m^ mm. Tm W^'^M^^^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/autobiographyofh01taylrich HENRY TAYLOR'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOL. I. T.ON'DOIf : PRISTED BT 8POTTIS\TOODK AND CO., KKW-STUKKT SQCAK5 AND PARLIAUBNT STBKBT From a Photograph by Mr. Hawker, Boumemojith. AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOE 1800-1875 ' Small sands the mountain, moments make the year. And trifles life,' (YouxG) IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. 1800 1844 LONDON LONGMANS, GEEEN AND CO. 1885 All rights resfHOi^d INTEODUCTION. This work was begun in 1865, continued as leisure served till 1877, and then privately printed for com- munication to a few friends. Any readers who may reach the last pages will find that it was intended only for posthumous publication ; and till the end of 1884 no other was contemplated. I mention this because, had it been otherwise, it might have been somewhat differently written. But publication in the 85th year of a man's life comes rather near to posthumous publication ; and, after a little revision, I have not found much difficulty in consenting to its present appearance. Bournemouth : March, 1885. • r J CONTENTS OP THE FIKST VOLUME. CHAPTER I. rAGR Birth and Parentage ......... 1 CHAPTER II. Boyhood . 22 CHAPTER III. Early Manhood at Witton-le-Wear — Influence of my Stepmother, of Miss Fenwick, and of Southey — First Appearance in Print . 37 CHAPTER lY. London on a Venture — Appointment in the Colonial Office and early Operations there . ; 59 CHAPTER V. Early Friends and Associates — Hyde Villiers and his Family — John Mill — Charles Austin— John Romilly — Edward Strutt . 73 CHAPTER VI. Speeches — Articles in the 'Quarterly Review' — GifFord — * Isaac Gomnenus ' — Visits to the Continent and to Miss Fenwick at Bath — Views of myself 86 ss- Mil CONTENTS OF CHAPTER VII. PAGE The History of Philip Van Artevelde adopted as the subject of a Drama — Proposal of a new Employment which does not take effect— Miss Villiers .... ... 109 CHAPTER VIII. Men and Affairs in the Colonial Office — Lords Goderich and Howick — Business or Poetry, which ? — Question of Slavery — Lords Goderich and Howick succeeded by Mr. Stanley and Mr. Lefevre 117 CHAPTER IX. *Let Indignation vex him even as a thing that is raw ' — Postscript to the previous Chapter 138 CHAPTER X. Death of Hyde Villiers — Commission of Inquiry into the Poor Laws— Part taken by my Father in its Operations . . 146 CHAPTER XI. The Elliots — Friendship in the Bud and in the Yellow Leaf — Verses — Visit to Walter Scott— Wordsworth— Sydney Smith . . 159 CHAPTER XII. Poets in the first Quarter of the Nineteenth Century — Byron — Moore — Coleridge — Wordsworth — Publication and Success of * Philip Van Artevelde ' — Social Results to me— Lansdowne House — Holland House— Publication of ' The Statesman ' . 186 CHAPTER XIII. Mr. Spring Rice succeeds Mr. Stanley as Secretary of State— Mr. Spring Rice and his Family— 'The Four Ages' of Titian -A Proposal of Marriage, and what followed . . • . . 208 THE FIBST VOLUME. ix CHAPTER XIV. PAGE Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone — Scheme for a Literary Insti- tute—Literary Pensions — Lord Aberdeen is succeeded by Lord Glenelg, and Mr. Hay by Mr. Stephen — James Spedding in the Colonial Office — His Ways and Works — His Bacon and his Sonnet —Mr. Manning (now Archbishop of Westminster) resigns his Junior Clerkship ....... 224 CHAPTER XV. Transition of the Negroes from Apprenticeship into Freedom — Measure for their Welfare propounded and mutilated in the Cabinet and defeated by Sir R. Peel in the House of Commons — Lord Melbourne's Government resigns : it is reconstituted, but the Measure is gone — The Negrots suffer the consequences for twenty-six years ........ 242 CHAPTER XVI. Diligent Endeavours of Friends to find me a Wife . . . 269 CHAPTER XVII. Retreat from Troubles into Imaginative Writing — * Edwin the Fair ' — Southey's Brain softens, and he is lost to me . . . 277 CHAPTER XVIII. [Witton Hall 'surprised with Joy' — Stanzas — Death of Lady Theo- dosia Spring Rice — An Illness — A Pamphlet— Charles Elliot in China— An Ode 288 CHAPTER XIX. |jOur Friends respectively become Friends in common — Aubrey de Vere. Lady Harriet Baring. Sir Edmund Head. George Cornewall Lewis. Charles Greville — Meeting between Lord Monteagle and my Father 306 X CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER XX. PAOB Friendly Acquaintances — Samuel Rogers — Archbishop Whately — Thomas Carlyle 319 CHAPTER XXI. Miss Fenwick with Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth .... 333 CHAPTER XXII. Publication of ' Edwin the Fair ' — Macaulay's Opinion of it — Health broken —Leaving England for Italy . . 340 APPENDIX, Charles Elliot's Operations m China 345 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF / HENEY TAYLOE, CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. When a man's life is written it is expected that something should be said of his birth and parentage, however little there may be to say in which any one but himself and his family can take an interest. I was born at Bishop-Middleham, in the county of Durham, on October 18, 1800. It would have been pleasant to me to have been high-born. Pleasantness to the imagination, however, seems to be in these days (perhaps in other days too) almost the only advantage of high-birth taken in itself and by itself For if by any accident it is stripped of the wealth and the rich or powerful connections with which it is commonly attended, it seems to do nothing for a man's worldly advancement, and often indeed to be lost sight of. It would have been pleasant to me also to have VOL. I. B 2. AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800 inherited a pleasant sounding name. To have a pleasant sound connected with one's life at every step of it, is surely no contemptible addition to the pleasantness of life ; and though changing an ugly sounding name for a pleasant sounding name is not to be approved, because fanciful changes of name, becoming frequent, might occasion public incon- veniences, yet, if there were no such reason against it, I do not think it would be to be despised merely because the motive of it is connected with the fancy and the imagination and the love of pleasing sounds. It is now readily excused in the case of a man who changes his name for an estate, and it is then said that he had ^ good reasons for it ' ; meaning, appa- rently, that if he changes his name from mercenary motives there is no fault to be foand with him, whereas if he makes the change from motives connected with the imagination, he is more or less despicable. My father, George Taylor (born June 6, 1772), was the son of George Taylor (born 1732), who inherited from his father, William Taylor (my great- grandfather), the estate of Swinhoe-Broomford, in the parish of Bamborough, in Northumberland. It was entailed, but when my grandfather's eldest son attained his majority, the entail was broken. I am the sole surviving heir in the male line of my great-gi-andfather, and a plan of the estate is all of it that has come into my possession. From the plan I learn that it consisted of 717 acres ; and I infer that the status of my great-grandfather was that of an BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 3 inconsiderable squire. From some Latin and' otlier books in my library in which he had written his name, I infer that he was a not mieducated squire.^ The only other thing I know of him is, that one day when following the hounds close at the heels of the husband of a lady who was said to be the most beautiful person in the county, the said husband's horse fell, and my great-grandfather unhappily riding over him and killing him, was in due season married to his widow. Of my forefathers, before the times of my great- grandfather, I know little or nothings ; how long they had been proprietors of Swinhoe-Broomford or whence they came. I have heard that they came from the other side of the border, under some perse- cution in the time of John Knox, connected in some way with a marriage of one of them with a daughter of a Sir Andrew Hume of the Merse, the Chief of a Border Clan. But these are merely confused recol- lections of what was told me when I was hardly old enough to receive distinct impressions. Mixed blood makes, in my opinion, the best breed ; and I should not be sorry to surmise that some proportion of mine may be Scotch ; but I think my family did not care much whence they came or from whom. Except once or twice, very early in my childhood, I do not remember to have heard it spoken of. * In a copy of Floras, which must have belonged to a son, to the name *Wm. Taylor' is added ' Vir — 1744.' Whether he meant that he was more of a man than his neighbours, or only that he had attained the age of manhood in the year 1744, I am unable to say. B-2 4 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800 My grandfather, George Taylor, married (May 5, 1761) Hannah, the daughter of Thomas Forster of Lucker. All that I know about them is what I find in a letter of February, 1807, to Sir Walter Scott from Kobert Surtees, the antiquary and his- torian of Durham, who, in giving an account of a search after Jacobite ballads, writes : ' Much of the above, such as it is, I owe to a very intelligent neighbour, now a temporary resident in this county, who has a hereditary riglit to be a retailer of Jacobite poetry, for his maternal grandfather, Thomas Forster, Esq., of Lucker, a near relative of General Forster, was condemned in 1715, and escaped out of Newgate by an exchange of clothes with his wife,. and after- wards recovered his estates ; ^ and Mr. Taylor's paternal ancestor was begot between the double walls of Chillingham Castle, where his father was secreted in the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion. Mr. Taylor remembers that his own father, whose estate was at Swinhoe, in Northumberland, used to maintain an old man in the capacity of writing-master to the children, who had been engaged in 1745, and was supposed to have been a jDcrson of some rank and property. He used on particular occasions, when tipsy, to sing a Latin Jacobite song, which I am sorry Taylor does not remember a word of.' General Forster took refuge in Italy, whence he sent to his * Sir G. Grey tells me tbis is a mistake, and that it was General Forster himself and not his brother who escaped by the exchange of clothes. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 5 mother a present of a fan, which has come down to me with a memorandum of its history attached to it. With the estate of Swinhoe-Broomford, my grand- ' father inherited a disputed title to an estate of greater value called Limeage, in Kent, and the lawsuit thereto appertaining, the expenses of which brought incumbrances upon Swinhoe-Broomford, and these incumbrances increased until the sale of the estate after it had come into my father's possession on the death of his eldest brother. The sale, which pro- duced 23,400^., did little more than pay off the in- cumbrances.^ Thus my grandfather, who died before I 'was born, had been latterly in embarrassed circumstances, and had left Swinhoe to live by himself in a lodging in the village of Rothbury ; and from the silence maintained about him and his separation from his family, I imagine that there must have been some- thing amiss in his habits of life. His children, three sons and two daughters, went to live with his younger brother John, who had no children of his own, and was supposed to be rather rich, having married a lady of good fortune, a daughter (if I recollect right) of a Sir George Wheler. ^ My father, writing to me on July 30, 1826, to announce the completion of the sale, added, ' Thank God ! — The estate and the family have been encumbered for a century — to my knowledge for 40 years— once more, thank God ! ' A Mr. Tewart was the purchaser. T have heard that a certain Mr. Henry Taylor has occupied it since. If BOj he was not related to us. 6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800 This John, my great-uncle, had a house in Durham. I recollect him well ; for his latter vears were passed in my father's house, as my father's early years had been in his. He was the leanest man I ever saw, small in the bone and rather tall, the spare shanks ending in gouty ankles, with a refined, blood- less, ^meagre countenance, in which self-sufficiency was in some degree tempered by self-respect. He was vain and supercilious, but there wa-s an ease and repose in his deportment which gave him an air of distinction rather than pretension. I suppose he must ihave had some claims to be considered literary, for there was in my father's library, and there ought to be in mine (though I cannot find it), a quarto volume of poetry, by a Mr. Percival, dedicated to him ; and those of my books in which his name is written are rather beyond the range of ordinary reading. The manners which prevailed when his were foo'med, had made ceremony a second nature to him, and he treated us children with the same formal politeness as our elders ; and his compliments gained in length and slowness from a distressing impediment in his speech. He was a man of some acuteness and ability (which were of no use to him) ; he was brought up to no profession, made no money, and allowed almost everything he had to melt away from him. Being childless himself, he gave his nephews to understand that there would be a good provision for them all at his death, and when it took place the provision proved very scanty indeed. I BIRTH AND PAEENTAGE. 7 In the meantime the three boys were sent to a grammar school at Witton-le-Wear, whence the two elder went to Trinity College, Cambridge. My father, the youngest, had had bad health, through which the sight of one eye was lost and that of the other impaired, and he was kept at home with his uncle, who could not be brought to any decision as to what was to be done with him. At about twenty-three years of age, however, circumstances led him to take a decision for himself. He fell ia love with Eleanor Ashworth, the daughter of an ironmonger in Durham. I do not know whether provincial tradesmen were more frequently well edu- cated in those days than in these, or whether this ironmonger was exceptional. I have no reason to think that his birth was above his station, not having heard anything about it ; but I believe he was a man of some education ; for I recollect to have seen when a boy a literary correspondence extending over many years between him and an eminent man of that time, Dunning C after wards Lord Ashburton) ; and his house was the resort of such scholars and men of literary tastes as a cathedral town may be supposed to bring together. The little I know of my mother (who died whilst I was an infant) is derived from some letters of hers which have come into my hands, for after her death my father could seldom bear to mention her name. I have been told by others that she was not pretty, but that in her looks as well as in her ways 8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOR. 1800 she was attractive ; and amongst the letters there are three which relate to rejected suits, and one which shows that my father's was not successful at first. The earliest of these is dated February 4, 1786, when she must have been a very young girl. It is ad- dressed to a brother in India.^ Some extracts from it will exhibit the manner of a courtship and declara- tion by surprise in the eighteenth century : — * This gentleman dined at Mr. Landell's ^ about three months ago, which was the first of my seeing him ; and he afterwards, at his own request, rode out once or twice with my uncle L. I saw very little more of him at Newcastle, but very unexpectedly received a visit from him at Durham soon after my return. I had fixed the day following to meet my friends, the Miss Johnsons, at Blue House ; ^ I men- tioned my intention to Mr. H., when he immediately proposed accompanying me, as it would make but a few miles difference in his ride to Newcastle. This I consented to very readily, and without the remotest suspicion that he meant to show me any particular attention. How I could possibly be so blind is, to be sure, totally unaccountable, unless he administered some stupifying potion to lull my senses asleep, ^ A Captain Ashworth, who seems to have been a man of some note ; for the Indian army was then in a high state of discontent, and it was said of Captain Ashworth, that he ' had but to lift a finger and he could have set the Ganges in a flame.' I believe he was afterwards chosen as a delegate from the army to represent their grievances at home. He is spoken of in a letter of May, 1 796, as ' General ' Ashworth. '^ Her mother's brother. ^ A seaside hotel. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 9 which indeed was very likely to operate in his favour. However, if this was the case, he had not the power of perpetuating its effect ; for I was presently roused by his telling me upon the road that it was quite immaterial his returning to Newcastle, that he thought Blue House a very pleasant place, and could spend a few days there very comfortably. To this proposal I made some very awkward reply, not knowing how to prevent him putting his plans in execution, and being too anxious to extricate myself from such a disagreeable situation to hit upon the right method of doing it. So we arrived at the end of our journey without coming to any explanation. He, however, to my great relief, left us that night, but returned again the evening following in the midst of a storm of wind and rain that Don Quixote himself would have shuddered to encounter. To these exploits he added various others of the like nature and tendency too tedious to mention ; but to crown all, I heard very soon after that he had (with the utmost prudence I must allow) made open declaration and application to Mr. Landell to act as proxy for him and woo his niece, having had proof which no man could miscon- strue, that he himself would never have an oppor- tunity ; more than this, he had asked and obtained the full consent of all his kindred, and I daresay the remotest branches of the family held themselves in readiness to pay their compliments to their cousin elect before I had the slightest intimation of what was going forward, an affair of which I sincerely wish 10 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800 they had suffered me for ever to remain in the darkest ignorance ; for from the first proposal of the connec- tion I have never been able to think of it without utter repugnance and a degree of horror which can only be iuiagmed by those who have experienced a similar situation, and who, from the dread of bitter misery, have been reduced to the sad obligation of rejecting the advice and solicitation of their best and most esteemed friends. I must talk seriously and rationally to you now ; I have been in a wonderful merry mood when I wrote the above, or I never could have treated a matter so lightly which has been the cause of so much heaviness to me ; for in truth no neglected maiden ever sighed so deeply for an admirer as I have sighed for neglect from mine. . . . Many will tell me that perfection is not to be found in mortals, and that I must take the bad with the good, and such-like pretty stories ; but though I am neither fool enough nor wise enough to expect an Addison or a Johnson, much less a Locke or a Newton, yet if I do make an engagement of such importance, I expect a man that has sense enough to discern right from wrong, who will not contradict me when I am in the right and caress me w^hen I am in the wrong, and with whom I can spend a winter evening by my fireside without gaping till I am in danger of getting a lock'd jaw. I have said more of this affair than I at first intended ; but I wished to vindicate to you, and to all those who kindly interest themselves in my welfare, my refusal BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 11 of an offer wliich certainly had many advantages, and particularly lucrative ones. My uncle has behaved to me in the handsomest manner, which I shall ever hold in grateful remembrance ; and it is needless to tell you that my dear mother at least equalled him in affectionate compliance with my wishes. Only my brother,' — not the Indian brother — 'has urged it with a degree of earnestness very distressing indeed to me, who have always looked up to him as the most able director of all my actions : but he has at last desisted from persuading me to a step the very idea of which is repugnant to every feeling of my heart.' The next of the three letters has no date of the year, but from the ehanged handwriting and the less redundant diction, I have no doubt it belonged to a more mature period of girlhood. It is a common- place specimen of civil and considerate rejection: — 'Dear Sir, — I received yours of the 18th only yesterday, which gave me pain in proportion to the regret I must ever feel in disappointing the wishes of any one whom I believe to have a regard for me. Many reasons, which I think it both useless and improper to communicate, determine me to request that you will think no more on the subject of your letter. The union you solicit never can take place ; but I sincerely wish you a much greater degree of happiness than it could possibly have afforded. I remain, &c., &c.' But this not having been enough, and some answer having been returned to it which seems to 12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOE. 1800 have given lier offence, there follows a rejoinder which is more peremptory, and, indeed,^ somewhat severe : — ' Dear Sir, — I must once more give you my most serious assurance that the reasons which dictated my answer to your letter of the 18th are equally solid and unanswerable. It seems to me next to impossi- ble that I should ever change my sentiments ; there- fore you may judge how far it is worth your while to give yourself any farther trouble about it. Pecu- niary considerations, you may rely upon it, have no influence in my present determination. Your pros- pects of preferment appear to me extremely promis- ing ; but were you Bishop of Durham, my resolution would remain the same. However, you will re- member that I never told you I had made any vow against matrimony ; for^ in fact, I should be heartily ashamed of doing anything so absurd. I trust I shall, on every important occasion, be enabled to pursue the best direction my judgment shall afford and make no vows or protestations about the matter. Forgive me if I tell you, your vows are made with a degree of rashness that might justify a distrust of their performance. Is it either prudent or rational to venture to involve yourself in a connection for life with a woman whose character and dispositions you can only be acquainted with from hearsay ? Y(5u have had the good luck to escape for once ; but let me warn you against such desperate proceedings in future ; for, believe me, no woman worth a farthing BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 13 will set any valiie on an opinion that rests on such very slender foundations. I am, &c., &c.^ Some time in or before 1794 my father's court- ship had begun ; but with doubtful prospects. She had suffered from a disappointment of the particulars of which I know nothing.^ She had returned my father's affection in a measure, but not in full ; she at first avowedly preferred the happiness and wishes of her mother and her brother, Captain Ashworth, to his ; and if her brother had been prepared to give up his Indian career, she would have elected to make a home for him rather than to marry. But her brother was vacillating, and seemed likely to decide upon returning to India, and she wrote to explain her sentiments to him : — ' To be once more left without a single friend on whom we had any claim for aid or protection — the wretchedness in which the accident of a moment had so lately overwhelmed me fresh in. my recollection — my mother's very slow if not precarious recovery — together with many other circumstances of inferior distress, threw a deeper shade of despondency over my mind than I think I ever before experienced. Mr. T.'s situation, and the probable consequences of his regard for me (the strength of which I have no more doubt of than I have of mine for him), were no small aggravation of my anxiety. But great as my affection for him is, it is not yet equal to that I feel ^ I have said I know nothing. I believe her attachment had been to an author, then of some celebrity and not yet altogether forgotten. 14 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800 for you and my mother ; and therefore, much as I would encounter for him myself, I cannot purchase his happiness at the expense of yours. Your offer of pecuniary assistance I was not unprepared for, my dearest John. I know there is "nothing kind and affectionate that you would not do for me ; and if you could afford it I would accept it as thankfully as I would the power of contributing to your com- fort in a similar way ; but if our scheme cannot be prudently accomplished without that, I will never proceed one step farther in it.' On September 30, 1794, however, she writes to my father in terms of encouragement, though still inconclusively ; for, after expressing ardent feelings of friendship, she proceeds that she will not presume to say how far her sentiments may hereafter change, or how far her future conduct may be in opposition to what she now thinks and feels : — * I have seen ingratitude, perfidy, and inconsis - tency carried to an extent that had never before entered my imagination ; and though the wounds this discovery made can never be healed and are ready to fly open on all occasions, yet such was my confidence in the honour and integrity of those who inflicted them, that I have disputed my own ever since the failure of theirs. That you will form future attachments equally strong with that which engrosses you now, believe me, it is irrational to doubt ; pos- sibly still stronger, for you have time enough to look about you for an entire and unbroken heart, which, I BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 15 whatever your prejudices may be, you certainly ought to prize more than one which has been torn into ten thousand pieces.' She probably came to a decision in the following year ; and my father, having then to look about for the means of marrying and maintaining a family, put himself in pupilage for a year to one of the foremost farmers of those days, and then took a farm at Bishop -Middleham (a few miles from Durham), whence, on April 23, 1797, my mother writes to a sister-in-law to announce her arrival, after having been married that morning. There are two letters from the same place, — ' the sweetest place under the sun, or above it either,' — in the latter of which, dated October 18, 1797, she writes to her brother, — ' Since the 23rd April, there has been a charm spread over the whole of my existence which I might in vain attempt to describe.' But before I pass to her married life, I will tran- scribe a letter in a lighter vein, which, though not dated, must belong to the period of her girlhood. ^ You play the termagant so prettily, that I verily believe you have had a lesson from Nature ; and if I all Aer scholars were not adepts, I should give her great credit for your proficiency. But all the actors of the old school were equally correct and particularly remarkable for that inimitable chastity of expression of which you have given so finished a specimen. And so you would have me live and die at Newcastle ! leave my country and my friends to — sit, as Miss 16 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800 Wilson says, ^'playing at being agreeable" with half a dozen " Virgin Automatons " who hail the hour of enlargement as if it were the period of human misery and the dawn of future bliss. The variety and ani- mation of a convent, I daresay, are nothing compared to this. But I will not be so ill-bred as to say I like Durham better than Newcastle while you are in it ; though, upon my honour and truth, I should if you were here. The perpetual hurly-burly of the place distracts me, and the incessant visiters and yisitings disturb my peace of mind. To be obliged to be always witty, amiable, and good-humoured, when, perhaps, I would often choose to be sulky, peevish, and disagreeable ; to smile, admire, and look gay, when, perhaps, I had rather cry, sleep, or sit looking at the figures in the fire ; to have one's thoughts and countenance for ever in full dress, powdered and perfumed, ready for the necessities of the moment, — are duties that I was never born to perform. You know I can be extremely agreeable with you for an hour, and ptatient enough with other people for a little time. But is there any such thing as eternal happiness ? Seriously now, my dear girl, what do you think of everlasting happiness ? I can conceive happiness to be exquisite and perfect beyond all expression — everything in kind and degree, — but in duration, — alas ! not unlimited. We can so mucb^ more easily comprehend the existence of everlasting pain than of everlasting pleasure ! and for this sad reason — that all pleasure that we know of inevitably BIETH AND PARENTAGE. 17 becomes pain, but pain never becomes pleasure. Not that I have expressed myself very philosophically, but never mind that .... One firm article of my behef is, that the great Author of all good never created pain, and that it is some unaccountable neces- sity of Nature that will be explained to us hereafter. What a strange letter this is ! I am half inclined to burn it. If I send it, you must remember that I never mean to be gay on serious subjects, and that if I express myself at all equivocally, it is without the consent either of my judgment or feelings.^ During the short term of their married life my father and mother seem to have been seldom sepa- rated; but once, in 1798, my father rode up to London, and some letters which then passed between them still exist. They are expressive of devoted attachment on the part of both, and portions of them are curious as exemplifying the enthusiasm on one side and the hostility on others which was then felt for Godwin, author of ' Political Justice,' ' Caleb Williams,' &c., and his wife Mary (born Wollstone- craft), authoress of ^The Eights of Women ' and ' Letters from Norway,' who had then lately died, after giving birth to another Mary (afterwards married to Percy Bysshe Shelley). My mother writes (May 27, 1798) :— ^ I am mistaking B. more and more every day. I spoke of him yesterday as the disciple of Godwin ; and to my utter astonishment Godwin seems to be the object of his thorough contempt. Miss A. is mild VOL. I. c 18 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800 and tender in comparison. Yesterday afternoon I was observing to him that I had never heard him speak of Godwin and Mary, and asked what he thought of their last publications. He said he had never read them, but understood that the memoir was a pitiful piece of biography. Peggy and I were speechless, — both, I believe, from unutterable vexa- tion. However we soon recovered, and attacked B. less temperately, perhaps, than became the sober voice of candid criticism. But, upon my word, Moyse's criticism on Hartley was little less provoking. He gave us several little paltry hearsay anecdotes of Gr., such as his calling his wife " the other party," his observation on her declaring in his arms that she was in heaven, &c., which certainly, abstracted from the overpowering evidence of all his writings, and above all of the simple narrative of his own feelings and conduct towards Mary, must excite the idea of that priggishness, coldness and pedantry which B. con- ceives to be the leading features of his character. But that man who can call the lover, husband, and biographer of Mary a cold-hearted pedant, must be himself an impenetrable stone. And B. has read the memoirs without retracting, — without indeed ever mentioning the subject to Peggy or me, — and as I saw he could read it without feeling a momentary inspiration of the candour and feeling it exhibits, I have done with him. He is indulging himself in visions of fame and celebrity which will never be realised. He says he had rather be eminently bad BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 19 tlian not eminent at alL I did not hear him say it, but Peggy did. What a monstrous offspring of vanity such an idea is ! What other embryoes of deformity he may be hatching besides, God only knows.' And in a subsequent letter (June 1, 1798) she recurs to the subject. ^ So you really have seen Godwin and had little Mary in your arms ! the only offspring of a union that will certainly be matchless in the present genera- tion. Poor Godwin ! what a melancholy tinge must all its infant sportiveness assume in his eyes ! Fenwick has been reading Mary's letters to Imlay, and he says if he had 150 wives and were in love with 150 more, he must still be in love with her, ... If you do not remember every word you hear Godwin utter, woe be to you ! ' I believe my father's ride of between two and three hundred miles to London was chiefly with a view to make Godwin's acquaintance. He was then supposed by a large party in the country to be a political philosopher who had achieved imperishable renown. His two large volumes sleep on my shelves, and written in the fly-leaf in the hand of one of my uncles is, ' Hoc nescire nefas.' If so, the last two have been nefarious generations. This fast fading of literary celebrities would be melancholy, were it not that transitory admii^ations give birth to permanent results and he who strongly affects his own generation must, c 2 20 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800 tlirougii it, affect those that follow, though his work and his name be forgotten. Of my mother nothing remains to be said, for I was cut off from the knowledge of her by her early death. And as there is but one more of her letters left, so much, of it as is characteristic shall take its place here. It is addressed to the lady who twenty years later became my father's second wife : — * My dear Miss Mills, — . . . It is scarcely possible that you could ever come inconveniently to us, even though we knew nothing of your intention, and you might perhaps often come much more conveniently to yourself without the delay of writing. As I now sit b}' my own fireside from one century to another [the letter is dated in the first month of the new century, January 10, 1800], I am more desirous than ever to render it as acceptable as possible to those I love, that I may not degenerate into a mere cricket and fatigue George's delicate ear with my monotonous notes. 1 wish you had seen Mrs. Turner. I have seldom seen a mind so masculine joined to manners so pleasing, I will not say feminine ; for her manners, like her opinions, are exclusively her own, and would disdain to fashion themselves in the same mould that has served the purpose of thousands before her. Yet she is free from all whimsical singularity ; and when she does differ from the rest of her species, it almost uniformly seems to proceed from that most interesting of all sources, originality of thought. She is also completely free from parade or ostentation of any BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 21 kind, and never seems to think herself at all above the level of human nature. Yet I do not think she has the best opinion of human nature ; but her minute acquaintance with it seems to have rendered her invulnerable to surprise, and the strangest vagary that could enter into the mind of man would be to her very much a thing of course. Why this character, with all its excellences and superiority, has excited in me admiration rather than affection, I do not yet venture to determine ; because I am afraid the cause rested solely in me, and I feel rather inclined to sneak off from the investigation of it. Certain it is that if in one hour I was led to respect the moderation which taught her to censure without acrimony, in the next I was chilled by the coolness which allowed her to praise without enthusiasm. But I have not time to add more. ' Very affectionately yours, ^E. Taylor.' The sentence she added last is an echo, which no one can mistake, of the Johnsonian cadence ; and I believe she had seen Dr. Johnson in her childhood. He had drunk tea (some two dozen cups) with her mother ; on which great occasion her aunt had incurred everlasting ignominy by leaving the doctor and going to a dance. 22 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800-21 CHAPTER II. BOYHOOD. Anno Dom. 1800-21. Anno ^t. 1-21. As I have said, it was whilst I was an infant in arms that my mother died. My father, who had by that time removed to St. Helens Auckland, in the same county, where he had taken another farm, pursued Ms farming operations on a large scale and with more or less activity for about 18 years (i.e, so long as times were prosperous), dividing his time between business and literature. I have said little of my father hitherto, and it is time that I should give some account of him. If I have any difficulty in doing so, it is the reverse of that which. I have met with in the case of my mother. Her I never knew. Of him my knowledge is so in- ward and accustomed as hardly to lend itself to an objective view ; for of course it crept upon me in- sensibly, growing with my growth, and the image of him was never at any one moment presented to me in its totality as something fresh and new : and there is the farther difficulty, that were I to describe him in general terms I should seem to be simply re- producing the model virtuous man of a fiction, who is ^T. 1-21 BOYHOOD. 23 proverbially uninteresting : T should describe him as good, just, generous, true, affectionate, pure-hearted : and when I attempt to individualise, I find nothing to say except that he was habitually, though not invariably, grave and reserved ; that his abilities, though not pre-eminent in any single kind, were remarkable for the many kinds in which they ex- celled, and, taken along with his unceasing industry, if he had had as much love of distinction as of know- ledge, would probably have made him eminent in his day and generation. But he had no love of distinction; rather, I think, a preference for obscurity and retirement ; and this prevailed so far as to withdraw him from society as well as from publicity ; and as, for the last thirty years of his life, his wife was the only inmate of his house, and he had no daughter and only one surviv- ing son, he lived too exclusively with his books, and his relations with his fellow-creatures were more limited than is desirable for any man. I may add that he did not read mankind with either the same interest or the same discernment with which he read books. He was open-handed and unsuspicious, and had there not been a more penetrating judgment within reach to restrain him, he would probably have lent and lost and given away ever^^thing that be- longed to him. He had a lively appreciation of wit, without having any of his own ; and though some- what taciturn and not brilliant in conversation, he was able and effective when he did take a part in it, 21: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800-21 and he left lasting impressions even on some whose acquaintance with him was but casual and short. Southey, in a letter to Miss Bowles, January 4, 1826, says in answer to an enquiry of hers, ' The article on Pope in the " Quarterly Review" was written by the father of my fellow-traveller, Henry Taylor, a most remarkable person for strength of character as well as for intellectual powers — the sort of man with whom Cato might shake hands, for he has the better part of an antique Roman about him.' And amongst my letters to my father in 1833 I find one describing the impression he had made many years before, after, as far as I am aware, only a short acquaintance : — ' I met with your old friend. Sir John Sebright, the other day. I did not quite know him by sight, though I soon made a guess after we had been talking for a while, and I led him on by degrees to farming and farmers, and in half an hour's time he began lo suspect me, and when the eclair cissement took place I assure you that I never saw an old gentleman burst into a finer fit of enthusiasm. He started from his seat and said that if I was your son, then I was the son of the man in the world for whom he had the greatest respect and admiration, and after (as the Americans say) " a pretty- considerable-damned-long " exposition of your very great merits, he said he had been talking of you and praising you for twenty years, and he hoped that on your account I would allow him the liberty of asking me to put him down JET. 1-21 BOYHOOD. 25 in the list of my friends. He concluded with an in- vitation to his place in Hertfordshire, which I told him I should be delighted to accept when leisure served, and a request that when I wrote to you I would con- vey to you the expression of his respect and regard in the strongest language that I could find. He seems to have about the same impression of the depth of your learning and the extent of your in- formation that the student had of that of Dr. Faustus, when he came to learn from him — What was and is in heaven and earth From chaos and creation's birth; — and I daresay he is persuaded that I have learned nothing less from you, and that I am to turn oat a very agreeable and instructive acquaintance accord- ingly. When he finds the buckets coming up empty, I shall have great difficulty in explaining how it comes that my father's son is not acquainted with everything that was and is.' In my father's youth I believe his animal spirits ran high, and it may have been easy for him to make friends ; but there must have been something very congenial to him in Sir J. Sebright, to have brought out on short notice the powers of pleasing thus indi- cated. For after my mother's death a deep and some- what severe melancholy took possession of him, and I do not think that he was ever again happy till his second marriage, when he was nearly forty-seven years of age. 26 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800-21 It was under this cloud that my boyhood was passed. Domestic affections had been and were all in all to him. He had strong opinions in favour of home education, and he educated his three boys himself. With my brothers his task was easy, for they had extraordinary gifts and powers. But with me it was otherwise. My mind was slow and languid, and the faculty of acquisition was sadly de- fective. Perhaps, too, my father made a mistake in attempting to combine the reading he desired for himself with tuition of me. He could do so well enough with my eldest brother, amongst whose boy- ish MSS. (he died at 20 years of age, in the same week with my other brother) I find versified trans- lations from Lucan, Statins, and Silius Italicus, indi- cating that the beaten track of tuition had been left far behind : but the path into which my stumbling steps Avere turned was perhaps the most arduous that could have been found for a lazy boy of twelve or thirteen. I have a painful recollection of my struggles as I passed through the History, the Annals, the ' De Moribus Germanorum,' and the ^ Vita Agricolas ' of Tacitus, at about that age ; understanding as much as I was compelled to understand and no more. Whether it was that my father was led by my difficulties to form a low estimate of my abilities, or that he found (as he well might) the task of teaching me intolerable, he did not attempt to teach me Greek ; and as I had taken a fancy to the sea (without knowing anything about it), he fell in with my wishes so far as to let I ^T. 1-21 BOYHOOD. 27 me take a year of it on trial ; after wliich, if I were minded to pursue it, I might. Accordingly, I was entered in April, 1814, being then 13-|- years of age, as a midshipman on board the Elephant (74), Captain Austin (possibly the same officer who is now (1865) Admiral of the Fleet, and if so, I should like to see him again, for I admired him in 1814). My father, on returning to the Inn at Portsmouth after having left me on board the Elephant^ took up a pocket edition of the ' Sylv?e ' of Statins which he had brought with him, and very strangely came upon this passage : — Grande tuo rarumque damus, Neptune, profundo Depositum. Juvenis dubise committitur alno Metius, atque animse partem super aequora nostrse Majorem transferre parat. Proferte benigna Sidera, et antennae gomino eonsidite cornu, QSbalii fratres : vobis pontusque, pol usque ]juceat J Iliacse longe nimbosa sororis Astra fugate, precor, totoque excludite coelo.^ Lih. 3, 2, 5. He noted the date and the circumstances in the margin of the volume, and added ' Sortes Yirgilianas I ' The Elephant was paid off in a fortnight, and I was transferred to a troopship, in which I made a voyage ^ Neptune, to thee and to thy depths we give A precious trust, the life wherein we live. Metius, our boy, embarks, and, dubious, we Send of our soul the better half to sea. QEbalian brothers, on each yard-arm sit ; By beams of yours let sea and skj^ be lit ; And from Heaven's whole circumference chase afar Your cloudy Trojan sister's stormy star. 28 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800-21 to Quebec, and then to a frigate. I applied to be allowed to join an expedition against Long Island, to which some of my messmates were drafted oiF; but my Captain had probably reasons of his own for refusing the application. He had, or ought to have had, moneys in his hands placed there by my father for my use, which, it afterwards appeared, were not easily producible. Whatever was the motive, he chose to take me home with him ; and of my service in the navy, which lasted less than a year, I remem- ber but little. If I had been a lazy boy at home, I was not less so at sea. Turning out for the second or third night watch was a trouble to my flesh. I never once went up the rigging — a fact which speaks as ill for the discipline of the ship as for my spirit of enterprise. I recollect mentioning it one evening when I was on a visit to Lockhart at Chiefswood, in the presence of a brown, brawny giant of a sea- captain (Ferguson by name). He lifted up and leant back his neck and head to their utmost stretch as he sat, raising his hands high in the air, which then descended upon his knees with a loud reper- cussion. Lockhart observed, ' That clearly means, " smite my timbers." ' The truth is that my health had always been of the languid kind ; my life at home had been somewhat gloomy and dreary, but never rough ; the messmates with whom I was now thrown seemed to me a set of abominable blackguards and bullies (one of them. ^T. 1-21 BOYHOOD. 29 who was about to join another ship, took the oppor- tunity of stealing my dirk, my books, and some of my linen, which I afterwards recovered) ; the food was nothing but hard biscuits, sometimes maggoty, and salt beef or salt pork ; four hours of the night as well as of the day were to be spent on the quarter- deck in all weathers ; and before the year of trial was out, I was so ill that I was unable to walk. Luckily, at this time, my ship arrived in English waters ; and as the war had then come to an end, I had no difficulty (or ought to have had none, for my indebted Captain threw some needless ones in my way) in obtaining my discharge from the navy. It is dated December 5, 1814, and gives me a good character. I returned home and remained there for about two years ; but I do not remember that my father resumed in any methodical way the task of teaching me, though no doubt he guided and supervised my studies ; and thus I regard myself as, after my thirteenth year, in a great measure self-educated ; with the advantage, however, of a good library, and a house in which literature and knowledge were con- sidered, along; with the domestic virtues and affections, all that it was worth while to live for. It was a house in which the face of a stranger was rarely seen and diversions were almost unknown. The clergyman of the parish was the only neighbour who had any pretensions to be an educated man ; and his pretensions must have been of a humble order, 30 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800-21 for I remember that, though he himself came to the front door when he had any business with my father, his wife and daughters came to the back door. Such was the position which was sometimes held by a parson in the North of England fifty or sixty years ago.-^ The house, too, was a silent house. So that, except the dog, who was my chief companion, and the pony, with whom also I was in familiar relations, reading was the only resource for me. There were a very few novels, — ^ Sir Charles Grandison ' and ^ Clarissa Harlowe,' ^ Cecilia ' and ^ Evelina,' the ^ Old Manor House,' and ' Caroline de Lichfield,' a French novel by Mme. de Montolieu, — all of which I read again and again ; — also translations of German dramas, — the ^ Robbers,' * Don Carlos,' ' Count Koenigsmark,' ' Benyowski,' ' The Stranger,' and others, — which charmed me as much ; — and poetry — Southey's, Coleridge's, Scott's, Campbell's, J. Mont- gomery's, and at last Byron's, — very dear to me all of it. I read Euclid, too, with some interest ; and tried Bridge's ^ Conic Sections,' but I could make nothing of that ; and Smith's * Wealth of Nations,' and Paley's 'Theology,' 'Evidences of Christianity,' and ' Moral Philosophy,' and Cavallo's ' Elements of Natural Philosophy,' Darwin's ' Zoonomia,' and in metaphysics the works of Locke and Hartley. What other books I read at that time I know not. I should think not very many. I was still lazy, and I lounged 1 Written in 1865. ^T. 1-21 BOYHOOD. 31 a good deal of ray time away in the houses of the farm servants and in the stables ; and, indeed, my favourite place for reading was nestling amongst the hay in the hay -loft. An intelligent boy, however, will not be the worse for some intercourse with the peasants of the north of England. Their language has (or had then) much of the force and significance which is found in that of the Scotch peasantry as given in Sir W. Scott's novels. ' Is that ye ? ' I recollect one man saying, and the other answering, ^ Ay, a' that's left o' me. I'm just an auld " has been." ' Such forms of speech were probably traditional or current, and not the invention of those from whom I heard them ; but they belong to a superior race. ^ I've forgotten mair na' he ever knew ' is another that I recollect, as the form in which one of my father's farm- servants asserted his superiority to another. ' He has not only mair lair ' (lore, learning) ' than another man, but he has a gift wi't,' was the same man's panegyric of my father. ' What ! are ye there, Molly ? ' I heard a man say once to a very old woman whom he had probably not met for a long time, and she answered — ' Aye, I think God Almighty's forgotten me.' They were a people whom it was not unprofit- able to mix with and talk to ; though it was from idleness, and not for profit, that I did it. Once a year a breeze and a sunbeam penetrated into these recesses. My father had had a friend (a relation, I believe, though a distant one) of the name o2 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800-21 of Davison, much older than himself, an accomplished man who had travelled in the East, had been British Consul at Nice, had come home, married, and died, leaving a widow with the remains of great beaut}^ and four daughters, one of whom was brilliantly pretty, and all of whom were attractive (in one wa}'^ or another and more or less), from simplicity and gracefulness of manner, brightness, singleness and saliency of character, softness, and an uncultivated refinement. I can barely recollect the father. Pro- bably I should not have recollected him at all but for his pigtail — one of the last survivors, I suppose, of the latest generation of f)igtails. Once a year the widow and the four fresh, pleasant, and graceful daughters came to spend a few midsummer weeks at the Hall at St. Helen's Auckland, or ^ The Nunnery,' as it was sometimes called ; for the last occupants had been an abbess and a sisterhood of nuns, driven from France by the revolution. It was a large, old, rambling house, formerly a seat of the Eden family, of which one range was Elizabethan, or perhaps of earlier date, low, with diamond-pane windows ; and at the end of this had been erected a less antique block of building, probably not 100 years old, from which proceeded on one side a still more recent offset. The house had clumps of large timber trees on both sides of it, and pastures divided by a sunk fence in front to give the effect of a park. The house and its trees made the only picturesque feature in the tract in which it stood, which was flat \ MT. 1-21 BOYHOOD. 33 and uninteresting. I see it now in all its blankness, as I used to see it when it occasionally became my duty to accompany my meagre and solemn grand - uncle in his slow rides. It was a dull situation and a dull life, and I was constitutionally deficient in animal spirits. But the annual visit of the four fresh girls came through the clouds like the chariot of Aurora. I was never caressed but by them. By this time — 1815 or 1816 — the prosperous times for farming had come to an end, and my father gave it up ; and finding himself no richer than when he began, it became necessary that he should look about for some means of providing for his sons. His farming avocations had made him ac- quainted with a much more ardent agriculturist than himself, who was also a politician in office, Mr. Arbuthnot, best known as the friend of the Duke of Wellington, and at this time Secretary to the Treasury in Lord Liverpool's Government. My father's inter- course with him was almost entirely by correspon- dence, though he once paid us a visit at St. Helen's Hall, where strangers were so rarely seen and cour- tiers never but this once. He seemed, however, to have a regard for my father, and when a provision was wanted for my brother George and myself, now seventeen and sixteen years of age, he gave us clerk- ships, the one in the Audit Office and the other in a Department then called the Storekeeper- General's, three or four years afterwards reduced and consoli- dated with the Commissariat branch of the Treasury VOL. I. D 34 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800-21 and with tlie Ordnance Department. This took George and myself to London ; and William, being intended for a doctor, was there already, attending the hospitals. We all lived together for a short time in lodgings in Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields ; and there we all together caught typhus fever, of which William and George died within a fortnight. I had it but slightly. My father bore the blow as he might. From that time forth his right hand shook, and for many years he was unable to write without using a me- chanical contrivance for steadying it. He was de- votedly attached to us all three ; but his literary and intellectual pride had been in my brothers. The elder of them had just completed his twen- tieth year ; the other was in his nineteenth. Both had written much poetry in the various manners in which boys write before their own is finally formed. It was precisely in the twenty years covered by their lives that poetry in England was changing its mood. My father's (he wrote not a little, and there is some extant of his eldest brother's also) was of the kind cultivated in the eighteenth century, — ethical and didactic. That of his sons was imagina- tive and romantic, and I shall have occasion to quote some of it hereafter. What I will quote here is in another kind, — an epitaph on Cobbett, the notorious writer of the seditious and libellous newspaper called ' The Register,' who had lately suffered, both from ^T. 1-21 BOYHOOD. 35 a horsewhip in the hands of a Mr. Newman and from a criminal prosecution. It is a parody of Gray's 'Elegy':- Here rests his body in the lap of Earth, A man to Mr. Newman not unknown; The Attorney-General frowned upon his birth, And Debt and Newgate marked him for their own* His 'Register ' it was the vogue to buy, And men thus recompensed him for the lash ; He gave to facts, 'twas all he had, the lie, He gained from fools, 'twas all he wanted, cash. George seems to have had a turn for mathematics and mechanics as well as for poetry. I recollect the roars of laughter in which some one indulged on inspecting an abortive attempt of his, when a very young boy, to produce the notes of the gamut from an JEolian harp, by keys and stops and two pairs of forge bellows borrowed from the village blacksmith, and wooden conduits or pipes to convey the air ; and in 1816 I find his father reproving him for ' applying his mathematics to such nonsense as a machine for shuffling cards.' Both brothers were addicted to music ; and the elder in a letter to the younger (November, 1816), speaking of a meeting with his Newfoundland dog after a long separation, says : * Fag and I had a most joyful meeting ; if the genius that invented the tune of " Caller Herring " from the women crying them, had been present, what a fine, wild, jovial air he might have composed ! ' After the death of my brothers I lived alone in D 2 36 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1800-21 lodgings in London (where I had scarcely a friend or acquaintance) till 1820, when I was sent to the head-quarters of the Windward and Leeward Island Command at Barbadoes ; and after a few months of service there, the absorption of the Department to which I belonged being accomplished, I lost my em- ployment and went home. 37 CHAPTER III. EARLY MANHOOD AT WITTON-LE-WEAR — INFLUENCE OF MY STEP- mother, of miss fenwick, and of southey — first appear- ance in print. Anno Dom. 1821-23. Anno ^t. 21-23. Shortly before I had gone abroad, my father, then 46 years old, had married (November 14, 1818) a lady of about the same age, to whom he had long been attached, and had removed from St. Helen's Auckland to a small house near the east coast, about half way between Newcastle and Sunderland ; whence again, in about a year, he removed to Witton-le-Wear, the village where he had been at school ; and there he remained till his death, thirty- two years afterwards. It has been my fortune throughout life to be connected, by relationship, marriage, and friendship, with remarkable women. I suppose my stepmother had faults like other people, but I never could find out what they were. She was gentle and affectionate, and yet firm and strong ; deeply religious and wholly unworldly ; she was — true as Truth's simplicity, And simple as the infancy of Truth — 8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAILOR. 1821-23 she had read well, though not widely ; and she was wise, — perhaps all the wiser for not having addicted herself to thinking thoughts, or thinking for thinking's sake or for the sense of intellectual power, — a practice . by which intellectual ambition is apt to — o'erleap itself And fall o' the other. Unperplexed by aims or efforts of this kind, but reerardinjor with a sinmlar intellectual acuteness what life and observation presented, she had a direct and undisturbed insight into human nature and a just and penetrating judgment. And to her other gifts there was added what, when I first came to live with her, made her society especially pleasant to me, — a lively wit and a keen sense of the ridiculous. Some- thing lively was much wanted at Witton Hall. The stranger within the gates was as seldom seen there as he had been at St. Helen's Auckland. The companionship of my stepmother was to some extent a substitute for society ; but it could not altogether dispel the gloom. And, indeed, though intellectually bright, she was not of a very cheerful or hopeful temperament. Her views of Hfe were rather melan- choly ; and but that she regarded this life as of small account, she would not have been happy in it. I hardly think she was happy ; serene rather, and resigned. My father's religious opinions,^ though not * In humility and reverence he was never wanting, and the spirit in which he held his opinions may be seen in a letter to one of my brothers dated June 15, 1814 : — ^T. 21-23 WITTON-LE-WEAR. 39 sectarian, were peculiar, and fell short of what satis- fied her. Devoted as he was to her, she made little impression upon him in this point ; and her imper- * I wrote to you last in the midst of the business of Darlington Fair and every minute expecting the mail, so you needed not reproach me with my brief epistle. Was that a place to reason high Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, Of happiness and final misery ? These are subjects that require all the leisure and consideration we can ever command ; and when these are given, more yet would be required : for perhaps on none of these questions can we ever decide with certainty ; and it would seem that the decisions, however important they may appear to us, have not been thought so by the Author of Revelation, or the Scriptures would have left no doubt on the subject ; ' ' si cette verite etoit necessaire comme le soleil est a la terre, elle seroit brillante comme lui. " The Scriptures have left no doubt that there will be a future life, — that the character of that, as happy or miserable, will depend on the moral worth of the character formed here, and they have laid down plain rules for the formation of that character. The Scriptures, we should observe, speak always in popular language, as of the stedfast earth and of the course of the sun and sea. They in no way pretend to inform on natural truths, or to give precision of language for the investigation of metaphysical subjects ; hence a frequent laxity of expression which renders one author in Scripture apparently contradictory of another on subjects where they did not, it seems, think it important to be precise. The duration of the punishment of the wicked is expressed in all passages in a way that leaves no doubt of its being of very long duration ; and when the most learned men doubt on the signification of the words used to express that signification, we may safely interpret them in that sense which to the best of our j udgment is most accordant with what Nature evinces and the Scriptures declare to be the character of the Deity, and by no means allow dubious phrases to impeach the general tenour of the whole. Now in my mind benevolence and mercy are the characters so strongly impressed by Nature in the Scriptures, that I am inclined to believe any errors in my construction of particular passages rather than admit a doctrine subversive, as it might seem, of these attributes. These are my general sentiments on the subject, but I by no means wish them to preclude particular investigations on your part. I did myself at one time enter pretty fully into such 40 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1821-23 turbable temper and religious acquiescence, which gave her a sort of even contentment under all other circumstances of life, did not save her from anxiety as to this. It was not, therefore, any buoyancy or sprightliness of animal spirits in her, but rather wit and the easy and lively action of a strong intellect, at once acute, direct and simple, together with ardent affections, never expressed but never to be doubted, which gave some warmth and animation even to Witton Hall. Nevertheless, my health, not at any time vigorous or comfortable, suffered from the want of active employment and the monotony of life. I read with some diligence but with little appetite. I desired to investigations, and I did not find that etymological reasoning brought any more uniform results from different passages than popular readings, except, I think, in the various cases of aldiv and its derivatives, translated ' ' eternity and eternal," " for ever and ever," &c. Now the Greek word was by no means ever certainly used for our metaphysical use of ' ' eter- nal ;" it is more properly "time " or *' life," as has often been observed. Homer uses it for a man's life, and at Iliad 4478 for a short life ; so that alav so frequently rendered "eternity" does not necessarily include a long time even. I do not pretend to be competent to enter into all the niceties which this subject involves, but I mention tx.is one as most frequently occurring to show the uncertainty and in my mind the impropriety of dogmatical inferences on such subjects, especially when those inferences would tend to subvert our ideas of the divine justice or benevolence deducible from far more certain sources. We cannot arrive at mathematical demonstration on these subjects, and must therefore acquiesce in difficulties to be solved only by adhering to the greater probabilities ; and even if investigation were to convince you that eternal punishments were reserved (in the metaphysical sense of the expression) for the wicked, according to the Scriptures, it would resolve itself into the question of the origin of evil, which, however it puzzles us to render compatible with the omnipotence of the Deity, cannot annihilate the evidence for immeasur- able benevolence and immeasurable power.' ^T. 21-23 WITTON-LE-WEAE. 41 be well informed, and whether at Witton or elsewhere I was in the habit of setting myself tasks. At an earlier period I had made translations of the ' De Moribus Germanorum ' of Tacitus, and of some cantos of the ^ Orlando Fnrioso ' (versified in Ottava Bima), and I had now taught myself a little (a very little) Greek as well as Italian, and had read the whole of Ariosto, much, if not the whole, of Alfieri, and more or less of the other best known Italian poets, the ' Discorsi ' and ^ Principe ^ of Machiavelli, Hume's, Smollett's, Clarendon's, Burnet's, and Gibbon's histo- ries. Sale's ' Koran,' more or less of Mosheim and of Milner's ' Church History,' and a good many lighter books in poetry and in prose. Indeed, the solitude of my life had thrown me much upon books. In a letter of my stepmother's (October 19, 1818) written to me before her mar- riage (for we corresponded for a year or two before that event), she writes : — ' I believe you are quite right in saying that nothing is so favourable to study as the lonely hours you have to spend. ... I believe there is nothing so advantageous to the formation of character as alternate solitude and society, and variety of society. We feed in society and digest in solitude. Never to be alone is a dreadful bar to reflection and that sort of investigation that makes us adopt the good for our own and cast the evil from us. A society of friends only is far too flattering ; a society of the domestic circle only is too little varied, — our ideas stagnate, 42 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1821-23 our opinions want toleration and liberality ; and in the domestic life we are, generally speaking, too much intruded on to find opportunity for solitude. I have ever found it so ; I never yet have been able to read, write, or reflect but with a divided attention ; and frequently the pains of disturbance, the efforts to repel it, seize upon that little portion of attention I might make my own, and so I lose all.' At Wit ton neither she nor I had much of inter- ruption to repel. I read, therefore, some hours every day ; but except the popular novels and poetry of the time — Scott's, Byron's, Moore's, Campbell's — all that I read I read slowly, languidly, and with effort. Two daily walks of an hour each were performed — also as a task. I recollect that I used to have a sort of spring of joy for a moment when I looked at my watch and found it to be an hour or so later than I had supposed it to be — so heavily did time go with me. But when evening came I had some compensa- tion for the tedium of the day. With me, as with many nervous young persons, evening brought, not exactly high spirits, but an excitement which was better. So after my father and stepmother had gone to bed at ten o'clock, I sat up late, sometimes in meditation, sometimes writing verses, sometimes simply abandoning myself to the pleasure of exist- ence. Though I drank nothing but tea, there was a sort of inebriety in the nocturnal state which was no doubt exhausting, and charged the days that followed with the nervous expenditure of the nights. But I iET. 21-23 WITTON-LE-WEAR. 43 was utterly ignorant in the management of my health ; and even if I had known how much it was suffering, perhaps I should not have spared it, for I had no pleasures but these. It was now, in 1821-2-3, that I began to write verses in more or less abundance. I have not pub- lished any of them, — I think I have not preserved any, — not because I thought them all bad of their kind, but because they were in a tone and style borrowed from the popular poets of the day — then the objects of my ardent admiration — and not the style which I found for myself at a more mature age, partly derived from better models, partly, I think, original. I wrote a poem of five or six hundred lines called ' The Cave of Ceada,' on the story of Aristomenes as told by Pausanias ; a longer poem called ' The Flight of Khadamistus,' on the story of that personage as told by Tacitus ; and a tragedy called ' King Don Philip the Second,' of course on the too often dramatised story of Don Carlos. Some of my poetry of this period was written under not unfavourable conditions. For dull, almost to disease, as my daily life was at Witton-le-Wear, there were three weeks of it on which I have always looked back as supremely delightful. In the summer of 1822 m}'- father and stepmother went on a tour to see the Scotch lakes ; for my father, notwithstanding his imperfect sight, had the most ardent admiration of picturesque beauty in nature that I have ever met with in any man, and 44 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1821-23 my stepmotherj in her degree, loved it also. They were absent for about three weeks. Now, to me, in those days, and indeed in later days also, there was something exciting in the sense of solitude — an abso- lute inspiration in an empty house. Generally, as I have said, my inebrieties were nocturnal only, and the day paid the penalty of the night's excess. But for these never-to-be-forgotten three weeks, all penal- ties were postponed, if not remitted ; the lark took up the song from the nightingale, and my delights were prolonged, without distinction of night or day, and with the intermission of but three or four hours of sleep begun after three in the morning. It was midsummer weather. The house was dark and gloomy, an old square ivy-covered border tower with walls so thick that light and sunshine had their own difficulties. I remember that a sprig of ivy had worked its way inwards and was sprouting in a corner of the drawing-room ; and writing in after years, when my father and stepmother had been from home, and had gone back to ' what they call their nest,' T said it reminded me of Wordsworth's — forsaken bird's nest filled with snow- Left in a bush of leafless eglantine. But the situation was picturesque, near the top of a steep hill which rose for about half a mile from the valley of the Wear. The river was crossed by a bridge nearly opposite ; its farther bank was steep ^T. 21-23 WITTON-LE-WEAR. 45 and thickly wooded towards the west ; towards the east, where the bank was low, there was a wood or grove, through which a burn, called the Lynn, went its way to join the river ; and farther eastward, at the summit of a green slope, stood an uninhabited castle, partly ancient, partly modern. My habitual walk was down the hill, across the bridge, through the grove, crossing the Lynn by an old plank bridge, and up to the castle, where I paced backwards and forwards on the top of a sunk fence that imitated a moat. During these three wonderful weeks I took this walk in the middle of the summer's nio^hts, and then mounted by a narrow little staircase from my bedroom at the top of the tower to the flat leads which roofed it, and there walked backwards and for- wards till the sun rose. All the day round I saw no one but the servants, except that I sometimes looked through a telescope (part of my naval outfit in 1814) from these leads at the goings on of a farmstead on a road which skirted our grounds at the farther end. Through this telescope I saw once a young daughter of the farmer rush into the arms of her brother, on his arrival after an absence, radiant with joy. I think this was the only phenomenon of human emo- tion which I had witnessed for three years, except one. That was when my stepmother, who was not in the habit of betraying her emotions as long as she could stand upon her feet, fell upon the floor on the receipt of a letter which told that a niece of hers (the 46 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1821-23 daughter of a clergyman and grand-daughter of an archbishop) had eloped with a married man. These three weeks were, as I have said, a favour- able time for writing verses ; and the best of my juvenile poems, ' The Cave of Ceada,' was written then. The best was not bad — of its kind — nor with- out a certain sort of fervour and beauty ; but it was merely built upon Byron. ^ So far as temperament went, there was nothinof wantinof. It is this tem- peramental element which makes a poetical poet ; it is this, combined with more than ordinary intelli- gence and thoughtfulness and an easy command of language and of salient and obvious melodies, which makes a popular poet ; it is this, combined with intellectual and rhythmic gifts of the highest order and with wisdom, which makes a great poet. Throughout youth and middle life, till health failed, and even after that, I had almost habitual accesses of this temperamental kind ; but I was never more of a poet, as far as this goes, than when I wrote bad or indifferent poetry ; and I never felt the charm of poetry more deeply than when the poetry * 1 find there is still one little Byronian poem in existence : — The tide rolls back, the black rocks rear Their rugged heads above the deep ; Thus dark when Hope hath ebbed appear The dreams that Wisdom wakes to weep ; Dark tombstones o'er a darker grave Of buried joys, where by the bier Is ceaseless sung by wind and wave The dirge we all are doomed to hear. ^T. 21-23 WITTON-LE-WEAR. 47 whicli charmed me was (though better executed) not of a higher order than that which I wrote myself. Oh many are the poets that are sown By Nature ; men endowed with highest gifts, The vision and the faculty divine, Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse. If many are these (of which I do not feel any positive assurance), certainly, in our days, many more are they who are poets by nature and temperament, and possessed also of the accomplishment of verse, but wanting in the highest gifts, *the vision and the faculty divine.' They are true poets so far forth ; and some of them have their just and appropriate reward in popularity. It was in the earliest of my years at Witton, 1822, that I first saw myself in print. In those days the ^ Edinburgh ' and ' Quarterly ' Reviews stood supreme as the literary and political organs, each of its own party in the State. They were great powers, not yet hustled by the swarm of other journals which in no long time after came trooping up to take their part in the leading of the Bear. I think the ^ West- minster Review ' was the only other quarterly journal in existence ; and whatever it may have been in point of ability, it could pretend to no rivalry with the other two in the 'pride of place.' Of the two editors, Jeffrey and Gifford, Jeffrey, with the aid of Sydney Smith and Brougham, had achieved the higher reputation for brilliancy and wit ; but Gifford' s 48 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1821-23 talents were not perhaps inferior to his ; nor his wit inferior either, though he was a graver man, and was now getting old and weak in health. Both were kmd men in life ; both were merciless and remorse- less as writers. Southey said to me of GifFord, that all his gall was in his inkstand. The same might have been said of Jeffrey. But they had had to fight their way in life in their youth ; and they, like many others then and since — myself for a time — adopted the evil habit of regarding literary life as a fair fight, of which the honour and glory belonged to him who could use weapons of offence with most skill and effect. Under cover of this view they ^corrupted their compassions,' and they hardened their hearts to acts of literary cruelty and wrong, dealing death- strokes at the feelings and hopes and fortunes of this or that literary aspirant, perhaps with one or another plea or pretext of a public or a party purpose to be answered, but in reality with little other object than that of raising their own credit as journalists by the force and brilHancy of their writings. There was no malice in all this, any more than there is malice in the soldier of fortune or the mer- cenary who hacks and hews and slays his fellow- creatures in his pursuit of glory and reward. But there was an utter indifference to human suffering : and it is seldom that human suffering takes a form more acute than in a youthful aspirant to literary celebrity who finds himself suddenly exposed to ^T. 21-23 FIRST APPEARANCE IN PRINT. 49 indignity and shame and made the laughter of man- kind. Mankind are always ready to applaud that which makes them laugh, whatsoever victim writhes ; but none was more ready to join in the applause than 1 was in my two-and-twentieth year. The view which I adopted afterwards (but not immediately nor very soon afterwards) was that no unkind word should be spoken of book or man unless there was something more to be alleged for it than the expur- gation of literature by criticism ; inasmuch as, gene- rally speaking, neglect will do all that is necessary in that way. In 1816, my brothers, in that year aged respec- tively seventeen and eighteen, had sent Gifford an article on Coleridge (perhaps a joint production) ; and although the article was not accepted, on the ground that another contributor had written one on the same subject, he had given them encouragement ; and in a letter to the younger of them, dated December 4, 1817, he writes : ' How was it that I never heard from you after I enclosed the MS. of Coleridge? I augured well of the mind that pro- duced that little article. It is surely capable of greater things ; but I lost sight of you all at once.' It was probably this correspondence of my brothers with Gifford that suggested to me to make an attempt in the same direction ; and, early in 1822, I sent him a short article upon Moore's ' Irish Melodies/ I heard nothing of it for several months, and I was VOL. I. E 50 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1821-23 infinitely surprised and delighted when, in October of that year, I received a letter and a remittance in acknowledgment of my article, which was to appear in the number then to be published. On referring to the article, I find it to be a light and lively piece of criticism on the approved model of sarcastic flippancy ; not indeed altogether suppressing the genuine ad- miration which I felt at that time for Moore, but nevertheless taking such opportunities as arose of mockmg at him. In the blind solitude of Witton Hall this appearance in the ' Quarterly Review ' seemed like an opening into the outer world and its sunshine. And, indeed, I think it did lead the way to the outer world ; for my father and stepmother, who had seen that I was suffering in health and spirits from an unoccupied and objectless life, were now encouraged to think that if I were to go forth I might find an occupation and career in literature. My stepmother, for these years that I had been at home, had been watching me fondly and wisely, and she understood me well. She had justly considered me as in some points of character unsettled and crude ; perhaps even more so than most youths may be expected to be between nineteen and twenty-two. My enthu- siastic admiration of Byron was morally stultifying ; I do not say debasing, because it was matter of ima- gination, and did not, in any positive and affirmative sense, work itself into my practical life. What it did was to supplant or stunt other and -elevating ^T. 21-23 DOMESTIC INFLUENCES. 51 admirations. But great is the loss in youth which is thereby suffered : We live by admiration, hope, and love.^ By love and hope throughout life and in all its seasons ; by admiration eminently in youth, and more or less, but perhaps with a diminishing pre- dominance, afterwards. My stepmother perceived, as she was sure to do, my follies and crudities — looked through and through them. Her temper was imperturbable. She did not remonstrate, admonish, warn, advise, or discuss, with any special reference to myself and my follies. The influence she exercised was that which was necessarily to operate from living with a keen and strong understanding, governed by a pure and strenuous moral mind, as free as any human being's can be from vanity or littleness or self-love. When called upon to speak on subjects involving moral sentiments, she spoke the truth, regardless whether agreeable or disagreeable. But she took no personal aim — none, that is, at me ; for persons were no doubt, as they must be with all practical minds, the groundwork of her moral insights. The persons who presented themselves in her secluded way of life were not many ; but many are not required for a true knowledge of human nature ; and for the purposes of such knowledge there may be more easily too many than too few ; for in this as in other ways ' the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.' * Wordsworth. 52 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1821-23 Under this regimen I had so far gained in strength, that within a year after this debut of mine in the ^ Quarterly Review ' she had come to the con- clusion that I might be safely sent to London to seek my fortunes as an adventurer in literature ; and my father adopted her view. She had had a powerful coadjutrix. For in these years were the beginnings of an influence founded partly on personal admiration — at least aided by it — which lasted in direct action through the greater part of life, and in its ultimate results, if not defeated by the adverse elements and powers, ought to reach beyond this horizon. My stepmother had a dear friend and cousin, at that time about forty years of age, by name Isabella Fen wick. Her face might have been called handsome, but that it was too noble and distinguished to be disposed of by that appellative. Her manners, her voice, and everything about her, harmonised with her face, and her whole effect was simple and great, and at the same time distinctly individual. My father says of her in one of his letters : ' All the noblenesses are so obvious, and yet there is so much single-heartedness withal, that one is sure all that is on the surface is also worked into the substance of the character.' I was then, and have been always, peculiarly amenable to manners and looks. Miss Fen wick was too far removed from me by age, and too far above me in nature and character, for me to be in love with her. My admiration was wholly unamorous, but it ^T. 21-23 MISS FENWICK. 53 was very ardent. She was largely and deeply re- ligious ; gladly and affectionately submissive to the authority of the Church ; but, by a law of her nature, free, — a child of God in the bondage of love and in the ' glorious liberty ' which consists with it. Her intellect was more imaginative, various, and capa- cious than her cousin's ; her judgment less sure- footed; her impulses more vehement; her nature more perturbed. She had the same sense of the ridiculous ; and when they were together, my father (who, rigorous and austere as he was in his morality, had a profound charity and consideration for all men that were not obnoxious to moral censure) used to be somewhat shocked at the treatment which weakness and folly met with at their hands. He could bear ridicule only when it was directed at himself; and he looked so grave and severe that his wife and his son \\ ere the only persons who were ever likely to laugh at him. But though our ridicule of himself was rather pleasant to him, he could not be persuaded that ridicule of strangers and of the absent was con- sistent with benevolence towards them ; and perhaps there was in Miss Fe^jwick at that time, besides what was harmless and stingless, some want of toleration for what, after all, in a just estimate, is tolerable enough, — prudential virtue and worldly respect- ability. Her theory was that the great sinners are, through remorse and repentance, more in the way to salvation than the indifferently well-conducted people. I recollect once, when the talk was of sermons, she 54 AUTOBIOGKAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1821-23 said the only use of them was to make respectable people uncomfortable. There would be something to be said for her preference of great sinners to respectable sinners, if great sinners did commonly repent ; but as the facts are, I am afraid the world cannot afford that moderately good conduct from mixed or secondary motives should be despised. Nevertheless, with all her vehemence of contempt for what was contemptible and her undue disrespect for what was merely creditable, she had a most generous and charitable heart; and out of an income which did not much exceed 1,000/., she spent (at least in the portion of her life when the disposal of her income was within my knowledge) several hundreds a year in bounties and charities. ' A more generous and a tenderer heart I never knew,' says Mrs. H. N. Cole- ridge ^ in a letter to Aubrey de Vere ; and so say I. Nor was it by money merely or by money most that her sympathy with misfortune made itself felt. Her spirits were easily depressed, and by such de- pression some persons are disabled for consolatory offices. It was not so with Miss Fen wick. She said of herself that she was at home in the house of mourning ; and no words could express her more truly. There is a good deal of her mind in my writings. I wish there were more ; and I wish that she had left her thoughts behind her in writings of her own. I think that during some portion of her life she had * Life and Letters of Mrs. H. N. Coleridge, vol. ii. p. 63. ^T. 21-23 MISS FENWICK. 55 been accustomed to commune with herself in her chamber and write the results. But the diffidence of a constitutional melancholy stopped them there. They were never seen by any one, and were not allowed to survive her. Once when I was writing an article for the ' Quarterly Review,' I told her that it would contain some things which she had dropped in conversation and I had picked up. She replied : — ' You must be most ingenious in making out any- thing from my conversation that could be useful in an article in the '' Quarterly." It must be good policy in me to speak to you in half sentences.' — It was very much her way to let a sentence die off when it had gone far enough to show whither it was leading. — ^ I do sometimes regret I did not earlier in life get into the habit of committing my thoughts to paper. But to communicate my thoughts then to some living ear seemed all in all to me ; and when from experience I found there were few who would be in- terested in listening to me and I turned to my pen, I found my taste had become too much cultivated for my power of expression, and I could not frame a sentence that did not disgust me. Else, having read a great deal and thought and felt a good deal, I might have written what might have interested others and improved myself. But most of my think- ing has perished within me.' The change which came over me by admiration in the case of Miss Fen wick, was corroborated by 56 AUTOBIOGKAPIIY OF IIENIIY TAYLOR. 1821-2.'? anotlier admiration. In the autumn of 1823 I went to the Lake country and paid a visit to Southey. He was then about 50 years of age. He was the first of our great men with whom I had come face to face. Afterwards I became acquainted with most of his eminent contemporaries and of my own, — with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Moore, Campbell, Tennyson, and Browning among poets ; amongst historians with Hallam, Macaulay, Froude, Carlyle, and Lecky ; amongst statesmen with all I think that were conspicuous except Canning, Brougham, and Disraeli ; and I have found none who combined with intellectual pre-eminence so much of what was per- sonally attractive. 1 have given some account of his personal bearing and his ways in conversation in a notice of him printed by his son at p. 4, vol. vi., of his ' Life and Correspondence.^ Of the impression he made upon me in my first youth, 1 made mention in some stanzas written in 1829, which being printed in the notes to ' Philip Van Artevelde,' need not be reprinted here. The beginning of the poem is lost ; but there are stanzas relating to the changes I under- went at \\ itton, and Miss Fenwick's part in pro- ducing them, and they are these : — Three years and five — three passed in scenes remote Where seldom stranger foot was known to stray, And every eve the thrush's dropping note Sang a soft requiem to a studious day ; Glenlynn, did ever evening pass away That I came not through all the changeful year 1 Like constancy I came in thy green May» JET. 21-23 MISS FEN WICK. 57 And when thy boughs were fallen into the sere, The yellow leaf, decay would only more endear. Three studious years — but not from books alone The harvest of those years was gathered in ; For living minds were there to which my own Did in its aspirations then begin, As was its right by birth, to be akin ; The just, the generous, the unworldly wise (Sole agonist infallible to win), The steady and the strong, I learnt to prize, And would have been the like if wishes might suffice. And with the wish some weakness past away, And vanities withal that spread their lure For an unsettled nature in that day Of dcinger w^hen the soul is immature And yet the wit is forward : these their cure Found in communion with the minds I name ; And there was one beside of heart as pure The force of whose commanding spirit came In aid of their old drifts, — new, sudden, yet the same. In all things noble, even in her faults. For power and dignity went thro' them all. That rare humility which most exalts Was hers — the fear the highest have to fall Below their own conceptions : I recall That first impression and the change it wrought Upon me, and find something to appal And something to rejoice the heart, — the thought How much it did effect, how far, far more it ought. Superior to the world she stood apart By nature, not from pride ; although of earth The earthy had no portion in her heart ; All vanities to which the world gives birth Were aliens there ; she used them for her mirth 58 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1821-23 If sprung from folly, and if baser born, Asserted the supremacy of worth "With a strong passion and a perfect scorn Which made all human vice seem wretched and forlorn. This was no idealisation. These were the facts of the case. 59 I CHAPTER IV. LONDON ON A VENTURE APPOINTMENT IN THE COLONIAL OFFICE AND EARLY OPERATIONS THERE. Anno Dom. 1823—24, &c. Anno ^t. 23, 24, &c. On the 18th of October I completed my twenty-third year, and before that day I left home, contentedly but with not much of the animation of hope, to seek my fortunes. My stepmother wrote to me on the 15th : — ' After all the chatterings, the jestings, the preach- ings, and the varieties of conversations that we have held for two years past, you may expect some con- tinuations of each variety now and then per post when you are settled in London ; and I shall hope for reply occasionally also, in some of the crammed sheets that you have to write with all your adventures. . . . You will imagine with how much additional interest Old Jackey [this was the postman] will be watched for on the winter evenings here now. I sometimes fear these evenings will want subject of interesting employment for your father, unless he can suit him- self in some kind of authorship. Dr. Holland suggests a subject [the Thirty Years' War] in a letter I here enclose. You will perhaps anticipate your father's 60 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1823-24 reply ; but in case you are not quite certain of it, I will tell you what he says to Mr. Turner, granting that it is of an interesting nature — " but having been executed by such a mind as Schiller's, a good trans- lation of his work would be a more valuable addition to English literature than any original work on the same subject by one man in a million, in which dis- tinguished minority I have no pretensions to stand." What is the work in which your father will feel that he must excel ? How frequently do we complain of the intolerable vanity of authors ! How few authors we should have if it was not for vanity ; and though it is a very disgusting quality, even when it is founded, as it sometimes is, upon valuable stuff, we are glad to have it spoiling the flavour in some degree, rather than not have the good stuff at all.' AVliat she here says of my father was not only true in 1823, but remained true for the ensuing twenty-eight years of his life. During those years he wrote a few articles in the ' Quarterly Review ' (about ten, 1 think), and except a memoir of his friend Mr. Surtees, author of the ' History of Dur- ham,' that was all. In his love of knowledge he had transformed the means into the end ; the uses of knowledge passed out of sight, whilst his unsunned hoards increased from year to year like a miser's money in the days in which a miser's way of hoarding was by heaping up gold in a cellar.^ I remember ^ So far as the Latin and Greek portion is concerned the hoard exists to this day, but as in a cellar still. For forty years he kej)t a I ^T. 23-24 EEMOVAL TO LONDON. 61 quoting to him with the impertinence which always pleased him when it came from me, the words which Miss Edgeworth puts in the mouth of a bookworm to a friend visiting him in his study : ' Here I am reading and reading from morning to night all the year round, and nobody's the imser! On the 22nd of October I had arrived in London, and on the 23rd I saw Gifford, and ' found him propped in his chair, with a little thickened milk and a bunch of grapes before him, and all the appearance of a far- gone invalid.' He had in his hands, and gave me in proof for revision, another article which I had written in the same style as the former, clever and malapert. This was directed against a man conspicuous in Parliament even then, and shortly to be much more so, with whose friendship I was honoured in later years. I have never told him that I was his anony- mous assailant in my youth, though of course he would care no more than if he were reminded of a derisive cheer in the House of Commons of forty years ago ; and had he known it at the time, knowing also how important it was to the young tumbler that his somersaults should attract notice, he would not Latin and Greek commonplace book, — an 'Index Idoneorum ' as he entitled it, — ranging the pasjiages he extracted under the various heads of subject to which they related. After his death, Dr. Whewell, then Master of Trinity, contemplated the publication of it by means of a fund at Cambridge disposable for the publication of valuable but unmarketable MSS. On inquiry, however, he found the fund was anticipated for some years then to come. [1880. I have presented it now to the Library of Durham University.] 62 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1823-24 have grudged any little specks of mud that might light upon him.^ A great encouragement no doubt it was to me — this second appearance in print immediately on my arrival in London ; and it may possibly have contri- buted more or less towards a greater success which was to come in less than three months. In the meantime I had undertaken to edit the ' London Magazine/ then, if I recollect right, lately set on foot, for which I had written two articles on * Recent Poetical Plagiarisms and Imitations.' I have looked over them now and am amazed at the display of reading and erudition which I know that I never possessed — Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and German. With one or two of these lang-uao^es I had a fair familiarity ; as to some others, what I may have read I could only have spelt out with a dictionary ; and yet I assumed to appear perfectly at my ease in them — translated Spanish and German ballads, and quoted from Lucan, Claudian, Lucius Varus, Silius Italicus, Statins, Aulus Gellius, Lucretius, Valerius Flaccus, Justin, Tibullus, — scarcely one of which authors I had ever read, and quoted for the most part aptly enough. I have no recollection of the manner in which I managed to put the§e wares in my window ; but I have little doubt that as regards the Greek and Latin authors I must have had by me * Note, August 15, 1876. Lord Russell tells me the article had been very useful to him by showing him that it was not to poetry but to politics that he was to devote himself. JET. 23-24 APPOINTMENT IN THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 63 my father's marked copies with his marginal notes. But my journalising projects and operations were soon to cease. Of two or three literary men to whom I had brought introductions, one was Dr. Holland (after- wards Sir Henry). He held an eminent position in his profession and in the literary world, and was in friendly relations with the leading men of all political parties. I had breakfasted with him once or twice after my arrival in London in October, and on the 10th of January he informed me, to my infinite surprise, that he had been in communication with the Under Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, and that, ' if my engagements would allow of it,' it was proposed that I should be appointed to a clerkship in that office with a salary of 350/. at once, which it was expected would shortly be increased to 600/. — the increase did in fact take place within twelve months — and which would ultimately rise to 900/.^ It was abundantly plain to me that ^ my engagements would allow of it.' I could not imagine how it had happened that Dr. Holland, who had not seen me, I think, above two or three times, had been induced to make me his nominee, when asked to recommend a fit person for the office in question. Some relatives of his were old friends of my father's, and on their ^ In point of fact, the prospects thrown open to me did not stop even here ; for, in the course of years, the office of Under Secretary of State, with 2,000L a year, was offered to me, though for reasons which will be stated in their place I did not accept it. 64 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1823-24 account he may have been glad to be of use to me ; but I daresay his main object was to recommend the man whom he thought most likely to be useful ; for no doubt the facts of the case were represented to him, and they were facts which called loudly for fit men. The business of the Colonial Office was growing every year more important — in reference to the question of negro emancipation I may say more momentous ; and it was in utter confusion. Several old clerks who took but little interest in it were therefore to be provided for elsewhere, and several new ones to be brought in, who were to be chosen with a view to obtain more effective service. Dr. Holland had but scanty means of estimating my abilities by personal intercourse, for I do not think that in my youth they came to the surface in society ; but there were my two articles in the ' Quarterly Review ' to speak for me ; and when it appeared to be desirable that Lord Bathur?t, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, should be fur- nished with testimony to my abilities, I was enabled to produce a letter from Gifibrd, opportunely received ten days before, commending my last article, and adding, ^ I shall always be happy to hear from you. I know not what leisure you may have, and therefore I do not press you ; but to me your communications, however brief, will always be acceptable.' In communicating to my father, on the 22nd of January, my instalment in the Colonial Office, I \ \ MT. 23-24 APPOINTMENT IN THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 65 concluded my letter by saying, ^ That this affair will delight you is one of my greatest pleasures in think- ing of it.' And this, I think, was true. As well as I recollect, I was at that time less solicitous personally about this sort of success than was reasonable or even justifiable. I used to think that tea and bread and butter (to me, as I have said, so inebriating) were all that was necessary to my happiness ; not knowino; that life in its further progress would bring with it other wants. At the same time I have no doubt that I rejoiced and was elated. The manner in which the news was received at Witton may be gathered from a letter of my step- mother's : — ' Your father met your last letter as he was walk- ing down to Auckland with letters that he had written to each of your aunts. His first feeling was to run back with the letter for my sake ; but then to add a postscript to the said letters in his pocket and to save the post for your aunts was more important, for he could communicate the good prospects to me at any rate by dinner-time ; so accordingly he came panting in to a late dinner, and Margaret, weary with keeping the meat hot, had it popped down on the table by the time he got off his hat, &c. " Take away the dinner, Margaret ! bring the candles, and don't come in till you are called." ^' What can have happened ! " said I. " Good news, excellent news ! " "From Harry?" "Yes, from Harry." "Make haste." So then he read away — wonders and marvels VOL. I. F 66 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1823-24 indeed, my dear Harry, and the greatest feeling of pleasure to me is, that you are likely to be rewarded for all your patient perseverance in endeavouring to become independent. You give me credit for imagining a scheme that is likely to become pro- ductive of so much good ; now, I have no more credit in that than any one who has to dispose of a book, or a broom, or a pen, or any other article, and who finds out that a book must be exposed to sale in a market where readers resort, or a broom where there are housemaids, the pen where there are writers, and so on ; and it was easy to see that one stored as you were must be useful to many, and could not be used unless known ; but that you have been so soon discovered and wanted is certainly a piece of good luck beyond our most sanguine expectations. I do not at all regret your not having gone sooner to town. All the time at home was preparatory, and I do think not more at all than what has been advantageous. Two years ago the value of a good income was in great part unknown to you, and consequently you are now better prepared, not only for spending it right, but for the patient performance of wearisome offices which will continue it to you. The life of authorship was a resource when nothing more steady could be had ; and for all its uncertainties and its laboriousness and its vexations, it had in it something very flattering to a mind formed like yours ; and if you succeed in this desirable clerkship, which we trust is pretty certain, you will - have to I .i:t. 23-24 FIRST OFFICIAL PERFORMANCES. 67 forego much of that fame you anticipated as an author ; for your mind will have to be given to dry work and to be kept present to your employment, or there will be neglects ; and, after all, it seems where talent is not required you cannot have the fame attending talent, but only the fame of being an attentive useful clerk, and your reward is money. I feel sorry for you on this point, for I think it will be mortifying to your favourite source of ambition ; but you must just drive your ambition into another channel ; and secretaryship leads to honours too, and a line of life that may be very agreeable to you ; for general talents are useful in every line and lead to fame ; and there may be leisure moments for your more favourite studies.' The business to which the appointment introduced me proved to be neither irksome nor ill-suited to me. I plunged into it at once, and by a letter which, though not dated, must have been written in March, 1824, it appears that I was working in Downing Street night after night till one or two in the morning, in the preparation of a paper which was immediately printed at the Foreign Office private press and laid l)efore the Cabinet ; and in furnishing materials for a speech to be spoken by Mr. Canning on the subject of the measures then in agitation for meliorating the condition of the slaves. My ' remarks nearly in full,' I wrote to my father, ' were sent to Canning ; cram, cram, cram, and on Tuesday night ei^olahat oratio,^ The paper for the Cabinet seems to have been F 2 68 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1823-24 elaborate and voluminous. ' A clerk was sent to see the types broken up and receive the printer's declara- tion that he had delivered all the impressions taken off and kept no copy. The impressions delivered I was directed to keep under lock and key and give to no one.' I do not find any copy amongst the official papers of mine, printed and MS., in my own possession, and I do not know how my task was executed. Lord Bathurst, it appears, was delighted with my work ; but it must have been very imperfect from want of practice and experience ; and the faults which I should imagine to have been most conspicuous, would be arrogance and impertinence. They were faults which tainted my official style, not only in the beggar- on-horseback beginnings, but I am afraid for several years afterwards. There is an indication of this in the letter in which I speak to my stepmother of what I am about : — ' At this time I have scarcely a word or thought for you but such as are born and die in Downing Street ; but I shall be glad to send my thoughts to Witton if they will go there (and there they will go if anywhere) by way of a diversion from foolish governors, furious houses of assembly, methodists, and slaves.' If anything could have cured me of such a fault at once, it would have been serving under Lord Bathurst. I could not have fallen in with any man in whose official style there was more of the- dignity ^T. 23-24 EARL BATHURST. 69 of good-nature. He could be severe when necessary ; but in his severity there was generally a parental tone ; and to the severest of his rebukes he could contrive to give a colouring of consideration for the culprit. I recollect a Scotch Minister coming home from British Guiana, in high indignation, and in a letter to Lord Bathurst accusing and abusing the Governor of the Colony in the most unmeasured terms. Lord Bathurst answered that he would have wished to send the letter to the Governor for his explanation of the facts alleged, but that he felt a difficulty in doing so, not only out of respect for the Governor, but from an unwillingness * to expose a Minister of the GospelJ I admired these examples, or I should not have remembered them after the lapse of forty ^ years ; but the hardness and crudeness of youth were incurable except by time ; and for some years at least, if not for many, the style and temper of despatches which I drafted were such as I believe I should be very much ashamed of were I to read them now* And at the same time my aptitude for business, which was considerable, and my laboriousness, placed in my hands a measure of authority which was probably never before exercised by so young a man in a position so subordinate ; indeed, a larger measure than in most of the years of my maturer official life ; for in after years there were abler men in office over me. > Written in 1865. 70 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1823-24 Some time in the first decade of my service a nobleman was Governor of an important Colony. From the commencement of his administration I had strongly disapproved his policy and course of proceeding, and at length I urged upon the Secretary of State (not Lord Bathurst, but one of his early successors) that it was necessary that he should be recalled. My urgency was in vain ; the Secretary of State was not prepared for such strong measures. Nowise discouraged by his reluctance, I proceeded to draw up an elaborate and voluminous despatch recapitulating the Governor's errors and misdoings from the commencement of his administration, and ending with his recall. The Secretary of State gave way, the despatch was signed, and the Governor came home accordingly. I dare say there were faults enough of tone in this despatch,^ as in my other proceedings of a like character ; but I believe that substantially I was in the right ; and there was this to be said for a strong exercise of authority in those days and on the ques- tion with which 1 was chiefly occupied — that it was the great question of the melioration, leading to the abolition, of slavery, and* that the Governors of the slave colonies were almost all of them identified in feeling and opinion with the slave-owners, and con- stituted to a great extent ' His Majesty's opposition' in that portion of his dominions. ^ I have now procured a copy of the despatch and I do not find the faults in it wliich 1 had expected to find. MT. 23-24 MANNERS. 71 My exercise of authority, singular and anomalous as it was, would perhaps have been still more uncontrolled, had it not been that at this time, and for many years afterwards, my manners were against me. Whether from nature or from the silence in which I had lived up to this time, I was unusually taciturn. It was not easy to me to say anything ; and if a man has nothing to say naturally, and finds something to say with much effort and difficulty, he can scarcely have what is called a natural manner. Mine was, with strangers or men with whom I was not intimate, far from natural, I believe, and anything but easy. I had a quick social sensitiveness ; by which I do not mean that I was apt to be hurt or to take offence, but that I was keenly alive to the minuter phenomena and effects of social intercourse. This over-quick consciousness of what is passing in the minds and what impressions are made on the feelings of those with whom we are holding intercourse is fatal to ease and simplicity of manner. It is necessarily accompanied by a continual consciousness of one's own effect upon them ; and this, with no more than an average share of vanity, or even with less than an average share, will often be enough to produce a disturbed and affected manner. I was quite aware of the defect ; few people, I think, had a better taste in manner than myself; no one admired simplicity of manner more than I did, or desired more to be possessed of it ; but the very importance which I 72 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1823-24 attached to it made it all the more unattainable. Nothing but time and the conversancy with society which brings indifference or a sufficiently light social sensibility, could place it within my reach. I think, too, that there was something at work worse than what I have described ; a certain amount of plebeian pride and jealousy of social distinctions. The manners of a gentleman should be liberal, not only in avoiding to assert social superiority of his own, but in recognising that of others. In measuring his distances he should give the benefit of a doubt to familiarity with those below him in rank and to form with those above him ; and if he be independent in his feelings and make no more of social superiorities than they are worth, he will naturally do so, — at least if he have a natural kindness and desire to please. I missed my way very much in these matters. In my utter ignorance of society and of relative social positions, I was afraid of seeming to defer too much to rank and station, and affected not to recognise them at all. Lord Bathurst combined all sorts of titles to be treated with deference, — office, rank, age, manners, and talents ; and I had a very genuine admu*ation and respect for him, and would have expressed it by a duly deferential manner if I had known hotv. But the only effect of my feelings upon my manner was to make it more than usually infelicitous, awkward, blunt, and shy. I o CHAPTER V. EARLY FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES — HYDE VILLIERS AND HIS FAMILY JOHN MILL — CHARLES AUSTIN — JOHN ROMILLY — EDWARD STRUTT. Anno Dom. 1824-27. Anno ^t. 24-27. It was not, however, to all persons nor in every species of intercourse that my manners were equally unprepossessing, or that I found myself unacceptable. My employment in the Colonial Office introduced me to a companion of my own age, Thomas Hyde Yilliers, then a clerk in the office ; and from com- panions we became very shortly each the most intimate friend of the other. We were associated in our work, I officially the subordinate, for something less than a year, when he quitted the office to enter upon political life in the House of Commons, and I took his place. He was perhaps the ablest, and had he lived long enough would probably have been the most distin- guished, of a very able and distinguished brotherhood. George Villiers, now Earl of Clarendon, and lately Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was the eldest of the brothers ; my friend, Hyde, the second ; 74 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-27 Charles, a member of the present Cabinet (1865), the third ; Edward, whose dear friendship was the treasure and the charm of my middle age, the fourth ; Montague, the late Bishop of Durham, the fifth ; Algernon, who died young, the sixth. And there was one sister, Theresa, then about two -and- twenty years of age.^ They lived with their father and mother in Kent House, Knightsbridge, occupying one half of it, whilst the other was occupied by their mother's brother. Lord Morley, and his wife, — a woman whose wit, vivacity and good humour, natural, easy, and unambitious, will probably be remembered in London society till the last of her contemporaries shall have dropped out of it. She was a woman of the world, and, with the exception, perhaps, of Lady Charlotte Lindsay, the wittiest woman of her time ; but with all that she was simple, kindly, brave and strong. George Yilliers, then about twenty -six years of age, was gay, graceful, brilliant and pre-eminently popular ; Charles, with still more wit than George (who, how- ever, had not a little), was sarcastic and unpopular, but amongst friends very agreeable ; of Hyde and Edward, as those with whom my relations were close, I will speak more largely, — of the one here, of the other hereafter ; for it was not immediately that my intimacy with Edward began. Hyde's face was that of a fair and distinguished looking child grown to the stature of manhood (he » Bom March 8, 1803. I ^T. 24-27 HYDE VILLIERS. 75' was very tall), with as little alteration as might be of its delicate features. He had a large forehead, large eyes, and a sensitive mouth beautifully chiselled. He was slenderly made, with a feminine roundness of the muscular fabric. His manners could be what he pleased. They were invariably highbred, and under all ordinary circumstances expressively courteous. He was calm, self-governed, ambitious, but with a far-sighted ambition, caring little for present, unless in so far as they might conduce to ultimate results ; cool and not vain, patient and resolute, enduring bodily pain with unshaken fortitude, and encountering danger ^ and difficulty with an undisturbed mind. In boyhood he had been educated at home, in the midst of social pleasures and with the worst of tutors ; and, with his personal attractiveness and talents for society, he was in the way to an epicene course of life ; but having gone to Cambridge, he there fell in with some young men of striking abilities, great attainments, and democratic opinions ; learnt to look with little favour upon the ways of life in the classes ^ Duelling had not yet come to an end, and I was once the bearer of a hostile message (in the nature of demand for an apology) from Hyde Villiers to an electioneering opponent, who, in one of his speeches, had exceeded the bounds of electioneering privilege. The negotiations took some time. Hyde was suffering severe pain from an abscess in the head, behind the ear, of which he died soon after. Throughout the affair he continued labouring almost without inter- mission at a report of a Committee of which he had been chairman. His brother, George, showed as little anxiety about the result of the proceedings. On my return from my first interview, he asked me what sort of fellow Mr. S. was. 'A mild prig,' was my answer. 'A very dangerous person indeed !' said George Villiers, with a smile. The gentleman made an apology, however, and there was no duel. 76 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-27 of society to whicli lie had been accustomed ; and deploring his misediication and the ignorance of which he now became conscious, applied himself to retrieve the time so far as might be still possible. Before he and I made each other's acquaintance he had made up his mind to renounce London society and its pleasures ; and soon after that he took a house in Suffolk Street which I shared with him ; and as I had hardly any other acquaintances, and he desired to avoid the swarm of his who were idle and uncultivated, we lived a great deal together. When I quoted in a previous page the greater part of a poem in which I had taken (about the year 1829) a retrospect of the formation of my own mind by intercourse with others, I reserved as more appo- site in this place the two following stanzas : The other was in age my own compeer : OF a severe philosophy was he A searching pupil — from his natural sphere Exorbitant, for he was bred to be 4-t Fashion's shrine a favoured devotee : But pleasure's bonds were not of strength to hold A strenuous mind that struggled to be free ; Love grew as tedious as a tale twice told And beauty's eye met his, impassive, calm, and cold. I gathered from his converse, — shall I say A reverence too exclusive and supreme For Reason in her logical array And most recluse absti'action : not a theme Thenceforward could escape by enthymeme ; We nourished in each other day by day A questioning spirit ; with our double team We drove the harrow o'er the trodden way, Scouting those easy words, the good old yea and nay. ^T. 24-27 CHARLES AUSTIN. 7 fr If the description ia the latter stanza was applic- able to Hyde Yilliers and myself, it was not less so to the small set of able and highly-instructed young men who had been, with one exception, his associates at Cambridge, and who, in London, continuing to be his, became mine also ; Charles Austin, John Mill, Edward Strutt, John Romilly, Charles Villiers. They were radical, Benthamite, doctrinaires; and were regarded by prudent people as very clever young men who were thwarting the gifts of Providence and throwing away their prospects of worldly advance- ment by audaciously avowing extreme and extrava- gant opinions. As time went on, however, the world met them half way ; and whether they have retained or renounced their democratic views, every one of them has obtained what he sought and pursued. Charles Austin was in conversation the most brilliant of them all; and there was a singular charm in his manner, which expressed the power to com- mand along with the desire to please. It was socially genial as well as buoyant (though, perhaps, indi- cating some hardness and coldness at bottom), good- humoured, frank, and wholly unalFected ; and there was a sort of light and almost careless strength in his conversational diction, contrasting strangely and strikingly with the logical precision of thought which he, in common with the rest of them, cultivated as the one thing needful. His precision seemed in- evitable and easy; that of the others more or less painstaking and circumspect. He betook himself to 78 ArTOBIOGRAPHY OF IIE.NRY TAYLOR. 1824-27 the Parliamentary Bar, then the most lucrative career for a lawyer, but one which, not being compatible with a seat in the House of Commons, excluded him from all the honours and dignities of the profession. He made an enormous fortune (nearly 40,000/. in one year I believe), with an amount of exertion which ruined his health for a time ; and all his labours, energies, abilities, knowledge, and fascination of manner and discourse, ended by placing him, in the latter stages of his life, in the position which a thousand ordinary persons occupy by mere inherit- ance in the earlier stages of theirs — that of a rich country gentleman and chairman of quarter sessions. Had his ambition been political instead of pecuniary, he might have been a second Lord Lyndhurst : but he got what he desired. John Mill was the most severely single-minded of the set. He was of an impassioned nature, but I should conjecture, though I do not hioii\^ that in his earliest youth the passion of his nature had not found a free and unobstructed course through the affections, and had got a good deal pent up in his intellect ; in which, however large (and amongst the scientific in- tellects of his time I hardly know where to look for a larger), it was but as an eagle in an aviary. The result was that his political philosophy, cold as was the creed and hard the forms and discipline, caught iire ; and whilst working, as in duty bound, through dry and rigorous processes of induction, was at heart ^ Written before the publication of John Mill's Autobiography. I MI. 24-27 JOHN MILL. 79 sometliiDg in the nature of political fanaticism. He was pure hearted — I was going to say conscientious — but at that time he seemed so naturally and neces- sarily good, and so inflexible, that one hardly thought of him as having occasion for a conscience, or as a man with whom any question could arise for reference to that tribunal. But his absorption in abstract operations of the intellect, his latent ardours, and his absolute simplicity of heart, were hardly, perhaps, compatible with knowledge of men and women, and with wisdom in living his life. His manners were plain, neither graceful nor awkward ; his features re- fined and regular ; the eyes small relatively to the scale of the face, the jaw large, the nose straight and finely shaped, the lips thin and compressed, the fore- head and head capacious ; and both face and body seemed to represent outwardly the inflexibility of the inner man. He shook hands with you from the shoulder. Though for the most part painfully grave, he was as sensible as anybody to Charles Austin's or Charles Villiers's sallies of wit, and his strong and well-built body would heave for a few moments with half- uttered laughter. He took his share in con- versation, and talked, ably and well of course, but with such scrupulous solicitude to think exactly what he should and say exactly what he thought, that he spoke with an appearance of effort and as if with an impediment of the mind. His ambition — so far as he had any — his ardent desire rather, for I doubt if he had much feeling about himself in the matter — 80 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-27 was to impress his opinions on mankind and pro- mote the cause of political science. His works on logic and political economy have now been for many years of the highest authority amongst the learned, and his writings on political philosophy are regarded, even by those who most differ from them, as the aberrations of a powerful and admirable intellect. He has just (1865) furnished the first example of a man sought out and summoned by a large constitu- ency to represent them in the House of Commons, without any proposal or desire of his own to do so, partly on account of his political opinions no doubt, but chiefly on the ground of his eminence as a political philosopher. His seat for Westminster, though not in itself what he would have sought and pursued, is the result and indication of what he did seek and pursue, — a wide -spread influence over the minds of men in his day and generation : and he, too, therefore, has got what he desired.^ ^ In our Debating Society one evening the subject was ptopounded by John Mill, who undertook to show that 'the aristocracy is a pernicious class in this country. ' In a speech of mine in reply to him, written and got off by heart, as were most of my speeches, I met his anticipated invectives against the stolid immobility of the aristocracy : — * It will be allowed, I apprehend, that the most active and energetic men are generally not the most prudent— that they are fond of experi- ments which the chances are not in favour of, and are sanguine beyond the average of mankind, which is itself known to be sanguine beyond reason. Now the conclusion is, that whereas this enlightened, enter- prising, and impetuous class of philosophers might persuade the country to run some awkward risks, this stubborn, benighted, and inveterate aristocracy throw their dead weight into the other scale, and keep all where it ought to be. In moments of popular restlessness, they prevent the commonwealth from falling into the hands of any rather wild lET. 24-27 EDWAED STRUTT. JOHN EOmLLY. 81 Edward Strutt was a man of sound knowledo^e and solid understanding, simple and honest-minded. He had a large fortune, obtained a good position in the House of Commons, became a member of the Government, and was eventually raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Belper ; which was probably all the success in life to which he had aspired ; if indeed he was troubled with any aspirations of the kind. John Komilly was sensitive and reserved ; judg- ing by his countenance, of a very gentle and affec- tionate nature ; but sensibility was not the fashion in this set of juvenile philosophers, and those who had it did not disclose it more than they could help. He had eminent abilities, and had been sedulously trained by Dumont in all the learning of the Benthamites. Men so trained were, perhaps, in general, better fitted for jurists than for judges, and better fitted forjudges than for advocates ; but John Romilly suc- ceeded at the Bar, and rose in due time to be Master of the Kolls and a peer of the realm. He therefore, like the others, has been successful, according to his desires. There remains Charles Yilliers ; and as I have already said, he is at this moment (1865), as he has been for several years, a Cabinet Minister. He was handsome but in a feminine way ; and in order to indicate the small value that he set upon such beauty, young gentleman who may be possessed with a very natural desire, together with some natural capability, of leading mankind where he pleases.' VOL. I. G 82 AUTOBIOGBAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-27 he affected slovenliness in dress and neglect of his person. He generally appeared in a threadbare coat which had lost one or more of its buttons, and Hyde said of him that he was a very good-looking fellow * when he was picked and washed.' He was idle ; like his elder brothers he had been wofully ill- educated ; and he was not, I think, in the habit of reading books. But he was shrewd and acute, and by living with instructed men he got the knowledge that can be so acquired ; and, pretending to nothing, paid for what he got by the interest he took in the knowledge others possessed and by the keenness and brightness of his wit ; in so much that he would have been as much missed in our circle as any other of us. ' So he is gone, with all his wit and all his malice,' said Johnson when Beauclerc died ; as if he somewhat regretted the loss of the malice as well as that of the wit. And there was a malice of the imagination in Charles Villiers's wit^ which was certainly very pleasant to us philosophers. It was a mischievous wit, and made him many enemies, and it was certainly not restrained by charity. But, on the other hand, I do not believe that it proceeded from any practical ill-nature. On the contrary, I have reason to know that there was in him no little kind- * The humour of malice, without the reality, which belonged to Charles Villiers was well expressed in an answer he gave to me on my return from some months' travel on the Continent in 1844, when I asked him about the state of public aflfairs, and how Gladstone had been getting on, adding that, from what I could hear, he had become quite popular : * Yes, everyone speaks well of him,— God damn him ! ' ^T. 24-27 CHARLES VILLIERS. WORDSWORTH. 83 ness of disposition — carefully concealed. In after years, understanding well his own aptitudes and defects, lie fastened upon one subject — the Corn Laws — acquired all the knowledge requisite for dealing with that, and through that made good his footing in political life. He played an important and con- spicuous part as one of the leading members of the Anti- Corn- Law League, and he took up a position in the House of Commons which, with his social rank and his family connections, so soon as it became neces- sary for the Whigs to conciliate the Radicals by ad- mitting two or three of them to a share in the govern- ment of the country, gave him an easy entrance into the Cabinet. He has, no doubt, learnt all that life in the House of Commons and in office teaches, and in this year of 1865 he has carried through Parliament with much ability and perseverance the most im- portant and the most pertinaciously opposed measure of the session — that for union-rating. Such were the male associates with whom my friendship with Hyde Yilliers brought me into more or less of intimacy. Frequent and long drawn out were the breakfastings of those days ; and when Wordsworth happened to be in London, I got him to come ; and though he was old, and the rest so young, and he was opposed to them in politics, yet the force and brightness of his conversation, his social geni- ality, and the philosophic as well as imaginative largeness of his intellect, delighted them all. Southey, too, came amongst us once or twice ] and I look back G 2 84 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF IIENHY TAYLOR. 1824-27 on those meetins^s with the sort of feelino: with which Beaumont reverted to the gatherings at the • Mermaid ' of Ben Jonson and the rest : — What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtile flame As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his duU life. The society of the family at Kent House was interesting and captivating in another way. Miss Villiers was eminently pretty, — as pretty, I think, as any one could be without being beautiful ; and she was as quick and intelligent as any one could be without being signally intellectual. She had been brought up in a class of society, the elite of which (as I have observed elsewhere) will naturally, from constant practice, be ^more adroit, vivacious and versatile in their talk than others, more prompt and nimble in their wit, and more graceful and perfect in the performance of the many little feats of agility in conversation which come easily to those who have been used to consider language rather as a toy than as an instrument.' She had all these advantages, and she aimed at nothing in conversation which she could not accomplish with ease and grace ; so that one felt as if she might have been more brilliant than she was had she been disposed to try. She had sense, and strength and clearness of purpose upon all occasions ; ^T. 24-27 MISS VILLIERS. 85 and a harmony and unity of the whole being, inward and outward, which, being so perfect, was in itself a charm. But what perhaps most charmed me in my gravity was a fresh light -heart edness, new to my experience as well as contrasted with my own condi- tions of existence — For the hours Had led her lightly down the vale of life, Dancing and scattering roses, and her face Seemed a perpetual daybreak, and the woods Where'er she rambled echoed through their aisles The music of a laugh so softly gay That Spring with all her songsters and her songs Knew nothing like it.* It was of her that I so wrote, though not by name. Of casual and superficial sensibilities she knew nothing ; and when the deeps were broken up, which could happen to her as to others, it seemed as if she could suffer only in paroxysms, and that in these she must either conquer or die. Her way was to conquer • but once she did nearly die ; her strong nerves gave way, and for some months she was unable to speak intelligibly or to walk. These physical consequences being removed, however, and- her health restored, she resumed her constitutional sprightliness ; the past was past, and not a trac^ of a trouble remained. ^ Ernesto. 86 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HEKEY TAYLOR. 1824-28 CHAPTER VI. SPEECHES — ARTICLES IN THE * QUARTERLY REVIEW* — GIFFORD ' ISAAC COMNENUS ' — VISITS TO THE CONTINENT AND TO MISS FENWICK AT BATH — VIEWS OF MYSELF. Anno Dom. 1824-28. Anno Mt. 24-28. In 1825 I made my first attempt to speak in public. It was made in a debating society to which the Villiers brothers and the other men I have mentioned belonged, and was reported in a letter to my step^ mother of March 12, 1825 ; adverting first to a speech delivered on the same evening by Hyde Villiers : — ^ I heard him make his first speech in the Academics last week with great success. It was able, orderly, and distinct ; with no grace of language other than harmony and simplicity. There was no striking embellishment in the speech ; but his manner of delivering it was extremely expressive and imposing. I made my first attempt last night and failed. I know of no other reason for my failure than the mere disability to collect my thoughts and give them connected utterance. My speech, if speech it could iET. 24-28 FIRST SPEECH. 87 be called, reminds me of Le Fevre's pulse.^ When I felt thoroughly embarrassed, I said that I felt myself not capable of going through with it and therefore I should give it up. And 1 do not know that I could have done anything better. But I felt it hard to hear some speakers string their nothings together with ease and fluency, whilst I who had something to say had no power to speak it. Also it could not but be matter of some mortification to exhibit a failure to a large audience, most of them men of ability. I do not consider the experiment conclusive ; and dis- ao-reeable as it is, it must be renewed. If I find that I am really unable to speak in public, it is always useful that men should be aware of their incapacities ; and it is necessary that I should ascertain mine in this instance, since it would materially influence even my present pursuits. — Since I came to Downing Street I have had some talk with Tilliers on the subject of my dehut last night. He says I made him excessively nervous, but he did not expect it would end as it did ; there was no appearance of shyness, my voice was firm and clear, and when I made my dend stands he always thought that I was deliberately collecting myself and that I should go on well after. He calls my break-down the coolest thing he ever saw/ My father and stepmother replied, the former beginning and the latter finishing the letter :— 1 The allusion is to a passage in the account of Le Fevre's death in Tristram Shandy, vol. vi. chap, xi, :— ' The pulse fluttered— stopped— went on — throbbed — stopped again — moved — stopped — shall I go on? —No.' 88 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOR. 1824-28 ^ Persevere by all means, aiid redeem the opinion of the society (if they be so inexperienced as to form one on a debut) even at the expense of incurring more wounds to vanity for a while — but attempt no reply till, by premeditated speaking, you have got over the hurry of spirits from desuetude/ . . . ' Your father is hurried to get other things ready for the post, so gives me his paper to express my mortification on the very natural and most picturesque account of your feelings. The coolness that was taken for impudence was pride that would not show mortifica- tion. 1 have always observed an inequality in your speech when upon any argument ; sometimes fluent and rapid, and sometimes hesitating and vacant. I am glad I was not present, I should have been so very nervous. Your failure was partly nervous, though not in the way of shyness ; but I trust practice will at least give you the exercise of your full powers, whatever they may be ; and if you have them, I am impatient to have the present impression on your audience removed. Had I to speak I should feel as you did, and as I have done many a time when 1 had any very painful thing to say : I have fixed upon the sentence and made my tongue do it like a parrot without any sense in my head, or in my heart either but of its own thumping.' In less than a fortnight I reported a second attempt : — ' I spoke last night sufficiently to my own satis- faction. I got off a little speech thoroughly by rote, I ^T. 24-28 SECOND SPEECH. 89 SO that I was sure I could not be prevented from speaking it except through an absolute deprivation of intellect and utterance ; I rose without any nervous excitation further thaia what would be of advantage to me, and with nothing of the nervous depression which had attended my former attempt, and I spoke it quite fluently to the end. I felt no want of self- possession, and made the emphasis and manner of delivery pretty much according to my ideal of what it ought to be. I felt in speaking as if I could have digressed and come back to my rote speech at pleasure ; but I had determined not to do it ; and perhaps would have found myself wrong if I had. However, till this is done, all I know respecting my talents in this way is that I can recite before any given audience any given speech I have gotten as much by heart as ever I got an alphabet.' A copy of the speech was enclosed, and it shows that, with all my admiration for my Benthamite friends, I was far from adopting their opinions. It might be supposed indeed from the language that I was an ardent Conservative ; but the truth is that, though I was of this way of thinking when called upon to think upon the subject at all, I cared little for politics ; and for the greater part of my life I was not in the habit of even reading the newspapers. Of political economy, nevertheless, I was a sedulous student. A few months later my letters make mention of another speech and of its success. ' The effect, how- 90 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-28 ever, was a good deal broken and spoiled towards the end by a sort of minim rest, as the musicians have it; that is, I made a total pause and stood upon the floor for some time, racking my recollection for what was to come next. . . . Certainly nothing could be less like impromptu speaking than the perfectly fluent delivery of the two portions and the dead stand- still between them. However, I have not much desire to get credit for doing more than I can do, and have no objection to everyone's knowing that I get by heart all I can say, until 1 can say something without. It is more satisfactory to feel a good foundation for any reputation, great or small, which one may come by.' An extract from one of my speeches may be worth transcribing. It was in refutation of my friends, the young Benthamites. ' That all our motives originate in selfishness is, in my opinion, though perfectly true, very immaterial. For I believe it is not denied that by virtue of association we come to be actuated by such motives as in common language are called dis- interested ; and how does it signify what be the original principles of our nature, so long as the derivative are the acting ones ? The immediate in- stigating causes of our acts are what concerns us in life, not the remote metaphysical origin. You may trace back closely, you may follow far, the suc- cessions and dependencies of our acts and feelings ; you may pursue them into the region of final causes, where they are lost in darkness ; but this will not bring you to a system of morals : for moral principles ^T. 24-28 BENTHAMITE ETPHCS EEPUDIATED. 91 are to be found by investigating rather the conse- quences of our acts than their causes, and rather the near causes than the more distant. Although, there- fore, if you will seek out in selfishness the source of every generous impulse I do not dispute that you may find it, yet, in my mind, it is like finding a north-west passage to the South Pole — the way is cold and gloomy, and it is likewise a long way about. Sir, having admitted the doctrines in question to be true, I will further admit them to be as harmless as many other metaphysical truths, so long as they are silently revolving in the brain of a philosopher ; but harmless they are not to those by whom they are half under- stood, and of this number are the multitude who maintain them. To this half- comprehension is to be imputed the open profession and boast of selfish- ness which has grown to be a prevalent folly among our youth, — a profession which is not always to be taken as indicating the natural temper of him who makes it, but which, however, sufiiciently betokens that a direction has been given to his vanity which will tend to confirm in him what is wrong in him, and to check any impulse of his better mind. A philosophic teacher of this school would instruct him, no doubt, if he would learn, that the true principle of well-advised selfishness is to seek for happiness in that range and region of pleasures which the in- fluence of association has placed at his command ; to seek it in the pleasures of benevolence and in the pleasures of sympathy ; in such as contain some 92 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR, 1824-28 principle of permanency and self-increase ; to seek it in such as are spreading and growing and abiding, not dwindling and wasting away. And the pupil of this more benign philosophy will be taught that the pleasures and passions of which self is the centre may, according as he contrives it, either go out where they are kindled, or may emanate thence and redound to him from all the multiplying and magni- fying objects within hist sphere. This, he will be taught, is the philosophy of selfishness. So it sounds, I confess, and so I believe it to be ; but it is a philo- sophy which is caviare to the general ; I have never heard of it or perceived any tokens of a belief in it amongst the disciples of the selfish system of morals ; and I am afraid it happens in this, as in other cases, that when men are referred to philosophy for their principles of action, each man will have a philosophy of his own, and one perhaps less remarkable for its depth than for its adaptation to his own likings and conve- nience. This unhappily has come to be very much the actual state of the case. Every man who aspires to a certain intellectual rank and precedency has his pecu- liar system of morals made for himself, like his easy chair — in which he arranges himself to his own perfect satisfaction, denouncing ex cathedra the easy chairs of all the rest of mankind. There is nothing that is infirm or out of joint in him but some dogma is put in like a cushion to bolster it up, and whoso meddles with his cushions is no philosopher. It is not long since I heard a Populationist vehemently reproach a poor MT. 24-28 BENTHAMITE ETHICS REPUDIATED. 93 but very respectable married gentleman for the sin of having nine children lawfully begotten. The Popu- lationist, on the other hand, was a single man, and might very possibly be chargeable with sinning against another sort of philosophy. And thus do men in our days, like their brother Antinomians in Hudibras — Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have no mind to. Sir, much mischief is done — by the act and by the example — when men of larger capacities than their fellows arrogate to themselves, not only in discourse and in disquisition, but in deed, a right to set aside the commonly received principles of morality and to govern themselves by their own. A few instances I know may be cited, in which, under very extraordi- nary circumstances, very extraordinary men have served the world by so doing ; but in ten generations there does not arise one man who can do so without the most perilous presumption ; and if knowledge should continue to diffuse itself as it has done, the circumstances will not again occur under which that one man would stand justified. Sir, in these times I would have men think freely, and speak freely, and write freely ; where they dissent from the prevailing opinions I would have them send forth their reasons nK)destly, as becomes men who are contending against all, and therefore against some that are wise ; and having sent forth their reasons, I could wish that they would leave them to make their way in the world ; but in the meantime that they would hold 94 AUTOBIOGEAPIIY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-28 themselves bound by the standing opinions of man- kind, and not free to follow their own. Sir, I will not trust that man who tells me that his conduct to me is to be regulated by principles of his own dis- covering and systems of his own making. I would say to him that the lex incognita of his secret con- science, of his subtle philosophy, is far from satisfac- tory to me. Sir, am I to study every man's philosophy before I know what 1 have to expect from him ? If not, then it is not enough for his system that it is right, but it must be no other than that system which is commonly known and acknowledged to be right ; there must be a general recognition of the principles and reciprocity in the practice ; I must have a public pledge ; I must have Government security ; I must be assured that he respects the commonly received, the universally sanctioned, the every day principles of morality, and that he respects the public opinion which, under the bond of such respect, will hold him to the observance of those principles, but which would not hold him to the observance of any other principles. Sir, if a man have discharged his mind from the control of public feeling and commonplace morality, I know not that wickedness which he may not commit and bring me a reason for it. If, therefore, a man should show me by any act, be it good, bad, or indifferent in itself, that he has passed his mind through this process, I should thenceforth know him to be a dangerous man, and deal with him accordingly. Take the case of a JET. 24-28 ARTICLE ON LANDOR. 95 resurrection-man. The work he engages in is, in its own nature, not only innocent but meritorious. The man is invariably a ruffian. The heart of human kind is against him — he has learnt to brave the abhorrent feelings of his fellow-creatures, and it is therefore not in this their misdirection only that he is ready to brave them. In like manner every man who by reason of his peculiar opinions should take up a hostile position amongst mankind, cutting himself off from the sympathies of the better part of society and creating to himself a common interest with its out- casts, — any man who should do this, would place himself in imminent peril of passing from a versatile philosophy to a reckless and driftless conduct in life, — from an isolated and unsupported morality to an utter destitution, as well of self-government as of social control/ Though much occupied with business in 1824 and 1825, some horce subsecivce were given to literature. I wrote, in 1824, an article for the ' Quarterly Eeview ' on Walter Savage Landor's ^Imaginary Con- versations.' In writing of the article to my father, I characterised it, in words quoted from one of the * Imaginary Conversations,' as ' that persecution by petulance which the commonalty call banter.' This was the last time that I offended in that kind ; and it appears that I had repented before the article was published ; and after endeavouring, at first without much success, to induce Gifford to expunge what 96 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR 1824-28 was most injurious, I sent tlie article to Landor's publisher (Landor himself was in Italy), with an offer to suppress it altogether if he thought it would do the book more harm than good. He thought otherwise, and did not desire the suppression ; and after I had prevailed in a farther effort to obtain some modification of it§ tone, it was published. Immitigable as Gifford was disposed to be to the last in his character of critic, he was personally very kind and gracious to me ; and I transcribe (panegyric and all) the last portion of the last of his letters, written (July 28, 1824) not long before his death : — ^ One word in confidence. The effects of age and sickness are hourly becoming more visible to me, and I must shortly retire from a situation to which my strength is unequal. I earnestly hope, however, that you will continue your assistance to the " Review " whoever may succeed me. It is not a time for me to flatter, and you may believe me when I say, that I think you have all the elements of an excellent critic, and that practice, under a careful eye, will speedily place you in a high rank among our best writers. I notice with pleasure a beautiful mixture of pathos and quiet humour, which put me often in mind of Southey, and a style that is truly English. Ambitious ornaments, which are the pro- perty of youth, you will by degrees discover and abandon. We have fine weather here, and I am pleasantly situated in full view of the channel and the shipping. This to me is a prime consideration, for I I ^T. 24-28 ' ISAAC COMNENUS.' 97 from youth much attached to the sea. With all this, I suspect that I do not get better ; my voice fails me greatly, and I rather hiss or whistle than breathe : but I retain my spirits, and with this I am more than satisfied.' This was, I think, the last that I heard of Gifford, except the announcement of his death in the news- papers. He must have had many literary and political acquaintances and friends ; but in this year, 1824, when I knew him, sick and moribund, he appeared to be a solitary old man. He had never been married ; the ' Quarterly Review ' was his only issue ; and his talents, in raising him out of the class in which he was born, had probably tended to domestic isolation. He had published some account of himself during his life, and no fuller or other biography appeared after his death. At least I have never heard of any. In these years I wrote ^ Isaac Comnenus.' With what hopes and with what doubts of its success I sent it into the world, is expressed in a letter to Southey of February 10, 1827 :— ^ It was begun between three and four years ago. The first two acts were written when I was an idle man in the country — I think in two months ; the others after I had come here, in as many years, and a year more was taken for adding and altering. Now, if I were to write another play at this rate, I might die undramatically before the fifth act ; and with respect to posthumous reputation, I cannot but think that VOL. I. H 98 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-28 the power of Fame to please is amongst tlie things of this world which pass away along with it. Whatever pleasure is to be had from success, therefore, I would rather have soon than late ; and with respect to dis- appointment from failure, I suppose I should feel it more or less, but my unhopeful habit of mind has always spared me any very keen feeling of that kind. I have always taken failure as a matter of course and been surprised when I succeeded in anything. I could not easily fancy myself feeling disappointment in a thing of this sort, though I suppose, as there must be some expectation to induce one to try, so some disappointment must follow failure. The in- solence of criticism is not offensive to me except when the criticism is ill- executed, as many miserable attempts are at the tone of critical superiority and contempt. I have been used to regard criti- cism like burlesque, as an exercise for the faculties of wit and ridicule. Whether such criticism will be offensive to me when directed against myself, remains to be seen. I am willing to suppose that it will not. I am not what is commonly called ^'touchy.'' People for whom I have much regard or respect can offend me, indifferent people scarcely.^ It was published by Mr Murray, the most eminent publisher of the time ; and in October, 1828, an article in commendation of it appeared in the ' Quarterly Review,' the writer of which, not then known by me to be so, was Southey. But the public would have nothing to say to it. Some of my MT. 24-28 ' ISAAC COMNENUS.' 99 most familiar associates seem to have known nothinef about it ; and when I heard there was to be an article on it, I expressed myself to my father as having lost my interest in it, my mind being occupied with other things. I suppose I saw that it had no chance of celebrity ; and I had always felt that, to a poet, less than celebrity was worse than nothing. It was easy to keep a secret which nobody desired to know, and I, as well as my book, remained in obscurity for some years longer, — about seven. It was as well for me, however, that I had tried and failed. The result of the failure was to leave me in no hurry to publish again ; and when, soon after, I went to work upon ^ Van Artevelde,' it was with little reference to success in publication, with hardly any anticipation of it, and with a disposition, there- fore, to work only in favourable moods and when it gave me present pleasure. ' Be not ambitious of an early fame,' says Landor ; * such is apt to shrivel and drop under the tree.' And conversely early failure is often a recoil pou7^ mieux sauter. In June and July of 1825, 1 joined South ey in an expedition through France to Holland ; and I wrote »some letters to my father and my stepmother, from the latter of which, written at Brussels on June 17, I iisrill take some notices of my travels, and of my companion, than whom, though some thirty years older than I, no young man could have been asso- ciated with one more young-hearted and easy to please. ' The cultivation, the peasantry, the villages, the s 2 100 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENHY TAYT.OR. 1824-28 cottages, the eating and drinking, and everything that appears, betoken a more flourishing country than I expected to see, and a country clear of the abject and destitute class which is numerous at home. But the great relief is from the jealousy of classes, which forms so many knots in the English people and ob- structs the free circulation of a good fellow-feeling. I, for one, never have the good feeling towards an English mechanic, being a stranger, which I have towards dogs and horses, being so. But the moment I came amongst the French I had it. Oil seemed to have taken the place of rust in the mechanism of society, and I was reminded of the easy action of the steam- engine when I looked down upon it from the deck of the steamboat that brought us over. The first evening after landing I walked out by myself about half a mile from Boulogne, and found a churchyard full of the black and white wooden crosses which are com- monly placed over the graves, and of the exuberant vegetation which the French encourage there ; and in a corner (itself as large as a small English church- yard) was the burial place of the English and other Protestants. Being somewhat tired with my day's travelling, I fell asleep upon an English tombstone ; and when I woke, a boy was digging a grave at a little distance. Had he been English he would have dug to the Antipodes before he would have noticed me ; but being French, he jumped out of the grave and came up to me, and we knew each other presently. He was a very fine intelligent boy, and I liked him ^T. 24-28 FOREIGN TOUKS. 101 as much as you would have liked a very fine Newfoundland dog ; and his ways were such as the dog's would have been to you. '' Youdriez-vous coucher ici? " he said to me, after we had talked for some time, and pointed to the grave he^had been digging. " Non, c'est en Angleterre que je veux coucher." ' Ce n'est pas assez fonce encore ; ' and then he jumped into it and went to work again. I have found no difficulty in making myself understood, the people are so quick in catching my meaning ; nor am I often at a loss for words ; but I am not so quick in catching theirs. No doubt I do violence to His Most Christian Majesty's French, but not a tenth part so much as Southey. He speaks the language, as he says, with- out shame or remorse ; and never man dashed on in such fearless defiance of pronunciation and all the parts of speech. At Bouchain he gave us a verse written in imitation of Drunken Barnaby : — Here we call for bread and butter ; Thanks for it in French we utter ; Better bread was never broken, Worser French was never spoken.* He said that if Barnaby 's journal was written by the person to whom it was ascribed, he had not been his own hero, for he was a very respectable man (a Dr. * Another quatrain on the same model occurs in his correspondence : — Amsterdam we reached by schooner, And not liking left the sooner. Never city such a sink was ; Weak the drink was, strong the stink was. 102 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-28 Brathwaite, T think he said) ; but whether drunk or sober, he had a high respect for him and wished he had him here. I give Southey credit for being civil in as few words as any man, for "il fait tres chaud, Monsieur," has served him all the way from Bou- logne; but once he bid me good morning with " il fait furieusement chaud, Monsieur," and I told him that he should not say that, because it was a point of civility to leave the superlative of your own senti- ment to be given by the person to whom you ad- dressed yourself, and if you took it yourself you left him nothing but a cold assent. So he agreed to give up "furieusement" in cases of speaking first ; but that very morning the host accosted him with " II fait tres chaud, Monsieur," and Southey's " furieuse- ment chaud, Monsieur," came out with singular zest. An invention of mine serves us for answers to all inquiries of waiters as to what we will have and liow we will have it, &c. It lies in the words, " le mieux possible." We have a good deal of literary conversation and many good stories. The former has served to revive some of the little knowledge in Belles -Lettres which I had nearly forgotten that I had ever acquired, and may make the remains of it last a year or two longer. The old roots will strike again. Most of what is newly added will die away like flowers stuck in the ground. ... I wish Miss Fenwick would come to town with you. I think it would be an excellent thing for her to do. She would serve you a good turn by keeping you com- iET. 24-28 FOREIGN TOURS. 103 pany when I am in Downing Street and my father is God knows where ; and she would see Southey before age has taken more from the most spirited countenance that ever human form was graced with.' In 1826, if I recollect right, I made another tour in Holland with Southey; and in 1827 I went to Paris, and thence to the north of Italy with my father. In 1828 Mrs. Yilliers proposed to me to accompany her and Miss Yilliers and Edward on a tour through Switzerland and Italy — a proposal which at that time must have had a peculiar fas- cination for me ; but I was either enabled or com- pelled to resist it. Probably my official duties stood in the way ; or possibly I may have thought that in one way or another no good would come of it. My father, I recollect, found me sadly insensible to the charms of scenery and of other objects which delighted him as they came before him and continued to delight him in the remembrance to the end of his days. If accompanied, my companion was more to me than the face of Nature; if alone, it was not scenery of the gay Italian type that I loved, but rather sylvan recesses and some ' boundless con- tiguity of shade : ' and I had a feeling which I have never seen expressed except in three lines of George Darley's : — There is a melanclioly in sunbright fields Deeper to me than gloom ; I am ne'er so sad As when I sit amid bright scenes alone. ^ 1 Darley's ' Sylvia.' 104 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-28 In Italy, instead of looking about me, I sat in the carriage and read ' Corinne/ And indeed, through- out Jife, and perhaps in youth as much as afterwards, though equal to work for as many hours of the day as other men, it was only for a few hours that I was capable of enjoyment. My health and constitution rendered that capability limited in duration, and liable to abatement from small bodily contingencies, — loss of sleep, indigestion, cold, heat, hunger or fatigue. I was patient enough of such things ; but pleasure could not consist with them. My visits to Miss Fen wick, at Bath, were frequent in these years, and our friendship grew and flourished. Towards the end of 1828 my stepmother writes in an- swer to an account I had given of one of my visits : — ^ My dear cousin certainly unites in her character what makes a most endearing and admirable com- bination, always most delightful to me ; and I rejoice in seeing it is always so to you ; and that she feels as motherly towards you as I do myself, but more in- dulgent to your failings, which must make her more dear to you, and perhaps more useful in the end ; for rare indeed are those who can receive any hint of their errors but from those they most deeply love ; and yet I never met with anyone (the insensible excepted) who was so candid and so perfectly true in such discussions as yourself.' My answer expresses my view of myself at twenty-seven years of age. * I do not know whether Miss Fen wick is more ^T. 24-28 INTEOSPECTIONS. 105 indulgent to me than you are. I daresay you are both very foolish in that way ; but if you were less so, I cannot think that there would be any love lost thereby. I think that generally speaking I can take the credit you give me for candour in discussions concerning my own merits and demerits. I am not what is called touchy on such occasions ; that is, not generally : for instances might be found of the kind, and some which have given me much pain in the recollection. They are imputable to aspirations after a certain dignity of character which there is not strength to attain, and the sense of humiliation from being made conscious that it has not been attained. There must be a consciousness of weakness to give rise to such resentments. Where the point censured brings my understanding only in question, nothing of the kind arises ; for I have no diffidence of the strength of my intellect. But I have felt for several years that there was in me a want of independent and self- subsisting strength of character, and an occasional susceptibility of vain and trivial impressions, the consciousness of which gives me pain, of course, whether brought to my mind by my own reflex observation or by the animadversions of others. Much of this I am willing to think is less belonging to my mind as it now is, than owing to habits formed in a previous state of it. But such habits remaining from a previous state are still important parts of the actual mind, and give a consciousness of original and native weakness. They are never presented to me in 106 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-28 stronger relief than when I am with Miss Fenwick. The faults which one might suppose to be, or to have been, in her character would be all from too much vehemence of an independent nature and an ill- considered direction of strong and generous feelings. Whatever the errors might be, one would see power and dignity all through them. Errors of this kind I would almost wish myself capable of committing. I should look back upon them with sorrow, perhaps, for their consequences, but without humiliation. But my errors are of no such manly and vigorous character ; my only strength is in a temperance of mind, and my hope is in improvement to be worked out by habits of meditation and that sort of self- analysis which is always going on where a subtle intellect is united with a solicitous temper.' To which she made answer : — ^ I don't quite understand your view of your own character, or what you aim at. You certainly are not independent of the opinion of others ; nor is it fitting that at your age you should ; experience only ought to bring that ; arrogance often does it, and an over- rated approbation by those who are as inexperienced, but who, feeling something of the power of intellect,, are impatient to be blown up like an air-cushion ; and then people gather in crowds and say — If you will blow me up, I will blow you up. That dignity you aim at, I suppose from what you remark justly in Miss Fenwick, will not exist in the mind that harbours a trait of vanity, nor even in a mind that ^T. 24-28 INTROSPECTIONS. 107 delights in being admired or looked up to even by wise men : but different minds pursue different ways with regard to working out their own characters ; and none seem to me desirable when worked out but such as are humble with a sense of their own im- perfections. That^ well established^ brings all that is right where there is real intellect ; and niakes them interesting and good even where the intellect is very poor. I have been writing all day, and my little share of intellect is feeble, and going and going, and gone. . . . — Yours ever, J. T. ' What you tell us of your friend T shows a great interest in your favour, and is satisfactory in many points of view ; you have sad temptations to vanity.' I replied : — ' You do not understand what I would be at about my character. To get rid of the vanity of it is my aim ; and that would bring with it an indepen- dence of the opinions of others so far as they regard what may be called objects of vanity. I agree with you that an entire independence of opinion, as regards questions of utility, is as undesirable as it is unattainable. Hare,^ the Irishman at Edinburgh, seems to have made the nearest approach to it one has heard of. As to humility, I do not quite know what is meant by that, when it is spoken of as a commendable quality. I like people to have neither a low estimate nor a high estimate of themselves, but ^ He was a celebrated murderer, who murdered people in order to sell their bodies to the surgeon for dissection. 108 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1824-28 simply a true estimate. If by humility is meant, not the estimate itself, but the feelings to which it gives rise, then I think certainly it is desirable that a full consciousness of imperfections (which is implied in a true estimate) should be attended by feelings of mortification ; and that the full consciousness of powers (also implied) should not be attended with feelings of exultation ; because such feelings are apt to disturb the j udgment, and to render the enjoyment of the powers more the object than what is more important in the application of them ; which feelings are, however, seldom consequent upon merely a true estimate ; at least they are so then in a very slight degree. They are, when they exist in greater potency, the cause of an untrue estimate. I think I have not much of this sort of exultation in such powers as I have, though I believe I have a full consciousness of them. I think I have much more pleasure in their exercise than in the acknowledgment of them by others ; at least when that acknowledg- ment is unattended by anything else that is agreeable. I sometimes have a great desire to gain an influence over certain individuals. My sense of admiration is strong, and where I admire I wish to be admired — a wish which is compounded perhaps as much of the sympathies as of the vanities of human nature : but exclude these objects, and present me with the admiration and applause of T (which you seem to think so dangerous), and I assure you the feeling falls as flat as a flounder.' 109 CHAPTER YIL THE HISTORY OF PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE ADOPTED AS THE SUBJECT of a drama — proposal of a new employment which does not take effect — miss villiers. Anno Dom. 1828-29. Anno ^t. 28-29. In the spring of 1828 I was meditating another drama ; and Southey, after dissuading me from founding one upon the story of Patkul, suggested that of Philip van Artevelde, which I at once adopted, writing on March 9 : — ' I have finished Artevelde's story in Barante. A play could not develop the character from first to last, or comprise the story, unless it were, like Wallenstein, divided into parts. The first part should conduct him from obscurity to his conquest of Bruges, — everywhere the fairest, and at the latter point the brightest of his history. And the second part might bring him from the splendour of his first achievement through the consequent moral changes to his death. I agree with you that there are fine materials for an historical drama.' And ten days later I wrote that ' Philip Van Artevelde ' was begun ; without much notion pro- 110 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1828-29 bably at that time that six years would be required to complete it. But my official tasks were heavy for some of those years, if not for all ; and I find from a letter to Southey in September, 1828, that I meditated taking upon myself new labours, which would have put poetry out of the question : — ' The proposal which is now made is that I should retain my present office under the Colonial Secretary of State, and give my spare time to another member of the Cabinet, my income being raised to 1,200/. a year. Beyond this accession to my income, my new employer says he promises nothing, and should hold himself perfectly clear in honour and in everything else if he did nothing for me ; but he adds that, if circumstances favoured it, his object would be to cultivate a close alliance and undertake " the structure of my fortunes. '^ Perhaps that is a structure which (if raised at all) is more likely to be the work of my own hands than of any other person's ; but he or any man is welcome to carry the bricks and mortar. I think it likely that this arrangement will be con- cluded, and then farewell to Philip Van Artevelde and all other my recreations ! For heavy will be the burthen I shall have taken up ! I shall have nothing but the objects of political life to repay me, and I must cultivate the sort of ambition which gives them their value.' There are traces here of a spirit of pride and self-assertion, which I had not then learnt to be as ^T. 28-29 OFFICIAL PROSPECTS. Ill alien as I afterwards knew them to be, from a pure and genuine spirit of independence. In a letter to my father I adverted to the proposed employment as one which, ^ if it led to any advancement would lead me into the line of life of a political adventurer without private fortiiae, which I know and see is a hard, anxious, and unquiet life, and I think a life of more excitement than any except those of an actor or of a highwayman. . . . On the other hand, advance- ment has of course its charms with me as with other people, though I do not occupy myself with doubtful prospects of it, or dwell upon them, or care so much about them as that their removal would give me a moment's concern.' The negotiation came to nothing, and Van Artevelde went on his way. But my father had misgivings as to the division of my powers between business and poetry, quoting the example of a person [name illegible] of whom it was said he might have been a good poet if he had not attempted to be a statesman, and a good statesman if he had not attempted to be a poet ; and he ex- pressed a hope that I would only take poetry as a pleasant change in the application of my powers, and not let it engross them at the expense of my health or the real business of life. His chief solicitude was about my health, which was far from strong ; and he was by no means ambitious for me, or desirous that I should aim at a political career. He may probably have thought that I was un- 112 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1828-29 fitted for such a career by other wants than the want of health ; and if so he was not altogether wrong. Mr. Gladstone, I was told the other day, says of me that 'I had wanted nothing but ambition to have been a great man ; ' meaning, no doubt, great in the way that he is great himself, politically. I think there were more things wanting. I might have done well enough as a subordinate and co-operative poli- tician, but I was unfitted to be a political leader in such times as those in which my lot was cast. In respect of organic politics I have always been of a sceptical turn — a man of uncertain opinions, and rather glad not to have occasion to form any. Such a man, if he be but moderately conscientious, must be unfitted for projecting great organic changes in complex polities, or for taking any high command in a battle for them. If I regarded the Reform Bill of 1832 as justifiable, it was not with sanguine expectations of the result, and only because there might be more danger in doing nothing or doing less. It is true that I was prepared to act with any amount of vigour and intrepidity on the question of West Indian Slavery ; but that was one of the simplest of all questions of organic change. I was thoroughly conversant with the dangers and horrors of the system in existence, and though I was not wholly free from doubts as to what might ensue upon emancipation, I could have no doubt that whatever else it might be, it would be better than what it supplanted. ^T. 28-29 POETRY AND BUSINESS, 113 But if my father formed a just estimate of my disqualifications for political life, lie probably saw no sufficient reason for believing (have I myself the belief even now ? I suppose I have, or I would not now be writing this autobiography) that I would be one of the few who attain to permanent celebrity as a poet. I did not defend my course upon any such ground : if I thought it so defensible, which I. can only have done in a doubtful way, for my forecasts have never been sanguine or positive, I suppressed my thoughts, and only answered that no doubt I should be a worse man of business for being a writer of poetry, and the worse poet for being a man of business ; but that as writing plays was the only pleasure in which I indulged, I was enabled to dis- patch my business regularly and competently in the main ; adding, ' If I were more devoted to business I should probably grasp more of it into my own hands which is properly belonging to others ; but my own share, considered in the widest extent of what can be called mine, would not be otherwise dealt with than it is now. What I do I very seldom do incom- pletely ; for I have always had an aversion to incom- pleteness in anything. If I were to go into society, or to do anything else but dispatch business and write plays, I could not get on certainly with both. But I read almost nothing and go nowhere. Ask my cousin too [meaning Miss Fen wick], and she VOL. I. 1 114 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1828-29 will say, tliat if I have an imagination it was meant to be exercised.' This habit of ' going nowhere ' was not altogether satisfactory to my mother, especially as there was one exception. * I wish you could tell us,' she had said, ' of any pleasant new acquaintances. You will grow old without variety, and if the Yilliers family disappoint you, or be separated from you by the events of life, then you will have no intimates at all ; and it is always bad to keep to one set of acquaintances ; your thoughts and your opinions become contracted, and it forms a prejudiced mind ; and then to avoid that, people assume a kind of allowance for other opinions that they call candour ; but it does not deserve the name ; it is more fre- quently a piece of deceit, and instead of producing the delightful effect of truth upon an honest mind of another way of thinking, it gives a strong muscular sensation of the right arm, that might produce a box on the ear, but for the habit of control.' No doubt what was in my stepmother's mind was that I had been passing two or three years in much intimacy with one young lady, and with one only ; that this one was attractive to all the world, and as she would know from the descriptions of her in my letters, could not but be peculiarly so to me ; an 1 that it was highly improbable that the consequences would be favourable to my happiness. Her mother had become a great friend of mine. I frequented Kent House continually, and when the ^T. 28-29 MISS VILLIERS. 115 London season was over and the family left town, Mrs. Yilliers and I kept up a weekly correspondence. She was a woman of a strong and ardent nature, but also a woman of the world ; and neither she nor I could have thought of a nearer connection as pos- sible, except in certain contingencies of worldly advancement not likely to occur at any early period. I had been brought up in what she would think poverty. I had no objection to it, and I was rash and ready for anything ; but it would have been wholly unreasonable to expect either the mother or the daughter to be so. Nor did I in point of fact expect it, or make at this time more than a contingent proposal, such as did not require or receive an explicit or decisive answer. But after some months of absence, between the end of one London season and the beginning of another, 1 became impatient of my position ; and on the occurrence of one of those casual jars to which a man in such a position is always liable, I resolved to bring the question to a determinate issue, and I was distinctly rejected. I have sometimes since, though rarely, met Miss Yilliers (or rather Lady Theresa, as she became on her brother's succession to the earldom of Claren- don), in a casual way, in society ; but our intimacy has not been renewed. She was married, in 1830, to Mr. Lister, a refined and accomplished gentleman, who, besides works of fiction and contributions to the periodical literature of the day, rendered valuable services to the public on Commissions and otherwise ; I 2 116 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOR 1828-29 and after his early death, in 1842, to Sir George Cornewall Lewis, said by some competent judges to be one of the most profomid and accurate scholars of his time, author of some solid and learned books, and afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State in two or three successive Govern- ments, who also died prematurely, at a time when he was believed by many to be on the way to the post of First Minister. She is now (1865) living in that same Kent House in which her life began, and to which, by an unusual course of things, she took home her first and second husbands to live with her and her mother, and which she has not ceased to inhabit from her girl days throughout her first married life, her first widowhood, her second married life, and her second widowhood ; and whence may she pass, in God's peace and the peace of her own bright and happy nature, to the mansions where age and youth and time and eternity are reconciled, and those who have once been friends will be fiiends again and for ever.^ ^ She died in November, 1865, a few months after this was written. 117 CHAPTER VIIT. men and affairs in the colonial office — lords godericii and howick — business or poetry, which? — question of slavery — lords goderich and howick succeeded by mr. stanley and mr. lefevre. Anno Dom. 1828-33. Anno ^t. 28-33. 1828 and 1829 had been years of torpor in the Colonial Office. Sir George Murray was at the head of it, — an old soldier and a high-bred gentleman, whose countenance and natural stateliness and simple dignity of demeanour were all that can be desired in' a Secretary of State, if to look the character were the one thing needful. The Duke of Wellington had induced him to undertake the office ; but when look- ing back upon it some years after, he told me that he knew himself to have been unfit for it, and that he would never again accept an office of the kind. No doubt his estimate of his unfitness was just. But there was a worse element of obstruction. J find, in a letter to my mother, the political Under Secretary of the time described as ' of all the Under Secretaries who had ever laid the weight of their authority upon the transactions of the Colonial Office, " the fleshliest incubus." ' If this political Under Secretary was 118 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HEKRY TAYLOR. 1828-33 obstructive througli timidity and indecisiveness, tlie permanent Under Secretary was obtuse but bold. The one was for ever occupied with details and in- capable of coming to a conclusion — routing and grnnting and tearing up the soil to get at a grain of the subject; the other went straight to a decision, which was right or wrong as might happen. I re- member applying to him the proverb that ' mettle is dangerous in a blind horse.' With these men over me, it may be imagined that in these years my interest and activity in colonial business was much abated, and I made comparatively rapid progress with my play. But with the begin- ning of 1831 there came a change. Lord Goderich came into office as Secretary of State, and I found him a man of more activity than I had expected, and easy and good-humoured in personal intercourse ; which, I observed to my mother, was a matter of some importance to me. I had ' always been apt,' I said, ' to forget the modesty of my official position, and to take a tone which I knew to be equally con- trary to good policy and good taste ; ' and I added that I had 'caught myself haranguing Lord Goderich and Lord Althorp in a style which would have been more becoming if they had been my own confidential servants instead of His Majesty's, — a distinction which I should not perhaps have recollected if I had not observed that I was exciting a little good- humoured surprise.' But what was most important was the change in I jiT. 28-33 BUSINESS OR POETRY —WHICH ? 119 the office of political Under Secretary, now entered upon by Lord Ho wick, son of the First Minister, Lord Grey. I spoke of him as active, vigorous, and decisive in business, honest-minded, and ardent, and in his nature and manners particularly gentlemanly ; and I liked him much. Under his influence projects and interests which had long lain dormant sprang into life and activity, and I was occupied in my office and oat of my office all day long in business and in nothing else but business. * In the midst of this life,' I wrote to my mother ^ I often have a great longing after poetry, and feel as if all time was thrown away of which a portion is not given to it. Perhaps if I were to be guided strictly and solely by a sense of duty I should devote myself wholly to a business in which I have so much oppor- tunity of being useful, and think no more thoughts about poetry for the rest of my life. That, I suppose, would be the conscientious line to take ; but personal considerations are all the other way, — the bent of my mind is the other way. I can be active and sedulous in business, and take a certain deo:ree of pleasure in drafting good despatches, and setting things to rights where they are wrong, and putting down oppression so far as may be done by my efforts in the slave colonies ; but I can never devote myself to business with my whole heart as I have done and could do to poetry. . What ambition I have, too, is poetical and not political ; and if it is not founded upon reasonable prospects of success, I still feel that 120 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1828-33 the employment is in itself a pleasure, and that no farther repayment of the labour is wanting, and that if I were disappointed of success it would still be nearly the same resource to me that it is when I am working under an expectation (such as it is) of that kind; And in glancing at the objects of ambition to be accomplished by an exclusive devotion to business, and rejecting the notion of political life without private fortune, I said, in a tone of levity which indi- cated the small measure of regard I entertained for my permanent chief, the blindly bold, — * Perhaps the best thing that I can reasonably look forward to is to succeed Hay (if it would please God to take him) in his permanent Under Secretary- ship, — a succession which Charles Greville suggested to me the other day as a proper thing to be brought about under the present Administration, if any means could be found of providing for Hay otherwise (sup- posing it should not please God to take him just immediately) : but I know of no such means, nor have I any idea that they would so promote me if they could ; because, though they are all in the way of bringing forward obscure men who are likely to be useful, I do not see how I could be much more useful to them in Hay's place than I am at present/ And upon the whole I concluded that there was no reason, unless it were from a sense of duty, that I should leave off writing plays. ^T. 28-33 QUESTION OF SLAVERY. 121 But for the next two or three years the sense of duty was put under high pressure. The -^ great question of slavery was approaching its inevitable close ; and the approach was made through paths of exceeding difficulty and fearful danger. In 1824 the Government of Lord Liverpool had taken up a position of mediator between the saints and the planters ; finding an escape for themselves from the dilemma of the moment by one of those compromises in which an endeavour is made to reconcile oppugnant principles and implacable op* ponents. The slaves were not to be enfranchised, but their condition was to be ' meliorated/ as the word went: A model code was devised according to which the lash was to be taken out of the hands of the driver, punishments were to be inflicted only under the authority of stipendiary magistrates, the hours of labour were to be limited, the allowances of food were to be regulated, husbands and wives and their children were not to be sold apart, and pro- tectors were to be appointed who were to watch over the enforcement of the code and make half-yearly reports on all matters affecting the welfare of the slaves. The saints accepted the measure as all they could get for the moment, profoundly convinced, however, that so long as slaves were slaves, they must continue to be the victims of cruelty and wrong ; whilst the planters, on the other hand, knew well enough that, whether or not nefrroes would be induced to work for 122 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1828-33 wages if freed (which they absolutely refused to believe), nothing short of the lash in the hand of the driver would make them work as slaves. In the West Indian Colonies, with few exceptions, all legislative authority, and, along with the power of granting or withholding supplies, almost all ex- ecutive authority, was in the hands of the planters. If the Assemblies refused to enact the ' meliorating ' code, there was no power in the Crown to coerce them. We tried everything. ]\Iany a concihatory despatch was written ; not a single Assembly was conciliated. Many were the minatory despatches that followed ; and threats were found equally un- availing. The controversy went on year after year ; the Assemblies raged abroad ; the saints wailed and howled at home ; the Crown maintained an outward aspect of moderation : ^ Not so, my sons, not so ! ' But in the Colonial Office we knew what we were about. We had established protectors of slaves in the few colonies in which we had legislative power ; they made their half-yearly reports in which every outrage and enormity perpetrated on the slaves was duly detailed, with the usual result of trials and acquittals by colonial juries, and perhaps a banquet given by the principal colonists in honour of the offenders ; we^ wrote despatches in answer, careful and cautious in their tone, but distinctly marking each atrocity, and bringing its salient points into the * A junior clerk under me (now Sir Clinton Murdoch) took a large share in these operations. MT. 28-33 QUESTION OF SLAVERY. 123 lio-ht ; we laid the reports and despatches before Parliament as fast as they were received and written ; Zachary Macaulay forthwith transferred them to the pages of his ' Monthly Anti-Slavery Reporter,' by which they were circulated far and wide through the country ; the bowlings and wailings of the saints were seen to be supported by unquestionable facts officially authenticated ; the cry of the country for the abolition of slavery waxed louder every year ; strange rumours reached the ears of the negroes ; they became excited and disturbed, imagining that the King had given them their freedom and that the fact and the freedom were kept from them by their owners ; there was plotting and conspiracy ; and at length came the insurrection of 1831 in Jamaica ; in which, of the neofroes some hundreds lost their lives, of the whites not one. This terrible event, with all its horrors and cruelties, its military slaughters and its many murders by flogging, though failing of its object as a direct means, was indirectly a death-blow to slavery. The reform of Parliament was almost simultaneous with it, and mio^ht have been sufficient of itself. Under the operation of both, the only questions that remained were, whether it was to be effected abruptly and at once, or through some transitional process, and whether with or without compensation to the planters. James Stephen, who, under the title of Counsel to the Colonial Department, had, for some years, more than any other man, ruled the Colonial Empire, 124 AUTOBIOGIIA.PHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1828-33 was now prepared to go all lengths with his uncle, Mr. Wilberforce, and the Anti- slavery party ; and simple and immediate emancipation was what they desired. From the first years in which I had been called upon to consider the question, I had been resolute for emancijDation ; but i had not been satisfied, nor at that time was Stephen or any one else, that eman- cipation ought to be total and immediate. In a letter to Edward Yilliers, of April, 1826, I adverted to the only example in existence of sudden emancipa- tion, that given by the French in St. Domingo, where massacres, more frightful even than those of La Vendee, were succeeded by the ferocious tyranny of Christophe, and by the ' Code Henri,' which provided that any man found during prescribed hours of the day off the land assigned to him to cultivate, should be shot by the police ; and I referred to the compulsory manumission clause of the meliorating Order in Council, as contended for in Lord Bathurst's de- spatches, for an indication of the principle on which gradual emancipation might be combined with in- demnity to the owners. In 1831, I was still unpre- pared for immediate emancipation ; but I thought that I could see my way to the immediate commence- ment of a self- accelerating process of emancipation. Lord Howick, whose strong understanding, political courage, and pure and vehement public spirit, had by this time put much power in his hands, had a scheme of his own for effecting emancipation, JET. 28-33 QUESTION OF SLAVERY. 125 and at the same time saving the planters, by laws against vagrancy, and by so taxing the land available for cultivating provisions as to make it impossible for the negroes to obtain a subsistence without working on the plantations. But it was determined on all hands that .J was to 'take the initiative and draw out a scheme of proceeding which might form the basis of discussion,' first in the Colonial Office, and, if approved there, in the Cabinet. I did not agree with Lord Howick any more than with Mr. Stephen. As to the land-tax, I thought that in countries where unoccupied land of exuberant fertility was to be found in large tracts both near and remote, no restraints of law could so far deprive the negroes of the use of it as to bring them under a necessity of working on the plantations ; and as it was in evidence that the labour of not much more than one day in the week on fertile land would supply a negro with all the food he had been accustomed to, I did not believe that, when freed, he would continue to work on the plantations for any wages which the planter could afford to pay. As to the other coarse, the pure and simple and immediate emancipation, I did not feel sure that it could be effected without disorder and bloodshed. * Buxton may ask,' I said in a letter to Lord Howick, ' what more have the negroes to contend for when they have got their freedom ? For what end or object could they be riotous or spill blood ? To which I answer, there will remain as objects of 126 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HE^^RY TAYLOR. 1828-33 contention the land, the buildings, the produce, — in short, all the property of which emancipation would not be intended to deprive the planters. The slave has not been taught hitherto to make any distinction between the planter's right to his land and buildings and to his gang : when he sees the one right abro- gated, will he still think the other sacred ? To an uninstructed mind, or to one in which respect for the rights of property has been impaired, an agrarian partition will probably seem as consonant to natural justice as an abolition of slavery.' I might have added as not beyond the range of conjecture, such an event as a war of races, — a rising of the blacks to exterminate the whites. The results which I regarded as not impossible did not follow upon emancipation as effected six years later (in 1838). Another result, which not only I, but even Steplicn himself, anticipated, did follow. The negroes sank into a state of barbarous indolence, the plantations were deserted, the exports of sugar from Jamaica fell to one-fourth of their previous quantity ; and I may add that when a more or less humble and grateful, though lazy, generation of negroes had passed away, the Jamaica rebellion of 1865 broke out, of which the declared object was to seize the plantations and exterminate the male whites, and which might easily have been successful so far forth, but for the energy and military abilities of a civil Governor. Perhaps, therefore, it was not unreasonable on my ^T. 28^33 QUESTION OF SLAVERY. 127 part to look upon immediate emancipation as involv- ing possible risks as well as some almost certain disadvantages. But I was of opinion also that it would not be just if unaccompanied by compensation to the slave- owners. I had calculated the compensation required at 20 millions (t£e precise sum eventually granted), and I had erroneously conceived — in common, if I recollect right, with Stephen and Lord Howick — that no Government would venture to propose such a grant to the House of Commons, or if proposing, would succeed in obtaining it. My own project was founded on the Spanish coartado system, under which a slave, if he had the means, could buy himself out of slavery by instal- ments. I proposed to give him the means for a first instalment out of public money, leaving him to provide himself, by his own industry, with the means of further self-purchase. I would have bought, say, Monday and Tuesday for him, leaving him so to employ Monday and Tuesday as in no long time to buy Wednesday ; so to employ Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, as in less time still to buy Thursday, and thus day by day with progressive ease and speed to buy out the working days of the week and consum- mate his freedom. I computed (it must have been very conjecturally) the time required for this consum- mation by an able-bodied male slave at three years and sixteen days. On this plan I conceived that before his bondage 128 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOE. 1823-33 ceased, lie would have acquired habits of self-command and voluntary industry to take with him into free lom, by which habits he would be saved from a life of savage sloth and the planter from ruin. I propounded my plan in an elaborate paper of 85 folio printed pao^es ^ deducing from voluminous evi- dence taken by recent Parliamentary Committees and other sources as full and authentic an account as I could exhibit of the state of West Indian society, and founding upon it the views I took of other schemes and the arguments by which I contended for my own. The paper was designed for the Cabinet ; but I counted on converting Lord Howick, through whom only it could make its way there. Lord Howick, I need scarcely say, was not a very convertible person. We had a lively discussion, and he declared that if my plan were adopted, he would go out of office and vote against it, though with his own father at the head of the Government. He naturally desired to make use of so much of my paper as suited his own views and throw aside what suited mine ; to this I demurred, though I was hardly entitled to do so ; and I think the paper never went beyond the walls of the office either in whole or in part. Looking at the merits of my plan by the light of experience since obtained, I think that if I could have been sure that no worse results would follow than did follow from wholesale emancipation, and if I had believed that Parliament would grant the 1 Written at the end of 1832. I ^T. 28-33 SLAVERY QUESTION. 129 20 millions which was granted, I ought not to have preferred my own plan, and perhaps I would not have preferred it ; though I think that it was well calcu- lated to avert the result of a barbarous indolence which I believed would follow upon wholesale eman- cipation, and which did in fact follow. The strongest objection was, perhaps, the political one, — that, at that eleventh hour, it would not have silenced the saints or the people. When there is a popular cry for anything, it can only be satisfied by something broad and simple and almost as inarticulate as the cry itself. It appears that, whether from the gi'owmg importance of this objection or from succeeding events and louder alarms, I came shortly to regard my plan as no longer eligible, at all events in its integrity, and that a plan, of the particulars of which I can find no account, was devised (probably by Stephen) which met the views of Lord Howick, Stephen, and myself. This plan was rejected by the Cabinet,^ * The rejection was mainly due to Lord Brougham. After the substitution of Lord Stanley's measure, or that which went by his name, Lord Howick wrote (9th October), ' I quite agree with you that it is enough to provoke one beyond all bearing to hear the Chancellor say that he will willingly take upon himself the whole responsibility of any mischief which may result from granting freedom to the slave. If I had been at the dinner, I should certainly have complimented him upon the fairness and candour of this avowal, saying that it is perfectly clear, that if any mischief does happen, it will be owing to the grant of freedom being incomplete, and that, knowing him to be really responsible for this, I was glad that he acknowledged himself to be so. might make good use of his old inflammatory speeches in favour of the full rights of the negroes contrasted with the measure of which he declares himself willing to take the responsibility, and which we know that he was mainly instru- mental in causing to be substituted for a more complete one.' VOL. I. K 130 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1828-33 and soon after, thougli not for this reason, Lord Goderich and Lord Howick resigned, and were suc- ceeded by Mr. Stanley and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre. The immediate effect of the change was to deprive Stephen and myself of our usurped functions, and remand us to our original insignificance. A rumour had gone abroad amongst the West Indian merchants and proprietors that we exercised an undue and over- ruling influence over our political chiefs. Stephen was by far the most feared of the two, and with the most reason ; but it appears that I also had begun to be suspected before 1833. Writing to my mother in February, 1831, I mentioned that Mr. Robert Grant, the Judge Advocate, had told Stephen he understood there was a man named Taylor in the office who had both Lord Goderich and Lord Howick in pupilage. Stephen answered that the same Taylor was the man who had just left the room. ^ No, no,' said Mr. Grant, ^ that is a young man, but the man I mean must be much older.' I expressed my regret that such rumours should get abroad, as they might do harm ; and ' moreover,' I said, ' these two Viscounts are not more in pupilage than it is neces- sary and natural that men should be who are new to their work, and are not foolish or jealous about taking the assistance that is properly within their reach.' Mr. Stanley was not content to take the assistance within his reach, and to take the consequences of taking it. And indeed some of the consequences were such as a man in his position might naturally 1 ^T. 28-33 MR. STANI.ET. T31 be expected to dislike. The Press liad been assailing, not Stephen and me only for asswrning, as we were said to do, but also our political driefs for devolving, duties which it was maintained ought to be discharged by those who were accountable to Parliament, and not by unknown and irresponsible persons. Lord Howick cared little for Avhat was thought or written about him. Mr. Stanley was a hardy man too, but of a very different type. He was greatly admired by a large party in the country, — perhaps by the country generally, — throughout a long life ; and it was customary to call him ^chivalrous.' I think he was not chival- rous.^ He was a very able and capable man ; he had force, energy, and vivacity ; and he was an effective speaker, always clear and strong, sometimes common- place, but not seldom brilliant. He was not a man of genius ; nor could it be said that he had a great intellect. He had the gifts of a party politician, such as eminent party politicians were in the generations immediately preceding his own rather than in his own, — subsisting throughout his life, so far as litera- ture is concerned, mainly upon the scholarship and academical accomplishments with which he began it and playing the game of politics with more of party than of public spirit, and with not much perhaps of personal friendliness. In his latter life, when the American Civil War brought what was called ^the ^ 'Autolycus Hotspur' was the name given him by Aubrey de Vere. K 2 132 AUTOBIOGKAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1828-33 cotton famine ' upon the districts in or near which his estates were situated, the misery around him brought into energetic action what was benevolent and hu- mane in his disposition, and he exerted himself to the utmost, devoting his daily labour for long periods . to organising and regulating the relief given to the sufferers. But for this I should have said that he was a hard and cold man. But out of the Colonial Office I have hardly any personal knowledge to found a judgment upon, and I may have been prejudiced against him by the course which he took in regard to Stephen and myself ; contrasting it with what had been generous in Lord Ho wick, — his pure and single desire to do the best he could for the cause by all means and appliances at his command, and, though tenacious of his opinions, wholly careless to whom the credit of playing an important part might attach, — not even caring much perhaps for the political and official proprieties fairly deserving consideration in comparison with the momentous issues at stake in dealing with the question of slavery. Mr. Stanley took counsel with Sir James Graham, one of the ablest of his colleagues. I doubt if either of them had more knowledge of the matter than might have come to them casually in Parliament and in the newspapers. But Mr. Stanley could make the most of the least. His skill as a debater enabled him to do without knowledge of his own. He took his topics from his opponents. Of anything of which he knew nothing, let but one view be presented to him, I jEft. 28-33 ME. STANLEY. 133 and he had not the slightest difficulty in presenting another and opposite one ; and in this way, so far as information was concerned, he lived upon the enemy's country. But this could suffi^ce only for what was incidental and preliminary. The time came for propounding a measure, and Mr. Stanley and his colleague concocted one*between them. Mr. Stanley introduced it into the House of Commons, and it was forthwith blown into the air. The explosion cleared our atmosphere in the Colonial Office. Mr. Stanley became conscious of difficulties which could not be conquered by political courage and natural ability unassisted and un- informed ; he must have felt, too, that there were more ways than one in which his political reputa- tion might suffer ; and he now, very graciously, had recourse to Mr. Stephen. With his aid the Abolition Act of 1833 was devised and constructed ; and the speech by which Mr. Stanley recommended it to the acceptance of the House of Commons was, if my view of it at the time is to be trusted, much more Stephen's than his own. Up to this point I do not know that any fault could be found with Mr. Stanley's ways of dealing with his subordinates. I, personally, had nothing to complain of. There was no reason why Mr. Stanley, who knew nothing about me, should place any confidence in me ; and there were some reasons why he should not be reputed to do so. The same might be said of Stephen at first. But when he had felt the 134 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1828-33 necessity of obtaining Stephen^s advice and assistance, and had profited by them to the utmost, he was as cold, unfriendly, and repulsive as he had been before the necessity arose ; and as soon as he was able to dispense with him he cast him oif, and even gave orders that he should not be allowed to see any public documents but such as might be officially referred to him as Counsel for the Colonial Department. The Abolition Act which was passed provided for what was called an apprenticeship to last for six years ; and on that total emancipation was to follow ; and dt provided also for a grant of 20 millions to compensate the slaveowners. In writing about the measure I said that if it should succeed, its success would be owing to the ' circumstance of Stephen's putting his own designs into enactments and Mr. Staiiley's into a preamble. It is owing to this circumstance, indeed,' I added, ' as far as I can judge, that any slavery measure whatever was passed in the late session ; for after the wild plunge with which Stanley entered upon the subject, I am persuaded that he would have been unable to carry ithrough a measure if Stephen had aiot held himself bound in duty to the cause to disencumber him, so far as was then possible, of his own schemes, and construct a measure that with all its faults might have a chance of success. The personal history of the Slavery Bill is, in truth, a remarkable part of the whole business. There have been many misbegotten measures before it which have brought upon their I JET. 28-33 MR. STANLEY. 135 putative parents reproaches no otherwise due to them than as having undertaken tasks it was impossible that they could perform with their own hands, and many measures also which have reflected honour on those to whom mighty little of the merit of them was really due ; but I doubt if a great measure was ever brought into the worlj' by a Minister of the Crown of which one could say that the responsibility for all that was evil in it had been so undividedly as well as wantonly and perversely incurred, and the credit for what was good so surreptitiously obtained. And Stephen, after all that he has done for Stanley, — after having his services haughtily repudiated in the first instance, solicited when the emergency came, and profited by to the utmost extent without compunction or moderation, — is now treated with supreme in- diff*erence and neglect, as if there was nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be grateful for, and as if nothing were to be observed in him which should entitle him to respect. There seems to be everything that is ungenerous and grasping in Stanley's com- position, and everything that is worldly, — worldly wisdom excepted, — for there is no wisdom of any kind in thus dealing with such a man as Stephen. He is at the Isle of Wight gradually recovering from a nervous affection of the head which was the con- sequence of over-exertion in the summer. You, who know what his habitual exertions are ' [the letter was addressed to Lord Ho wick] , * and what extraordinary exertions he can make without in the least suffering 136 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1828-33 by them, will judge what the labour must have been that did him this injury. With all his easiness of nature ^ he is fully sensible that he is ill-treated, and I do not think that his connection with this office will last much longer on its present footing.' There was, no doubt, a good deal of the ex- aggeration of anger in this invective, due perhaps not only to my regard for Stephen (who in the last three or four years had become one of my intimate friends), and to my indignation at his being ill-used, but also to my own little personal feeling about being not used. The Act brought about the emancipation in four years instead of six (for the apprenticeship pleased nobody), and in 1838 the negroes passed in all tran- quillity and good order into the life of indolent freedom. Before the Act of 1833 had come into operation (which was on August 1, 1834), we of the Colonial Office had been relieved from ow oppressor.'^ Mr. Stanley had been succeeded by Mr. Spring Eice ; and Stephen, who for so many years might better have been called the Colonial Department itself than the ' Counsel to the Colonial Department,' was * I should rather have said ' his sense of subordination.* I do not think that easiness of nature did really belong to him. ^ I find that my first impressions of Mr. Stanley when I came into communication with him at an earlier period, — that is, when he was political Under Secretary of State in December, 1827, — were very difi'erent from those which I received in 1833. In a letter to my father of December 29, 1827, I mentioned that I had accidentally had two or three conversations with him and liked him exceedingly: — * Great frankness and simplicity, with a head clear and strong, is my impression of him,* ^T. 23-33 MR. STEPHEN SUCCEEDS MR. HAY. 137 brought from Lincoln's Inn to Downing Street, and established in a newly created office of Assistant Under Secretary of State, from which he passed on in another year to that of Under Secretary of State, vacated by Mr. Hay. I have said that the language of my letter about Lord Stanley and Stephen w^as probably inspired in part by some feeling of personal resentment on my part, for which there were no just grounds. I do not think, however, that this feeling was either lively or lasting. For my other vocation was much more truly my own, and for two years it had been almost entirely surrendered to the exigencies of official work ; so that the relief from the one and the resumption of the other brought with it a substantial solace and satisfaction. 138 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1833 CHAPTER IX. * LET INDIGNATION VEX HIM EVEN AS A THING THAT IS RAW ' postscript to the previous chapter. Anno Dom. 1833. Anno ^t. 33. I HAVE forgotten, and I might very well be glad to forget, a transaction by which I aimed at throwing overboard a part of my official burthens before I and they were stranded together. Previously to the advent of Mr. Stanley, circumstances had arisen which, in my opinion, gave me a claim to increased emoluments. I preferred the claim, and in a private interview between the Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a decision was taken in its favour. But in taking this decision the Secretary of the Treasury had been passed over. Now it is well known that, borne upon the strength of the Treasury, there is a necessary and indispensable office, commonly called, or which ought to be com- monly called, that of Treasury Curmudgeon. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was not the Treasury Curmudgeon of the day. The Political Secretary was. The good easy Chancellor of the Exchequer ^T. 33 A €LATM REFUSED. 139 was overruled by the stout and unamenable Secretary, and my claim was rejected. Till now everything bad come to m-e unasked, and this repulse made me angry. I conceived that Lord Ho wick had not supported my claim as stub- bornly as he ought, and I wrote him .a letter in which I insisted upon taking in time what was refused in money, and applying to my own purposes the hours at home which I had hitherto devoted to official work. Had I contented myself with contending for this right in a simple and seemly manner, I should not have much fault to find with the proceeding; but my letter was full of inflated and arrogant self- assertion : — ' I cannot tell you how odious it was to me,' I wrote, ' to prefer my claim in the first instance, nor with what reluctance I brought myself to do so.. But now that it is disposed of, I feel greatly relieved and quite able to mention the subject. . . . From the first year cthat I was in this office I hav€ been employed, not in the business of a clerk, but in that of a statesman. So far as the West Indian Colonies have been concerned, I have at all times since that period done more for the Secretary and Under Secre- tary of State for the time being, of their peculiar and appropriate business, than they have done for them- selves. I have been accustomed to relieve them from the trouble of taking decisions, of giving directions, of reading despatches, and of writing them. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the 140 AUTOBIOGEArHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1833 consideration which has been given to a subject by the Secretary of State has consisted in reading the draft submitted to him, and his decision has consisted in adopting it ; and the more important the question has been, tiie more have I found my judgment to be leant upon. Since the year 1823, this department has been written up from the lowest condition of dis- repute to, upon the whole I believe, a respectable, though not perhaps a very high place in public esti- mation ; and whilst the primary contribution to this effect has been made of course by Stephen, I feel that I have contributed the secondary share.' I then recapitulated some facts of the case and proceeded : — ' Under these circumstances it is natural for me to take a review of my position and see what means are in my power to make the best of my prospects. In considering this matter I cannot but look at Stephen's case as having a direct bearing upon the judgment which I ought to form for myself; and without presuming for a moment to compare my power of transacting business with hi&, I think that I in my degree may profit by his experience. Looking then to his case, I perceive that a man may give his days and nights to public business — that he may possess every attribute of a philosophical and prac- tical politician — the largest views^ the minutest accuracy — the most comprehensive and unerring judgment ; — that he may be a man of infinite dex- terity and resource ; — that he may be from time to time producing in the ordinary dispatch of business ^T. 33 LETTEE TO LOED HOWICK. 141 sucli State Papers as the public archives of the kingdom for all the centuries over which they extend will probably afford few to equal ; — that every day that he lives he may solve difficult questions and dis- pose of intricate cases and complicated masses of documents to an extent to which it might be sup- posed that no human industry could reach ; — that he may take upon himself the heaviest burdens of other men and transfer to them his own singular accom- plishments ; — that he may clear away their daily perplexities and sustain their reputation ; — and after a long term of such service find himself, so far as his own emoluments, interests, standing, and consider- ation in the country are concerned, precisely where he was at the beginning, — each successive Secretary of State having professed himself very much obliged and there leaving him. Can it be consistent with good sense in any man, having such an example before his eyes, and believing himself, in however inferior a degree, to belong nevertheless to the same intellectual order of mankind, to rely exclusively for his advance- ment upon the system of merging himself in other men ? That my powers of doing business are un- equal to Stephen's only makes the example an a fortiori illustration of the futility of any expectations on my part of profiting more by the exercise in this ;way of my less capabilities. Stephen may have attained — I trust he has — after many years employed upon this plan, within a certain limited circle of official men, a certain quantum of credit as a man 142 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1833 of business. I had imagined that to me too the same thing might have attached in a less degree : but I confess that when I consider all the circum- stances of Stephen's case, and that at this moment the Board of Trade are grudging him what they give him, I am by no means surprised to find that my official reputation has not travelled even so far as from Downing Street to the Treasury. Feeling therefore that it is in vain in these times to attempt to obtain a hold upon the Government, I conceive it to be no more than reasonable in any man who believes himself to be possessed of the power, to endeavour to acquire a hold upon the Public. If I take a wrong measure of my own capacity, it is at my own peril. I know that a more fatal mistake cannot be made. But fallible though a man's judgment may be on such points, it is all that he has for his guidance in life, and he must neces- sarily act upon it. My habits and tastes have been from boyhood essentially literary, and I was entering upon literature as a profession to live by, when a Clerkship in this office was offered to me. In per- forming my official duties I believe myself to have sacrificed a literary reputation, — which, had the sacrifice been a condition of the office, I should not have mentioned as any mistake ; because I consider the certainty of subsistence, however obscure, to be the preferable object. But had I confined myself to transacting my fair proportion of business and no more, I might have combined both objects : and this MT. 33 LETTER TO LOUD HOWICK. 143 is what it is my purpose to do for tlie future. The far greater part of my drafts have been written at home at night ; the hours of my attendance at the office being chiefly consumed in seeing people upon business, giving directions to my assistants and juniors, and conferring with the Secretary or Under Secretary of State or with Mr. Stephen. My object now is that the portion of time should be defined which is considered to be fairly due from me to the public, and that while I pledge myself to a punctual attendance at the office during these hours, my time at home should be discharged from all official claims upon it. ' I do not complain of the species of duty which has hitherto been devolved upon me, nor do I wish to de- cline it in future. On the contrary, I will readily do my utmost to make my services, as far as they will go within the prescribed limits of time, available in any way which shall be considered advantageous to the public service. ^ Pray do not misapprehend the object of this letter. It is by no means my wish to promote a reconsideration of the decision taken at the Treasury, or in any way to object to it. It is as much for my interest as it can possibly be for that of the public, to have thrown upon my hands that portion of my time which the Government are, under the present circumstances of the country, unable to pay for. My wish is, not to sell my extra time, but to possess it. If their Lordships were willing to grant the 144 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1833 highest amount of remuneration which has been proposed, it would not, in truth, be an equivalent to me for the leisure which I am desirous to resume/ In giving an account of the commencement of my official life, I have said that the faults which I should imagine to have been most conspicuous in my official style would be ' arrogance and imper- tinence, and this, not only in the beggar-on-horse- back beginnings, but for several years afterwards.' At the date of the above letter, about nine years of my official life had elapsed ; and it is clear that these faults had not been corrected then. I hope, however, that the state of mind was exceptional, seeing what I said of it to my mother : — ' For myself, I am plunged in quarrels and conten- tions, some of which touch my feelings and others my interests ; but I am well and strong and going stoutly through all things. Indeed, if my spirits had not been in a state of vivacity, I should not, perhaps, have done battle for my interests ; because they are not what I am apt to stand up for when it costs me much in the way of discomposure. But I stood forth in their defence, upon this occasion, with as fine a spirit of lively pugnacity as ever launched an Irishman into a row.' And though it is only in the retrospect that I perceive the true character of my own proceedings, I recognised at the time the character of the man with whom I was dealing : — jfiT. 33 LOED HO WICK. 145 ^ There is mucli less to be objected to bim/ I wrote in another letter, 'than to the great majority of men of his nurture. A thoughtful zeal for the interests of others is not to be expected from such men, and this is all that has been wanting in him. There is more generosity of temper, more freedom from little- nesses of feeling in him, than I have met with before in any public man with whom I have been in the habit of transacting public business.' Owing to this temper in the man to whom the letter was addressed, our friendly relations were unimpaired and no harm came of it. Perhaps no good either ; for even if I acted upon my intention of transferring some portion of my time and atten- tion to my play (which I doubt), a few weeks or months only elapsed before Mr. Stanley took office in the manner I have described, and placed my whole time at my disposal. VOL. I. 146 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1832 CHAPTER X. death op hyde villiers — commission of inquiry into the poor laws — part taken by my father in its operations. Anno Dom. 1832. Anno ^t. 32. I REVERT to my life in its personal relations. In December, 1832, in the midst of the most pressing and anxious labour which had yet fallen to my lot, — the preparation for the Cabinet of my paper on Slavery, — I lost the dearest of my friends, — of my male friends at least the dearest, — and indeed the only very intimate friend of my own age that I possessed, — Hyde Yilliers. We had passed eight or nine years, not in friend- ship only, but in close companionship ; and it is companionship — is it not ? — which takes the measure of friendship. Wordsworth thought so ; for I re- member when the affection of a certain couple of friends for each other was spoken of, he said, — ' Are they, so far as circumstances permit, continually together ; for that is the test ? ' Now circumstances had varied much from year to year in what they would permit to Hyde Yilliers and me, and latterly ^T. 32 HYDE VILLIERS. 147 we had both had much work to do and much in which we were much interested ; but I doubt if ever the approach of the one was felt as an interruption by the other. Certainly there was no moment of the day or night when his approach was inopportune to me. As I have mentioned before, we lived together for some time in a house in Suffolk Street. The House of Commons had even then begun to keep late hours, and the hours I kept were early ; but when he came home from the House, if he had any- thing interesting to tell, he woke me up, with the certainty that it would give me nothing but pleasure ; he sate down upon my bed and we talked together as youth only can talk between two and three in the morning. For the last eighteen months of his life he had been in political office, and he had been fashioned by nature for a politician ; — personally attractive by gracefulness and a manner not the less expressive for being high-bred ; invariably calm and self-possessed ; a man who harmonised patience and gentleness with strength. The office he filled was that of Secretary to the Board of Control ; the duty of the time was the momentous one of determining in what manner Ministers should propose to Parliament that the Indian Empire should thenceforth be governed ; and his Chief was the high-minded, accomplished, and occasionally eloquent, but habitually and incurably sluggish and somnolent, Charles Grant. I came to know him afterwards, under the title of Lord Glenelg, L 2 148 AUTOBIOaHAPHY OF IIEXHY TAYLOR. 1832 by four years of personal experience in tlie Colonial Office ; and, amiable and excellent as be was, a more incompetent man could not bave been found to fill an office requiring activity and a ready judgment. A dart flung at bim by Lord Brougbam in 1838, points to bis notorious defect, as a Minister called upon to deal witli a crisis. Tbe tben crisis was tbat of tbe Canadian Eebellion : — ^ It is indeed,' said Lord Brouo'bam, ^ a most alarmino^ and frio-btful state of tbings, and I am sure it must bave given my noble friend many a sleepless day.'' It was under sucb a cbief as tbis tbat Hyde Yilliers bad to bandle tbe arduous and complex and vitally important Indian question of 1832 ; and tbe duty of guiding tbe Government to a conclusion devolved, I believe, mainly, if not entirely, upon bim. In tbe session of tbat year, at bis instance, six Committees of tbe House of Commons bad been appointed, or ratber, I tbinlv, one Committee to be divided into six sub-Committees, by wbicb tbe several brancbes of tbe multifarious tbeme were to be examined. He bad to watcb tbe proceedings of tbese Committees, to preside over anotber Indian Com- mittee, to transact tbe current business of bis office in tbe morning, and to waste weary niglits in tbe House of Commons ; and as soon as tbe session was over, be was tbreatened witb being deprived of a seat in Parliament, and bad tbe cares and quarrels of an unsuccessful contest to accompany tbe anxious work of dealing witb and drafting tbe Committee's report I ^T. 32 HYDE VILLIEES. 149 (by the Speaker's permission, though the session had closed) and preparing a scheme of measures to be submitted to the Cabinet. In a letter written after his death, alono: with some account of his work and the difficulties he had to meet, I described his way of working : — ■ ' With all this was going on the perpetual toil of draofmna: Charles Grant to decisions, — a waste of time and spirits which those only can estimate who have known what it is to act under the inactive and decide for the indecisive. These burthens he bore with a steady and invariably tranquil outward demeanour, never complaining of them as oppressive, — partly perhaps from a feeling that it was injurious to a man's reputation to have it supposed that he felt his busi- ness to be too much for him. But in point of fact, whilst there was an excess of energy in his mind, there was too little elasticity. He became more and more deeply involved in intellectual labours, from which he could not or did not withdraw himself for intervals of relaxation. There was p'reat vio-our of intellect, but it was not a free and elastic vigour. His mind got enthralled by the subject of his medita- tions ' . . . . He was suffering from an abscess in his head when he had to canvass another borough, travelled 280 miles in the mail without stopping, com- menced his canvass on his arrival (three weeks before his death), went from house to house for twelve hours daily, his strength breaking down 150 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1832 from day to day, and throngli intense suiFering and with desperate energy prosecuted his canvass, not even then desisting from his official work, up to the verge of the delirium which ended in his death. My father and stepmother, brooding over my loss in the solitude of Witton, felt it sorely and were full of fears for the effect of it upon my mind. Partly for their sakes perhaps, and partly in sincerity of belief and in a just estimate of the terminable, though not transitory, hold of sorrow and dejection upon a multifarious mindj I wrote to reassure them :— ' I do not fear any lasting depression of spirits from this event ; for I do not think the nature of my mind is liable to that from any event. I have mobility of mind, though not elasticity of spirits ; and as long as bodily health and strength remain to me I shall get over every misfortune.' It was, I think, not long afterwards that I wrote in the person of Van Artevelde, what he had to say when looking back upon the death of Adriana : — * "Well, well, — she's gone, And I have tamed my sorrow. Pain and grief Are transitory things no less than joy. And though they leave us not the men we were Yet they do leave us. You behold me here A man bereaved, with something of a blight Upon the early blossoms of his life And its first verdure, having not the less A living root, and drawing from the earth Its vital juices, from the air its powers : ^T. 32 HYDE VILLIEES. 151 And surely as man's health and strength are whole His appetites regerminate, his heart Reopens, and his objects and desires Shoot up renewed.' The society of Hyde Yilliers, and tlie interest I took in his topics, had made me pay more attention before his death than I did after it to political matters with which I had no official connection. In 1828 he travelled in Ireland, with a view to inform himself on the Irish questions then in agitation, and he wrote me long letters embodying ' the sundry contemplation of his travels.' I wish I could produce them, but I think they were borrowed for the information of some of his colleagues, and I fear they are lost. A long letter of mine in reply is extant ; and if a selection from my correspondence should be published, it will probably be found there. On the English poor laws also we had much consultation and discussion ; and it was at the sug- gestion of Hyde Villiers, in a letter addressed by him to another member of the Government of 1831, that the Commission was appointed whose widespread inquiries and elaborate reports laid the foundation for the new Poor Law of the succeeding year. The Bishop of London, Sturges Bourne {ci-devant Secre- tary of State for the Home Department), Nassau Senior, and, at my suggestion, the Kev. Mr. Davison, who had written on the subject in 1817, were to be the Commissioners ^ ; and by Hyde Yilliers' and Lord * I rather think Mr. Davison declined. 152 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1832 Howick's advice, application was made to my father to act as its Secretary. My father, for once, liad no doubt or misgiving as to his qualifications for the task proposed to him. But domestic circumstances were sadly adverse. He had recently gone with his wife to stay for an indefinite time with her mother, a charming old lady between 80 and 90 ysars of age, and who now seemed to be approaching her end. It was a very anxious case of nursing ; my stepmother's health and spirits were weak and worn ; and, except her husband, she had no one to give her solace or support. It was the first occasion in my father's life which had afi'orded a prospect of putting his abilities and attainments to use for the benefit of mankind, and the benefit of mankind was certainly what he had always had much at heart. He is the only man I have known in whom philanthropy could be the source of emotions such as arise in other men from personal distress. A gentleman in Scotland had achieved some celebrity by what was believed to be an enthu- siastic devotion of his life to the founding and supervising schools for the poor. My father shared the general admiration, and had been conducted over the schools by the gentleman himself. But some years afterwards this person was detected in some scandalous immoralities which led to his being excluded from society. I mentioned the fact to my father. He was astonished and incredulous at first ; ^T. 32 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 153 and when I convinced liim of the truth, he received it with tears. But whatever power philanthropic feelings had to move him, domestic affections reigned supreme ; and the question whether he should leave home at this conjuncture he left entirely to his wife. It was impossible that she should leave her mother in the state she then was ; the separation from my father was an almost intolerable grief to her ; but she kept her sorrows: as silent as she could, and the decision was to accept. My father, emerging from a life of seclusion and inaction at sixty years of age, was found a most energetic and effective Secretary. But it became necessary that the sittings should be prolonged beyond the three or four months originally contem- plated, and the strain upon my mother's fortitude was more than she could bear. Thoug^h silent as to her sufferings in her letters to my father, in one or two of those to me she had been more confiding ; and before five months were out she was laid up with nerv^ous fever, and my father at once resolved to resign his appointment and go home. At the next meeting of the Commissioners, Mr. Seuior observed that he supposed my father's reports must be the groundwork of the report finally to be made by the Commission ; to which Sturges Bourne replied that he did not see that they had anything else to go to. But this must have been a generous exaggeration. 154 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYXOR. 1832 What was the precise measure of my father s contribution to the final result of the Commission I do not venture to say. That result was one of the most important laws of our time ; and the credit of it was generally, and, I believe, quite justly, given to Mr. Senior, as its principal and essential author. I have a few more words to say on the subject before I quit it. I have always looked upon the case as affording an instructive example of one of the ways in which the public mind in this country, or the mind of some preponderating portion of the public, can be brought to bear upon a great public question with such weight as to enable the Government to pass an unpopular law. The series of searching interroga- tories to which I have adverted were circulated to all authorities and agencies connected with the admini- stration of relief to the poor, from the overseers upwards, in every parish in the country. Those who drew up and issued those interrogatories could them- selves have answered most of them perfectly well. Their object was not so much to learn as to teach. Many of those to whom they applied for the informa- tion could not give it without inquiring from others ; whilst these, again, may have had to gather informa- tion not already possessed or recall what they had forgotten : and thus it was that thousands of people throughout the land were brought to ask or to answer questions, and to give and take instruction and think for themselves on the subject of those interrogatories ; ZET. 32 POOR LAW COMmSSION. ] 55 and on the foundation of all this questioning and answering a body of public opinion was built up. ^ An index/ says Lord Bacon, ' is chiefly useful to the maker thereof.' And the person who answers a question is not seldom the person who is chiefly the wiser for the answer. If the public proceedings may be thought to have afforded an example for a politician to take note of, my father's conduct in the matter, in the view which I took of it, furnished a case for a casuist. When he had been some three months at this task, I wrote to my stepmother, in answer to some of the letters I have spoken of, thus : ^ I do believe that there ' never was a more perfect adaptation of a man to a task and a task to a man, and this must be your consolation, and you must think of the many millions of people who will benefit by that which brings suffering to you. You have not been in the way or in the habit of aj^preciating public duties, or I scarcely think that you could have reconciled it to a sense of what a man owes to his fellow- creatures that my father should have declined to undertake this business, any more than, having undertaken it, to persevere. It seems to me that scarcely any sacrifice of private feelings and interests, however much in a private view to be lamented, could be a consideration powerful enough to deter a very conscientious man from giving his assistance in a matter of such momentous public interest as this.' My mother had said, in one of the confidential 156 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1832 letters to which I was replying, ^ I am divided, like one who would serve two masters ; ' but at lenoi;h she made up her mind to speak out, and my father did not hesitate a moment on the question whether the domestic or the public duty were the more sacred. ^ I cannot easily imagine,' I wrote to my step- mother, ' by what process it is that any one person's absence makes any other person so ill ; but I have not a bit the less sympathy for you on that account. Illness is illness and distress is distress, come how they may ; ' and then I said all I could find to say to extenuate the sacrifice she was occasioning, and console her for being the occasion of it, and added : — ' Even if all these considerations had not come in to render the resignation a matter of less moment in my eyes, I should have been fully satisfied with his taking the measure which he might think most con- ducive to your happiness and his. It has never been the way of our family to interfere with each other's independence of judgment and action, and if the father does not so by the son., why should the son by the father ? ... As to the question of conscience and duty and so forth, I should have held difi'erent doc- trines from yours, but I should not have had the least objection to you and my father satisfying your own consciences according to your own opinions ; on the contrary, as my feelings would have been all in the interest of your opinions and not of my own, I should have been far better pleased that that could be done ^T. 32 PUBLIC V. PRIVATE DUTY. 157 by you and him with a good conscience, which, I doubt not, I in your place would have done all the same, only with a bad one.' I cannot find that she entered upon the case of conscience in the way of argument ; she only said, — ' The debates I have had with myself hoic far I was to allow my life .to be nibbled away without injuring your father's peace more than giving up his situation would do, were debates that wore my mind and exhausted my body frightfully ; but unless you know all, which you never can do, you must still wonder and still condemn ; and that cannot be helped. I thank you most affectionately for the allowance you make.' To Miss Fen wick I spoke my mind on the moral question with still less reserve : ' It is well that their tender consciences go along with them in the proceed- insT, which I, in the hardihood of mine, would have adopted with a fall sense of its flagrant immorality. For my part, I never can twist my conscience, though I can easily defy it. " The last infirmity of evil," *'to justify my deeds unto myself," is an infirmity with which I am not conscious that I was ever much afflicted ; and it is one to which I imagine stout consciences are seldom liable to the same degree as tender ones.' Miss Fen wick took the opposite side : — ^ I not only suppose that he thought himself right in returning to her, but I think he was right ; for he contracted the obligation of cherishing her in sickness and in 158 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1832 health, before he contracted any obligation to the Poor Law Commission ; and when that interfered with what was his first duty, the other surely ceased to be one, and his charity then had to return home and act in that narrow sphere in which all charities begin.' There is the case of conscience ; and not being myself much of a casuist, there I leave it. 159 CHAPTER XL THE ELLIOTS — FEIENDSHIP IN THE BUD AND IN THE YELLOW LEAF — VERSES — VISIT TO WALTER SCOTT — WORDSWORTH — SYDNEY SMITH. Anno Dom. 1830-34. Anno ^t. 30-34. Before I pass to the period of sudden celebrity which broke upon me in June 1834 — sudden and somewhat startling at first, but in the course of subsequent years not a little overclouded, or perhaps I should say outshone — before I pass to this period I will say something of a few friendships which had accrued to me in the latter years of my obscurity. The little group of doctrinaires had broken up, as such groups of the young are wont to do when the maturer men go forth upon their several paths and become occupied and absorbed in professions or m political life, or when they marry themselves away. The death of Hyde Yilliers would probably have dissolved the group, had it not been, as I rather think it was, dispersed at an earlier date. No more of breakfasts prolonged from ten o'clock to three by the charm of Charles Austin's bold and buoyant vivacities, set off by the gentle and thoughtful precision of John 160 AUTOBIOGEAPIIY OF IIEXRY TAYLOR. 1830-34 Romilly, the searching insights of John Mill, the steady and sterling sense of Edward Strutt, the gibes and mockeries of Charles Yilliers, and the almost feminine grace combined with the masculine intellect of Hyde. These were at an end. And in Kent House, with all its attractions, its gaiety and wit, my place knew me no more. It was after going past it one evening that I wrote the lines in ' Yan Artevelde ' beginning — There is a gate in Ghent— I passed beside it — A threshold there, worn of my frequent feet, .^ Which I shall cross no more. And no doubt much of what had brightened my life had been taken out of it. Edward Yilliers remained to me for ten years lonfT^er. What he was in himself and what he was to me I have endeavoured to express in poetry, and it would be vain for me to attempt it in prose. He could not be said to restore what I had lost in Hyde ; there was but little resemblance between the two brothers ; but his friendship, though in another kind, was a not less precious possession. My father regarded it as a rare instance of a vacancy so for- tunately filled — filled as it only could be at so early a moment through a loving remembrance, common to both, of a loss which both had suiFered : and he remarked how much more frequently w^e may say with Shenstone, ' Heu ! quanto minus est ciim reliquis versari quam tui meminisse ! ' We were both at that time mournful men ; both at all times constitutionally subject to dejection ; ^T. 30-34 EDWAED VILLTERS. 161 and each was to the other rather consolatory than cheermg. If Edward was unlike Hyde, who resolutely went his way in life with a calm and equable energy, he was still more unhke those of his family whose gaiety and wit were everj^where seen in society and everywhere admired. With all the ease and grace of his manner there was an habitual reserve — not forbidding and perfectly well-bred — but be- longing' to the tone of his spirits, which indisposed him to mix much in general society ; and one result was, that the few with whom he preferred to live were the more devoted to him. In his intercourse with them the genial liveliness of his mind came to the surface ; and if his constitutional melancholy could not be quite dissipated, it gave an additional charm to the brightness that broke through it ; and never in any man that I have known, and rarely in any woman, has nature accomplished a harmony so perfect between the countenance and the mind : — There was a brightening paleness in his face Such as Diana, rising o'er the rocks, Showered on the lonely Latmian : on his brow Sorrow there was, but sorrow not severe.^ There were times, however, when neither of us could enliven the other. I remember the tone of humorous reproach with which he said to me one day when we had been taking one of our long walks together in sombre silence, that ' he had not animal 1 *Gebir.' VOL. I. M 162 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENKY TAYLOH. 1830-34 spirits for two ; ' and it is a satisfaction to tliink that he found not long after, in a nearer relation of life than that of friendship, the strength and elasticity of temperament of which he had felt the want in me as well as in himself. I was longer than he in finding the all-sufficient support ; but in the meantime sundry gains accrued to set off against my losses. About half a year after Hyde Yilliers left the Colonial Office, Frederick Elliot entered it — in July 1825. He cannot have been then much more than 16 years of age ; but he was a lively and engaging boy, with a head in which youth and age had met and come to terms and made an alliance not yet, I think, altogether dissolved, though he must now (in 1872) have reached his ' grand climacteric' His life exemplified the value of money in giving the right direction to the abilities of men whose natural aptitude is for a political career, by showing the way in which they are turned aside for want of it. His faculties in dealing with ad- ministrative affairs were known to the official class ; his social and conversational gifts, his range of know- ledge, and the ease, lightness, and versatility with which he could bring it to bear, were known in London society ; but his political judgment and penetration were known to few, and might have been wholly unknown, had he not been sent to Canada in 1835, at the age of 26, as Secretary to Lord Gos- ford's Commission of Inquiry into Canadian affairs, then in a very critical condition. In that and the ^T. 30-34 PEEDERICK ELLIOT. 163 following year I received from him long letters giving an account of what he saw and heard, with the con- clusions at which he arrived. I showed them to Lord Grey (then in the Cabinet, though not in the Colonial Office), and of one of them he wrote to me thus : — ' I return Elliot's letters, which I think decidedly the best papers on Canadian affairs I have ever read. Indeed, I do not know that I ever saw an account of the state of parties and politics in any country drawn up with equal judgment and discrimination. ... I trust that you will show this letter to Lord Glenelg, and I even wish you could feel yourself at liberty to allow him to show to Lord Melbourne and the Kino^ a copy of all the more important parts of it.' In Charles Greville's 'Diary' (20th December, 1835) vol. iii., of the 'Greville Memoirs,' he writes : — ' I have just seen an excellent letter from F. Elliot to Taylor, with a description of the state of parties and politics in Lower Canada, which has been shown to the Ministers, who think it the ablest expose on those heads that has been transmitted from thence. I have very little doubt that he will go far ; he has an admirable talent for business, a clear head, liberal and unprejudiced opinions, and he writes re- markably well.' And far he might have gone, but that he had not money to pay his way. In the course of a few years a friendship grew up between us ; and through him I became acquainted with the attractive, strong-hearted, genial, mettlesome race to M 2 164 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYXOR. 1830-84 wliicli he belonged — frank, friendly, luminous, spirited ' sons of tlie morning ; ' sons — and daughters none the less. Hugh Elliot, the stock from which they came, sometime Minister at the Court of Frederick the Great, has been presented to this generation, I may say, ' in his habit as he lived,' by his grand -daughter. Lady Minto, in one of the pleas antes t biographies in which one century could be invited to take a look at another. Of his sailor son, Charles, I gave some account to Miss Fenwick, writing from the ' Star and Garter' at Kichmond in March 1834 : — * Charles, wdiom I should have been delighted to bring you acquainted with, is on his way to China. He is of all the men whom I have met with in life the one whose feelings are the fullest and freshest, and, with a great strength and buoyancy of temper- ament, the most tender : and he has a manliness of character which places him in a condition to let them take their free course without fear or shame. I have seen nothing like him in this landward society, where people think what will be thought of them, and fear their neighbours more than they love them, till their hearts become reserved and debilitated. In the present state of society a sailor may be that which scarcely any other man can. But Charles Elliot is ploughing the seas, which, as he now is, may be said to have produced him ; and so you will not see him ; and it may be many a long year before I shall, more's the pity ! ' ^T. 30-34 CHAELES ELLIOT DRAMATISED. 165 And I gave a much more particular account of him in ' Edwin the Fair ; ' for in that play he performs the part of Earl Athulf. I was already engaged in this portraiture when Sir James Stephen, in ignorance that he was giving the sanction of his sentiments to a foregone conclusion, wrote to me (18th November, 1841) : — ' I return your letter with great admiration of Charles Elliot, who certainly seems as fine a fellow as ever sat for his portrait to painter or poet/ I have often compounded one of my 'dramatis personse ' from materials known to me in life, taking this from one person and that from another, and trusting to my imagination to harmonise what was diverse ; but except in this instance I do not remem- ber that I have ever put a real man into a play in his totality. The part was conceived in the heart of my imagination, and there is nothing said or done by Athulf which is other than what would have been done or said by Charles Elliot in the like circum- stances. Wulfstan the Wise (of whom Coleridge was the prototype) takes a psychological view of him : — Much mirth he hath and yet less mirth than fancy : His is that nature of humanity Which both ways doth redound, rejoicing now With soaringtj of the soul, anon brought low ; For such the law that rules the larger spirits. This soul of man, this elemental crasis, Completed, should present the universe Abounding in all kinds ; and unto all One law is common, — that their act and reach 166 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1830-34 Stretched to the farthest is resilient ever, And in resilience hath its plenary force. Against the gust remitting fiercelier burns The fire, than with the gust it burnt before. The richest mirth, the richest sadness too, Stands from a groundwork of its opposite ; For these extremes upon the way to meet Take a wide sweep of nature, gathering in Harvests of sundry seasons. In 1834, however, Charles Elliot's capabilities of sadness had not been developed, as they were un- happily at a later period, by domestic afflictions ; nor had he at that time met with any reverses in his public career ; and Ethilda's description of him, in Act i. scene 5, as ^ wild with pleasantness and mirth ' may be taken as not needing to be much qualified in the earliest years of our friendship : and even when his gallant, and I will say heroic, services as plenipotentiary in China, being rendered at a crisis of inevitable disaster, had been received by the British populace in the spirit in which unsuccessful heroism always has been and always will be received by every populace, — not many besides the Duke of Wellington and Lord Melbourne being clear-sighted and intrepid enough to applaud him publicly according to his deserts, — even then his hardy hilarity was but little the worse for mere popular ingratitude : Elgiva de- picts him — Not 80 thoughtless now, And more in broken lights ; but Nature's flag Is flying still, whose revels in his heart Hardly can care suspend. ^T. 30-34 CHARLES ELLIOT DRAMATISED. 167 And so throughout the play, whensoever there is nothinof worse than warfare carried on with indifferent instrumentalities, or cares and oppositions in public life to be encountered, the heart of the fictitious commander and politician is, like that of the real one, rather vexed than oppressed ; and in scenes such as the following between Athulf and the Clown Grim- bald, it is not so much an imitation of Charles Elliot that is given, as a mere plagiarism or tran- scription : — ■ Athulf. There — take my truncheon ; thou couldst rule my force With more acceptance in the general mind Than I. By Heaven I am ashamed to see Such bickerings in a camp. Give me a cowl And let me rule a monastery rather. Grimbald. There — take my cap and bells ; I'll rule your force, And wisely too ; but when I look for love In change for wisdom from the multitude, Give me again my good old cap and bells. Athulf. Ah, fool, you're right, and that man is not wise That cannot bear to be accounted foolish. I must be patient ; yet it frets my heart, Amongst my many cares, to be reviled By shallow coxcombs whom I daily save, Rescue, redeem, snatch from a rubbishy tomb Amongst the ruins of their wits, pulled down By their own hands upon their heads, God help them ! Well, I'll be patient. And if there was something peculiar to himself in the mixture or alternation of the splenetic and the 168 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOR. 1830-34 gay and good-humoured with which Charles Elliot met and defeated hostility and unjust reproach, hardly less singular was the compound of natural impetuosity with self-enforced caution which marked his conduct of affairs in China, both when he rescued the British residents of Canton from their perilous imprisonment, and when, in the hour of victory, justly distinguishing between the guilty authorities and the innocent people, he saved that multitudinous and not unfriendly city from the consequences of being taken by storm. ^ And again let Wulfstan the Wise (preparing himself with a speech to be delivered in the Synod) supply the delineation : — Earl Athulf 's disposition shall I then Duly develop ; him shall I disclose As one whose courage high and humour gay Cover a vein of caution, his true heart, -« Intrepid though it be, not blind to danger, But through imagination's optic glass Discerning, yea, and magnifying it may be, "What still he dares : him in these colours dressed I shall set forth as prompt for enterprise, By reason of his boldness, and yet apt ^ I may mention a trait of Charles Elliot's humour by which those who have read the memoir of Hugh Elliot may recognise the fatlier in the son. When, under circumstances of the gravest respon- sibility, he had to make his way up the river to Canton, it became necessary to pass under the fire of a Chinese battery ; and by way of indicating the importance he attached to it, he had an arm-chair placed on the deck of his cutter, and sat in it, holding an umbrella over his head to protect him from the sun. His contempt was not altogether justified, for the Chinese gunners did manage to hit the cutter. ^T. 30-04 CIIAELES ELLIOT DRAMATISED. 169 For composition, owing to that vein Of fancy that enhances, prudence which wards Contingencies of peril. Whilst, of the descendants of Hugh Elliot, Charles probably resembled him the most, to others of them the same brightness of spirit belonged in different degrees and in different ways, — coruscating in some, lambent in others. There was a sort of careless thoughtfulness that went along with it in some of them ; and for me, in my dull and melancholy moods, it had a charm which, perhaps, none hut a melancholy man can fully appreciate. Hamlet felt it when he took to his heart a friend That no revenue had but his good spirits To feed and clothe him. And when he tells how it was that he chose Horatio, he might be supposed to be describing Charles Elliot:— Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice And could of men distinguish her election, She hath sealed thee for herself; for thou hast been As one in suffering all that suffers nothing, A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks : and blessed are those "Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger To sound what stop she please : give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. Perhaps I should proceed with the quotation and add, — ' something too much of this : ' especially as 170 AUTOBIOGKAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1830-34 there was another of the family with whom I was in equally intimate relations, and of whom also I have something to say. For the genial vivacity, the liveliness of the heart and mind and whole nature which drew me to him, in like manner and in like measure charmed me in his eldest sister. Lady Hislop. She was in young middle life, and was the wife of a distinguished General Officer, much older than herself, who had commanded the British army in the Deccan in 1817, and fought and won the battle of Maihidpore. When I knew him he was a simple- hearted, kindly, courteous gentleman, not easily brought into conversation, but happy and contented, sitting under his fig-tree and enjoying the honours and repose which a life of eminent military services had earned. Count Ugo, 'the gallant and magnani- mous old man,' in the ' Sicilian Summer,' was mainly, though not, perhaps, so literally as in the case of Charles Elliot, drawn from Sir Thomas Hislop ; and Rosalba does him no more than justice when she says that he was ' ever a just, courteous, and bountiful man, of good life and conversation, with a gentle and generous heart, and per ad venture as much under- standing as innocence has occasion for.' Lady Hislop had been, I believe, much repandue in society before her marriage ; and she was singularly fitted to play a part in it ; but the General's health was not strong, and at this time they were living in retirement at Charlton, about eight miles from Lon- don, where I became, about the year 1833, a frequent ^T. 30-34 LADY HISLOP AND HER DAUGHTER. 171 visitor. In June of that year I wrote to my father : — ' Pray take your excursion up the Tyne. It is always desirable to have a change of scene now and then, and shake oneself out of the dream that one gets into by living in a circle. / have been changing my scene to Charlton on Blackheath for two or three days in each of these two weeks last past, and getting more and more delighted with my friend there, Lady Hislop, whom I had scarcely seen for the last twelve months. She is ingenuous, impetuous, and vivacious in her talk and manner, and essentially discreet in her conduct ; behaving like an angel to her mild, simple, and kind-hearted old husband.' For that old husband I had a great regard, and, in the course of time, I think even an aiFection. And there was an only child, a girl of about eight years of age, to whom I was very much devoted even in those days. How much and how long I continued to be devoted to her, may be inferred from these two stanzas, addressed to her, I do not remember exactly when, but after she had passed into middle age : — Dear Nina, how betides it that with you Sickness and sorrow, which since Time was born "Were Youth's destroyei*s, seem but to renew The twilight softness of your dewy morn 1 Ye days of Charlton, how you laugh'd to scorn The imminent Future ! Portion it its due ; I look in those large eyes whose tender blue The darken'd hair now deepens, and maintain That Time with all his following forlorn, Sickness and sorrow, injury and pain, If a Destroyer, is an Angel too. 172 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOE. 1830-34 Dante, the glorious dreamer, was he wrong The ' Mount of Preparation ' to invest With sapphire hues and people with a throng Of happy spirits 1 one, at his behest Sang the remembered strain he loved the best, Whereby he knew that early loves are strong Met in the ' Second Eegion ; ' I so long There wandering, hear a voice when daylight fades And shines the Love-Star singly in the West Sweeter than what was sweetest in the shades Of Purgatory, Casella's broken song. During tlie years 1834 and 1835, Charlton Yilla was a great resource and comfort to me. Along with the charm of a bright intelligence, not uninformed by books as well as by commerce with society, and especially, I think, foreign and diplomatic society, Lady Hislop had a faculty, rarely to be met with in lively women, of giving rest to the weary. And rest was what I stood greatly in need of ; for though in the ten years which had elapsed since I left Witton, I had ceased to be subject to nervous de- pression, lassitude had remained to me, alternating with excitement. In the middle of my work at the Colonial Office it was not unusual with me to lie down for an hour or more and ' go into abeyance,' as Hyde Villiers called it, neither speaking nor listening nor thinking ; and in the evening my exhaustion was so incapacitating that I often went to bed at eight or nine o'clock. A letter to Lady Hislop of January, 1834, betokens what my condition was in those years : — * I suppose you will hear of Charles to-morrow. MT. 30-34 LADY HISLOP. 173 I should miss him a good deal if I had sense and spirit enough to miss anything in the sort of life which I lead, dividing the day between hours of languor when nothing is felt, and hours of occupation when things present are all in all. It has not hap- pened to me to meet with anyone whose society was so attractive to me, nor to part from anyone with so much regret ; unless it be those whom I met with in a fresher season of life, and whom I have been parted from for ever. We shall see him again in a few years, I hope ; and probably less changed by the lapse of a few years than most people. Thanks for your inquiry about my teeth. As to dismissing the dentist, if there were to be any dismissal it should be that of the teeth ; the fault is in them, not in him.' And after adverting to the advantages which artificial have over natural teeth : — ' I believe there are very many occasions on which we patch when we ought to substitute ; and for my part I wish it were possible to substitute another body alto- gether for the very inconvenient one which I carry about. Pope went by water one day from London to Twickenham, and getting into dispute with the waterman about the fare, happened to make use of his favourite ejaculation of " God mend me ! '' *' Mend you, indeed ! " said the waterman, " much easier to make another." I am afraid I am in Pope's predicament, both in my teeth and in more important parts of this fabric, — in body and soul. You are very kind, and so is Sir Thomas (my best regards to 174 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOE. 1830-34 him), in backing Nina's invitation. When will you have me ? — Shairt be to-morrow night ; or Tuesday mom ; Or Tuesday noon or night ; or Wednesday morn 1 I pray thee name the time ; but let it not Exceed three days. Some gossip followed, and I told her of a new acquaintance I had made : ' The night before last I plunged deep into the acquaintance of Mrs. Norton. I came to the top again dripping with beauty ; but I shook my ears and found myself no worse.' My visits to Charlton continued till the autumn of 1835, when the Hislops went abroad. After their departure I wrote some letters to Lady Hislop, but not many. She had, or supposed she had, a difficulty in writing letters, and I think the correspondence drooped and dropped ; and when in a year or two they returned to this country. Sir Thomas's health was much broken, and she was so wholly engrossed by it that I believe my visits to Charlton were less frequent than before. About this time too I induced Miss Fen wick to take a house in London during the winter months of each year ; in these months we lived together, and this domesti- cation withdrew me more or less from visits out of town; and when, after the death of Sir Thomas, Lady Hislop came to live in London, another and still closer domestication had taken place, and in no long time I had ceased to live there myself. My friend's life in London was occupied with ^T. 80-34 LADY TIISLOP. 175 many and multiplying concernments. Her daughter was married at an early age to Lord Melgund (now Earl of Minto), and lived near her ; and four grand- children were born to her ; and a daughter of her brother Charles, who was serving abroad, was con- signed to her care and was to be brought up and brought out and married in due season.^ And with her, every member of her family who had occasion for help or kindness or care, sought and found what they wanted. These were the true and constant and abiding interests of her life from lirst to last, and ih London as well as elsewhere ; and at the same time she played with the world and society, and took as much interest in doing so as the nature of the game would permit. Under all these conditions her life was filled up. Lady Hislop and I never had a quarrel ; never, as far as I know, even a misunderstandins: ; but with each successive change of outward circumstance, other changes crept along, and all else was not as it had been. Very various are the ways in which friendships grow old. An old friendship may or may not be a better thing than a new one, but it is not the same thing. It may have struck a deeper root, but the flower and the freshness have faded. The anxieties and sorrows which will naturally attend a friendship of many years, and the serious joys which take their turn, will exercise the affections in their entire scope and capacity, and what is strong will be established in its strength. Arthur ^ To Mr. Russell, afterwards Lord de Clifford. 176 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOE. 1630-34 Hallam has written, — ' Pain is the deepest thing that we have in our nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and more holy than any other ; ' — and on the other hand joy, though not the deepest, may be a deep thing nevertheless, and some sorts of gladness there may be, and some vic- tories and some consolations, which do their part in mmistering to the strength and stability of the affections, and contribute to make the old friendship the graver stake and the more precious possession. But for all this, there are imaginative pleasures dancing round the beginnings of loves and friend- ships which will not dance on for ever, and the perishable garland they weave has some odours and colours that are wanting even to the best and fairest fruitions of the riper season, — even, I will venture to say, to the triumphs of the harvest-home when those who have sown and reaped come again with joy and bring their sheaves with them. In the days of those Charlton visits I had lent Lady Hislop the copy of Barante's ' Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne de la Maison de Yalois,' in which I had been studying the story of Philip van Artevelde and his times. After the lapse of many a long year, I was sitting up in my bed (obliged to do so every night from severe spasmodic asthma), and studying Barante once more for the story which is dramatised in ^ St. Clement's Eve ; ' and in turning over the pages I came upon some flowers and leaves which Lady Hislop had put between them thirty years iET. 30-34 FRIENDSHIP. 177 before ; and this gave occasion to a few verses which may find a better place here than elsewhere : — Oh tender leaves and flowers, Tho' withered tender yet, What privilege of joy was ours In youth when first we met ! Bright eyes beheld your bloom, Fair hands your charms caressed, And not irreverent was the doom Which laid you here to rest. Sweet phantoms, from your bed Thus re-arisen, you paint The likeness of a love long dead In faded colours faint. Oh tender flowers and leaves, By all our vanish'd joys — By glittering spring-tide that deceives, By winter that destroys, — • Though nought can now restore The perished to its place. Eyes dimmed by time and tears once moi-e Shall look you in the face. My stepmother seems to have felt something of what I feel about what belongs to the beginnings of friendships. It was hardly in her nature to have a quarrel ; bat one of her friends did quarrel with her once ; and it was in allusion to what passed upon the occasion that she wrote thus : — ^ She certainly has not risen in my estimation by this discourse ; but dear she must ever be to me with all her faults, and I trust that I must still be so to her VOL. I. N 178 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1830-34 •with all mine Sach only can be the friendship of many years of frequent intercourse, when the fabric built by imagination has crumbled away and the realities of human nature are no longer clothed with the charms of early attachments.' The case of Lady Hislop and myself was, as I have said, a case of crumbling, not of quarrelling. The friendship underwent a change, but it never ceased. I have survived her, but I have not survived the affection. In the autumn of 1831 I paid a visit to the Lakes, and after passing some time in the society of Southey and Wordsworth, it occurred to me that I ought to make an effort to see Walter Scott, whose health had been broken by more than one shock of paralysis, and who might not be much longer to be seen in this world. With this view I procured myself an invita- tion to spend two or three days at Chief's Wood, near Abbotsford, the abode of Mr. Lockhart. Scott dined at Chief's Wood on one of these days, and I dined at Abbotsford on another. I was much and mournfully impressed with his manner and appearance. There was a homely dignity and a sad composure in them, which perhaps belonged to his state of health and to a consciousness that his end was not far off ; and along with these there was the simplicity and single- ness he must have had from nature. The animation and fertility of discourse with which also nature had gifted him were brought low. I witnessed only one ^T. 30-34 VISIT TO WALTER SCOTT. 179 little quickening of the spirit. There was to be a pic-nic party, and a question arose whether two elderly ladies in the neighbourhood should be invited. One of the family intimated an opinion that the two elderly ladies would not add to the liveliness of the party, — in fact, that they would be ' a bore ; ' — on which a light came into the sick man's eyes and a flush into his cheeks, and he exclaimed, — ' I cannot call that good breeding.' He could not bear that the good old ladies, his neighbours, should be considered unacceptable. I had brought him word that Wordsworth intended to pay him a visit later in the autumn. He answered, ' Wordsworth must come soon or he will not find me here.' I understood this as said in contemplation of his approaching death ; but perhaps it had reference only to his intended departure for Naples, whither he went not long after to escape the English winter. Wordsworth paid him the proposed visit, and of that came the sonnet written on the occasion of his departure. It is a sonnet which I often repeat to myself, and I will take this oppor- tunity of repeating it to others : — A trouble, not of clouds or weeping rain, Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light Engendered, hangs o'er Eil don's triple height : Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain For kindred power departing from their sight ; While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain, Saddens his voice again, and yet again. N 2 180 AUTOBIOGEAPIIY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1830-34 Lift up your hearts, ye mourners, for the might Of the whole woild's good wishes with him goes ; Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows Follow this wondrous Potentate. Be true, ' Ye winds of ocean and the midland sea Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope. AYordsworth and Scott dwelt in regions as far apart as it was possible for men to occupy who each covered so large a space. Neither, I should think, could appreciate the other in full measure ; but Scott would perhaps go nearer to a full appreciation of Wordsworth than Wordsworth of Scott ; and I value the more on this account the feeling expressed in this grand valedictory sonnet. They were as little alike in their aspect as in their genius. The only thing common to both countenances was that neither expressed a limitation. You might not have divined from either frontispiece the treasures of the vx)lume, — it was not likely that you should ; — but when you knew that there they were, there was nothing but what harmonised with your knowledge. Both were the faces of considerable men. Scott's had a character of rusticity. Words - w^orth's was a face which did not assign itself to any class. It was a hardy weather-beaten old face which might have belonged to a nobleman, a yeoman, a mariner, or a philosopher ; for there was so much of a man that you lost sight of superadded distinctions. For my own part I should not, judging by his face, have guessed him to be a poet. To my eyes there MI. 30-34 WORDS WOETH. 181 was more of strength than refinement In the face. But I think he took a different view of it himself. Whatever view he took, if occasion arose, he would be sure to disclose it ; for his thoughts went naked. I was once discussing with him the merits of a picture of himself, hanging on the wall in Lockhart's house in London. Some one had said it was like : — ' Yes,' he replied, * I cannot deny that there is a likeness ; such a likeness as the artist could produce ; it is like me so far as he could go in me ; it is like if you suppose all the finer faculties of the mind to be withdrawn : that, I should say, is Wordsworth the Chancellor of the Exchequer, — Wordsworth the Speaker of the House of Commons.' In this there was not more vanity than belongs to other men ; the difference being that what there was, like everything else in him, was wholly undisguised. He naturally took an interest in his own looks, and wished to take the most favourable view of them ; as most men do, though most men do not make mention of it. And there is something to be said for his view. Perhaps what was wanting was only physical refine- ment. It was a rough grey face, full of rifts and clefts and fissures, out of which, some one said, you might expect lichens to grow. But Miss Fenwick, who was familiar with the face in all its moods, could see through all this ; and so could I too at times. The failure of the face to express all that it might have expressed was indicated by Coleridge with characteristic subtlety and significance. He said that 182 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOR. 1830-34 Chantrey's bust of Words wortli was more like Words- worth tlian Wordsworth was like himself. In Scotland great men were not the only objects of interest to me. There was a girl in a remote district who had a singular charm of freshness, pleasantness, and Scotch friendliness, with simplicity and originality. I knew her in London afterwards — but London is not a place in which simplicity and originality can live and flourish as in their native soil. Even the admiration they may meet with — for it is quite possible that they may be admired — may not be good for them. A young lady finds that her simplicity is charming, and she thinks she will be more simple than ever. She is fearlessly natural, original, and unconventional in her ways, and becom- ing conscious that her ways are winning, she pushes naturalness a step or two beyond Nature's need. The charm is not lost, but it is just a little impaired. Miss Fen wick did not sympathise with the light and casual admirations which came across me ; she tliought them likely to interfere with sentiments which might be more to the purpose ; for her purpose was that I should be married. But there was one nugatory admiration to which she could not refuse her sympathy, the object being a sister of her own, much younger than she was, married to a Somerset- shire country gentleman. From Miss Fenwick's house in Bath I wrote to my mother : — < Mrs. is here, whom I had not seen for three ^T. 30-34 A PORTRAIT. 183 years, and it is seldom I see anything which interests me more. I scarcely think that any artist could paint, or any visionary imagine, a creature more beautiful in her kind ; and though one is conscious that a great deal of brilliancy has passed away, yet the tender tone of the complexion has not ; and the contour of the features, which is so perfect, and the parity of expression, make the remains of her beauty more attractive than the unimpaired beauty of most other angels.' I have seen many specimens of young beauty since that was written, and some of beauty outlasting youth ; but with the unfading recollection I still have of Mrs. , I could almost write it again, and say with Donne, — No Spring nor Summer's beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one Autumnal face. My mother replied : — * Mrs. is indeed a very interesting person, and her beauty of that kind which time has less power over than most kinds. Brilliancy or animation never was hers. One used to feel, in a manner, quite obliged to her if she smiled when the rest of the party were all mirth and folly. Yet she never was what might be termed melancholy, never dull. She retains that enchanting grace which always distin- guished her, and an elegance of figure, though I don't think any one part of her or her proportions was really good. Altogether I have seldom seen anyone I more admired.' 384 AUTOBTOGEAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOE. 1830-34 In order to be near her sister, whose abode was Bagborough House, not far from Taunton, Miss Fenwick occupied for a few years the house of an absentee vicar of Halse, a few miles distant. Thither went I on a visit in the summer of one of those years ; and thither went with me Edward Yilliers and his wife ; for he had then lately married Miss Elizabeth Liddell, a daughter of the first Lord KaVensworth, and they had both entered into a sort of partnership in the friendship between Miss Fenwick and me. They loved and admired her with all their hearts ; and Miss Fenwick felt about them as I did. Sydney Smith's parsonage of Combe Fleury was within a few miles of Halse, and we paid him a visit. He was in high spirits, and took us round his grounds, showing us the beautiful prospects to be seen from each point of view, for Combe Fleury is situated in one of the richest tracts of Somerset- shire : — * An extensive prospect there to the East ; Galatia — Mesopotamia — lie in that direction.' And when our visit was over and we rose to take leave, he asked Mrs. Villiers whither she was bound when she left Halse. — ' To Bath,' was the answer. * To Bath ! ' he said ; ^ what can take you to Bath?' ^ Well, I have an aunt there, whom I really ought to go and see.' * Ah ! an aunt — you have an aunt at Bath ; yes, everybody has an aunt at Bath — a perfect ant-hill. ^T. 30-34 SYDNEY SMITH. 185 I have an aunt at Bath : "Go to the ant, thou sluggard," has been ringing in my ears for a century ; but I've never gone/ And then followed the loud but soft volley of cordial laughter with which he usually speeded his own jests on their way. Miss Fen wick could well appreciate his wit and humour, but she could not always approve his senti- ments and opinions ; and she was capable of observing upon them with some severity. When he said he could not see what there was in Wordsworth's poetry, she replied, — ^ There are some things which must be spiritually discerned.' She was told afterwards that he had called her ' a sensible woman ; ' and then she considered that he had taken his revenge. Another visit which we paid in the neighbourhood of Halse brought me acquainted with a daughter of Sir Thomas Lethbridge, in whose family beauty seemed to be inherited as a sort of heirloom, like poetry in the Tennysons and intellect in the Coleridges. Miss Anna Maria Lethbridge, now Lady Clarges, was of that beautiful family the most beau- tiful member. If there were any of my admirations at this time which could be called frivolous or foolish this was not one, for there was a dignity of beauty in her which lent something of its own nature and character to the feeling it inspired. 186 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAY-LOR. 1834-36 CHAPTER XII. POETS IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BYRON — MOORE — COLERIDGE — WORDSWORTH — PUBLICATION AND SUCCESS OF * PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE ' — SOCIAL RESULTS TO ME LANSDOWNE HOUSE — HOLLAND HOUSE — PUBLICATION OF * THE STATESMAN.' Anno Dom. 1834-36. Anno ^t. 34-36. * Philip van Artevelde ' had been in progress for about five years before the summer of 1833, and the revision of it extended over nearly another year. For about ten years before its publication the popular appetite for poetry had not been of a craving character. The enthusiasm for Lord Byron's im- passioned but often rather empty moroseness and despair, though it may not have sufifered a general collapse, had passed away from some of the more cultivated classes, and found perhaps its surest retreat in the schoolboy's study and in the back shop. And thither also had retired the sympathy which, when it is accompanied by anything dazzling in personal attributes or circumstances, intensity of self-love can sometimes excite in the popular mind. The more just admiration felt for his brilliancy J2T. 34-3G BYRON— MOORE. 187 and wit and his general poetic power remained in large measure ; but even this, perhaps, drooped more or less from being entangled with the dead body of the other enthusiasm. For myself, I have never been able to rekindle my youthful infatuation (as it seems to me now) for Lord Byron's poetry, and I rather think I am not a competent judge of it. It is not easy for a passion to pass into a reasonably warm regard. Moore had not excited amongst his admirers the peculiar personal interest which attached to Lord Byron ; but having by some years the start of him, with much more of poetic sensibility and metrical art than the country had been accustomed to in the eighteenth century, he shone as a morning star in the awakening eye of the nineteenth ; and though he was apt to disfigure his songs by what he meant for a crowning ornament— a metaphor artificially set forth and too much like ' the posy of a ring,' — yet in his more genuine poetic moods, whether plaintive or festive, or, as he could sometimes con- trive it, a graceful combination of the two, he could not but charm an audience who had forgotten the songsters of Elizabeth and James, and so far as the poetry of song was concerned, had had nothing better to listen to in their own times than what was called 'the Delia Cruscan School,' or 'the School of Laura Matilda.' But Moore's genius, though of course with much diversity, was yet too much akin to Byron's for the 188 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-36 one not to have lost by the apposition of the other. At the dawn of Byron's day It 'gan to pale its uneffectual fire, and when that day declined, its own lustre was so far bedimmed as to make extinction seem to some cold calculators little more than a question of time. In this state of things the two great poetic intellects of the age, which had been passing through a tunnel, as it were, since the end of the preceding century, issued forth of it and were seen and known. The depths to which the genius of the one or of the other had penetrated might be measured with the same rod, but the range was very different ; so far, at least, as was to be seen in the space covered by their published poetry. Wordsworth had produced four or five times as much as Coleridge, whose pro- duct was scanty. Coleridge, as Wordsworth once expressed it to me, had been ' in blossom ' only for four years — from 1796 to 1800. The plant was perennial, but the flowers were few. That the greatest imaginative intellect of the age should, so far as poetry is concerned, have done little more in a long life than show what it could have done, may tend to reconcile one to the fate by which some who appeared destined to be great poets have died in early youth. * Christabel,' the ' Ancient Mariner,' and some others of his early poems were enough, no doubt, to make an era in poetry, and they did make ^T. 34-36 COLERIDGE. 189 an era ; for though they did not themselves at once and in direct action reach the popular mind, they took immediate effect upon those whose fortune it was to be the popular poets of the time ; and poetry could never again be content to dance in a court dress with Pope, or to go through a course of gym- nastics with Dryden, or to sit by the fireside with Cowper, or to mount the pulpit with Young. If Coleridge produced little in his after life that equalled the richness of those blossoming years from 1796 to 1800, it was not that intellectual or imagin- ative activity fell short ; the activities were all there, but they revolved into themselves ; and the moral will, enervated by opium, was wanting in power to determine and give effect to them. I have always thought that Coleridge was describing his own states of mind when he speaks of — joy above the name of pleasure, Deep self-possession, an intense repose. ... No other than as Eastern sages paint The God who floats upon a lotos leaf. Dreams for a thousand ages, then awaking, Creates a world, and smiling at the bubble Relapses into bliss. Wordsworth, on the contrary, wrote, in my opinion, too much poetry ; as most men will who live long and write little else, and have no employ- ment save that of meditation and composition. But his poetry takes concentrated forms as well as those which permit him to be diffuse ; and when at last it 190 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-36 found its field of operation free from the r«ink growths of the first quarter of this century, it exercised a great fertilising and cultivating power ; insomuch that, within the limits of the thoughtful classes, the mind of at least one generation may be said to have been moulded by it. The first opening of their minds to Wordsworth was effected by Pro- fessor Wilson and his associates in ' Blackwood's Magazine ; ' and this opening was widened, I think, by two articles of mine in the ^ Quarterly Review,* one of which, I was told by the publisher at the time, had doubled the sale of his works. His popu- larity with these classes, and through them with others, lasted for some twenty years. He never lost his hold of the generation by which he had first been appreciated ; but another generation arose which preferred to have a poet of its own, — a great poet in his kind, — and Wordsworth went into occultation during the transit of Tennyson.^ The case of Coleridge was somewhat different. He too, though he did not write largely like Words- worth, wrote a good many poems which were hardly worthy to stand by the side of those on which his fame was founded. But his best poems had received from the first the profound admiration, not only of the writers of poetry who caught some breath of his inspiration, but also of a small circle of its readers * JvZy 1870. The occultation did not last many years, and I think that now Wordsworth's poetry shines through the higher order of minds everywhere with a radiance again unrivalled. iET. 34-^36 COLERIDGE. 191 sitting at his feet ; and if for many a long year he was not read by the reading multitude, yet even with them a vague notion had grown up that there was something in him ' rich and strange,' though they may have imagined that, as far as they were concerned, it might as well be at the bottom of the sea. This partial insensibility lasted as long as Cole- ridge lived, but not a day longer : — The gates of fame and of the grave Stand under the same architrave. ^ So it was at least in the case of Coleridge : for in the history of the rise and fall of poetic reputations, in- explicable as it so often is, there is nothing more curious than the way in which the long silence of the outer world was broken in 1834 when Coleridge died. For some twelve months or more he was the favourite theme of every magazine and journal. Lights will sometimes flicker over a newly filled grave, but this was more like the noisy inebriety of an Irish funeral. Like other paroxysms it passed over ; and it is hard to guess now, as one popular poet rises after another, — hard to guess and im- possible to distinguish, amid the trampling of the triumphal processions, — what voices may still be re- peating to themselves the poetry of the past, and how many may still be treasuring in their hearts the love of a greatness which has grown old. ^ Walter Savage Landor. 192 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOR. 1834-36 In June, 1834, when ^ Philip van Artevelde ' appeared, Coleridge was still living, though his end was near,^ and Wordsworth was not yet far famed. It was a flat time. Publishers would have nothing to say to poets, regarding them as an unprofitable people. My MS. seems to have been in search of a publisher some months before. On the 4th Febru- ary, I told my father that I had been reported to be the author of ' The Doctor,' and also of ^ Contarini Fleming ; ' and having expressed my amusement at finding myself the Father General of foundling publi- cations and my satisfaction at it as showing that my name might go for something on the title-page of ' Philip van Artevelde,' I proceeded : — ' That per- sonage is now in the hands of John Murray, to enable him to judge whether he is, like most other dema- gogues, a marketable commodity. . . . Whatever be the fate of that work, it is off my hands. I do not say so in any way as being glad to get rid of it — quite the contrary — but only to express that the interest that has been with me for some six years past must now give place to something new.' Murray, though strongly advised by Lockhart to accept the publication, remembered what he had lost seven years before by ' Isaac Comnenus,' and was not prepared for such another venture. He referred me to Moxon, then commencing business. Moxon told me that when authors applied to Murray to publish * I heard with much interest from John Sterling that he read it before he died. ^T. 34-3G 'VAN ARTE VELDE.' 193 works likely to involve a loss, Murray was very much in the habit of referring them to him. But as I was ready to take the risk, he of course was glad enough to publish. I had shown the manuscript to four friends : James Stephen, Charles Greville, Spencer Walpole, and Frederick Elliot. I think Frederick Elliot was the only one who had confidence in its success. On the question whether I should publish 'Yan Arte- velde ' at my own expense, my father wrote to me in March 1834: 'I do not expect '' Artevelde" to be popular. It is so opposite a style of composition to that on which the tastes of this generation have been formed. Those are few who form their taste for themselves, and those are many who suffer their taste to be formed by popularity ; and it is the many who make a work pay or lose. The influence of the few, with the aid of " Artevelde" himself, may slowly and at last, in another generation perhaps, change the taste of the many ; but this will go to the account of your fame, not of your exchequer ; for fame, you know, "is an exchequer of words and I think no other treasure." Still I say that in your situation, as you can afford the risk, I would incur it.' To which I answered : — ' I agree with you as to " Yan Artevelde " being at issue with popular taste, and I infer that it can only succeed by creating the taste by which it is to be appreciated, — an inference which seems almost to amount to a conclusion against its success. Nevertheless I am determined VOL. I. o 194 . AUTOBIOGKAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-36 to take no discouragement from anything but the actual result, knowing by experience that it is a sort of disappointment which needs no preparation, inas- much as it does not bring with it one day's de- pression or one hour's annoyance. If I want the energies of ambition, I enjoy at least the indemnities of indifference ; and that, not only as regards accept- ation by this present public. My interest in the pursuit will survive another failure — another and another — being the interest of excitabilities connected with the exercise of the art, and in a great degree in- dependent of anything ulterior. Yet what ambition I have is directed in this line ; and standing now Tvithin the precincts of middle age, with deliberation and with food for deliberation in the experience of several years devoted mainly to other endeavours, and without any reason to be dissatisfied, on the whole, with the result of those endeavours, I do unquestionably conceive that my vocation is to write plays, and that my life will give out the larger sum total of results in proportion as it shall be more devoted to this employment.' The principal question which arose amongst my friends was as to the prudence of the preface. ^ Charles Greville says that it is all wrong from beginning to end, and that it will not do to invite people to read my book by telling them that it is what won't suit their taste. He says it will be called dogmatical, and that people will not bear to be called upon to conform to my taste, instead of to read ^T. 34-36 ' VAN AETEVELDE.' 1 05 something which is conformable to theirs. Edward Yilliers is partly of the same- mind ; but Frederick Elliot only requires some additional humilities and then would let it go/ I referred the question to Southey. * Let your preface stand/ he said. * A preface that provokes contradiction does no harm. One that attempts to defend or apologise for the book it in- troduces serves only to show the enemy what the garrison look upon as the weakest part of their works. Any such introduction is sure to bring on the attack that it deprecates.' ' I keep my preface/ was my reply, ' only with- drawing my humilities. They were introduced by advice, to avoid the effect of arrogance, and they produced the effect of egoism. Moreover they were too solemn — too much in the manner of " your humble man's man, Emperor Peter." The preface is now tolerably impersonal, and I must risk the charge of arrogance.' So these preliminaries were settled, and, as my mother expressed it, quoting the words of a certain Lady Chaytor living near her, over which we had made ourselves merry some time before — ' Now for a leap into the lap of the public' The leap was made with the advantage of a lift and a toss. The publication had been kept back so as to appear along with an article by ' Lockhart in the ' Quarterly Review.' There were one or two other plauditory articles written from personal motives ; 2 196 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOR. 1834-;J6 then notices, more or less slight or elaborate, swarmed in every direction ; and one of my reviewers applied . to me what had been said formerly of some one else \\^y (I forget of whom) that I had * awakened one morning and found myself famous/ The sale was rapid, and as the edition had numbered only 500 copies, another had to be put in preparation without delay. Lansdowne House and Holland House, then the great receiving houses of London society, opened their gates wide. In that society I found that I was going by the name of my hero ; and one lady, more fashionable than well informed, sent me an invitation addressed to ' Philip van Artevelde, Esq.' I enjoyed my success very much for its own sake, and I valued it greatly for the pleasure and interest it excited in my father and mother. They were not for the present at Witton Hall ; as I have said, they had temporarily left that dreary abode ; and it was for one almost as solitary — the house of my mother's mother, Mrs. Mills. She was in her eighty- seventh year, and greatly needed her daughter's care and attendance, which were given till her death in 1836 ; — ^it was not till then that they returned to Witton. Even the aged mother's mother, an accom- plished and cultivated person, had taken an ardent interest in the work, had read it again and again, and had expressed an expectation that it * would give a new turn to the taste of the day, and revive a purer and higher love of poetry than had been abroad for some years/ iET. 34-36 'VAN ARTEVELDE.' 197 My mother wrote in July : — * I suppose you are sick of the sound of praise by this time. The praise of friends is sweet ; the praise of strangers more flattering ; and the praise of enemies the most dehghtful of all. Yet none of these will make you think better or worse of your poem than you did before it burst forth to the world.' ^ I am not in the least sick of the sound of praise/ I answered ; ' but, on the contrary, begin to think that I can digest any quantity of it. . . . If it were not that the s^le is less than it was, I should imasfine, from what I hear and what I see in print, that the book was getting a great reputation. . . . If I were to tell the truth, I believe I should say that just at this moment T am thinking little about praise or dis- praise, and less about what is accruing to me than what is going away from me ; and what is going away from me is C F . She starts for Scotland to- morrow. . . . When you say that there is in the character of Van Artevelde, what none of the critics have perceived, a kind of hardness mixed with his softness, you have got (to use a flower of speech) the right sow by the ear.' She had spoken also of an occasional want of reflnement in Clara ; to which I answered, that the want of refinement might be a fact and might be a fault ; but that, judging from my own observation, I doubted whether the vivacity of Clara would be natural without a capability of coarseness, any more 198 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-36 than the strength of Artevelde without the capability of harshness. In so saying, I think I was hard upon Clara. The better answer would have been that Clara's manners were not modern but mediseval. If modern manners were to be the standard, where would Rosalind be, and where even Desdemona ? Much of our modern refinement is conventional, and as such has its own value as an outwork. Much of what may seem to us coarse in mediaeval manners was in those days consistent with innate and essential delicacy. Divers other views were interchanged. My father, who had read the work piecemeal in MS., rejoiced in it more and more when he came to read it in print and in sequence. His wonder was that a man who had read so little should have so much to say. But he was anxious, and so was I, that I should read more before I wrote again. This, however, it was not easy to accomplish. The celebrity of my work had brought about a change in my daily life which was by no means favourable to reading or to any other profitable employment of my time. Of course I, like every other successful author at his first coming forth from the jungle, was put under pressure of London society. I had some advantages for a first appearance in it. But taking me all in aU I was unapt. My strength was not equal to the effect of late hours and social excite- ments, and as my weakness erf health did not appear MT. 34-36 SOCIAL POPULARITY. 199 in my looks, it was not accepted as an excuse for refusing repeated invitations, and the refusals gave offence, while the invitations I accepted were numer- ous enough to incapacitate me for anything more than the work of my office. There was another unfitness ; it did not occur to me that social popularity was an object to be aimed at, nor consequently that it was worth while to give some thought to the ways of gaining or keeping it. This was a moral as well as a social mistake. Miss Fen wick says in one of her letters : — 'Any kind of liking is a precious thing, to be cherished, whether it comes suddenly or slowly.' Perhaps popularity in London society would not have entered into her contemplation as included in the maxim ; but from some points of view it is worthy to be included. An honest and disinterested conciliation, a desire to please simply for the love of giving pleasure, are commendable ; and the genial sympathies of our nature cannot be cherished without a desire that those we like should like us ; and they may be fitly carried forward a little farther, in a desire to be liked by whosoever is not likely to be the worse for liking us. If a man can rely upon himself for making truth and sincerity paramount, and for not being weakened and wasted and spoilt, there is no reason why he should not study the arts of pleasing, and seek to make himself acceptable in society. Nothing of this entered into my ways of thinking in 1834. I had real good nature, and as goodnature 200 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOE. 1834-36 is at the root of good breeding, I ought to have been well-bred. Bat I was not myself easily displeased or offended ; and giving others credit for a hardihood similar to my own, I went on my tactless way, hurting people without knowing it ; and it was only in retrospect that I seem to have seen how much social popularity had accrued to me and how wantonly I had thrown it away. Had I perceived it at the time I should probably have thought that it signified very little ; but it does not follow that this would have been a just estimate. All this may have been, in some respects, a dis- advantage ; but, on the other hand, if I had continued long to be as much liked and sought in society as I was in 1834-5, my time and strength would have been wasted and I might have become good for little else. This was the view I took of the access and recess of my popularity, when, in 1844, I wrote a short poem (not published nor intended for publica- tion) in which I reviewed the successive stages of my career from the seclusion of Witton Hall to the date, then recent, of my marriage : — A change again ; — my name had travell'd far, And in the World's applausive countenance kind I sunned myself : not fearing so to mar That strength of heart and liberty of mind Which comes but by hard nurture : Me tho' blind God's mercy spared — from social snares with ease • Saved by that gracious gift, inaptitude to please. 1 had scruples, too, which came in aid of this ^T. 34-36 LADY HOLLAND. 201 gracious gift. I had greatly enjoyed the society of Holland House ; that of Lansdowne House not so much. The former was made up of the men of wit and the eminent political men of the day, with an occasional man of letters. The dinners at Lansdowne House were now and then of the like composition and still more agreeable because there were more women ; but for the most part they, or those of them to which I was invited, consisted of men of letters almost exclusively ; and as I had no love of knowledge or of instructive conversation and none of my own to produce, they did not charm me much. But greatly as I preferred the society of Holland House, a scruple came across me which led me to withdraw from it. I did not like Lady Holland, and I found myself speaking of her accordingly. I was not sufficiently a man of the world to think this compatible with accepting her hospitalities, and I refused one invitation after another till she became aware that more would be sent in vain.^ This, I have no doubt, had its effect in reducing the social demands upon me ; for it may well have caused me to be looked upon as a person who thought himself of infinite importance and whom it was not easy to deal with. Nothing ^ In the diaries of Miss Caroline Fox, published in 1882, an account is given of my secession, taken by her to be my exclusion, from Holland House, which is founded on a fact, but unfounded in the inference. It is true that in conversation with Lady Holland, she sneered at Wordsworth's poetry, and I answered by saying, ' Let me beg you to believe. Lady Holland, that that has not been the sort of thing to say about Wordsworth for the last ten years.' But she sent me more than one invitation to dinner after this misdemeanour. 202 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-36 could be better calculated to relieve me from the pressure of many who might have been candidates for the honour of my ' good company and gracious speech.' If this was the view taken, I was misunderstood. Self-sufficiency and self-importance were not, I think, in the number of my weaknesses. But the misunder- standing was a natural one, and it may have been useful in preserving me from some of the ' social snares ' spoken of in the poem. I offended in another way. In May, 1836, 1 published a little volume which I misnamed ^ The Statesman.' It had no right to so large a title. ' Pragmatic precepts ' would have been a better, if the word ' pragmatic ' had not in these latter times got away from its origin, so as to be used in a dyslo- gistic sense. But I have found more than once that there is no page of a book so difficult to write as the title-page ; and at the same time there is probably no one page taken singly which is of equal importance to its fortunes. This book had the advantage, and it was a very great advantage, of revision in the proof-sheets by three capable critics, Spedding, Glad- stone, and E. Yilliers ; but on referring to their comments I do not find that any question was raised upon that important page. The work contains commentaries upon official life and the ways in which men may best be managed and administrative business conducted ; and in so far as official and unofficial life occupy a common field, it JST. 34-36 'THE statesman; 203 looks indirectly into the ways of the world. The preface is more modest than the title-page. Adverting to Lord Bacon's Book ^ De Negotiis ' (the 8th of the ^ De Augmentis '), and to the large note of deficiency there set down, the preface proceeds : — ^ I should be much indeed misunderstood if, in pointing to this want in our literature, I were supposed to advance, on the part of the volume thus introduced, the slightest pretension to supply it. Amongst the dreams of juvenile presumption it had, I acknowledge, at one time entered into my fancy that if life should be long continued to me and leisure should by any happy accident accrue upon it, I might, in the course of years, undertake such an enterprise. When this vision lost some of its original brightness I still conceived that I might be able to blot from Lord Bacon's note of " deficients " so much of the doctrine " De Negotiis " as belongs to the division which he has entitled "De Occasionibus sparsis." But the colours of this exhalation also faded in due season, and when the scheme came to be chilled and condensed, the contents of the following volume were the only result that, for the present at least, I could hope to realise.' The ofience given was not, however, in the over- weening title, any more than in the blushing preface ; but I believe chiefly in a chapter (the 7th) on ' popularity,' and in another (the 14th) on the ' arts of rising.' One sentence in the former chapter would have been enough. I affirmed that 'popularity is 204 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOR. 1 834-36 most commonly obtained by an abuse of humility and a large indulgence for all qualities and pro- ceedings which are not denounced as flagitious by the society to which a man belongs y ' and ' one of the doctrines of this popular humility/ I proceeded, * is much the same with that which Machiavelli ascribes to the Romish Church in his time — the doctrine " come e male del male dir male ? '^' There is a better doctrine which teaches that men are not only the subjects, but the instruments of God's moral government. The judgments of the street and of the market-place, the sentences which men pronounce upon each other in the ordinary intercourse of life, constitute the most essential of all social juris- dictions, and he who would serve the great Lawgiver with fidelity must carry the sword of justice in his mouth.' There are certainly a good many worthy persons in society who would rather not meet a man with the sword of justice in his mouth. But there was something worse still : — ' In the earlier stashes of a man's career he will find it his intere&t, if it be consonant with his cha- racter (for nothing, be it observed, can be for a man's interest in the long run which is not founded upon his character), I say, if it fall in with his nature and dispositions it will answer to his interests to have a speaking acquaintance with large numbers of people of all classes and parties. A general acquaintance of this kind can be kept lightly in hand at no great cost I ^T. 34-36 'THE statesman; 205 of time or trouble. By taking care that it shall cover a due proportion of men of obscure and middle station, the discredit of courting the great may be partly escaped ; and he who has a speaking acquaint- ance with a thousand individuals will hardly find himself in any circumstances in which he cannot make some use of somebody. Out of the multitude of the obscure some will emerge to distinction ; the relations with this man or that may be drawn closer as circumstances suggest ; and acquaintances which could not be made at particular conjunctures without imputations of interested motives, may be improved at such moments with much less inconvenience. It is always to be borne in mind that, as in commerce large fortunes are most commonly made by dealing in articles for which the poor (that is, the multi- tude) are customers, so in this traffic with society a man should take into account, not the rich and the great only, but the many. When a man shall have mounted to a higher level of fortune, he will, doubt- less, find the numerousness of his acquaintance in obscure life to be more troublesome than useful. But if he have taken proper care not to lavish him- self in wanton intimacies, and whilst multiplying his potential friendships as much as possible, not to culti- vate them into actual friendships oftener than his occasions required, he will find the burden of his superfluous acquaintance lie hardly so heavy upon him in any circumstances as to make it worth his while to throw it ofi*. In his more exalted station 206 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-36 bows and smiles will be abundantly sufficient for those with whom bows and smiles had, at all times, constituted the warp and woof of his connection. From those with whom his intercourse has gone further, he may probably be enabled to earn a dis- pensation for the future by doing them some sub- stantial service which costs him nothing ; and with regard to some still closer alliances in which he may be entangled with obscure and unserviceable men, he will do well to single out some individual from time to time, in whose behalf he should make some great and well-known exertion as a tribute to friendship. This will enable him to spare trouble in other in- stances, and yet avoid being charged generally with the pride of a parvenu,^ It might be supposed that the spirit in which these passages were written could not well be mis- construed, and that in amusing myself with this kind of inquisition and exposition, I ran no risk of being understood to recommend seriously the arts I ex- pounded. But it was not so. Men who were them- selves more or less artists in this kind, thought they could best acquit themselves by exclamations of disgust and contempt, and that they could best suppress the book in which the arts were exposed by misrepresenting it as a book in which they were taught and recommended. At least I had some reason to think so. In this way I believe the hooh suffered at its first appearance as well as the author ; but had it possessed ^T. 34-36 'THE statesman; 207 the requisites for popularity, it would soon have forced its way. It did not force its way either soon or late. So long as it was in print it never actually ceased to sell. About once a month for 36 years, it occurred to some person that he would like to read it, and in some such numbers as 12 in a year, a single edition of 750 or 1,000 copies — I forget which — dribbled away, and in this year of 1873, for the first time the book is out of print. Fra Paolo di Sarpi said of a book of his (it could scarcely be his great work) that it would have a dozen readers in every age, and that that was enough. I think Fra Paolo was a man of very moderate desires. 108 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 CHAPTER XIII. mr. spring rice succeeds mr. stanley as secretary of state mr. spring rice and his family * the four ages ' op titian a proposal of marriage, and what followed. Anno Dom. 1834-38. Anno ^t. 34-38. In August, 1834, Mr. Stanley and Mr. Lefevre left the Government and were succeeded in the Colonial Office by Mr. Spring Rice and Sir George Grey ; an event which brought with it a great change in my official life, and led in the course of a few years to the greatest change that can happen to a man in his personal life, my marriage. I wrote to Miss Fenwick on the 8th September, — * We have had a general pacification at this office, which, after havmg been torn with civil convulsions for a year and a half, is now to enjoy all the blessings of peace. Spring Rice has offered Stephen something in the shape of promotion, and perhaps all that it was in his power to offer him at present ; he is to be made an Assistant Under-Secretary of State ; that is, that office is to be created for him, and he is to hold it along with his present office, and with the same salary. This is not much of a step, but MT. 34-38 MR. SPRING RICE. 209 Stephen is content to take it and to come into re- newed activity ; and I, being of his faction, am to do likewise ! ' My father thought that I might be brought into more activity than was good for me ; but I told him that he ' need not be afraid that I should work as I had done, either for love or money/ Mr. Spring Rice had not been above a week or two in office, before he asked me to spend a couple of days with him at a house he had taken at Petersham. In a fortnight this visit was followed by another ; and I wish it were allowable, connected as I now am with them, to repeat what I said of the family, col- lectively and individually, in my letters. A little of it I may : — *If conciliation was his object he succeeded, — would have succeeded by himself, and succeeded all the more with the help of his wife and daughters and his little boys. . . . The boys are nice boys, and the ways of the family altogether very pleasing and very expressive of happiness and affection. I liked them much and got on very well with them, as I generally do with women and children.^ In a letter to Southey (9th September, 1834) I spoke of the father : — ^ Spring Rice is the only popular man whom I have found it possible to like ; but there is a genuine though an indiscriminat- ing cordiality of temper about him, and a prodigality of kindness to every one which is certainly agreeable to see if it has no higher value ; and after seeing him VOL. I. p 210 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 in his family at Petersham (a very pleasing family) for a couple of days I found it impossible, notwith- standing my habitual distrust of men who conciliate all the world, not to believe that there was something substantial in his nature. We went down in an open carriage at sunset, and he took care not to let the sun disappear without the proper quotation from " Madoc ; " and the next day he took a fitting opportunity to pay a similar compliment to '^ Thalaba." He seems to have filled his daughters as full of Wordsworth as they could hold, and after coming from church turned to '' The Happy Warrior," and said it was worth a thou- sand sermons/ In another letter I described the manners of the young ones in the family as ' lively and gentle, fond and free.' ... 'I have never seen a household which it was more satisfactory and pleasant to look upon.' Speaking of the eldest daughter, I said, — ' She has Wordsworth at her fingers' ends, and is full of poetry from her fingers' ends to her toes. This, however, seems to be the way of the family : Spring Eice himself seems to have a real love of it, and to have taught his children to admire Wordsworth as that which was most admirable. . . . Spring Rice is a man of a light heart and happy nature and particularly cordial manners, and when our parting breakfast came to a close (he being bound for Windsor on a visit to the King) he rubbed his hands and ejaculated a wish that now we were all together, we could all stay where we were for the rest of the ST. 34-88 Mil. SPRING RICE. 211 day ; and I really have an idea that we all had amused each other very well, — tossing poetry and quotations from hand to hand ; for the house is as full of poetry as any circulating library can be full of novels. So I like my Secretary of State of this day, — him and his ; and he takes my views to a great degree of what ought to be done in the office.' In the office, so long as he remained in it, all went well ; at least in Stephen's estimation and in mine. He was a man who had opinions of his own, but he was entirely free from arrogance or presump- tion ; and ready therefore, on fit occasions, to listen to the opinions of others and give them whatever preference might be due to opinions founded upon a knowledge of many years, over the opinions of one who was, for the time being, new to his work. I have known few men, however, whose knowledge of all sorts of subjects, literary and political, was more extensive, and none who could acquire knowledge, and make it ready for use, more swiftly as well as effectively. Stephen said of him, I remember, — ' If you multiply his matter into his velocity you get a very considerable momentum.' He was then, or had been down to a recent date, perhaps the most popular man of his party. ' Spring Rice,' I wrote to Southey, 16th November, 1834, ' is the first person since Lord Bathurst whose departure from these doors I have seen with regret ; a light-hearted, warm-hearted man, with a mind, not powerful certainly, but acute and active, accomplished, and versed in literature and p 2 212 AUTOBIOGKAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 poetry as well as equal to business. He took his family down to Hastings the other day to remain there for the winter, that Lady Theodosia (who is consumptive, I fear) might have the benefit of that warmer climate, I asked him when he came back if he had planted them to his satisfaction, and he answered me by an allusion to the passage in " The Excursion," in which the Solitary describes his having taken his wife — To a low cottage in a sunny bay Where the salt sea innocuously breaks, And the sea-breeze as innocently breathes On Devon's leafy shore^* saying that he had thought of it on the way back till his eyes had filled. And in truth I never met with a man, much less a public man, whose heart was more devoted to his fireside. I see him go with concern, therefore, and without any expectation that His Majesty will transfer the seals of the Colonial Department to any person who will be half as much to my mind.^ In no long time he lost his popularity. He had done nothing to forfeit it ; but how it came and how it went is not difficult to understand. Havino^ from nature a genial Irish temperament, he had a cordial greeting for every man he met. The cor- diality, however general and indiscriminating, was perfectly sincere. But it did not mean what an equal cordiality on the part of a dry Englishman would have meant. Englishmen, however, construed it by an English standard, and an untold multitude of .^JT. 34-38 MISS ALICE SPRING PJCE. 213 casual acquaintances took Mm for a fast friend. This redounded to his popularity till the period when he attained to high office with patronage at his command. Then came the time of trial ; the untold multitude expected each man a loaf or a fish : no miracle was wrought ; and the Minister, not being more than human, was accounted less than friendly. In public life cordial manners have their value and their charm ; but in order that the popular favour they bring may be liable to no reaction, there should be a lightness and carelessness in the cordiality, showing that it is referable to the source rather than to the object, — scattered, not elicited. So qualified it gives birth to no unreasonable expectations, no embittered dis- appointments- The Government fell in a few months, and Mr. Spring Rice was succeeded by Lord Aberdeen. After this I saw less of him and his family than before ; no more, indeed, than I saw casually in society or in occasional visits at their house in London during the season. But the youngest daughter, Theodosia Alice by name,^ whom I had taken to be a child when I first saw her in 1834, had grown to be more of an object of attention to me than, with all my love for children, it was possible that a child could be. It is not for me, situated as I now am, to describe her ; but it is open to me or any one to quote what is printed in a book ; and in the life of Archbishop Whately, vol. i., p. 487, I find a letter from the ^ Hereafter called 'Alice.' 214 AUrOBIOGR.VPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-88 Arclibisliop to Mr. Senior, dated 21st July, 1841, in which it is mentioned that she was beautiful. If so she was in 1841, it may be presumed that she was not less so in 1836, when she was in her eighteenth year ; and at that time I conceived that I had met with a picture of her by Titian. The work of Titian's in which I found it I described in a letter to Miss Fen wick, of the 3rd July, 1836. ' It belongs to the collection of Bridgwater House, and commonly goes by the name of " The Four Ages," inasmuch as the several groups in the ])icture represent the several stages of human life. The group on the left hand consists of three children. Two of them are in a deep sleep, and the third is setting its foot upon one of the others as a stepping stone to a tree which it is about to climb. Infancy is thus represented by the careless animation of its waking moments and by the deadness of its sleep ; for the waking child puts his foot upon the one that lies asleep, and, nevertheless, the one that lies asleep is not wakened. The next group consists of a man half reclining and a girl sitting beside him with a musical instrument in her hand. In the background is old age represented by an old man meditating upon a skull. There is a controversy concerning the intent and meaning of this picture ; some saying that it represents three ages, some four. If it re- })resents four, the man and girl in the second group, who seem to be lovers, must stand for two of them. The girl bears a strong resemblance to Alice Spring lUce; ^T. 34-38 A PROPOSAL AND WHAT FOLLOWED. 215 The letter proceeds to give some account of a declaration and proposal. The family, or at least the father, was startled. Mr. Spring Rice, in his first reception of the pro- posal, though not refusing to consider it, was cautious and cold. He complained justly of being taken by surprise, and alleged that neither of the parties could know much of the other. This was true. It was very little indeed that we knew of each other. And how little is it that is ordinarily known in such cases ! Mr. Rogers ob- served to me once that it matters very little whom one marries, for one finds next day that one has married somebody else. Milton complains that ^ there is no such freedom of access granted or pre- sumed as may suffice for a perfect discerning till too late.' The habits and circumstances of society are no doubt much changed since Milton's time ; perhaps they are a little changed even since the time of Rogers ; but the changes operate in more ways than one. In Northumberland, I remember, when I was a boy, it was said by some old gentleman that the marriages of last century were commonly between relations or near neighbours ; on which a shrewd uncle of mine observed that ' that was before the roads were mended.' Amongst cousins alid near neighbours a husband or a wife can be chosen with a real knowledge of what may be expected of them in domestic life. But not only have the roads been mended ; the rail has been laid down ; and girls and 216 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 men from the remotest counties go to London and meet in a concourse and a crowd ; and though it is true that there is more frequency and more freedom than there used to be in such intercourse as a con- course concedes, yet all the conclusions that can commonly be drawn from intercourse of this kind are such as have reference to looks, manners, intelli- gence and tone. ^ Didst thou see him whisper her in the compassed window ? ' says an observant person in one of Shakespeare's plays ; and a ^ compassed window ' is, in London, about as much of an oppor- tunity for intercourse apart as a couple who may be gravitating towards each other can well hope to enjoy. Had I waited for a knowledge which was not to be had, my proceedings might have been as much too slow as they were held to be too precipitate. In some of the great occasions of life, if we did not act upon an impulse we should probably let slip the time of action. But Nature has made provision for such cases. The greater the stake the greater the pains of anxiety and the troubles of a mind tossed to and fro ; they become intolerable and we rush to a decision. A man pre-occupied with his own delibera- tions walks up to a stone wall and runs his head against it ; the man who has not only a lure beyond, but a goad from behind, takes a run and a leap and clears it. I have never ceased to rejoice that on this greatest occasion of my life I was a little rash. From a sonnet in my common-place book it appears that I had either met with or imagined some ^T. 34-38 A PROPOSAL AND WHAT FOLLOWED. 217 monitor wlio strongly disapproved of my proceeding. My father thought me rash, but it is certainly not his disapproval to which the sonnet replies, or, if his, I must have been making the most of a little for the purposes of my argument. It is entitled, — A Charge Repelled. From slight communion slender knowledge snatched, On slender knowledge serious purpose built, Of purpose so upstarting issue hatched Showing a rashness near akin to guilt, And folly with misfortune mostly matched ! Grave tho' the char'ge, the Panel can allege A solid plea for that precipitate pledge : There is a wisdom, scorn it as thou wilt^ Much reasoning Sophist, which the mind receives By impulse ; there is knowledge that is met Than what is sought more certain ; Reason weaves Simply a snare for him who, thought-beset, Prudentially refuses trust to place In the clear honesty of that fair face. When the proposal was made in July the family were on the point of departure for Ireland. In November Mr. Spring Rice returned to London, leaving his family in Ireland ; and within a week after his return, he asked me to a very domestic dinner — himself, his eldest son, and one very intimate friend — cooked by a housemaid, and served in a back- room of his empty house. This, which was repeated in another week, was plainly a measure ; and we remained in the relations it indicated till his family were about to join him in April, 1837. I thought it time then that I should ascertain 218 AUTOBIOGKAPHY OF HENEY TAYLOE. 1834-38 more distinctly where I stood, and I reopened com- munications. Mr. Spring Rice, in his answer to my letter, held still to the objection of inadequate know- ledge, declining to sanction an engagement, whilst he consented to our seeing more of each other on an unengaged footing. But early in June religious questions were raised at the instance of a member of the familjT- ; and after an explanatory correspondence with Mr. Spring Rice, the engagement was broken off by his daughter, on religious grounds. With some natures, revelations of love are made chiefly through pain, and perhaps it was through the shock of the disruption that 1 first knew of the depths to which mine had reached. But in no long time there were some glimmerings of renewed hope. Hope is said by Crashaw (or is it by Cowley ?) to be the brother of Faith : — Hope, of all ills that men endure The orly cheap and universal cure ! Thou captive's freedom and thou sick man's health, Thou loser's victory and thou beggar's wealth, Brother of Faith, 'twixt whom and thee The joys of Heaven and Earth divided be, Though Faith be heir and have the fixed estate. Thy portion yet in moveables is great ! In my case the moveables and the fixed estate were to be one inheritance or one forfeiture. Opinions had never been strong in me — at least on matters not susceptible of proof ; and I think I can acquit myself altogether of intellectual pride. JET. 34-38 RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS. 219 The nature of my intellect in its philosophic field was large, loose, and reconcihng. I conceived the hope of such an approximation in the course of time as would make the difficulty on the score of religion not unsurmountable. During these months I sought for assistance, at Miss Fen wick's suggestion, from two friends of hers and mine, widely differing on points of ecclesiastical doctrines and discipline, but in spirit equally devout — Sir James Stephen and Mr. Gladstone. In point of intellectual range I regarded them as belonging to the same order of minds as my own, my inferiority lying mainly in the region of intellectual operations in which the intellect is de- pendent for its power and scope upon spiritual discernment. I need not say that their assistance was most gladly given. Southey took perhaps a still more ardent interest in my endeavours ; but his mind did not bear upon mine. It was too habitually and constitutionally confident on many sorts of questions, temporal and spiritual, on which my own was habitually diffident. In his view of the state of my mind, with which he had long been well acquainted, there had been nothing in it from the first which should have prevented the marriage on religious grounds, though he was fully aware that my convictions fell far short of my aspirations. Had the case been his own, he said, he should have greatly preferred me to a Roman Catholic. I could not understand the preference, but it was emphatically expressed. 220 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HE^"EY TAYLOR. 1834-38 So supported, my endeavours were not unsuccess- ful. There was a lifting of the mists and by degrees The burthen of the mystery Of all this unintelligible world Was lightened. In January, 1838, 1 reopened communications with Mr. Spring Rice, and submitted to him my confession of faith. I think it may be regarded as having a rather close affirity to that section of Abraham Tucker's * Lights of Nature 'which he entitles ' Lights of Nature and Gospel Lights Blended.' After some delay it was accepted as sufficient, and intercourse was to be resumed on the footing of ' a valued friend ; ' but on no other footing till the month of June following, when the young lady would be of age. On this my mother wrote : — ' How the unnatural restraint is to be kept up for four months when each party knows the feelings of the other and each is re- solved that such restraint shall end on the 2nd of June, I can't imagine. I am not sure whether I would not rather be without the intercourse till that day, lest the feelings grow dull and the temper of the parties wearied. . . .' I resolved to submit to the condition : for, under all circumstances of life, errors of acquiescence have been more according to my nature than errors of opposition. But my mother's doubts were fully justified in the result. After some months the young lady's courage failed and she bsroke off the engagement. JET. 34-38 * EDWIN THE FAIR.* 221 On the 21st of April, just a month after the catastrophe, I told my mother that my health, which had been somcTi^hat shaken, was re-established; that I had found a refuge in my imagination ; and that, relinquishing a long meditated design of dramatising ' Thomas A'Becket,' for which the preparations seemed interminable, I had resumed a former project of dramatising ' Edwin the Fair,' where I was ^ free to do what I liked, and needed not to ask, "Wit, whither wilt ? " ' Into this project I plunged, seasonably for a diversion, but far too hastily for the purposes of art. A dramatist, before he begins to execute, should see his way in his plot from beginning to end. It may be that accidents will happen on the road, and some deviations become permissible or desirable ; but the more the preconceived main drift is kept in view the better. I did not give myself time for this fore and aft completion of design before I began to write. Still the state of mind and the course of events which had hurried me brought some compensations in dramatic and poetic detail for grave structural defects. Trouble and sorrow are not destitute of results to the mind and imagination ; — The tree Sucks kindlier nurture from a soil enriched By its own fallen leaves ; and man is made In heart and spirit from deciduous hopes And things that seem to perish. 222 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 Those lines were written after my earlier disappoint- ment. It was after my later that Leolf found himself on the shore at Hastings (the scene was written there, as well as laid there), — Discoursing to the sea Of ebbs and flows ; explaining to the rocks How from the excavating tide they win A voice poetic, solacing thono^h sad, Which when the passionate winds revisit them Gives utterance to the injuries of time. And he tells them that ^ poets are thus made.' The Leolf of the play is no more an impersonation of myself than the Elgiva is an impersonation of Alice ; but the one being A man upon whose head Already peepeth out the willowy grey, and the other a young girl who had been incon- stant to him, there was of course an opportunity of bringing into the story some outgrowths of the life I had been living ; and in the last scene between Leolf and Elgiva there is enough of this mixed with what belongs to the tale to make some portion of it not come amiss in quotation here, — not amiss at least to those, and some there may be, who may like to see in what manner life and poetry and truth and fiction will sometimes take occasion to embrace and hiosculate : — Leolf. This is the last time we shall speak together ; Forgive me therefore if my speech be bold And need not an expositor to come. I loved you once ; and in such sort I loved .15x34-88 'EDWIN THE FAIR.' 223 That anguish hath but burnt the image in, And I must bear it with me to my grave. I loved you once ; dearest Elgiva, yes. My heart, even now, is feeding on that love As in its flower and freshness, ere the grace And beauty of the fashion of it perished. It was too anxious to be fortunate. And it must now be buried, self embalmed Within my breast, or living there recluse Talk to itself and traffic with itself ; And like a miser that puts nothing out And asks for no return, must I tell o'er The treasures of the past. Elgiva. Can no return Be rendered 1 And is gratitude then nothing 1 Leolf. To me 'tis nothing, being less than love; But cherish it as to your own soul precious ; The heavenliest lot that earthly natures know Is to be affluent in gratitude. Be grateful and be happy. For myself If sorrow be my portion, yet shall hope That springs from sorrow and aspires to Heaven Be with me still. Elgiva. Oh Leolf, Leolf, So tender, so severe ! . . . Leolf. Mistake me hot ; I would not be unjust. Our lives were linked By one misfortune and a double fault ; It was my folly to have fixed my hopes . Upon the fruitage of a budding heart ; It was your fault, — the lighter fault by far, — Being the bud to seem to be the berry. The first inconstancy of unripe years Is nature's error on the way to truth. Happily, in my case, it was the berry which had seemed to be the bud. 224 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 CHAPTER Xir. LORD ABERDEEN AND MR. GLADSTONE — SCHEME FOR A LITERARY INSTITUTE — LITERARY PENSIONS — LORD ABERDEEN IS SUCCEEDED BY LORD GLENELG AND MR. HAY BY MR. STEPHEN — JAMES SPEDDING IN THE COLONIAL OFFICE— HIS WAYS AND WORKS HIS BACON AND HlS SONNET — MR. MANNING (nOW ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER) RESIGNS HIS JUNIOR CLERKSHIP. Anno Dom. 1834-38. Anno Mr. 34-38. A MONTH after I had set to work upon ^ Edwin the Fair/ an official task was provided for me which my father thought * would aiFord me as much interest with less fatigue.' But before I proceed, I must bring up to date the history of my office, as Sterne does that of the kitchen and Rapin that of the church. I have said that in 1834 Mr. Spring Rice was succeeded in the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies by the Earl of Aberdeen. From no one of the twenty- six Secretaries of State under whom I have served have I met with more kindness and con- sideration than from Lord Aberdeen, and to none have I been able to give in return for kindness, — or rather not in return for it, since what I have given must have been given whether for value received or JET. 34-38 LORD ABERDEEN 225 not, — a larger measure of admiration, — due for his absolute simplicity and singleness of character, kept pure by reason of its inherent strength through a long political life, and combined with no ordinary measure of political sagacity and prudence, and with high literary cultivation. It was the last probably which brought us into more intimate relations than public business alone could have generated. Lord Brougham, when Chancellor, had written to South ey to ask his opinion as to what could be done by the Government to promote the interests of literature. Sou they 's reply indicated a distrust of Brougham's sincerity, and merely glanced at the possibility of some Government not preoccupied like the then existing one with the more urgent task of saving the country from dangers they themselves had created, undertaking to devise some scheme by which young men, with literary ability, might be enabled to subsist, and spared the temptation of pandering to the appetite of the populace for seditious and inflammatory writings. Southey had sent me a copy of the correspondence, which I had kept ; and I showed it to Lord Aberdeen, and he to Sir R. Peel, They took up the subject, and I was asked to con- sider whether something could not be done in the direction to which Southey had pointed. I accordingly produced a scheme, founded partly upon one of which Southey' s letter had given a sketch, partly upon the model of the French Institute, and partly upon notions of my own. The British VOL. I. Q 2'26 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 Institute was to be divided into four Academies ; 1st. Physics and Mathematics ; 2nd. Moral and Political Science ; 3rd. General Literature ; 4th. Classics and Antiquarian Learning : — which were to consist each of eight salaried and four honorary members, those under thirty years of age receiving 200/. a-year, those above thirty receiving 500/., and one, as pre- sident, receiving 800/. The members were to be, at the inchoation of the bodies, named by the Crown, and vacancies thereafter to be filled alternately by the Crown's selection from three candidates chosen by the Academy, and by the Academy's selection from three candidates chosen by the Crown. The paper I wrote enters at some length into the grounds and pleas for establishing such an institute, and the difficulties and objections which would have to be encountered. It was regarded with some favour. ^ Lord A,,' I wrote to my mother, ^thought it would be as likely to succeed as any other measure they might bring forward ; but (speaking the day after the division on the Speakership), he added that he did not know what the measure was in which they were not likely to be defeated. However, he said. Peel would keep it by him in case of the times affording an opportunity.' The Government lasted, I think, only till the April following ; and all that Sir Robert could do was to appropriate to literature the annual 1,200/. already on the Civil List for pensions to be granted ^T. 34-38 LITERARY PENSIONS. 227 by the Crown. I was asked to suggest the names of literary men to whom pensions should be offered. Southey was, of course, the one who stood first ; but, oddly enough, a personal friend of his own in the Cabinet raised the question whether the grant of a pension to him would not expose the Government to violent attacks in the House of Commons. Oa learning this I had recourse to Mr. Spring Rice, who assured me that not only he would not oppose such a grant, but he ' would fight for it if it were against all the devils in the Domdaniel caverns ; ' ^ and he added that he could answer for his party in the House being with him. Sir Robert Peel, being in constant expectation of the fall of his Government, reserved any announcement of the pension till its last days, and in the meantime wrote to Mr. Southey, to offer him a baronetcy, and to ask in what way he. could assist him, and was answered in the admirable and touching letter now published in ' Southey's Life and Correspondence/ wherein he explains his pe- cuniary circumstances, and how utterly unbecoming it would be in him to accept the baronetcy, and adverting to the shock he had sustained by the insanity of his wife, forbodes the loss of his own faculties, hitherto almost the sole support of his family, and intimates that a pension would be the only way of helping him ; and that though, as he conceived, this way could not be thought of, under ^ See Southey's ' Thalaba.' Q 2 228 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 present circumstances, as a boon to himself indi- vidually, yet it might perhaps be practicable as part of a general plan for the encouragement of literature. The pension, however, had already been resolved upon and the warrant signed. The amount was 300/. per annum. In the course of a year or two Southey's forebodings came true ; a softening of the brain crept upon him ; and in 1839 his decaying powers sank into total imbecility. From that time to his death in 1843 the pension afforded the family a chief means of support. After his death they were provided for by the produce of life assurances. I felt grateful to Lord Aberdeen for the part he had taken in this matter, and for much besides ; and I was very sorry that my official connection with him came so soon to an end. Our friendly inter- course continued as long as he lived. During the few months — from January to April, 1835 — for which Lord Aberdeen continued Secretary for the Colonies, Mr. Gladstone, then first entering upon official life, was Under Secretary. ' I rather like Gladstone,' I wrote, on making his acquaintance ; ' but he is said to have more of the devil in him than appears — in a virtuous way, that is —only self-willed. He may be all the more useful here for that.' His amiable manner and looks deluded Sir James Stephen, who said that, for success m political life, he wanted pugnacity ! ^T. 34-38 MR. GLADSTONE — OFFICIAL LIFE. 229 By the time that he quitted office (in April), I had of course come to know more about him, and what I said then was : — ' Gladstone left with us a paper on Negro Edu- cation, which confirmed me in the impression that he is a very considerable man, — by far the most so of any man I have seen amongst our rising statesmen. He has, together with his abilities, great strength of character and excellent dispositions.' Soon after Lord Aberdeen had entered the office he had said to Charles Greville that he was ashamed to see me there. I suppose because it was in the position of a clerk. I have never myself felt that I was misplaced in that position j and when that of Under Secretary of State was offered me in 1847, it was without any feeling of regret that I refused it. Acting under men of the order of those under whom it was my fortune to act after the first few years of my service, subordination presented no difficulties (according to my observation of life, subordination comes more easily to men — at least to gentlemen — than the exercise of authority does); and even in a political career, unless as First Minister, subordination would still have been part and lot of the life ; whilst that life would have been less suited to me, and would probably have afi'orded me, on the whole and in and out of office, no larger opportunities for doing the State some service than I enjoyed during the unbroken forty- eight years for which I served as a clerk. 230 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 Acting according to this view, when Greville told me in January, 1835, that 'if the present Government were to subsist for a while, they would wish to place me in some more prominent position,' a letter to my mother says : — ' I gave him to understand that I did not wish to be placed in any situation which would imply more activity than I am called upon to exercise where I am ; and, indeed, it would be difficult for the Govern- ment, in these days of no sinecures, to better my condition in my own estimation.' And looking back upon my life over an interval of forty years, if political office was in contemplation, I cannot think that I was wrono;. Strono; health and an independent fortune would have made more of a doubt ; but even with those elements to vary the question, I think the answer should have been the same. I had no strong political opinions, nor had I any special aptitude for political life ; and I have no reason to suppose that any place I might have occupied in it has not been better filled by others. Even had it been otherwise, every year of many years has detracted from the value of individual mind and character in a political career, whilst adding to the demand for co-operation, compromise, and sub- serviency to popular impulse or opinion ; and the mere capable and flexible tactician — the Lord Palmer- ston of the day — could hold his ground as well as the man of large intellect and devoted patriotism — the man who, in this month of April, 1873, has just ^T. 34-38 DISADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL LIFE. 231 remounted to his uncertain seat, after having been upset into the ditch upon a question of third-rate importance. With every year, moreover, the labours and troubles and trials of political life have increased and multiplied ; and what Sir Philip Sidney says to Lord Brooke in Landor's ' Imaginary Conversation,' if true of other times, is more eminently true of these : — 'How many who have abandoned for public life the studies of philosophy and poetry, may be com- pared to brooks and rivers which, in the beginning of their course, have assuaged our thirst and have invited us to tranquillity by their bright resemblance of it, and which afterwards partake the nature of that vast body whereinto they run, — its dreariness, its bitterness, its foam, its storms, its everlasting noise and commotion.' In April, 1835, Lord Aberdeen was succeeded by Lord Glenelg. This change brought about the downfall of our then permanent Under Secretary, Mr. Robert William Hay. He was almost the only man I have served under who was disagreeable to me. In the early days of my acquaintance with Sydney Smith, I think it was the first time I saw him, he called upon me at the Colonial Office, and, probably by way of finding something to say, observed that Mr. Hay was a very agreeable man. I replied, — ' Perhaps so, but I have a personal dislike to him.' The old man of the world laughed at my frankness, 232 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 and, exchanging the word ' dislike ' for ' hatred/ made the most of it in society. The object of my dislike was now on the point of being removed out of my way. His politics were Conservative ; he lived much with Conservative politicians, and Lord Melbourne's Government did not like him any better than I did. Whilst his friends were in office he had obtained a grant of a dormant retiring pension, to be enjoyed, he conceived, whenever it should please him to retire. Lord Mel- bourne's Government said it should be whenever it pleased them ; and that was at once. He was certainly not equal to the office he held ; and, in point of fact, the duties of it had always been performed by others, and the far greater portion of them by Sir James Stephen. Lord Glenelg was a friend of Stephen's ; but he was far from sharing the desire of his colleagues to force Hay into retirement and put Stephen in his place. He was an amiable man and exceedingly averse from strong measures ; and, moreover, a brother-in-law of his was Under Secretary for the Home Department, and he was averse from a prece- dent for dealing with such offices as if held by a terminable tenure. Stephen insisted that, as he had done Hay's work for many years, if he was not to have the office, he ought to have the retiring pension ; and he refused to do Hay's work any longer if this was denied. Mr. Hay, who was probably unaware to what extent the Government was a party to what ;et. 34-38 OFFER OF A GOVEENMENT. 233 was going on, waited upon Lord Melbourne to com- plain of the course Stephen was taking, and having described what he suspected it to be, asked if it was not plain that Stephen's design was to supplant him in his office. All the answer he got from Lord Mel- bourne was, ' It looks devilish like it.' Lord Glenelg, however, still hung back, ^nd for some days found a refuge from the painful dilemma in which he was placed by shutting himself up in his house. But this, alas ! could be but a temporary resource ; his colleagues were inexorable ; and in the end Mr. Hay took his departure and Stephen reigned in his stead. For the four or five years for which Lord Glenelg held the seals, — indeed for many other years before and after, — Stephen virtually ruled the Colonial Empire. The result to me was a considerable acquisition of leisure time. He had an enormous appetite for work, and I almost think he preferred to engross it into his own hands and not to be much helped ; and I, for my part, could make him perfectly welcome to any amount of it that passed away from me. One of the first measures which he recommended to Lord Glenelg was to oiFer me the Government of Upper Canada. I wavered for a moment, thinking I might have a quieter life there than I had lately had in London. My father, with the generosity which was natural to him, was ready to make small account of his own feelings in such a separation ; but the knowledge of what his feelings would be was scarcely 234 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF IIEXRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 required to turn the balance, and I. decided against it. At this time I obtained another relief, and in obtainino^ it obtained a friend for life. James Spedding was the younger son of a Cumberland squire who had been a friend of my father's in former, though I think they had not met in latter days. In the notes to ' Van Artevelde ' I had quoted a passage from an admirable speech of his spoken in a debating club at Cambridge when he was an undergraduate. This led to my making his acquaintance ; and when some very laborious business of detail had to be executed, 1 obtained authority to offer him the employment with a remuneration of 150Z. a year. He was in a difficulty at the time about the choice of a profession, and feeling that a life without business and occupation of some kind was dangerous, was glad to accept this employment as one which might answer the purpose well enough, if he proved suited to it, and if not might be relinquished without difficulty and exchanged for some other. 1 wrote to Mr. Southey, 24th January, 1836 : — ' Spedding has been and will be invaluable, and they owe me much for him. He is regarded on all hands, not only as a man of first rate capacity, but as having quite a genius for business. I, for my part, have never seen anything like him in business on this side Stephen. . . . When I contemplate the easy labours of Stephen and one or two others. I am disposed to think that there are giants in these days.' iET. 34-e^8 JAMES SPEDUING. 235 For six years Spedding worked away with universal approbation, and all this time he would have been willing to accept a post of precis -writer with oOOl. a year, or any other such recognised posi- tion, and attach himself permanently to the office. But none such was placed at his disposal. Stephen had once said to me, when advising me to depend upon the public and upon literature for advancement, and not upon the Government, — ' You may write off the first joint of your fingers for them, and then you may write off the second joint, and all that they will say of you is, " What a remarkably short-fingered man ! " ' They did not say this of Spedding, but they did nothing for him, and he took the opportunity of the Whig Government going out in 1841 to give up his employment. He then applied himself to edit the works and vindicate the fame of Lord Bacon. In 1847, on Sir James Stephen's retirement, the office of Under Secretary of IState, with 2,000/. a year, was offered to him by Lord Grey, before it was offered to me, and he could not be induced to accept it. He could not be brought to believe, what no one else doubted, that he was equal to the duties. Be this as it may, the fact that the man, being well known and close at hand for six years, who could have been had for 300/. a year in 1841, should have been let slip, though he was thought worth 2,000/. a year in 1847, if not a rare, is a clear example 236 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 of the little heed given by the Government of this country to the choice and use of instruments. It was at my suggestion that the offer was made ; but I am not sorry that it was declined. He has devoted his singular abilities and his infinite industry in research, during a long life, to a great cause, and Lord Bacon will become known to posterity, gradually perhaps but surely, as the man that he truly was, — • illustrious beyond all others except Shakespeare in his intellect, and with whatever infirmities, still not less than noble in his moral mind. In Sped ding, who seemed to us in the Colonial Office the most mild and imperturbable of men, the detractors of Lord Bacon had awakened a passion of indignation the capability for which even those who knew him more than superficially could scarcely have believed to be lying hidden in his heart. In the course of a search amongst old papers, I have come upon a sonnet and a letter, in which the passion finds a language to express itself both in prose and verse. The letter speaks of the sonnet : — ' It sprang out of a very strong emotion that us2d to visit me from time to time, and from the occasional aoitation of which I am not yet secure. And the emotion is roused as often as I consider what kind of creatures they are who so complacently take it for granted that they are nobler beings than Bacon — being as I believe the beggarliest souls that have been gifted with the faculty of expressing themselves — insomuch that if the administration of the divine judgments were ^T. 34-38 JAMES SPEDDING. 237 deputed to me for half an hour, I think I would employ it in making the scales fall from their eyes, and letting them see and understand Bacon as he was, and themselves as they are. The contemplation of the two for half an hour would at least leave them speechless. My only doubt is whether any power whatever could enable them to understand either his greatness or their own littleness without making them over again quite new, which would be more trouble than they are worth. Well then, if this is what ought to be done, why is it not done ? Why are these people permitted to go on strutting and moralising and making the angels weep, when a sudden gift of insight into themselves would make them go and hide out of the way ? I can think of no likelier reason than that Bacon himself would be sorry that any of those who were once his fellow- creatures should suffer such a punishment on his account. And it was to relieve myself from the pressure of this thought (which, as you may see, is apt to put me out of my proprieties) by shutting it up in a sonnet that I began. . . .' And then he proceeds to say how he conceives that he had ended in a failure. But the truth is that from beginning to end the sonnet is one of Miltonic force and fervour, and here it is : When I have heard sleek worldlings quote thy name And sigh o'er great parts gone in evil ways, And thank the God they serve on Sabbath days That they are not as thou, meek Yerulam, 238 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 Then have I marvelled that the searching flame Lingered in God's uplifted hand which lays The filmed bosom bare to its own gaze And makes men die with horror of their shame : But when I thought how humbly thou didst walk On earth, — how kiss that merciless rod, — I said Surely 'twas thy prevailing voice that prayed For patience with those men and their rash talk, Because they knew thy deeds but not thy heart, And who knows partly can but judge in part. It was not on one subject only tliat Spedding could be impassioned. There is rather a wide range between Lord Bacon and Jenny Lind, but I find a letter (2nd September, 1817) in which he reproves me for not going to hear that celebrated songstress sing : — ' I cannot approve of your conduct with regard to Jenny Lind. . . . The experiment might have failed, but it was worth tr3ang. Failing, it would only have spoiled an evening ; succeeding, it would have enriched a life. Heaven has never been so opened in my time. I was reading the " Winter's Tale " the other day, and was surprised to observe how like Perdita had grown to Jenny Lind since I last saw her.' This was not the enthusiasm of a person devoted to music. I had never known, nor I think had anyone else, that he cared for music at all. James Spedding was well quit of the Colonial Office. His friends, it is true, were highly dissatis- fied with his decision to refuse the office of Under Secretary of State ; but he maintained that he knew .i:t. 34-38 CARDINAL MANNING. 239 himself and his deficiencies better than they ; and no doubt he did know what were the tasks that suited him best. He observed, with the quiet humour which was characteristic of him, that ' it was fortunate he was by when the decision was taken.' The work to which he gave his life is a work of great labour, a work of great love, and a work which will be a lantern unto the feet and a light unto the paths of many generations of mankind, — of as many as shall care to look back to the greatest secondary cause of their being what, in the progress of science and discovery, they shall have become. This loss of Spedding was not the end of our losses. I wrote to my father in August, 1839, from the Colonial Office : — 'Another of our very best men ^ will leave us in a few weeks for Canada, in the capacity of Secretary to Poulett Thomson, who (strange to say !) is going there as Governor- General, with all sorts of powers, and probably with a peerage, '' Levia sursum ! " ' ^ Some years before, another great fish had been caught and let go. The present Archbishop of West- minster, Cardinal Manning, was for a short time a junior clerk in the Colonial Office. But him it might not have been easy to retain upon any terms. He is a man of dignified and graceful manners, with what I should call, though I hardly know on what ^ He who is now Sir Thomas Clinton Murdoch. ^ This disparagement does no credit to my judgment of men. I believe Lord Sydenham did his work exceedingly well. 240 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1834-38 grounds, a mediasval countenance, austere but gentle, and some qualities which have deservedly given him a personal influence, as well as an ecclesiastical pre- eminence, in the Church to which he was converted, though there is one party in it to which he is any- thing but acceptable. Indeed, it has been said by a cynical member of that Church that the greatest misfortune it has suffered in this century was the death of Mrs. Manning. After many a long year he and I met once more I passed a few months in London in the winter of 1872, and in a letter to Lord Blachford of November in that year I wrote : — • ' He sent me a message of remembrance when he heard we were in London and I went to see him. He was a sio;ht to see — much chano^ed from his former face — most meagre and strangely mediaeval, and the austerity had lost the sweetness which went with it formerly, though still there was nothing ungentle. He considers that Aubrey de Yere has at last produced a great work. He had not thought so highly as I did of Aubrey's poetry before " The Legends of St. Patrick." ' From Lord Glenelg's accession to office in 1835 to the summer of 1838, what with the aid given by Spedding and the voracious ways of Stephen, I doubt whether my official employments were much of a burthen to me. But, in 1838, a critical period had arrived for the negro populations of the West Indies ; and as the sugar colonies were my special charge, my duties in 1838-9 came to be of a more engrossing character. ;et. 34-38 A WEST INDIAN CRISIS. 241 Since the questions with which I had to deal are of some historical interest and importance, and what took place is, in my opinion, instructive, as showing in what manner and with what consequences our Colonial policy becomes entangled with our system of government by political parties at home, I shall venture, in this instance, to do more than glance at my operations in the Colonial Office ; and I propose to treat of the subject at some length. Indeed, what I did is entitled to a prominent place in my life on its official side, being the only instance in which, if I did not singly and absolutely originate (which I rather think I did), I was, at all events, chiefly instrumental in originating, a measure of importance in Home as well as in Colonial politics ; inasmuch as the way in which it was dealt with in the Cabinet and in Parliament proved vital to the existence of the Government. When I say vital I mean mortal. VOL. I. 242 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HEXRT TAYLOR. 1838-39 CHAPTER XV. transition of tfie negroes from apprenticeship into freedom — measure for their welfare propounded and mutilated in the cabinet and defeated by sir r. peel in the house of commons — lord melbourne's government resigns : it is reconstituted, but the measure is gone — the negroes suffer the consequences for twenty-six years. Anno Dom. 1838-30. Anno Mt. 38-39. In May, 1838, I wrote to my father that I was in doubt whether I could take any holidays in that year, and enclosed an official minute addressed to me and my answer to it by way of explanation, adding, — ' The task proposed to me was one which I could not, with a good conscience, consider myself at liberty to decline or devolve. It is, in fact, that of pre- paring the West Indies for the transition from apprenticeship to freedom.' The six years' apprenticeship, commenced under the Imperial Abolition of Slavery Act on the 1st August, 1834, had no sooner been established than its inherent and incurable evils began to be developed. The stipendiary justices sent out from England, if they could not prevent, could materially mitigate and control, the oppression of the negroes by their ^T. 38-39 A WEST INDIAN CRISIS. 243 masters, so far as that oppression was exercised in the exaction of labour ; but the master so controlled regarded the amount of labour exacted as ruinously insufficient. On the other hand, the planters, in their capacity of local justices, could perpetrate all manner of cruelty and wrong under the shelter of local laws, — sending men and women to their horribly over- crowded prisons, to be put on the treadmill and flogged without mercy upon the flimsiest pretexts. The superior courts were partisans of slavery ; the legislatures were worse than the judicatures ; all were embittered and enrasred as'ainst the nesfroes and their friends, and the police were fit agents for giving eff*ect to the passions of their employers. The Anti- Slavery party in this country renewed their agitation, and on the 11th April, 1838, an Act was passed by Parliament (1 Vic, c. 19) to amend the Act for the Abolition of Slavery, the object of which was to remove various evils and abuses in the apprenticeship system for which no remedies could be obtained from the local legislatures ; and another Act was passed to enable the Crown to shut up such of the West Indian prisons as might be found unfit for use, and thereby compel the legislatures to provide others. The result was more anger than ever on the part of the Jamaica Assembly, manifested by a protest in which they grossly insulted both Houses of Parlia- ment, and indeed the English nation. The Governor, an excellent old soldier, Sir Lionel Smith (described E 2 244 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENKY TAYLOR. 1838-39 by the Duke of Wellington in a private letter to the Secretary of State as fit for any situation in which he could be placed), wrote confidentially to Lord Glenelg, 17th May, 1838 : — ^It is impossible for any one to answer for the conduct of the House of Assembly. Many are there in the island who would be delighted to get up an insurrection for the pleasure of destroying the negroes and missionaries. They are, in fact, mad. I have received a letter from a magistrate, telling me that some militia officers threaten, if I do not call out the militia, that they will assemble of their own accord ; but for what I know not. . . . Also that I am to be shot. I mention these silly things to your Lordship to show some of the consequences of a seditious press upon the minds of the people. ' By this time the apprenticeship had become in- tolerable to all parties ; the dangers resulting from it were manifest ; one local legislature — that of Antigua — had renounced it from the beginning; several others had done so after experience of it ; and the Jamaica Assembly itself, in June, 1838, came to the same conclusion, and passed an Act under which final emancipation was to take effect on the 1st August following, instead of the 1st August, 1840. It was now more urgently necessary than ever that laws should be enacted to provide for the exi- gencies of the new state of society, and that laws should be repealed which were utterly at variance with the liberty of the subject. How little the liberty of the subject was provided ^T. 38-39 EVILS OF APPEENTICESHIP. 245 for by the mere abolition of predial servitude, is shown by an article written by James Spedding in the * Edinourgh Review ' for July, 1839. 'A single illustration will be sufficient. The following case may occur at any time, may be occurring whilst we write. . . . The great mass of the labourers are tenants at will of their former masters and have no homes but such as belong to them. The manager calls on them to enter into a contract involving heavy duties and small pay and lasting for a long time. If they consent they bind themselves to a bad bargain, and in case of any kind of failure to fulfil the entire conditions of it, which need not he expressed in writing^ they may be deprived of all their wages, or imprisoned for three months in a Jamaica prison, at the discre- tion of any justice of the peace. If they refuse, they are liable, at the discretion of any two justices, to be summarily ejected from the estate. Being ejected, they may be brought before the nearest justice as vagrants wandering abroad . . . and sentenced to hard labour in the house of correction for six months . . . they may besides, be they males or females, receive thirty-nine lashes.' I had written in the summer of 1838, four long papers on the preparatory measures proper to be taken by the Government. My views had met with the concurrence of every one in the Colonial Office and had been brought before the Government. I have no copies of them and no recollection of their substance ; but in October, it appears I was not 246 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 content with tlie course of action which the Govern- ment was contemplating, and on the 24th of that month I wrote on the subject to Mr. Stephen: — ' . . . I cannot help expressing to you privately my persuasion that the Government is in danger of fallmg into a system of erroneous policy on this question and creatmg great and continual discontent to no purpose. What they are doing and about to do is, in fact, a repetition of the policy pursued from 1823 to 1834, on Slave melioration, and I think the experience of the effects of that policy, contrasted with the experience of the effects of reversing it which we have had subsequently, should teach us a different lesson. I observe, indeed, that Lord Howick^ considers the question at issue to be now of a differ- ent character, and the position of the Government with the Assemblies to be totally altered, insomuch as the interests of the planters are now identified with the general interest, and they must be equally desirous with the Government that order, industry and contentment should prevail. So far forth, it is true there is a common object ; and it may be like- wise true that the liberal and protective laws which the Government would desire to establish would be the best means of attaining it. But the planters would not see this. I believe that to have been true which was so often urged, that many of the meliorat- ing laws proposed from 1823 to 1834 would have * Lord Howick was in the Cabinet, but not at this time in the Colonial Office. J3T. 38-39 POLICY TO BE PURSUED. 247 been equally for the interest of the planter and of the slave. But these laws were as much resisted by the Assemblies as those which were for the interest of the slaves solely. Liberality, charity, forbearance, equal dealing, &c., would be, no doubt, like honesty, the best policy in the present circumstances of the planters ; but it Is nevertheless certain that this is not the policy by which their legislation will be guided, and we have already had specimens, in the St. Vincent's Vagrancy and Contract for Service Acts, that every effort will be made to enact laws at direct variance with this policy ; and it may be reasonably feared that all persuasion to the contrary will be of no more avail than the annual meliorating circulars and the daily animadversions on acts of assembly in the previous controversy of ten years long. Now I cannot but think, that if we are to learn anything from experience, it should be this : — That assuming the objects of the Government to be necessary to the establishment of the liberty and promotion of the industry of the negroes, and that the habits and prejudices, if not the interests of the planters, are strongly opposed to them, then the only method of accomplishing them effectually and com- pletely, and the best method as regards irritation and discontent, will be by exerting at once and conclusively, a power which shall overrule all opposition and set the question at rest. The per- suasory and recommendatory process may appear to be the more conciliatory at first ; but I am convinced 248 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 tliat the appearance is fallacious. The West Indian legislatures have neither the will nor the skill to make such laws as you want made ; and they cannot be converted on the point of willingness, and they will not be instructed. You have Acts sent you which mean a great deal of mischief, and which, for want of legal knowledge and technical ingenuity, may do a great deal that was not meant. You object and advise and suspend the Queen's decision, — and is there one case in ten, in which an Assembly has been either conciliated or brought to reason by such a process? Is not neglect at the best, or in the case of the most important Colonies, anger and contumely, the ordinary result ? . . . This process, then, leads to irritation in detail, a slow, never- ending, rankhng quarrel. . . . It may be remarked that the Assemblies have taken very quietly every actual exercise of supreme authority by Parlia- mentary legislation, inasmuch as it was done and there was no help for it ; but have resented most bitterly every recommendation of the Government by the adoption of which they might have averted Parliamentary interference : and nothing has kept them in a more implacable state of hostility than that constant setting up and knocking down of their authority which has been misdeemed a system of conciliation. There was, in truth, nothing . of the substance of conciliation about it ; and the mere ])hrases and outward show were regarded as nothing better than a cool attempt to play upon their credulity. MT. 38-39 POLICY TO BE PTTRSUED. 249 They were told that the utmost respect was enter- tained for their constitutional privileges of legisla- tion, and they were respectfully advised to legislate in this way or that, with a sufficient intimation at the same time, that if they were to legislate much otherwise they might just as well not legislate at all, for their Acts would be disallowed. The result almost always was that they did nothing, that their functions were paralysed and their passions kept in a state of great activity. . . .' What I proposed at this time was that Parlia- ment should be asked to enact the law^s which the Assemblies refused to enact. But before the year was out, the Jamaica Assembly had taken a further step ; and in resent- ment of the interference already exercised by Parlia- ment, and in anticipation of further interference, had absolutely refused to do business ; whilst the Governor reported that the small owners and overseers ' might irritate and persecute the peaceable negroes into resistance,' endeavouring 'to make out a case for calling out the militia,' which militia he describes as ^ lawless,' and ' officered by men who have been generally slaveholders and are now burniDg with hatred and vengeance against the negroes for being free.' Under these circumstances measures of a more comprehensive character than had been hitherto contemplated seemed to be required : and on the 14th January, 1839, a decision had been arrived at in the department, and I drew up a Minute (with a 250 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 voluminous appendix) for submission to the Cabinet by Lord Glenelg, ' on the course to be taken with the West Indian AssembUes.' The main drift of it may be gathered from the following extracts : — ' The exigency now created unavoidably brings under the view of the Government the question whether the West Indian Assemblies be or be not, by their constitution and the nature of the societies for which they legislate, absolutely incompetent and unfit to deal with the new state of things and to pro- vide for the peace and well-being of Her Majesty's subjects in those parts. And as the immediate crisis arises in Jamaica, and that island from its magnitude must carry the whole question along with it, it will be convenient to consider the subject with reference to Jamaica individually so far as regards any specific circumstances of the case. But the general features of society are the same throughout the West Indies, and they present views which cover the whole of the question. ' The first inquiry which presents itself is, what field or basis for a really representative system is to be found in the West Indian communities ; and whether it is in the nature of things that the elements of which they are constituted can furnish one ? Let the society of Jamaica be taken for an example — 320,000 black people just emancipated, still in the depths of ignorance and by their African tempera- ment highly excitable; about 28,000 people partly coloured, partly black, whose freedom is of earlier ^T. 38-89 POLICY TO BE PUESUED. 251 date than that of the emancipated class, of whom many may have property, but so few are decently educated that it was thought by the Governor that their own friends would not wish to see the Assembly chiefly composed of them; and lastly, 9,000 Whites possessed by all the passions and the inveterate prejudices growing out of the slave system, Throw these elements into what forms or combinations we will, is it possible to bring out of them anything like a representative system properly so called ? The Blacks have neither property nor knowledge, and cannot therefore have political power, or communi- cate it through any exercise of the rights of a con- stituency. Yet they are the mass of the people, and if there is to be any representation it ought to be their interests mainly that are represented. The coloured class have some property and such a portion of knowledge as may just enable them to possess political influence, but hardly to make a good use of it ; and though they have no good will to the Whites, yet are they still worse aff'ected towards the Blacks; and standing between two classes to which they are equally akin, they have naturally shown themselves disposed to make an alliance with the dominant and aristocratic class, and to join them in trampling upon the Blacks to whom they feel it to be their shame and misfortune to be allied in blood. There are, it is believed, twelve coloured members of Assembly, and the Governor reports that out of these there are only three who did not go over to the Whites 252 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 and desert the Government in the recent divisions. The obvious truth is that every attempt at a representative system in such a community must result in an oligarchy. Such the Assembly of Jamaica always has been, now is, and will inevitably continue to be, until the mass of the population shall have been educated and raised in the scale of society/ * Such being the organisation of this body, it is important to observe that the structure of the society affording no support to the Crown either from an extended public opinion (which has no existence) or from proprietary connection with the Government, the royal authority in Jamaica resolves itself into the power of imposing inaction by the veto. The Crown in former times had no adequate object to gain by engaging in struggles in which the Assembly was always prepared to go to the extreme of stopping the supplies, and the result was the usurpation by the Assembly of the chief admmistrative as well as legislative powers of the State. Thus (under the authority either of its own resolutions or of acts of the legislature assented to by the Crown in former times and to which, when renewed, the Crown con- tinues to assent as a matter of immemorial usage and necessity) it is accustomed to delegate to com- mittees or commissioners consisting of members of its own body, some of the most important adminis- trative offices, and especially that of expending the ^T. 38-39 POLICY TO BE PURSUED. 253 money voted by itself. Some of these boards and committees sit and exercise their delegated powers in permanent session, notwithstanding prorogation or even dissolution of the body from which their powers are derived. Moreover it is not necessary in the Assembly of Jamaica, as in the House of Commons, that a proposal for a grant of money should come from the Government ; any member of Assembly may propose any grant of money for any purpose. Under this system the levy and expenditure of public money is conducted with a responsibility which travels in a circle amongst a body of forty-four men. The tax levied on the property of the colony, which is chiefly the property of absentees, is paid into the Treasury ; the forty-four vote it away as an Assembly; the same forty- four or any five of them give effect to the expenditure by making contracts and issuing orders, warrants or resolutions ; and the same forty-four, or a quorum of them, act as auditors. ^ Looking at the Assembly therefore on the side of financial afl*airs, it presents the aspect which might be expected in a body representing no considerable class, responsible to none, and mixing executive with legislative functions. We see the virtue of its members corrupted, the revenues of the island diverted from their proper application, and the Government left without the necessary resources for administering justice, spreading instruction, prevent- ing crime, and administering to the public welfare in the most important and vital points ; these objects 254 AUTOBIOGEAPIIY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 having been hitherto either scandalously neglected, abusively pursued, or effected, so far as they have been effected at all, at the expense of this country. Although there is hardly an instance of money being granted for any useful object recommended by Her Majesty's Government, the colony is now declared by the Governor to owe about a million of money and to be fast advancing towards bankruptcy. ' But still more important than the point of finan- cial integrity is that of political feeling ; and in this respect the Assembly of Jamaica may be said to be the very result and representative of slavery — proud and stubborn, and at all times inaccessible to any motives connected even with justice or humanity to the negroes, let alone their advancement in civilisation and qualification for civil rights. Their refusal to do business is, no doubt, founded in reality less on the Parliamentary interference with the prisons, than upon their desire to evade giving an answer to the specific applications about to be made to them for laws of protection for the negroes. * Now there can hardly be a doubt that these laws themselves are indispensable in the present state of affairs, and that such changes must be made as will admit of their enactment and execution. But further, there can be as little doubt that the establishment of a governing power consentaneous with the spirit of those laws, and fitted to mould the whole state of things into conformity with that spirit, is the only remedy for the existing discordancy between the old ^T. 38-39 POLICY TO BE PURSUED. 255 institutions of these colonies and the new rio;hts sriven to the negroes. * Looking to what the state of society has been in the West Indies, and then looking to what it is to be, it would seem to be an almost necessary a 'priori conclusion that the laws and polity which were adapted to the one state of things cannot be fit for the other. To effect by a force from without the greatest of all social changes, — a change of the most practical and pervasive character, penetrating every- where and affecting every man's relations with every other man and every hour's transactions, — to force this social change, and yet to leave the political frame- work of this totally different society the same as it was, would seem, even in a mere theoretical view, to be in the nature of a political solecism. And when we look to the character of the Assembly of Jamaica, and to the fact of their refusing to enact the indis- pensable measures required at the very outset of the career of improvement, no further confirmation of such a view can be needed ; and it must surely be acknowledged in every quarter, except amongst the resident West India planters, that such a body as this, unfit to exist in any state of society, is eminently disqualified for the great task of educating and improving a people newly born into freedom as it were. ' If the abolition of the Assembly is loudly called for by the immediate exigency and urgently demanded also by considerations of general and prospective 256 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRT TAYLOR. 1838-31) policy, the present conjuncture offers certainly peculiar facilities for carrying that measure into effect. ' Those who wish to get rid of the Assembly of Jamaica could not desire to see it put itself more imprudently and extravagantly in the wrong than it has done in the last twelve months ; and in the wrong, not only as regards Her Majesty's Government, but also with Parliament, and more especially Avith the House of Lords, in which House, if in any quarter, it might have hoped to find a few advocates/ The memorandum quotes resolutions of the Jamaica Assembly, in which the House of Lords is accused of either * cowardice and imbecility,' or ' fraud and malice,' and the House of Commons of ' perjury ' and ' corruption,' and proceeds : — ' It is thus, after treating with insult the first of the two acts of Parliamentary interposition, that they met the second — that about the prisons — with the resolution of obstinate inaction which calls upon the already insulted Parliament to take the matter up : and Her Majesty's Government will now go to a Parliament where (to judge by the divisions of last session even) the Assembly has not a single friend, with an acknowledgment on all sides that a crisis has arrived in which they have no choice but to propose a large and decisive measure. ^ But there is another and, in truth, a very serious point of view in which the present moment offers opportunities which might very shortly be ^T. 38-39 POLICY TO BE PURSUED. 257 irretrievably lost. It is not impossible, indeed the Governor looks upon it as extremely probable, that in no long time under the operation of the existing ten-pound franchise, and with the facilities which exist for creating fictitious freeholds, every white member may be turned out of the Assembly and the revolu- tion of affairs may bring up suddenly a coloured and black ascendency. ^ This would change the complexion of the evil to be dealt with, but not reduce its magnitude. The mass of the population is, and must long be, ignorant and bedarkened ; and whether the men who sit in the Assembly be white, black, or coloured, they will inevitably be irresponsible and unrepresentative of the interests of the people. A black oligarchy will certainly oppress a white minority of the people, but it will not protect the populatiori at large ; for •no irresponsible oligarchy of any colour will ever do that. ' And in what position would the Government be placed if it had to deal with a black ascendency in the Assembly ? The people of colour would join either the whites through inclination or the blacks through fear ; and whichever way the coalition might take place, there would be ample ground to apprehend that the inveterate feelings by which the colonists are divided would lead to measures of legislative oppression and, in the end, break out into acts of violence. ^ Here, then, would be a new call upon the VOL. I. S 258 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 Government to arbitrate and protect. And it may be said, perhaps, that the Crown has its veto ; that the legislation of the Assembly is altogether by permission ; that acts of violence and oppression of one class towards another may thus be prevented ; and that the only evil to be feared is that which has been hitherto experienced, namely, a Legislature inoperative to any good purpose. ' On this, however, serious doubts may be sug- gested, if we are to contemplate a change in the allotment of political power. So long as the Assem- bly was white and the populace black and coloured, the Crown could quarrel with the Assembly and take the part of the black and coloured classes, without fear of any other consequence than that which actually followed, namely, that the Crown partially neu- tralised the proceedings of the Assembly, whilst the Assembly paralysed the Government. But if, in the course of time, the black and coloured classes should predominate in the Assembly, and should take measures, as might naturally be expected of them, to oppress the whites ; or if the blacks alone should be paramount and oppress the white and coloured ; that is, if by any change the Crown should be called upon to take part with a numerical minority of the popula- tion, against political power combined with physical force (instead of, as heretofore, opposed to it) — against a black or coloured interest in the Assembly, backed by the black or coloured population of the island — then the quarrel between the Government and the ^T. 38-39 POLICY TO BE PURSUED. 259 Jamaica Assembly would be totally different in its features from those we have been accustomed to, and of a far more dangerous character. ' But if we are looking to the establishment of a polity in Jamaica which shall be adapted to the circumstances of the to come, years we must con- template the possibility of having to thwart the coloured and black interest as well as the white ; we must expect the oppresseb to decome the oppressor in his turn ; we must anticipate that new powers will be used with little moderation, and that the gratitude of a people to a Government for rights conceded and benefits conferred will not last longer than other popular sentiments, or constitute a tie of such strength as to control accruing influences and the passions of the day. There is perhaps no contingency which the Government of this country should more earnestly deprecate than one which might bring them, from being the allies and advocates of the black and coloured classes, into a relation of opposition and resistance to them ; and yet if that ignorant, pre- judiced, excitable, and relatively numerous people should jump into exercise of political functions for which they are unfit, in a state of society which re- quires much legislative management, contin^'encies of this kind are by no means to be regarded as of improbable occurrence. ' And if by a very probable progress of events, a black or coloured ascendency were once estab- lished, would the Government be enabled, as now, to s 2 260 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 command an undivided support in this country for measures of control? Would auditories in Exeter Hall sympathise with oppressed Whites ? or would it be believed that black or coloured representatives would be guilty of abuse, malversation, or contu- macious refusals of supplies? And if the Govern- ment would be likely to obtain but a doubtful ad- herency to measures for the control of such an Assembly, still less could it rely upon finding any support in going to Parliament for its abolition. ' It is at the present moment therefore, if ever, that the Assembly can be got rid of. It is perhaps itself aware that a black ascendency may possibly impend ; and this may account in part for the apparent rashness with which it seems almost to court a death-blow at the hands of the Government.' The memorandum concludes by proposing that the Government should apply to Parliament for the abolition of the Assemblies and the substitution of Legislatures in the chartered colonies based on the model of the Legislatures already existing in the Crown Colonies, in which the power of the Crown was paramount. The memorandum was ^ circulated ' as it is called, Le. sent round to each Minister ; and Lord Melbourne expressed his concurrence in it. After the circu- lation I met Lord Ho wick in society. To his question whether it was not I who had written the paper, I answered I did not know why he should think so ; ^T. 38-39 MISCAERIAGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 261 and he rejoined, ' I am only sure of one thing, that it is not Glenelg's/ Lord Ho wick was entirely with me in the matter ; but unfortunately it devolved upon Lord Glenelg to bring it before the Cabinet. He read my paper to his colleagues, and three Cabinets were held upon it. The . measure it proposed was warmly advocated by some of the Ministers, but I have reason to know that Lord Glenelg's support of his adopted child was but faint-hearted, and in the end its adversaries prevailed to the extent of reducing it to a measure for suspending the Jamaica Assembly during five years (or even a less term, for the Government seems to have intimated that the term might be curtailed in Committee) instead of abolishing all the West Indian Assemblies and substituting Crown Colony Councils. This was fatal. The justification of the measure lay in the total unfitness of such bodies as the Assemblies, whether in Jamaica or elsewhere, and whether during or after five years or any other number of years, to legislate for communities of freed negroes. In cutting away half the measure, — indeed far more than half — the Cabinet had cut away the whole of the principle on which it was founded. Sir Robert Peel led the opposition in the House of Commons ; the majority for the Bill was no more than five ; and on the day following (7th May, 1839) the Government quitted office. It is, no doubt, an evil incident to our form of government that half measures are often the only 262 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 measures that can be carried through Parliament ; but the habit of halving measures is not a whole- some habit for Cabinets to acquire ; and in this instance it was the opinion of one of the most distinguished members of the Cabinet that if the measure had not been halved it would have been carried. The fate of the measure is instructive, as showing the occasional effect of our system of party govern- ment upon the welfare of our Colonial dependencies. Sir Robert Peel and his party threw out the Govern- ment (to very little purpose, as it proved, for Sir Robert met with what he considered an insuper- able difficulty in forming another) ; and the well- being of about a million negroes was sacrificed for a term of about six-and-twenty years. Corruption, malversation, waste, and ruin went on in Jamaica and elsewhere. No provision was made for the due administration of justice or an efficient police ; none for securing to the negro the fruits of his industry, if industrious ; none for his education ; none for saving him from the consequences of vagrancy and squatting on unoccupied lands, in barbarous solitudes, when driven from the plantations by the conduct of the planters : the docile and grateful generation of negroes that had worshipped God and the missionaries passed away ; new and inferior missionaries had to beg their bread from flocks which gave thein a beggarly return, and indeed regarded them as little better than beggars ; wild black missionaries broke ^T. 38-39 MISCARRIAGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 263 into the fold, and, under the name of revivalists, led roving multitudes of negroes into an extravagance of debauchery compared with which their ordinary- condition of concubinage was decent and respectable ; roving gangs of another kind lived by plundering the provision grounds of their fellows, who had no resource but to rove and plunder in their turn ; political agitators of the mixed blood arose and pointed to Hayti ; plots were formed for slaughtering the planters and taking possession of the plantations ; companies of . negroes were secretly embodied and drilled under black leaders in the remote and moun- tainous districts ; and at length, in October 1865, the blow was struck in St. Thomas' -in- the- East which was designed to raise the whole black popula- tion of Jamaica in revolt and exterminate the whites. Twenty- six magistrates and others, assembled with other persons in sessions, saw large bodies of the negroes march down upon them in military array, and having no means of defence, eighteen were killed in cold blood, and thirty-one wounded, of whom I think some died of their wounds. It so happened that Mr. Eyre, the Governor of the colony, though a civilian, was a man with a military faculty ; and by the exercise of his gifts of this kind with military promptitude and decision, he contrived to cut off the communication of the rebels with their friends in the northern and western districts, and very speedily to crush them within their own. The negro population throughout the colony was 264 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1888-39 intimidated, and peace was restored. But the Assembly which had been preserved in 1839 for twenty-six years more of misrule, Avas frightened into its senses at the state of things it had brought to pass, and voluntarily put an end to its existence.^ Thus, in about the term of one generation, Sir Eobert Peel's error, following on the half-and-half policy of Lord Melbourne's Cabinet, was corrected by its own consequences, and the government by the Crown, which the Colonial Department had vainly advocated in 1839, was established in 1866. The reign of peace and prosperity then began, and every year since then has shown a considerable advance in the colony's commercial and financial condition (I am writing in 1873) ; and though moral and social progress is not so palpably ascertainable and must be less swift, yet there can be no doubt that it has ' On this subject I had a correspondence with Lord Grey in 1876. He was at first disposed to acquit Sir R. Peel, but on reference to the debates owned that I was substantially right. No doubt, as Lord Grey contended, the measure was miserably defective, and did not deserve to succeed ; but so far as Jamaica was concerned it would have enabled the Crown to enact during the five years of suspension of the Assembly, a system of laws consonant with freedom, so far as the then state of society would permit. What w^ould have happened after the Assembly should have resumed its functions can only be con- jectured. But Sir R. Peel rested his opposition on the principle of preserving West Indian Representative Legislatures as embodying principles of liberty, quoting as analogous the case of the North American Colonies in 1774, calling them ^opitZar Assemblies, and citing Burke's declamation on the ' high and haughty spirit of liberty ' which animated the planters of Virginia and Carolina, where slavery existed, as well as the Northern States. And in short throughout his speech he is the advocate of the system by which the planters were to legislate for the negroes. See his speech of drd May, 1839. Hansard, p. 766. MT. 38-39 ULTIMATE RESULT. 265 begun, and I trust that the measures adopted to ensure it will bear their full fruits in due season. One drawback there will be. As in 1839, so in 1869, the home politics of England operated to the prejudice of her West Indian colonies. The question between disendowment of the Anglican Church and equal concurrent endowment of that, along with other Christian communions, in the West Indies, was un- happily decided in favour of the disendowment, as most consistent with English opinion and the principles of the party by whom Mr. Gladstone's Government was supported and by whose aid the Anglican Church in Ireland had been disendowed. But to apply what is called ' the voluntary principle ' to negro populations, is about as reasonable as it would be to call upon a flock of sheep to find themselves a shepherd. Such is the story of my official operations in 1838-9. Though Lord Melbourne's Government was reconstituted, the division in the Cabinet connected with the Jamaica question led to a change in the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies. Lord Normanby succeeded to Lord Glenelg (February, 1839), and in a few months after Lord John Russell succeeded to Lord Normanby. In October, 1839, 1 find myself writing to Edward Villiers, — ' You once asked me how Stephen and I liked Lord John's way of doing business. Very much — very different from anything before him.' 266 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 When Lord Glenelg left us there was a desire on the part of some members of the Government that Stephen should be transferred to some other office. ' Some of the Ministers/ I wrote to my father, * are furious with Stephen for having advised poor. Lord Glenelg not to accept the Privy Seal ' (this had been offered to him as a sop) ; ' and most of them, I believe, are annoyed by the imputations cast upon them in the world, of being tools in Stephen's hands in all affairs connected with the colonies. It is said that they want to get Stephen out (on honour- able terms for him) ; and I rather think they are justly chargeable with the gross folly of this wish , . . Some persons suppose that if Stephen goes I shall be asked to take his place. If I should be asked I shall give a reasonable answer ; but I shall not stir a step to get myself the offer.' My father was anxious that I should take into account the preference to be given to 2,000/. a year over 1,000/., in addition to the superior official rank, as enabling me to marry ; or rather enabling me to have a wider field of choice in marriage. I agreed that the appointment would be a facility in that way. * The official rank would go for a good deal with the middle classes, the country gentlemen, and the humdrum aristocracy.^ Amongst the fashionable aristocracy it would not go for much ; because my position in that society would hardly be more * Called by Sydney Smith 'The table-land of Society,— high and flat.' JET. 38-39 PROMOTION NOT SOUGHT. 267 improved by being Under Secretary of State than Sir Walter Scott's was — elsewhere than at Selkirk — by being " the Shirra." But no doubt the difference between 1,000/. and 2,000/. a year is recognised in all classes. . . . As to applications and claims, I am satisfied that my best course is to have nothing to do with them. I know by experience that the parts of candidate and claimant are parts which I cannot perform, and it is in vain for me to undertake them, I know also what Her Majesty's Ministers are made of. I am personally acquainted with almost all the members of the present Cabinet, and am on terms of rather friendly acquaintanceship with some of them. Lord had a partiality for me two or three years ago — " absolutely loved me," as Lady expressed it. That was for the first two seasons after I was known in the world. But Lord 's heart is like lago's purse : — " 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands." . . . Moreover my claims are not so strong as they were seven years ago. I was much more zealous and laborious the first eight years of my service than I have been the last seven. And, all these things considered, I hope you will approve of my leaving tte Government to make me the offer of the place at the suggestion of their own convenience if they make it at all — which I think unlikely. The only men in public life on whose friendships I would place any reliance are Gladstone and Lord Aberdeen.' 268 AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 The language of this letter sounds as though I thought Cabinet Ministers who did not care to be of use to me, were to blame. Such language is often thoughtlessly employed when not much is meant. But if I did mean it I was unreasonable. There was no reason why these gentlemen should take trouble about me simply because they were acquainted with me. And as to the one of them who liked me less when he knew me more, that may very well have come to pass without any fault of his. Stephen remained where he was ; no offer was made to me ; and for some years my official life was uneventful. 269 CHAPTER XVI. diligent endeavours of friends to find me a wife. Anno Dom. 1838-3^. Anno ^t. 38-39. I HAVE spoken of tlie distress which was suffered by my father and mother and Miss Fenwick through the overthrow of my hopes in April, 1838. And mixed with the sorrow was the fear either that I might not marry at all, or that I might be a long time in finding my way to a wife. They and other of my friends had for some years been anxious to see me safely married, believing that I would not be happy in single life ; and also, perhaps, believing that, through some sudden captivation or some inadvertency of commitment, I might very pos- sibly one day or another make a marriage in which I would be less happy still. So far as the blankness of celibacy was concerned, I had seen no reason to differ from them, even in earlier years ; and I had now arrived at an age at which the forecasts of life, never with me very bright, begin to darken, and men are not so self-sufficing as in their youth, whilst they feel, as well as know, that they will be less and less so in the years to come. 270 AUTOBIOGKAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 When lialf our threescore years and ten have been left behind, we get a glimpse of a still somewhat distant, but what we perceive must be a rather dreary- tract to be traversed, if the wayfarer is to perform the journey alone. For, as I expressed it at the time — Think what it must be To watch in solitude our own decay, Jealously asking of our observation If ears or eyes or brains or body fail, And not to see the while new bodies, brains, New eyes, new ears, about us springing fresh And to ourselves more precious than are ours.* So much for the alternative of not marrying at. all. As to marrying amiss, that was less to be appre- hended. I was no longer in the condition of St. Augustine in his youth, when he was ^ in love with being loved, and hated safety and a way without snares.^ Under this change of conditions I took counsel with Wulfstan the Wise, as to the sort of marriage which would be suitable for my time of life ; and Wulfstan in his wisdom made answer thus : — . . . Love changes with the changing life of man : In its first youth sufficient to itself. Heedless of all beside, it reigns alone, Revels or storms and spends itself in passion : In middle age, — a garden through whose soil The roots of neighbouring forest trees have crept, — It strikes on stringy customs bedded deep. Perhaps on alien passions ; still it grows 1 ' Edwin the Fair,' Act ii. sc. 2. ^T. 38-39 ' ' MIDDLE-AGED M^PJAGES. 271 And lacks not force nor freshness ; but this age Shall aptly choose as answering best its own A love that clings not nor is exigent, Encumbers not the active purposes Nor drains their source ; but proffers with free grace Pleasure at pleasure touched, at pleasure waived, A washing of the weary traveller's feet, A quenching of his thirst, a sweet repose, Alternate and preparative, in groves Where loving much the flower that loves the shade And loving much the shade that that flower loves, ^ He yet is unbewildered, unenslaved. Thence starting light and pleasantly let go When serious service calls. ^ In no long time my friends began to look about and see what resources remained for me. I looked on ; and with a view to lighten the gloom of Witton Hall and quicken it with new images and interests I gave minute accounts to my mother (accounts which would by no means conduce to the romance of this history) of the various potential wives that were sought out for me and duly considered. My mother was not well disposed towards London society : — * I think nothing more surely injures a man's happiness than having acquired a taste for the stimu- lating qualities so much cultivated by women whose sole pursuit is to please in society ; that society being also of the light, gay, fashionable sort. . . . The qualities which promote cheerfulness in domestic life rn,ay appear dull in society ; whilst the woman who gives her soul to attract' admiration, or who is after * * Edwin the Fair,' Act ii. so. 2. 272 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 her own nature the delight and delighted one in com- pany,-' is I believe very rarely cheerful and contented in the sameness of domestic life. And if it is bad for the woman to acquire such tastes, it is no less detrimental that the man should have cultivated his taste to admire these butterflies to the exclusion of more rational companionship.' This was said with reference to one lady in particular ; and I said in reply : — * Thanks for your solicitude, but she will do me no harm. Two or three years ago perhaps she might ; but not now.' And indeed I was myself rather tired of London society, as it was of me ; and I was not of opinion that it was the place in which a man in my position could expect to find the best of wives. But London society was the only society to which I had easy or habitual access ; and though once in a way I could (and did) make an expedition to a remote hill- side and give a passing admhation to * the flower that loves the shade,' and though this might have been enough in the days when I was liable to sudden fancies, yet in these very diff*erent days, when it only remained for me, as Southey expresses it, ' to walk into love,' the devotion of a few holidays to that ambulatory process was not enough. And another difficulty presented itself. I had always had a strong leaning towards youthfiilness (probably from not having seen enough of it in my f i MT. 38-39 MIDDLE-AGED MARRIAGES. 273 own youth) ; and now when it had become unseason- able, the perverse partiality remained almost as strong as ever. I could reason as Donne did, — Since such Love's natural station is, may still My love descend and journey down the hill ; * Not panting after growing beauties ; so I shall ebb on with them that homeward go. ' But I am not sure that Donne did actually feel as he saw reason to feel ; and neither did I. And what I further fancied was gaiety of heart and high spirits. I thought that, though I might not be able to make a woman happy, yet if nature had made her to be so, I could let her. On both points Miss Fen wick gave me a word of warning. ^ I hold strongly to the opinion, that any dis- parity in age without some peculiar fitness in the individual, could not but tell injuriously on your future welfare ; and that fitness must proceed from he?' having got beyond her years, not in what you have not lost by yours. You are not an old boy, and never were a young one. Even when you were one-and-twenty, I question that it would have answered to you to marry a girl, though then you might better have relied on " the genial sense of youth " for guiding you to one who w^ould ripen into the character that would suit you. Noio you must have it ready found for you. Youthful spirits are tender as well as gay, and are easily 1 'Elegies,' 2. VOL. I. T 274 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-:39 damped. They require companionship : and youthful feelings and affections demand both a sympathy and a return that only youth can bestow. Should you get them in a wife it would be in all likelihood but to see them die away before their time, or turn to other objects for their gratification. Now, in a coun- try life there are many objects to which she might turn with safety and advantage ; — to nature in general^ — a garden, animals (tame and wild), a school, and household cares : but in a town there is but the miserable world and its vanities to turn to ; and how full of danger it is you know better than I can tell. Look around you ; the world is full of women taking this course, and men who are suffering from it. But who would suffer more than you? not from what you lose ; for you have not much happiness to lose ; but from what you will have failed to gain. No, my dear cousin ; the wife to suit you is one whose spring is past, whose youthful spirits have stood the trials that all women must meet before thirty, and have settled into a steady cheerfulness ; and whose youth- ful feelings, still retaining their warmth, have been disciplined by some suffering and are regulated by principle. Such a woman loves both well and wisely; and you would be happy in her love and she in yours. Indeed in marriage there can be no advantage which is not mutual. It is losing sight of this truth and seeking a separate advantage that leads men to those ill-assorted marriages which cause so much misery. It becomes you to think more wisely and worthily ; I 2ET. 38-39 MIDDLE-AGED MARRIAGES. 275 or rather it becomes you to act as wisely as you think, and to endeavour to bring your taste up to your judgment. For I doubt not your agreeing in every word I say ; — and why should I say all this when you can say it so much better to yourself ? I know not ; only that I am ever turning in my mind all that affects your happiness, and desiring it and praying for it with an earnest, anxious, full and loving heart.' I knew it all, and I knew more. I knew, as I have observed before, that I had become, or was fast becoming, too old to be successful with young girls. My mother once said of girls that they were as easily won at eighteen as at eight- and- twenty ; and that may be correct in the application of it which she in- tended —i.e. when a man is young too ; — but it is not girls of eighteen, but girls of eight-and- twenty, that are easily won by men of eight- and-thirty. Till the last year or two I had looked about six years younger than my age. But now I looked the age I was, and I was the age I looked. Some very vision- ary person has spoken of ^ poets ever young :' eternal youth might better be predicated of farmers or fox- hunters. Without any confusion of reckonings, however, it might fairly be supposed that in some cases my poetry might be a sort of compensation for ten years of youth past and gone, and give me a chance the more. But with some it went for nothing, and I had to say with Touchstone, — ' When a man's verses cannot be read, nor a man's good wit seconded T 2 276 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 with the forward child Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a small room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.' ji 177 CHAPTER XVII. RETREAT FROM TROUBLES INTO IMAGINATIVE WRITING — * EDWIN THE FAIR ' — SOUTHEy's BRAIN SOFTENS AND HE IS LOST TO ME. Anno Dom. 1838-39. Anno ^t. 38-39. Across these outlooks into the future and these friendly quests and speculations, there had fallen, more than once or twice, some flickering and un- certain lights out of the past. Ignes fatui, they might be, or they might be signals of distress. I had heard of some such, but I attached little importance to what I had heard ; I told my mother I that I regarded the question as at an end ; and in no I long time my mind was sufficiently dispossessed to. I take refuge in my imagination. ^ Guide my way,' I said Akenside, — i Thro' fair Lyceum's walk, the green retreats Of Academus, and the thy my vale Where oft enchanted with Socratic sounds Ilissus pure devolved his tuneful stream In gentle murmurs. I The guidance I invoked, led by a rougher road to groves and streams of an enchantment less classic, [but to my fancy not less seductive ; and by the close I 278 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY TAYLOR. 1838-39 of the autumn I had withdrawn myself into my dramatic romance. The way in which my days were passed at this time is described in a letter to Miss Fen wick : — ' These ten days that I have been in town I have been living quite alone, and have found myself very pleasant. It is only when I am thus delivered over to myself in absolute possession that I have the full use and enjoyment of my poetical faculties ; and it is certainly a pleasure not to be despised, though it only lasts for three or four hours of the day, and leaves me in a state of lassitude. With my hours so much at my own disposal as they are in this manner of living, I can arrange them so that the worst of the languor shall come when I have nothing to do but to bear it and get over it. I get up at seven in the morning, and run riot till half-past eleven. By that time the excitement which has been ^pleasurable turns to a ner- vous fulness and irritability about the forehead ; and my fancy is like a cat which purrs and is pleased to be stroked for a certain time, and then scratches. I am in the sort of state described by Byron, when he says, — I feel my brain turn round, And all my fancies whirling like a mill ; Which is a signal to the nerves and brain To take a quiet ride in some green lane. With me it is a walk through the Park to my office ; and there I cool down to business ; get through a moderate amount of it ; and go home to dinner at MT. 38-39 RETREATS INTO POETRY. 279 five o'clock ; from which time I sink more and more into exhaustion, and just contrive to linger through the evening with reading, lying on the sofa, and a walk round Grosvenor Square, till half-past nine or ten, when I go to bed ; as pleased as much lassitude and a little lowness will allow me to be, that I have made something out of six or seven hours of the twenty -four.' The time was now approaching when I was to have another need for a retreat, whether into poetry or into business, from sad thoughts and contemplations. Mrs. Southey's mental malady, which terminated only with her death, had preyed upon her husband's mind for three or four j^ears before that termination came. On the 12th January, 1834, he writes : — ^ From a house that was once full of children, I shall soon have only two left at home, both of whom have arrived at a grave, or at least a serious age, and each of whom ought to depart when a proper opportunity offers. What remains for me in life is to take my degree as Grandfather and be left alone with my wife — whose spirits are irrecoverably broken — and with my books. But these are sufficient society for me, and by God's blessing I have never yet felt the want of sunshine in myself.' And the sunshine breaks out in the very same letter. * The Doctor ' had been recently published anonymously ; and who was the author was a subject of ranch controversy in literary circles. This was an amusement to him, and in order to divert suspicion from himself, in a letter 280 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRT TAYLOR. 1838-39 to me, meant to be shown, for I was almost the only one of his friends by whom he was known to be the author, he writes thus : — ' I have read *' The Doctor," one of the strangest books that has ever fallen in my way, but in spite of its aiFe