant, but the Sergeant was fast 
 asleep. 
 
 " Weel," says Mr Lyell, at last, " I'm not illeebral or in- 
 queesitorial ; but you wull admit, Mr Matthew, that something 
 maun be done wi' heretics, Papists, Sabbath-breakers, sheep- 
 stealers, and siclike? What wud you do wi' a misbeliever, 
 Mr Matthew, if I may tak the leeberty of asking ? " 
 
 " It is Macleod's Universal Sheep-dip that is goot 
 for them," said a sepoolcral vice. It was the Sergeant 
 speaking in his sleep ; but whether he was meanin' heretics 
 or gimmers or tups, we could not tell. 
 
A SCOTCH TROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 333 
 
 " Ah, well, Mr Lyell, the Sergeant may not be so far wrong. 
 For removing inconvenient vermin the Highland sheep-dip is 
 invaluable. Your Robertson Smiths will cease from vexing 
 the souls of the fathers in Israel when they have had a touch 
 or two of the tar-brush. But enough of Scotch theology, — 
 a little of it, like Wordsworth, you know, goes a long way. 
 Why, that must be Erin-go-bragh over there? The faint 
 blue line along the horizon, is it indeed the Emerald Isle ? 
 She looks peaceful enough from the outside, to be sure ; 
 but what a legion of evil spirits have taken up their abode in 
 her, and how they are tearing her to pieces ! You are a 
 Liberal, I presume, Mr Lyell ; most Scotchmen are, I am 
 told." 
 
 " At preesent I'm Leebral. You see I was a Tory durin' 
 the time they were in offisch ; but they never did me ony 
 gude : and what gude they did to Scotland, savin' to mak 
 Taper a shirra and Tadpole a lord, I canna tell. So, in the 
 meantime, I'm Leebral." 
 
 "Nothing like conscientious convictions, Mr Lyell. For 
 my own part, I am rather inclined to go over to the Barbarians. 
 I love light, and sweetness, and reasonableness, and am as 
 little a lover of superstition as the most advanced Radical in 
 the Cabinet ; but the passion of the mob is not a weapon 
 which I care to handle. What communion has light with 
 darkness ? How can the lover of the idea yoke himself with 
 the blind tumultuary forces of ignorance and fanaticism ? We 
 were told the other day, to be sure, that a stock of prime 
 political ideas might be laid in for future use by the young 
 men of Birmingham meeting together at their political clubs, 
 and airing over their beer the sterile and passionate common- 
 places of Radicalism. Not in this way, ye gods ! — not at 
 such Thyestean banquet of clap-trap — is a wise and under- 
 standing people formed. — But against the mighty sweep of 
 the democracy, what avail our faint and feeble protests ? 
 We shy and modest scholars, Mr Lyell, are an old-fashioned 
 community, and the new beatitude which Birmingham has 
 invented — Blessed are the cocksure ! — is worth any two of 
 the old." 
 
 He was interrupit by a terrific snort from the sleepin' 
 
334 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 Sergeant. The deep guttural soun's followed each other \vi' 
 melodious preceesion, shapin' themselves at last into the 
 solemn march and rhythmic cadence of Gaelic pottery. Mr 
 Lyell explained to Him how it was. 
 
 " My dear sir," says He, takin' oot o' his coat-pocket a bit 
 slate and skeelyvine, " this is a psychological and philological 
 experience of the deepest interest. The Sergeant's Gaelic 
 differs in many respects from the Gaelic we speak at Oxford. 
 So please oblige me, as he proceeds, with a free or literal 
 translation, as suits you best." 
 
 I am not good at writing the Gaelic ; but the English o' 
 the Sergeant's monologue, by that fine man and gran' scholar, 
 Mr Skene — and a fine man and a gran' scholar he is — will be 
 fand in his Hielan book. 
 
 The licht by this time was beginnin' to break : we had 
 entered the Sound o' Jura. But He was as brisk as ever. 
 
 " What I miss in your lakes and mountains, Mr Lyell — 
 what I particularly miss in them — is Urbanity. Scottish 
 scenery is more or less brutal. Now, if that Peak " (he was 
 lookin' at wan o' the Paps) " had dipped the other way, or if 
 the crude blue of this unusually movable water 1 were softened 
 by a wash of cobalt, how far better it would have been ! 
 But the Something or Other in the world that looks after the 
 picturesque has very rudimentary notions of form and colour. 
 Do not suppose that I harbour any prejudice against your 
 country ; — I am ready to admit (though I was born among 
 them) that even our English lakes are not entirely successful. 
 You will know what I mean, Sergeant MacTavish, when I say 
 that the Note of Provinciality is painfully apparent. The 
 Lancashire lakes are local and shallow, and want the ineffable 
 sentiment of the Middle Age. This, of course, is the reason 
 why Wordsworth, their chief interpreter, is local and shallow, 
 and wants the ineffable sentiment of the Middle Age — which 
 belongs, indeed, to Oxford alone. O Oxford ! Oxford ! — 
 Hullo! here come the rest of the personally - conducted, 
 looking very gash in the morning air. Poor devils, it must 
 have been stuffy down-stairs. — You see that lad on the taffrail, 
 Mr Lyell? — that's Black or Brown or Green — I forget his 
 
 1 It was only a bit jabble after all. 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 335 
 
 name — the fellow who hails from Styornoway, you know. 
 By Jove ! what a lot of body colour the beggar must use ! — 
 doesn't he lay it on thick ? — And now, Sergeant, just one 
 mouthful before we turn in for a tub, — a rizzared haddie, 
 shall we say, or the ham and eggs of the British Philistine ? " 
 
 How it cam aboot, Mr Drumly, was never exackly known. 
 It was an instantaneous cat-ass-trophy. The members of the 
 personally-conducted pairty were colleckit roun' the funnel 
 (for the mornin' air was chilly), and, wi'oot a moment's notice, 
 the biler burst. The hail members o' the pairty, including 
 the conductor, were blawn into the air, while the ship herseP 
 began to sink, as it appeared to us. 
 
 But He was equal to the deeficulties o' the position. 
 
 " Let us save ourselves, Sergeant," says He. " Jump into 
 the dingy, Mr Lyell, and we'll be clear of the wreck before 
 they know what we are about. There's just room for three. 
 Sal us reipubliccc suprema /ex." 
 
 And in anither minute we w r ere clear o' the sinkin' ship (if 
 it did sink, which we had nae leisure to ascertain), and floatin' 
 wi' the tide to the nearest Ian'. 
 
 It's an ill wind that blaws naebody gude. Had it not been 
 for the Sergeant's leg we would never have got to the shore ; 
 for there was not wan oar in the boat, and the pockmankey 
 was a dead wecht. However, we managed to get the leg 
 unscrewed ; and it answered verra weel as a rudder. 
 
 Oh, Mr Drumly, it's a bonnie island ! The white eider- 
 drakes are jist in thoosan's, and the sealchs are as tame as 
 Robin-redbreasts. And a' nicht lang you hear the pipe o' the 
 plover and the skirl o' the whaup ; and you draw the blanket 
 up to your nose, an' dream o' the blessed islands which were 
 veesited by the wise Ulysses. And the grey rock wi' its 
 border o' purple heather (and the heather this year was jist 
 uncommon) rises oot o' the green sod, whar the bog-pimpernel 
 and the loose-strife are bloomin' amang the bracken. And 
 the ferns, Mr Drumly ! — there are jist perfect thickets o' the 
 hartstongue, and the hay-scented, and the sea-spleenwort, and 
 the Royal. 
 
336 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 "Indeed, Mr Lyell," says He, "we have fallen upon our 
 feet. This is the island valley of Avilion (as you may have 
 heard), to which they brought the wounded Arthur, — 
 
 " ' Where falls not hail or rain or any snow ' ; 
 
 or is it not rather," he continued, "that warm bay among 
 the green Illyrian hills of which a not altogether ignoble poet 
 has sung? 
 
 ' ' ' And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes 
 Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, 
 Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore, 
 In breathless quiet after all their ills. 
 Nor do they see their country, nor the place 
 Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills, 
 Nor the unhappy palace of their race, 
 Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more.' 
 
 To us, Mr Lyell, has a like felicity been accorded. Sole- 
 sitting by the shores of old romance and religion — unvext 
 by Bishop or Beadle — we shall recover our sanity — we shall 
 cease to be sad." 
 
 And the inhabitants were mair than freenly. Donald the 
 inn-keeper is a man o' judgment and discretion (it is a blen' o' 
 Farintosh and Talisker that he keeps) ; and wha can describe 
 the Laird, Sir Duncan ? You see, the Sergeant had been in 
 his company in the Crimea (whar the Sergeant lost his leg, 
 and Sir Duncan his twa fingers) ; and the moment Sir Duncan 
 heard it was his auld corporal, he had him up to the Castle, 
 and there were fine times for the Sergeant. 
 
 It was only the second morning after we landit that Mur- 
 doch the keeper (and Murdoch, who is a fine big man, was 
 pentit for the Queen's ain buik, as you know, Mr Drumly) 
 cam doun to tell us that there was to be a sealch-hunt that day. 
 They were takin' the big boat, and there wud be room for the 
 three o' us. Sae by the time the Colonel drove doun, we 
 were ready on the pier. 
 
 Weel, Mr Drumly, we had a famous day. Mr Matthew 
 was jist the life and sowl o' the pairty. At wan moment he 
 wud swear that he didna care a bodle for Sir Walter's bastard 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 337 
 
 epicks (as he ca'ed them) ; at anither he declared that the 
 Lord o' the Isles was jist as fine and breezy a cruise roun' the 
 wast coast as the heart o' man could desire. He wud settle 
 in Scotland himseP, he said, if it wasna that he micht possibly 
 come across a Scotchman 
 
 " But this is grand ! " he went on, whan we had run roun' 
 to the lonely rocks whar the great sea-lions dwall. For you 
 maun understand, Mr Drumly, that there are twa kinds o' 
 sealchs — the Raon and the Tapist. It was the great Tapists 
 we were seekin' that day. They live on the ootside reefs, wi' 
 not a rock (except the Dhu Hertsich) between them and 
 Newfundlan'. It is seldom they see the face of man, except 
 whan a big ship in the wild winter weather, after wan cruel 
 scrape amang the breakers, goes stracht to the bottom wi' 
 every sowl on board. We were lying between Cann-riva an' 
 Ellan-na-rhoan, in a braid open channel which the blind 
 rollers dinna reach. The wan rock was covered wi' sealchs o' 
 the smaller sort — grey shinin' objec's lying aboot in coontless 
 numbers on the wrack. (You can tell a sealch, Mr Drumly, 
 by its shimmer on the wrack ; for the tangle, you observe, 
 disna refleck the licht.) Black bullet-heads were constantly 
 appearin' aboon the water, — risin' and sinkin' noiselessly, or 
 lookin' aboot wi' an air o' conseederate enquiry for places to 
 Ian' canny. Them on the rock were jist obviously in the 
 enjoyment of perfect feeleecity, — lollin' lazily on their backs 
 in the heat, or fannin' themsels' wi' their flappers as a leddy 
 wi' her fan. Only the great Tapists — the sea-lions on Cann- 
 riva — were snappin' and snarlin' and fechtin'. 
 
 " Hand me the glass," says Mr Matthew to the under- 
 keeper, whan we had landit Sir Duncan and Murdoch. " I 
 must have a near look at a Tavish. What a row they are 
 making, to be sure ! That toothless old villain is an ugly 
 customer when roused, I'll be bound. Look at his back 
 teeth, — or rather at the stumps ! I tell you what it is, Mr 
 Lyell — they are holding an in hunc effectum meeting of Com- 
 mission, and the Moderator (that's what you call him ?) is in 
 the chair ! Now, I wonder what the subject under discussion 
 may be? One would like to know what they think about 
 predestination, and free-will, and effectual calling, and the 
 
 Y 
 
338 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 origin of species, and the punishment of the wicked ? Have 
 they any Darwins or Huxleys among them ? Anyway, it's 
 theological — for they are beginin' to show their teeth. I have 
 it now, sure enough : keep the boat steady for one moment, 
 will you ? 'Tis a trial for heresy, I declare ; the queer, in- 
 quisitive, hungry-looking little chap in the centre is the cul- 
 prit, and the grandfather of all seals — the owner of the tusks 
 — has been laying down the law and practice of the Kirk. 
 The young one wishes to put in a word, but they won't listen 
 — not they. See how their flappers are going, and their tails ! 
 
 Hear to the worrying and growling ! And now there is a 
 general scrimmage ; old Methuselah has got the heretic by 
 the tail — he holds on like grim death — they'll be off the 
 rock presently if they don't look sharp — ay, ay — down 
 they go into the deep water, and the whole Commission 
 after them." 
 
 It was Sir Duncan's bullet that, in pint o' fack, had dis- 
 persed the Assembly ; and whan we rowed up to the place, 
 we found that wan of them had been badly shot. The beast, 
 however, had slipt doun the side of the rock : and tho' the 
 hail sea was red wi' his blude, it was lang or ever we could 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 339 
 
 manage to heuk him up. Whan he cam to the surface, Mr 
 Drumly, it was jist fearsome to look at him, — a' the warst 
 passions o' his last mument o' controversy were stamped upon 
 his face. For it was the Moderawtor himsel'. He weighed 
 exackly 44 stun. 
 
 We ran back in the best o' speerits. There was a spankin' 
 breeze, and the air was jist intoxicatin'. (If it cud only be 
 bottled and exported like the meeneral water, there wud be 
 sma' necessity for pheesic.) And the Colonel and oor Oxfurd 
 freen' gaed aff a' the road hame like Roman can'les or Manby's 
 rockets — the best o' firewarks. Mr Matthew sang wan o' 
 Mendelshun's melodies (improved by Sir Herbert Yokeley) ; 
 he danced a reel wi' the Sergeant ; and whan he was fairly 
 oot o' breath, he got Murdoch to recite an Eerish psalm that 
 was brought to the island by Saint Columba. It is in Mr 
 Skene's new book, and the translation is fine and leeteral, 
 bein' for the maist part a concise narrateeve by Fin-ma-Coul 
 himsel' of what was doin' in Kintyre aboot the time o' the 
 Deluge ; — 
 
 "As to me, I remained a year under the flood. 
 There had not been slept, nor will there be slept, 
 A sleep better than that which I had " 
 
 " That'll do, Murdoch, that'll do ; he must have been an 
 uncommon long time under water ; — unless he was one of 
 your own seals, I don't very well see how he got it out of 
 him. But I suppose we were all seals about that time ; 
 and, to be sure, I would rather any day be a seal than 
 a chimpansee. I'm told they have a fine ear for music. 
 Gandebant carmine phocce. But they'll prefer the Gaelic 
 tunes, I daresay, in these parts — Ossian, Fingal, Blackie, 
 and that sort of thing ? " 
 
 " Well, sir," says Murdoch, " you will know that aal our 
 shepherds they have two dogs — the one he speaks the English, 
 the other he will speak the Gaelic. But I do not know 
 myself what the sealchs will be saying, — tho' the old people 
 in the Island " 
 
 "Exactly. They have heard the sea-maids sing many a 
 time : and by the way, Colonel, the Colonsay mermaid who 
 
34-0 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 lost her heart to the Laird must have been a sweet slip of a 
 lass. How does the old ballad run ? — 
 
 " ' On Jura's heath how sweetly swell 
 
 The murmurs of the mountain bee ! 
 How softly mourns the writhed shell 
 
 Of Jura's shore, its parent sea ! 
 And softly floating o'er the deep, 
 
 The Mermaid's sweet sea-soothing lay, 
 That charmed the dancing waves to sleep, 
 
 Before the bark of Colonsay. ' 
 
 But — seals or mermaids, Murdoch — there's something very 
 human indeed about a phoca, and when one of them sails up 
 to take a look at my tweed wideawake — with that wistful 
 appeal for sympathy in her brown eyes — hang me if I wouldn't 
 miss her on purpose ! " 
 
 The neist day was the Sabbath. 
 
 It was wan o' the disadvantages of our position that there 
 was nae Free Kirk in the Island. But the Rev. Feter Mac- 
 Craw, 1 wha ludged at the Inn, spoke on the hillside on 
 Sabbaths during the summer months. He was gey an' auld, 
 and he cam here for change o' air, — leaving the parish o' 
 Drambogie to the services o' the assistant an' successor that 
 the Presbytery had provided. " What's the gude o' keepin' a 
 dowg," says he, " if you have to bark yoursel' ? " He was 
 weel acquaint wi' his co-presbyter, Dr Dingweel o' Drumna- 
 drouthy, and he brocht a sermon by the Doctor in his pocket, 
 which he undertook to read us that day. It was a verra fine 
 discoorse, and was reported in the Scotsman paper at the time 
 (wi' nae gude objec', you may be sure), and if I can get a 
 copy o' the paper I wull pit it in a note. It was upon 
 Robinson Smuth, as you may easily understan', — Dr Dingweel 
 is faithfu' aboon the lave, and disna spare himsel' or his freens. 
 Wha was Robinson Smuth ? What call had he to trouble the 
 Kirk? What call had he to hamper them wi' the furms o' 
 process? A martyr? How cud he be a martyr whan he had 
 
 1 Peter is wan o' the Parliament Hoose MacCraws, — ye'll mind Angus o' 
 the First Deeveesion? 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 34 1 
 
 keepit every penny o' his steepen'? The Hielanmen kent 
 weel hoo to answer his rationaleestic deeficulties : yet it was 
 said that the Hielanmen were behind the age ! It micht be 
 that they had sma' respec' for the unsanctified cleverness o' 
 the creetic an' the pheelologer ; it micht be that they had sma' 
 respec' for ony eminence o' learnin' which cud be reached by 
 scholarship and not by grace ; but they were steadfast an' 
 immuvable as their ain immuvable mountains, and it was jist 
 as possible to tie their han's wi' reed tape and the furms o' 
 process as the wind which sweept the corries o' Cruachan. 
 
 "I like that kind of man," said Mr Matthew, as we tramped 
 hame thro' the heather in the gloamin' — " I like him and his 
 picturesque irrationality. Yes, Mr Lyell, these old boys retain 
 what the young ones want ; — they have character, — they are 
 idiomatic as their native proverbs ; and while the insipid, 
 emasculate, cosmopolitan puppy will be forgotten to-morrow, 
 the mother wit and the homely saws of these Patriarchal Sages 
 will be kept in lively remembrance through many a mountain 
 glen, — for one generation, if not for two. And then they are 
 part and parcel of a great corporation, and corporations are 
 cohesive and permanent. The man who cuts himself loose 
 from the organised prejudices of his contemporaries is a fool 
 for his pains. For after all, my friends, what and how much 
 do the wisest of us know ? I stand by the immeasurable sea, 
 and stretch out my hands into the unfathomable darkness ; — 
 Tendentemque mantis ripce alter ioris a more." 
 
 It still wanted a day till the steamer was due. We were 
 sittin' on the shore near the Red Rocks. The sea at oor 
 feet was like a sheet o' glass ; phantom islands rose oot o' the 
 purple mist : on the ither han', the sunset was clear over New- 
 fundlan'. As we sat there we saw a boat comin' stracht from 
 Jura. We were rather drowsy at the time. There had been 
 strange soun's heard in the Inn durin' the nicht, which had 
 broken oor sleep. It seemed as if a' the deevils that passed 
 into the swine were fechtin' in Gaelic ootside the front door. 
 " Wan of oor shepherds and wan of the principallest men in 
 the island had a sort o' misunderstanding," Donald remarked, 
 whan we saw him in the mornin'. Then there was an auld 
 
342 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 bantam-cock an' a young Cheena fule wha began crawin' hours 
 before it was daylicht. Mr Matthew had flung his brushes, and 
 his big boots, and his best breeks, and every article o' furniture 
 in the bedroom, at them oot o' the window ; but they crawed 
 as crusely as ever ; — it was a competitive competition, and the 
 little wan wud not be beat. Weel, Mr Drumly, the boat cam 
 nearer an' nearer, but the tide was contrar. It got dark an' 
 rayther chilly; so the Sergeant an' Mr Lyell gaed into the 
 hoose. They were jist tellin' the lass to bring the het water 
 ben, whan — 
 
 " Mr Robinson Smuth ! ! ! " says Donald, openin' the par- 
 lour-door. 
 
 " Angels and Ministers o' Grace ! ! ! ! " says Mr Lyell. 
 " The Devil !!!!!" says the Sergeant. 
 It was Himself, Mr Drumly, and he began the conversa- 
 tion wi' perfec' affabeelity in the native tongue. " AAS ofiop 
 ovto cjiosico <popv to piy Svfji <pvv iSos rjorov Kpo tov 6o\iy os. But, 
 gentlemen, shall I address you in Gaelic or English ? " he 
 added, seein' that Mr Lyell did not exackly follow him. 
 
 The Sergeant's eyes watered. " It is the goot Gaelic he 
 has. But you will speak the English, sir, if you please — this 
 shentleman has not much of the Gaelic now." 
 
 " More's the pity," says he, " for it is the language of skeel- 
 ful poets and brave men. Gentlemen, I heard you were in 
 the island, and it occurred to me that a few minutes' conver- 
 sation in private might tend to remove certain misconceptions 
 
 which " 
 
 " I'm agreeable, Mr Smuth," says the Sergeant, wi' ready 
 politeness. " But you will be takin' your doch-an-dorris before 
 startin' ? " 
 
 " Not a drop, Sergeant. Wi' sic a keen and wechty contro- 
 versialist as Mr Lyell " 
 
 The Schoolmaister booed. 
 
 Weel, Mr Drumly, they were at it a' nicht. The young lad 
 was maist respectfu', as was only proper and becomin', seein' 
 that the Sergeant and Mr Lyell are men o' age, and wecht in 
 the community. But, Mr Drumly, facks are facks. If Jeere- 
 miah had mair birr than the minor prophets, what's the gude 
 
A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 343 
 
 of sayin' that he had not ? If every word o' the Pentateuch 
 was not written by Moses, whar's the sense of sayin' that it 
 was ? Facks are facks, Mr Drumly. 
 
 The sun was risin' over Jura when they shook han's. The 
 Sergeant and Mr Lyell walked doun wi' him to the pier, whar 
 the men were lying asleep in their boat. The sail was hoisted; 
 the oars run oot ; and by the time they gat back to the Inn, 
 only a dim speck was veesible on the water — weel across to 
 Ardlussa. 
 
 They stude at the Inn door for a bit — the mornin' air was 
 sweet and balmy. 
 
 "What do you think, Sergeant?" says Mr Lyell. 
 
 " What do you think, Mr Lyell ? " says the Sergeant. 
 
 " I think we are twa auld fules," says Mr Lyell. 
 
 "You will speak for yourself, Andrew Lyell," says the Ser- 
 geant, liftin' his leg to munt the stair. " But he is a clever lad 
 whatever, and it is the goot Gaelic he has." 
 
 {For Mr Lyell.) 
 ANGUS GRIERSON, 
 
 Probationer in Cawmelton. 
 
 So much for the Sergeant. R.I.P. But it is not 
 the Sergeant alone who has joined the majority; here 
 is a bundle of pleasant letters addressed to Mr Lyell, 
 congratulating him on the success of his embassy ; 
 and the writers are all gone, — " fallen upon lasting 
 silence," as Mr Stevenson says finely. " Doctor John," 
 Principal Tulloch, Spencer Baynes, Professor Sellar, 
 James Brown of Paisley, John Nichol, Patrick Alex- 
 ander. The ranks of our little army have indeed been 
 sadly thinned ; only a few veterans remain, and round 
 
344 A SCOTCH PROFESSOR AND AN OXFORD DON. 
 
 them the evening shadows are closing in. Does the 
 horizon widen as we grow old ? Or does the capacity 
 to rise with the lark, — to rise skyward with the lark 
 and share the rapture of her song — belong to the 
 young only ? I fear sometimes that it does. Yet 
 even the weariest may be permitted to hail and 
 welcome her. It is our latest poet who writes — 
 
 " My heart is dashed with cares and fears, 
 My song comes fluttering and is gone ; 
 O, high above this home of tears, 
 Eternal joy, sing on." 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. 
 
MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON AND 
 THE SCOTLAND OF MARY STUART. 
 Edition de Luxe, with six Portraits of Mary 
 Stuart, after Janet and Others, and an Auto- 
 type Reproduction of Sir Noel Paton's Sketch 
 of the Queen. 2 Vols, demy 8vo, 28s. net. 
 
 NOTICES OF FIRST EDITION. 
 
 " Le meilleur de ces livres est sans conteste l'ouvrage de deux volumes 
 que M. John Skelton d'Edimbourg a ecrit sous le titre, ' Maitland de 
 Lethington : L'Ecosse de Marie Stuart.' L'auteur, deja honorablement 
 connu par un grand nombre de travaux litteraires et politiques, nous y 
 donne la biographie du Secretaire d'Etat de Marie, avec de nombreuses et 
 interessantes digressions sur l'aspect general des affaires d'Ecosse au XVI e 
 siecle. L'ouvrage, ecrit d'un style vif et pittoresque, est fort attrayant, en 
 meme temps que sur beaucoup de points il ouvre des perspectives nou- 
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 " Wir schliessen unser Referat liber eine in ihrer Art classische Schrift 
 die kein Freund der Wahrheit ohne reiche Belehrung aus der Hand legt." 
 — Professor Bellesheim, in Literarische Rundschau. 
 
 " It has been reserved for the ardent polemical zeal and brilliant literary 
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 personality of Maitland of Lethington, the arch-antagonist of John Knox." 
 — Professor David Masson, on Scotch Historical Research. 
 
 "To those who have not passed through the painful experiences of an 
 examiner, I may recommend the brief discussion of the genuineness of the 
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 " Mr Skelton's now completed work forms one of the most original and 
 valuable contributions to Scottish history completed within living memory." 
 — Professor Story, in the Scots Magazine. 
 
"Mr Skelton's picturesque and fascinating volumes on 'Maitland of 
 
 Lethington.' A striking historical portrait, limned with careful and 
 
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 Stuart. 
 
 " Mr Skelton has produced a work of much brilliancy ; his style is both 
 lucid and animated, his descriptions are vivid, and his characters are al- 
 ways distinctly and forcibly drawn. As a defence of Maitland it is at 
 least ingenious and well sustained." — The Rev. A. J. Carlyle, in the 
 Histoi-ical Review. 
 
 " Of Mr Skelton's charming and animated work I desire to make special 
 mention. The Lethington of these pages owes his existence to Mr Skel- 
 ton's portrait. " — Michael Field, in The Tragic Mary. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London. 
 
 MARY STUART. By John Skelton, C.B., 
 
 LL.D. (Boussod, Valladon, & Co. : 1893.) 
 
 Edition on Japanese paper, £8 net {put of print). 
 Ordinary Edition, £2, 8s. net {put of print). 
 
 "The splendid monograph on Mary Stuart by Mr Skelton is perhaps 
 the most sumptuous volume ever published in illustration of the life and 
 
 fortunes of the beautiful and unhappy Queen of Scots Mr Skelton's 
 
 contribution to the controversy is of great weight and moment, and cannot 
 be neglected by any serious student of the subject." — The Times. 
 
 "There are four portions of this book which, regarded strictly as litera- 
 ture, could hardly have been surpassed, — the account of Mary's life in 
 France, the description of the Scotland into which she was plunged, the 
 
 indictment of her enemies, and the narrative of her life in England 
 
 Mr Skelton has done much. Above all he has, in this superb book, ex- 
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 greatest, the most unfortunate, the best loved, the best hated, of all the 
 sorceresses of history." — The Spectator. 
 
 "We do not think the case for Queen Mary has ever been argued so 
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24 List of Books Published by 
 
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William Blackwood and Sons. 25 
 
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26 List of Books Published by 
 
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