No More Learning

Creighton's History of the Papacy during the period of the
Reformation (1882–94), which should, at the least, have been
carried on to the council of Trent, ended with the sack of Rome.
But the book is neither a fragment nor a torso, and, at all events
in its earlier volumes, sufficiently illustrates the qualities which the
historian brought to bear upon the composition of it, and which
made it something more than a supplement to Ranke's greater
work. The book could not satisfy the demands of lord Acton,
who would have preferred an indictment of the papacy for its
historic shortcomings; but it helps to explain, without seeking
to palliate, and forms a memorable contribution to the history
of learning. His style was well suited to his method of treatment,
being wholly free from pedantry and artificiality, and sensitive to
any of those lapses into exaggeration which were one of the chief
faults noted by him in his favourites, the Italian humanists of the
pontificate of Nicholas V.
Before Creighton addressed himself to his chief historical work,
he had found many outlets for his critical powers, and had success-
fully practised the art of epitomising on subjects so different as
a history of Rome and a life of Simon de Montfort. After he had
exchanged his Northumbrian parish for the chair of ecclesiastical
history at Cambridge, he engaged anew in varied historical work,
wrote a life of cardinal Wolsey, a history of his native town, Carlisle,
and, later, a biography of queen Elizabeth, which attracted much
favour. He was, also, associated, from 1886 to 1891, with The
English Historical Review—a critical journal the foundation of
which had, at various times, occupied the minds of J. R. Green
and other younger historians, and of which Creighton was
judiciously chosen as the first editor. It marked a very distinct
advance in the method, as well as in the spirit, of English
historical study, and maintained itself, without serious difficulty,
on the level on which, with the co-operation of lord Acton
and others, it had been placed at the start. But, in 1885,
Creighton's appointment to a canonry at Worcester had marked
the beginning of the high ecclesiastical career that awaited him,
and for the sake of which his historical labours had, ultimately, to
be relinquished. The last volume of his Papacy was brought out
while he held the see of Peterborough. But his work there and in
London (whither he was transferred in 1896) must, like the episcopal
>


## p. 101 (#131) ############################################

II]
Writers on Later Church History
History or
life of Stubbs, be left out of sight in this place? . His continued
interest in historical studies is shown by the fact that, in 1896,
the year of his appointment to London, he wrote the introduction to
The Cambridge Modern History, in place of his friend lord Acton.
A younger author in the same field of historical research, but
more especially in earlier periods, which he was acknowledged to
have mastered with wholly exceptional completeness, was William
Edward Collins, during the last seven years of his life bishop of
Gibraltar. A writer on English church history of a different
type was John Henry Overton, who died as canon of Peter-
borough and had long been a Lincolnshire rector. His and
Charles J. Abbey's history of The English Church in the Eigh-
teenth Century (1878) is a useful book, which has helped to
remove prejudices ; while his William Law, Non-juror and
Mystic (1881) is, perhaps, the most attractive among his many
large-hearted and well-written contributions to our later religious
history. William Richard Stephens, who died as dean of Win-
chester, was author of various contributions to church history
and joint editor, with William Hunt, of The History of the
English Church, to which he contributed the second volume (from
the Norman conquest to the accession of Edward I); and he wrote
the lives of his father-in-law, dean Hook, and of Freeman.
Thomas Graves Law, who, in his later years, was librarian of the
Signet library at Edinburgh, by some of his writings threw light
on interesting passages in the history of English catholicism in the
later Elizabethan period, more especially on the conflicts between
Jesuits and seculars (1889) and on the archpriest controversy. He
was a man of high ability, and distinguished by broad-mindedness
as well as by learning?
In Scottish ecclesiastical history proper, the palm must be
assigned to an earlier writer, Thomas McCrie, an original seceder'
from the established church. Through his Life of John Knox
(1812), as the subtitle of the book indicates, he sought to throw
light upon the history of the Scottish reformation.
It was
followed by The Life of Andrew Melville, and the two books,
which were supplemented by material belonging to a later period,
became standard narratives of the greatest historical movement
in Scottish national life. McCrie further contributed to the
history of the reformation two less exhaustive works, on its
1 It is told in the second volume of Mrs Creighton's Life and Letters of her
hasband (1904).
• He was, also, eminent as a biographer, and edited The New Testament in Scots.


## p. 102 (#132) ############################################

I 02
Historians
[ch.
progress and suppression in Italy and in Spain. Whether, had
he carried out his design of a life of Calvin, it would have proved
equal to his life of the great Scottish reformer, it is, of course,
impossible to say; but few ecclesiastical historians were better
qualified for essaying even so thorny a theme.
The history of civilisation cannot rightly be described as a
product of the nineteenth century; yet, on the one hand, the
immense advance made in the course of that century in the methods,
as well as in the range, of scientific studies, and, on the other, the
unprecedented interest which, from about 1830 or 1840 onwards,
began to be taken by historians, as well as by politicians, in the
life and social conditions of the people at large, gave a wholly new
impulse to the cultivation of this field of enquiry. Its originator
was, of course, Voltaire ; and, though, throughout the nineteenth
century, this branch (if it can be called a branch) of history was
vigorously carried on by writers of various kinds in Germany,
France never lost her hold upon it. So early as 1830, Guizot's
Histoire de la Civilisation en France, as an organic part of a
more comprehensive scheme, sought to execute the design which
Voltaire had proposed to himself in his Essai sur les Moeurs. At
a later date, the philosophy of history was incorporated by Comte
in his system of positivism, and, more especially, in social science
(or sociology), as intended to teach the evolution of social life, and
to define the laws which govern its conditions and mutations. The
philosophy of history, thus recast, ignored any but natural laws,
although, not unfrequently, its disciples differed as to what
justified the elevation of a particular experience to the authori-
tative position of a general law. Comte was neither a historian
nor the intellectual progenitor of historians; but one English
writer, at least, was led by his influence to attempt what amounted
to a new departure in our historical literature, since Robertson
and Hallam, while following Voltaire and Guizot respectively, had
not gone far in developing their principles.
Of Henry Thomas Buckle it may be averred that his History
of Civilization in England (of which the first volume appeared
in 1857, and the second in 1861) 'hit the taste of the time,' as
few works of the kind have done-one of these, perhaps, being
Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants, of which Buckle says that
'the immense success of this great work must have aided that
movement of which it is itself an evidence. ' Buckle's volumes
were little more than an introduction to his subject, the first
dealing, in a way which can hardly be called rambling, but is


## p. 103 (#133) ############################################

11]
Lecky's Earlier Works
103
a
certainly deficient in perspicuity of plan, with the preliminaries
of the theme, which it ends by sketching in outline, while the
second treats, specifically, of two applications of the method of
enquiry adopted. The historical subjects chosen are the history
of the Spanish intellect from the fifth to the middle of the nine-
teenth, and that of Scotland and the Scottish mind to the end of
the eighteenth, century. Both sections of the volume are so
vigorous, not to say racy, in treatment that the success of this
portion of Buckle's work is not wonderful, even if, to some, it
may seem to indicate, as the book did to Milman, that its author
was himself 'a bit of a bigot. ' In his earlier volume, he had pro-
claimed his views of history and historians with the utmost clearness.
The most celebrated historian was esteemed by him 'manifestly
inferior to the most successful cultivators of physical science'; for
the study of man is still in its infancy, as compared with that of
the movements of nature. No believer in a science of history need,
therefore, disturb himself as to the problem between freewill and pre-
destination which, at one time, overshadowed the world of thought;
history, to him, is that of a world from which men and women
are left out'; and what has to be considered is the influence of
physical laws as governing conditions of climate, food and soil.
Buckle's criticism of existing historical methods was, in some
respects, an expansion of the ideas of Comte. Perhaps, in spite
of his great abilities and accomplishments, and his unwearying
devotion, during the greater part of his manhood, to the task he
had set himself, he lacked the historical, and, more especially, the
ethnographical, knowledge requisite for writing a history of civili-
sation comprehending east as well as west, or even for applying
to the earlier ages of English civilisation standards other than
those of his own age and school of thought. He was, as Leslie
Stephen says, a thorough-going adherent of John Stuart Mill and
the empirical school, and adopted its attitude towards history.
The stimulating and, in many ways, corrective effect of his one
important book is not to be gainsaid, nor the share which he had
in placing the treatment of historical problems on a broader and
more scientific basis.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky composed the earliest of the
works by which he rapidly built up a great reputation, under the
unmistakable influence of Buckle, of whom he was, then, an
ardent admirer. He was repelled by Comte, but acknowledged
that Comte had 'done more than any previous writer to show
that the speculative opinions of any age are phenomena resulting


## p. 104 (#134) ############################################

104
[CH.
Historians
from the totality of the actual influences of that age? ' The
actual firstfruits of Lecky's Dublin training—if we may pass over
a still earlier anonymous broad-minded essay entitled The Religious
Tendencies of the Age—were the impassioned, likewise anonymous,
Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland (1861). Though this
production bore testimony both to his patriotism and to his
eloquence, it fell quite flat; but it was reprinted after he had
become famous and, again, in an enlarged form, in 1903. Its
initial bad luck disheartened the writer, and left him at a loss
whither to turn. Early in the following year, before beginning
a long succession of travels (centring in visits to libraries) in
Spain and other continental countries, he began the work which
was to spread his reputation almost as quickly as Buckle's had
been spread by his History; or, rather, he wrote a treatise, The
Declining Sense of the Miraculous, which, after being printed
separately, formed the first two chapters of his History of the
Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (1865).
By means of an argument of transparent clearness, conveyed in
a style congenial to the theme, but revealing, here and there, the
author's power of giving expression to strong feeling, it demon-
strates that European progress is due to the spirit of rationalism,
the opposite of that of theological dogmatism, just as the tolerance
demanded by reason is adverse to the persecution engendered by
bigotry. The argument is developed at great length and with a
superabundance of illustration; but neither the writer's youth
nor the nature of his mind inclined him to brevity, and the
interest of most readers in such a subject can only be sustained
by a copious use of concrete exemplification. Lecky's second
work (which always remained his own favourite), The History of
European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), dealt
with the same field of philosophical enquiry as its predecessor ; but
it differed from the general survey of European ‘illumination' in
undertaking to examine, as it were ab extra, the origin and
growth of moral ideas which dominated a period of European life,
and to show the development undergone by these ideas in the
course of their contact with the actual condition of men and
things. The later book, necessarily, contains a larger amount of
purely philosophical discussion than the earlier, and it brought
upon the author attacks from the utilitarian school.
Lecky, who, at the time of the publication of his second
1 See the estimate of Comte's position in literature in Memoir of W. E. H. Lecky,
by his wife, p. 54, note.


## p. 105 (#135) ############################################

11] Lecky's History of England 105
important work, had barely passed his thirtieth year, now turned
to political, in lieu of philosophical, history. He was always
averse from fragmentary composition, and the nursing of a great
design seems to have been almost a necessity to his years of
maturity, at all events so long as he remained out of parliament.
He felt that he had a good opportunity of airing his Irish
politics in a parallel or, rather, a contrast, between the Scotch
and Irish business'; and the appearance of Froude's English in
Ireland lent a special force to the full treatment of Irish history
which, at the risk of disproportionateness, he intended to offer
in his forthcoming work. But A History of England in the
Eighteenth Century (1878—90) was designed on the broadest of
bases, and on lines well according with the most comprehensive
demands of political philosophy: being intended, as the preface
states, “to disengage from the great mass of facts those which
relate to the permanent forces of the nation, or which indicate
some of the most enduring features of the national life. Fore-
most stood the history of political ideas and of their embodiment
in political institutions; but economical and social history re-
ceived a measure of attention far exceeding that usually bestowed
upon it in previous histories of the eighteenth century; while
religious history (the rise of methodism, for instance, and the
progress of religious tolerance) were allowed full consideration.
On the other hand, much that possessed 'a biographical, party
or military interest' was, for lack of space, suppressed, although
Lecky was always interested in individual character or genius,
and never wearied in pursuing the successive phases of the history
of a mind like Burke's, with whom, indeed, he had, undeniably,
some intellectual affinity. The Irish chapters, alike in the second
and in the sixth to eighth volumes, are, on the whole, the most
successful in the work, as most completely covering their subject.
Historical writing such as this can afford to dispense with minor
attractions, and to make no pretence of creating interest either
by accumulation of details or by devices of style.
The last volumes of Lecky's History, published in 1890, con-
tained an account of the rebellion and the union, perhaps the
most striking and the most stirring portion of the entire narrative.
When he had finished his great work, he had, although not yet
much more than fifty years of age, become a little tired of
history’; a happy marriage, and consequent new sphere of life,
together with a sense of unbroken success, may have helped to
make him unwilling to resume the historian's pen, although he was
>


## p. 106 (#136) ############################################

106 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH. .
assiduous in the revision of the works he had already produced.
His Democracy and Liberty (1896) took him back into the sphere
of political philosophy; its tone is studiously moderate, although
the applications of the principles enunciated to actual politics are
undisguised. The Map of Life (1899) is more distinctly aphoristic
and was, perhaps in consequence, more widely popular. His latest
publication was, as has been seen, a revised edition of his earliest
contribution to history—a study and a science of which he may
fairly be said, about the turn of the century, to have been the
foremost British representative.
B. BIOGRAPHERS AND MEMOIR-WRITERS
Biography, like portrait-painting, has always flourished in
England—whether because of the love of the concrete which
marks our race, or because of the individualism of character as
well as of intellect to which our insularity and our freedom have
been alike propitious. But, although the number of English
biographies is legion, and many of them have not floated away
into oblivion with the outward facts of the lives recorded in them,
few have secured for themselves a permanent place in our litera-
ture. To some of these, already mentioned under the names of
their authors or of the great writers of whom they treated, we do
not propose to return in the present chapter; passing by even such
a masterpiece of English biography as the Life of Sir Walter Scott
by his son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart? . The subject of this
delightful biography is, indeed, itself incomparable ; for which of
our great English men of letters is Scott's equal in blended
humanity and serenity-except Shakespeare, of whose life we
know next to nothing?
Scott's own historical works, apart from the Tales of a Grand-
father from Scottish and French history, comprise the Scottish
history which he wrote for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia
immediately after he had completed the last of his imaginative
works, Anne of Geierstein, and the rather earlier Life of Buona-
parte. The latter, written in the midst of pain, sorrow and ruin,'
is an extraordinary effort-a twelvemonth's labour extending over
what, on the original model of his works,' would have filled from
thirteen to fourteen volumes ; but its details met with sharp
criticism, and it can hardly be said to warrant Lockhart's pre-
diction that 'posterity will recognise Napoleon's Livy in Scott 2. '
1 Cf. , ante, vol. xn, chap. 1, and bibliography.
? Lockhart himself published a History of Napoleon Buonaparte (1829) and a History


## p. 107 (#137) ############################################

11] Moore. Southey. Sir William Napier 107
His influence upon historical literature, which continued and
immeasurably developed that of Châteaubriand, was of far greater
importance than were his own contributions to it. Perhaps the
most direct and signal expression which it found was in French
literature; Thierry's Norman Conquest, as has been well observed,
could hardly have been written, or at least written as it was, without
Ivanhoe? But, at home, too, the doctrine of local colouring had
impressed itself, once for all, upon historical narrative.
Byron's autobiographical memoirs have perished, perhaps not
unhappily for his fame, inasmuch as he was never written down by
anyone but himself? '; Moore's life of his friend (1830), appended
to Byron's Letters and Journals, however, with all its short-
comings, whether from the critical or from the purely historical
point of view, will never be laid aside. Moore had previously
tried his hand at biography in a superficial but pleasant Life of
Sheridan (1825); at a later date, he wrote a Life of Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, of whom he had no personal knowledge as he had of
Sheridan and Byron. He also left behind him an autobiography,
which was edited, together with his journals and correspondence,
by the willing hand of his friend lord John Russell.
Southey's History of the Peninsular War, already noted
among his other historical and biographical writings: was, to all
intents and purposes, superseded by Sir William Napier's work
on the same subject (1828–40). Napier, in the words of his
biographer, had himself 'nobly shared in making a history which
he afterwards so eloquently wrote. Yet his book, while con-
taining passages of magnificent elan, by reason of its lengthy and
general method of treatment survives chiefly as a military history,
in which character it has few competitors in our literature5.
of the late War, with Sketches of Nelson, Wellington and Napoleon (1832). As to his
editorship of The Quarterly Review, see, ante, vol. XII, chap. viii. For some of his
imaginative works, see bibliography.
i Barante, too, in his Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne, presents himself as under
the same influence. Cf. the entire sec. III of bk. v of Fueter, E. , Geschichte der
neueren Historiographie (1911).
2 Cf. , ante, vol. XI, p. 103.
3 Cf. , ante, vol. XI, p. 167.
The first lord Aberdare.
s of the famous Wellington Despatches, edited by lonel Gurwood (13 vols.
1834—9), which attracted the ingenuous admiration of their author himself, those
which have reference to the Peninsular war are contained in vols. IV to xi (1835–8).
Sir William Napier's Life and Opinions of Sir Charles Napier (1857), though written
in the spirit of a knight errant. . . to vindicate the fame of his brother Charles, as The
Peninsular War had been written to vindicate that of his chief, Sir John Moore,' is
rendered quite unsafe by partisanship, reproducing, as it does, the assertions of his
Conquest of Scinde, and Administration of Scinde, books whose noble qualities are
marred by violence of attack as well as by eagerness of defence. No more fiery spirit
9
)


## p. 108 (#138) ############################################

108 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH.
The biographical form of composition was adopted by William
Roscoe in his chief historical works, which included an English
version of one of the best, because one of the sincerest, auto-
biographies of all times, The Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, a
Florentine Artist : written by himself. Roscoe was drawn to the
study of the Italian renascence by a congeniality of taste and
feeling which he had cultivated, on his own account, from his
youth up, and to which he had remained true through all the
vicissitudes of an active career of business and politics. He thus
became a mainspring of the intellectual movement which led
many English lovers of letters and art in his and the following
generation to turn once more to Italy as the chief fountain of
their inspiration. From his youth onwards, he had cherished the
idea of making Lorenzo de' Medici the subject of his first work;
nor would it have been possible to find any second figure of the
Italian renascence so typical of both its political and its literary
side. The book which, at his own cost, he printed (1796) in
sumptuous fashion was itself short, but furnished forth with
appendixes of excerpts, sparkling in Latin, and with a series of
notes seductive to a learned eye. The unqualified success of
Roscoe's Lorenzo was not, altogether, repeated in his Life of Leo X;
which covered ground, in part, too dangerous to be trodden with-
out censure. But, though the Italian translation of the later work
was placed on the Index, while the original proved by no means
palatable to the adherents of the German reformation, it is a
delightful book and breathes the atmosphere of that Rome from
which Benvenuto preferred to withdraw on the death of the
Medicean pope. In his later years, Roscoe published an interest-
ing volume of further illustrations of his Life of Lorenzo, in defence
of his hero, besides producing an edition of Pope. He had in him
the making of a historian of civilisation, as well as of a merchant-
prince; but life is an unkind task-master, and it is to his honour
that, by the efforts of his own literary genius, he succeeded in
doing much for the humanities which he loved 1.
A later, and, to some moderns, less attractive, phase of the
renascence movement was brought nearer to English readers by the
one larger work published, amidst a number of smaller contributions
to the literature of scholarship and adjoining fields of research, by
ever burnt in the heart of a historical writer; yet he was never more himself than when
inditing an unfrequent apology. -John Campbell's Lives of the Admirals (1742—4) went
through several editions, and an abridgment appeared so late as 1870.
J. A. Symonds' contributions to the history of the Italian renascence, see,
ante, vol. XIII, chap. XIII.
1 As


## p. 109 (#139) ############################################

11] Mark Pattison. Sir James Stephen
109
9
Mark Pattison, the renowned rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.
Yet, his Isaac Casaubon (1875), though an admirable piece of work,
fitly described by Pattison's pupil and friend Richard Copley
Christie as 'the best biography in our language of a scholar, in the
sense in which Pattison', in common with Casaubon and Scaliger,
understood the word,' was not produced till the author found
himself anticipated (by Jacob Bernays) in the life of Scaliger, for
which, during thirty years, he had been preparing. Although much
of what Pattison wrote besides Isaac Casaubon (including the
collected Essays and a characteristic life of Milton in the 'English
Men of Letters' series) is worthy of preservation, it was in his own
posthumously published Memoirs (reaching to 1860) that he made
an addition of surpassing interest to biographical literature. His
express prohibition of the cancelling of a word of these Memoirs,
except a few paragraphs at the beginning which seemed to be of
too egotistical a character, was conscientiously obeyed; and the
result is a book of self-confession—but of the sort that obliges the
writer to confess his opinion of others as well as of himself. He
tells us how it was only at an advanced period of his life that
he had come to understand Goethe's ideal of self-culture, and
the pollution and disfigurement' of it by literary ambition.
Luckily, 'the vulgar feeling that a literary life means one de-
voted to the making of books' so far prevailed with Pattison that
his pen was rarely idle, and that he made himself memorable, not
only in the educational history of his university, but, also, in the
history of learning and letters.
Whatever may be the place of Sir James Stephen among the
historical writers of the earlier Victorian period, he is sure of
remembrance among English biographical essayists. His 'works,'
no doubt (as Charles Lamb might have said), repose, for the most
part, at the Colonial office, which he ruled for many years as
under-secretary. But the fruits of his scanty leisure, gathered in
1849 under the title Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, together
with Lectures on the History of France, the solitary published
memorial of his efforts as William Smyth's successor in the
1 See his notice of Pattison in vol. XLIV, D. of N. B. R. C. Christie was himself a
scholar of the type to which he refers, and produced, besides other scholarly work,
his excellent monograph, Étienne Dolet, the Martyr of the Renaissance (1861). Cf. ,
ante, vol. XII, p. 333.
2 The lectures of William Smyth, who resided at Peterhouse for more than forty
years—the last of four modern history professors belonging to that college, of whom
two preceded Gray-form, together with those of Sir James Stephen, a link between
the earlier and the later days of history teaching in the English universities. At
Cambridge, the call for serious historical study had hardly begun to be raised in
6


## p. 110 (#140) ############################################

110 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [[
CH.
6
modern history chair at Cambridge, display high literary qualities,
with characteristic features of their own. To his legal training,
Stephen owed his introduction to administrative work, and he was
the maker of many constitutions, before, in his Lectures on the
History of France (which extended over the whole period from
the separation of Gaul from the Roman empire to Louis XIV), he
expounded at length the inner political history of that country.
The 'sociological' view of history was an abomination to him.
His early connection, strengthened by marriage, with the evan-
gelical school of religious thought, and, more especially, with
that 'Clapham sect,' to which one of the best known of his essays
offers a lasting tribute, lent force to his religious convictions
and warmth to his moral sympathies. He could not see more
than one side to the conflict between the rise of Christianity and
the decay of the Roman empire, and he perceived the retributive
hand of Providence in the troubles of the church of Rome
following on the persecution of the Albigenses. But, as time
went on, his wide reading, combined with the teachings of ex-
perience, broadened his sympathies, more especially as he did not
transfer his official dogmatism into his best literary work. "The
historian,' he says, “aims at one kind of praise, the lecturer in
history at another. ' In many of his essays, as well as in those of
his lectures which dealt with the Power of the Pen in France,' he
succeeded in blending with a vivid characterisation of real men
something of the imaginative power that projects itself into great
lives of the past.
There was, perhaps, more difference than resemblance in the
gifts which the two sons of Sir James Stephen respectively in-
herited from their father, or which were peculiar to themselves;
but, though Sir Leslie Stephen, in his Life of Sir James Fitzjames
Stephen, naturally dwelt on family features, the elder brother's
interests did not lie in the direction of biographical or other
history? Leslie, on the other hand, among his many claims to an
enduring literary fame, has none superior to those arising out of
Smyth's, or even in Stephen's, time. Yet, Smyth was not only a highly accomplished
man-a poet of some reputation and an excellent talker—but well-read and discerning,
a moderate whig, able to admire Burke without condemning Mackintosh. Thus, his
Lectures on the French Revolution (1840), considering the incompleteness of authentic
materials, may be described as one of the earliest adequate and dispassionate English
treatments of their subject.
1 His chief eminence was that of a jurist; as a Saturday reviewer, he dealt, mainly,
with subjects appertaining to moral, political, or social philosophy. His Story of
Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey (1885) was an exceptional product
of his Indian life.
6


## p. 111 (#141) ############################################

11]
Collections of Lives
III
his work as a biographer, and as the first architect of the greatest
monument of national biography possessed by our literature.
Among collective works narrating in succession the lives of
occupants of particular offices, the precedence belongs to the
biographies of royal personages. Considerable popularity was
attained by Lives of the Queens of England (1840–8), by Agnes
and Elizabeth Strickland, published, by the wish of the latter and
elder sister, under the name of Agnes only. She followed it up by
Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses con-
nected with the Royal Succession of Great Britain and Lives of
the Bachelor Kings of England, from William Rufus to Edward VI,
to which series her sister Elizabeth was, again, a contributor.
Other series ensued, including both Tudor and Stewart princesses,
and the seven bishops. She was not a powerful writer, but inde-
fatigable in the accumulation of illustrative detail and conscientious
in the use of it.
After the completion of Miss Strickland's chief
work, Mrs Mary Anne Everett Green, who, previously, under her
maiden name Wood, had published Letters of Royal Ladies of
Great Britain, brought out Lives of the Princesses of England
(1849—55), on which she had been long engaged. The very large
amount of valuable work done by her as one of the editors of the
Calendars of State Papers at the Record office left her little
leisure for literary activity of her own; but she produced, among
other books, Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria (1857), a volume
based entirely on original research, and collected much material
for a series of lives of our Hanoverian queens, to which was to
have been prefixed a life of the electress Sophia. It is to be
regretted that this plan remained unexecuted, for Mrs Everett
Green had sound historical judgment as well as extensive and
accurate knowledge of our national history, from the Elizabethan
age downwards.
A biographer of royalty, also, was Sir Theodore Martin, whose Life
of the Prince Consort (1875—80), undertaken by queen Victoria's
desire, is founded largely on original papers, in part of great value
for diplomatic history. Martin, who, while an active lawyer, was one
of the most accomplished as well as one of the most versatile men
of letters of his times—essayist, poetic translator and parodist-
also wrote, besides an early memoir of his comrade in satire,
William Edmonstoune Aytoun, a Life of Lord Lyndhurst (1883)
i The story of The Dictionary of National Biography is told in Memoir of George
Smith, by Sir Sidney Lee, prefixed to vol. 1 of the first supplement of the Dictionary
(1901). As to Sir Leslie Stephen, see, post, chap. III.


## p. 112 (#142) ############################################

112 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH.
>
a
and a memoir of his own adored wife, the great and beautiful
actress best known by her maiden name Helen Faucit (1900).
The Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (1860—76) by
Walter Farquhar Hook, dean of Chichester, and previously vicar
of Leeds, form a characteristic memorial of the evening 'leisure'
of a long life devoted to the service of the church whose entire
history is surveyed in this long series of volumes ? .
An even
greater success than that obtained by this series, though partly
of the mixed kind which does not make for edification, attended
the publication of lord Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors
(1846—7) and Lives of the Lord Chief Justices of England
(1849—57). The Lives of Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham,
which followed (1860), filled the cup of remonstrance to overflowing.
(The life of Lyndhurst had, as was just seen, to be, more or less
adequately, written over again by another hand); as for Brougham,
he had found time to add to his innumerable literary offspring his
own Life and Times, which was published posthumously (1871). )
Far more attractive, though their humour is by no means devoid
of occasional causticity, are the pen-and-ink portraits of the
Scottish bench and bar in the first quarter of the century
published in Memorials of His Time (1856), by lord Cockburn,
biographer of lord Jeffrey (1852).
The most important English biography produced in the mid-
Victorian age was David Masson's Life of Milton, narrated in
connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History
of his Time (1859–80). The full title of the book must be given
in order to indicate its range ; since, when the author had, at last,
brought the work to a conclusion, he was warranted in expressing
his satisfaction in having been able to persevere to the very end
in the original plan, omitting nothing, slurring nothing, that the plan
required. ' In a word, this classical book is a history of as momentous
a period of twoscore years as is to be found in the national life of
England-grouped, on the principle enunciated by Carlyle,round the
personal life and labours of one of its greatest men and one of the
greatest of English writers. Everything Milton wrote is here taken
into account: of every important poem or prose-work from his hand
a complete history and a critical analysis are supplied ; and he is
consistently viewed in connection with his times, with the move-
ments which shaped their course, and with the men from whom
those movements sprang, in state and in church, in peace and in
war, in learning and in literature. Whether it be in the fascinating
i Cf. , ante, vol. XII, p. 274.


## p. 113 (#143) ############################################

11]
Masson's Life of Milton.
Church
113
picture of Milton in his youth, pure as the Castalian fount from
which his soul drank inspiration, and rich with ten talents and the
resolve to multiply by cultivating them--or in the complete
review of the prose-works which Pattison and others deplored,
but which Masson preferred to explain—or in the survey of
the last seven years, and of Milton's surroundings in life and
literature, and his solitude in the presence of Paradise Lost—this
biography nowhere loses sight of its subject or contracts it within
narrower limits than are necessary in relating the life of a great
man who, while his name belongs to all times, was himself part of
his own. Though the magnitude of the scheme necessitates frequent
surveys or retrospects, which sometimes look like digressions, but
are not really such, the general arrangement is clear; here and
there, perhaps, the scaffolding is still visible. Masson's style,
rather conspicuously, lacked ease and grace, without possessing
that irresistible note of individuality—the individuality of genius
-which belonged to the style of his friend Carlyle. But, in
candour and sincerity, at all events, the biographer of Milton
was equal to the editor of Cromwell's letters, and he surpassed
the greater writer in assiduity of research and in the simplicity of
his attitude towards the facts of history,
Of the great masters of continental literatures, Dante missed
an English biographer of the highest qualities in Richard William
Church, though the essays on him by this delightful writer and
admirable critic are among the most notable of his literary pro-
ductions, which include short lives of St Anselm and of Spenser? .
Goethe, to whom, from Henry Crabb Robinson, the author of the
Diary, onwards, a growing body of English readers had, largely under
the influence of Carlyle, come to look up with veneration, found in
George Henry Lewes the most widely popular of all his biographers.
Lewes had made a name for himself by his Biographical History
of Philosophy (1845–6), as well as by less ambitious work; in his
Life of Goethe (1855) he produced a work of great literary skill ;
yet it unmistakably lacks the deeper note, which he may have been
well-judged in not attempting to force.
John Forster, by his Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith (1854),
| For Masson's other biographical works, see bibliography. A biographical historian
of considerable merit, who also produced a useful edition of Dryden, was William
Dougal Christie, whose Life of the First Earl of Shaftesbury (1871) deserves com.
mendation as a book of value as well as of capacity, though the ‘rehabilitation of
Achitophel may not be regarded as complete.
? As to dean Church, cf. , ante, vol. XII, pp. 271—2. The distinguished Italian
scholar, Arthur James Butler, published, in 1885, a short Dante, his Times and his Work.
5
E. L XIV.
CH. II.
8


## p. 114 (#144) ############################################

114 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH. .
his Life of Walter Savage Landor (1869) and his Life of Charles
Dickens(1872–4), together with some admirable biographical essays
and the first volume of a Life of Swift, took a place in the first rank
of English biographers, and was, for a long time, the friend and
oracle of many eminent English men of letters of his day. In
his earlier years, he had cherished a more concentrated kind of
ambition. So far back as 1830, he had thought of writing the life
of Cromwell; and, although this was not to become the chief work
of his maturity, it was included in his valuable series entitled
Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth (1836–9). The
life of Sir John Eliot was afterwards (1864) expanded by him
into a larger biography, and he had previously (1860) published a
brace of monographs (one of them enlarged from an earlier essay)
based on a careful examination of parliamentary material and
dealing with two critical episodes of the struggle between Charles I
and the Long parliament. Forster had entered deeply into the
spirit of the great struggle of the Stewart age, as is shown by the
essay On English Freedom under Plantagenets and Tudors pre-
fixed to the second of these works. Altogether, whatever may
have been his, in the circumstances very excusable, foibles, his
literary life was one of generous purpose, and of rare energy.
Among the numerous memoir-writers proper of the century,
there can be no doubt that, notwithstanding the habit of self-
depreciation, at times truly pathetic, to which his fastidious and
complicated nature was secretly prone, Charles Cavendish Fulke
Greville bears away the palm. The three series of The Greville
Memoirs (1874–87), which comment on the course of English
politics and society from the accession of George IV to the year
1860, in some measure differ from one another; in the earlier
volumes, the writer adheres to the principle of leaving time to
soften, and even to arrest, his judgments; in the second, and, no
doubt, in the third, series occasional suppression was, in con-
sequence of the relative nearness of events, found necessary by
the editor, Henry Reeve; while, on the other hand, the years
brought with them a gentler tone, together with an occasional
weariness of the great world. For the rest, Charles Greville
was always ready to play the part of mediator as well as that of
confidant; and his essential qualities as a memoir-writer re-
mained to him throughout. He was gifted with an insight into
character hardly surpassed by any of the great predecessors whom
he could never quite keep out of view. His style, though, as it were,
instinctively polished, was free from all desire for epigrammatic


## p. 115 (#145) ############################################

11]
Croker and Creevey
I15
effect; he never says either too much or too little. Neither
personal goodwill nor personal dislike hindered him from perceiving
the failings of Wellington or ignoring the merits of Peel; and the
vagaries of Brougham diverted him too much to allow of his
even here lapsing into caricature. The set characters which, on
the occasion of their deaths, he drew of the former two, and of
personages so diverse as Melbourne, Althorp and Harrowby,
Talleyrand and Macaulay, lord George Bentinck and Charles
Butler, lady Harrowby and Mme de Lieven, Luttrell, Alvanley and
D'Orsay, are all, more or less, masterly, and this list is by no means
exhaustive. When he occasionally tried his hand at a political
pamphlet or letter, neither his force nor his self-restraint deserted
him, and his anonymous book The Policy of England to Ireland
(1845), in which he advocated a policy of concurrent religious
endowments in Ireland, was a rare instance of political foresight
as well as of historical judgment.
The Croker Papers, not published till 1884, when nearly a
generation had passed after John Wilson Croker's death (1857),
and more than half a century since his retirement from active
public life (1832) throw a great deal of light upon the bitter
party conflicts of the twenty-two years during which he held the
secretaryship to the admiralty. In this office, his first important
task was to defend the Walcheren expedition ; but attack rather
than defence was his métier. He was of the inner councils of
.
his party on most of the great political questions of these years,
and among the unconvinced opponents both of parliamentary
reform and the repeal of the corn-laws. But his chief services to
the conservatives (he was the inventor of this name, scouted by
Disraeli, who had no love to spare for him) were rendered in the
pages of The Quarterly Review. The Croker Papers, which are
held together by a very thin biographical thread, derive their
chief interest from the letters comprised in them from the duke of
Wellington, lord George Bentinck and others, and from Croker's
occasional journal addressed to his patron, the marquis of
Hertford.
The Creevey Papers, published in 1903, about seventy years
after the death of the writer or recipient of the letters of which,
together with fragments of diaries, they mainly consist, have no
pretension to rank in historical significance by the side of The
Croker Papers, or in literary value by that of The Greville
Memoirs. Thomas Creevey, though born in Liverpool, seems to
have regarded Ireland as his native country, but was an absentee
8-2


## p. 116 (#146) ############################################

116 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [CH.
till he had turned sixty. His position in the political and social
world was really due to himself, and to a combination of fidelity
and adaptability which made him, at one time, a member of the
extreme radical faction, and, at another, commended him to the
goodwill of the sovereign whom he had previously mentioned as
'perfidious Billy. ' He had a caustic style, not untouched with
the grossness fashionable in the days of the regency, and his use
of nicknames is appalling in its irreverence. His notices of
Brougham ('Wickedshifts') are even more vivid than Greville's ;
but he rarely rises to a higher tone, though his account of
lord Grey (to whom he loyally adhered) in his latter days does
honour to both. Creevey, at one time, contemplated writing a
history of his times, and, in 1826, published, as a pamphlet, a series
of letters on reform addressed to lord John Russell (whom he
could not abide).
A novel form of political memoir—though it had, of course,
been previously used for other ends—was that of Conversations
with M. Thiers, M. Guizot and other distinguished persons
during the Second Empire, recorded by the wellknown economist
Nassau William Senior and posthumously published in two series,
covering together the years 1852 to 1863. Senior's interlocutors
were largely, but not altogether, political opponents of the empire,
and they include many literary celebrities; so that the Conversa-
tions faithfully mirror the thoughts of the intellectual flower of
contemporary France. These volumes had been preceded by
Journals kept in France and Italy, and by Correspondence and
Conversations of A. de Tocqueville, who pronounced Senior's the
most enlightened of English minds. The rather earlier Journals,
Conversations and Essays relating to Ireland (1868) comprise,
with reprinted earlier papers on a subject always full of interest to
the author, journals of visits to Ireland in 1852, 1858 and 1862, and
conversations with people of all sorts whom he met on his travels,
up to his former tutor and lifelong friend archbishop Whately.
This rapid and unavoidably incomplete review of the progress
of English historical literature in the nineteenth century could not
be more fitly concluded than by a reference to the eminent
teacher and scholar, the very type of modern historical learning in
its maturest development, with whose literary ideas and designs
the present work may claim a kind of collateral kinship. To
speak of lord Acton as a teacher might seem to attach an undue
significance to the exertions of six years out of a full life, great as


## p. 117 (#147) ############################################

11]
Lord Acton
117
those exertions were, and marked by a touching desire to be,
within academic limits, all things to all men. ' But it is not to his
professorial work that the tribute suggested should be limited.
His inaugural lecture (though he had not devoted several years to
the preparation of it, as Gray did to that of a discourse he
never delivered), besides being, in elevation of tone, as noble an
utterance as has, perbaps, ever been made on a similar occasion,
indicates, partly with playful irony, partly with high moral dignity,
the purposes and qualities needing to be combined in the study of
history at the stage of progress now reached. Acton's own
historical learning has often been represented as barren ; and it
is true that, notwithstanding his extraordinary diligence in the
daily increase of his store, its accumulation resulted in the pro-
duction of no great historical work. The plan of a history of
liberty which he had formed early in life was never carried out by
him, and there remain only the hints given in two popular lectures
delivered by him at Bridgnorth, so early as 1877, to show his
conception of the theme.
By liberty he meant the assurance that every man should be protected
in doing what he believed to be his duty against the influence of authority
and majorities, custom and opinion 1.
The problem of his personal life was how to reconcile this principle
with submission to the authority of the church of which, through-
out life, he was a devout member. The influence of Döllinger
had long dominated his mind, and it reflects itself even in his
literary manner. But, as a writer, he held the principle of liberty,
as above defined, sacred in great things and in small, and in
the affairs of both church and state. The edict of Nantes, he
told his Cambridge class, 'forms an epoch in the progress of
toleration, that is, in the history of liberty, which is the marrow of
all modern history? ' The struggle against absolute monarchy in
England ‘is the point where the history of nations turned into its
modern bed. It is the point also where the Englishman became
the leader of the world. '
Undoubtedly, the task of Acton's life, as he had set it to him-
self, fell short of accomplishment because of the actual endlessness
of the method, which, for a long time only half consciously, he had
pursued in making ready for it. "Eotiv 0áraooa—but to no mortal
is it given to exhaust that sea, though his knowledge may cover,
besides a wide range of theology, the whole field of history, and
1 Cf. Gooch, G. P. , English History and Historians (1913), p. 384.
· Lectures on Modern History (1906), p. 171.
3 Ibid. p. 205.
1


## p. 118 (#148) ############################################

118 Biographers and Memoir-Writers [ch. .
а
include an intimate acquaintance with the by-paths and hidden lanes
that lead to it, and though he may possess, and turn over with daily
and nightly hand, four libraries owned by him at the same time in
four distinct counties or countries. Yet it would be a mistake to
suppose that Acton found difficulty in making good literary use of
the knowledge he was thus incessantly acquiring, and that, while
one of the fullest of historical writers and critics, he had not, at
the same time, a ready pen, or one possessed of a humour which
only a feeling of reverence prevented from running rapidly into
sarcasm. Many a distinguished author has taught himself the calm
.
dignity of manner which came naturally to Acton, both in writing
and in personal intercourse ; his foible was rather to let his
text wear the aspect of notes (at times the more enjoyable the
more carefully they are studied), or, at least, of apophthegms
following one another so closely as to produce the effect of over-
loading
Acton's literary career began (a little before his parliamentary)
in 1859, with his nominal editorship of The Rambler, in succession
to Newman, the main editorial work being still carried on by
Richard Simpson, the biographer of Edmund Campion. Acton's
contributions to this journal, which began with an article ‘Mill
On Liberty,' were by no means confined to the discussion of
topics connected with the growth of liberal catholicism ; and
the same was the case with his numerous articles and reviews
(under the heading contemporary literature') in The Home
and Foreign Review, which, in 1862, took the place of the
departed Rambler? Three years later, The Chronicle made its
appearance, for which Acton wrote many articles of political and
historical interest, ending with a notable paper on the massacre
of St Bartholomew, besides carrying on a succession of notes on
the political situation in the papal and other Italian states, and a
continuous comment in the shape of reviews, on contemporary
literature. ' When, to these, are added his contributions to The
North British and The Quarterly Review, as well as to The
English Historical Review", together with occasional lectures
and addresses, it will be seen that Letters of Quirinus and the
subsequent Open Letter to a German Bishop on the Vatican
Council (1870), and his letters to The Times on the Vatican
1 See lord Bryce's account in Studies in Contemporary Biography (1903), p. 382.
2 Acton wrote its final word, Conflicts with Rome. '
3 The first number contained a characteristically comprehensive article by Acton
entitled “German Schools of History,' followed in a later number by Döllinger's
Historical Work. '


## p. 119 (#149) ############################################

11] Acton's Historical Principles 119
decrees-or, rather, on Gladstone's celebrated letter about them
(1874), form only a part of a prolonged many-sided literary activity.
After his removal to Cambridge, his lectures (of which two series
have been published since his death) proved the firmness of his
grasp not less than the wellknown width of his learning, and
reawakened the expectation of further historical work of an
enduring character from his hands.
It had been hoped, by Acton himself, and by many who would
have taken pride in working under his leadership, that The
Cambridge Modern History would, besides embodying some of
his historical ideas, offer an opportunity to its projector of laying
down in its opening chapter his conception of the legacy of the
middle ages, and that his editorship and successive contributions
would inspire the progress of the work as a whole. Neither hope
was destined to be fulfilled. But his elucidation of its plan remains
to demonstrate what, to a great scholar, whose opportunities had
surpassed those of any previous or contemporary historian, seemed
the range of the sphere in which modern history moved and had
its being, and in what spirit the materials now open to historical
criticism should, in his judgment, be transfused into historical
narrative. Across the century, the spirit of the greatest of modern
writers on ancient history-Niebuhr-seems in contact with the
spirit of him who had most closely scanned the course of modern
history ; and, together, they seem to vindicate the right and duty
of the advance made in historical studies and literature during
the century's course in England and elsewhere. The historians
of former ages, lord Acton said, in the incomparable inaugural
lecture already cited, “unapproachable for us in knowledge and
in talent, cannot be our limit,' because 'we have the power to
be more rigidly impersonal, disinterested and just than they. '
C. POLITICAL ORATORS AND WRITERS OF PAMPHLETS
The great age of English political oratory might seem to have
passed away with the fatal year (1806) which removed both Pitt
and Fox from the scene of their mighty conflicts; a greater orator
than either-Burke—had died nearly a decade earlier. When, in
1802, James Mill arrived in London, he at first thought the
eloquence of the house of commons inferior to that of the
general assembly (though nearly a generation was to elapse before
the chair of that assembly was filled by Chalmers, the most brilliant
of all luminaries of the Scottish pulpit). But Mill listened with


## p. 120 (#150) ############################################

I 20
[CH.
Political Orators
admiration to Fox and Sheridan, as well as to some other well-
known parliamentary speakers of the time.
One of these was William Wilberforce, then in the midst of his
immortal efforts for the abolition of the slave trade, accomplished
in 1807. The all but unique position which, after this, he held in
public estimation was by no means due only to his self-devotion
to a cause appealing to the deepest instincts of humanity, and to
his detachment from all party motives of action, in 'any under-
taking which had the welfare of mankind for its object? ' It, also,
owed much to the charm of his personality, the modest dignity of
his bearing and the unaffected ease and simple grace of his delivery.
Among other parliamentary figures prominent in the early years
of the century was William Windham, whose birth and breeding as
a country gentleman of ancient descent had implanted in him,
together with an unextinguishable interest in the peasantry, a
spirit of unflinching patriotism and of independence which refused
to bend before any pressure of court or party. A school-fellow of
Fox, and a follower of Burke, he had imbibed a love of literature
which induced Johnson to describe him as, in that region, inter
stellas Luna minores. His oratory, however, found its proper
sphere in the house of commons, and it was when he led the
Grenville party in opposition that his ability as a debater was
most conspicuous. His speeches, of which a considerable col-
lection remains, are full of apt, rather than striking, Latin quo-
tations, besides occasional native sallies. In a different key from
his attacks upon the peace of Amiens, and his stern comments on
the seizure of the Danish fleet, is his long and temperate speech
on the scandal which drove the duke of York from office. No
politician was ever more free from self-interest, or orator from rant.
‘Nothing,' he said, 'is more agreeable than to praise the Athenians
among the Athenians; but I rather consider it the duty of public
men to speak wholesome truths. '
Samuel Whitbread had been educated with the same care as
Windham and, by his marriage with the sister of his school-
fellow, afterwards earl Grey, was brought near to the innermost
whig circle, though his wealth was derived from the great
trading concern in which he was a partner. Long a devoted
follower of Fox, he was fearless in the denunciation of all kinds of
abuses; during the last six years of his life, he is said to have
been the most frequent speaker in the house of commons, and
i See the admirable essay on Wilberforce in Sir James Stephen's Essays in
Ecclesiastical Biography.


## p. 121 (#151) ############################################

II]
Erskine. Tierney
I 2 I
was the soul of the agitation in favour of the princess of Wales. His
vehemence of manner was a constant source of derision to satirists
with pen or picture, who always remembered the brewery; but,
though his impetuosity reflected his enthusiasm for what he held
right, he could, as both Sheridan and Burdett found, be prudent
on occasion.
Thomas, afterwards lord, Erskine seems never to have quite
caught the tone of the house of commons, though a consistent
member of the whig party, whose principles he, also, upheld with
his pen? But his fame rests on his forensic oratory, which entitled
him to choose for the motto of his peerage the words 'trial by
jury. He was engaged in a series of cases bearing on the liberty
of the press and the charge of constructive treason; and defended
in turn lord George Gordon, Thomas Paine, the publisher Stock-
dale, who had incurred the wrath of the house of commons, and
the radical founder of the London Corresponding society, Thomas
Hardy, whom he brought off amidst the wildest popular enthusiasm.
That his triumphs, described by earl Russell as those of the
sword and buckler' which 'protected justice and freedom,' were
free from meretricious glitter seems to be borne out by those of
his speeches that have been preserved out of an enormous mass
of oratory, if allowance be made for the egoism which seems
inseparable from the Ciceronian manner and which was certainly
not alien to Erskine's nature.
George Tierney, on the other hand, was a parliamentary poli-
tician proper, whose course of public action was determined by
personal interest as well as by political opinions. Though of Irish
descent, he was educated at Eton and Cambridge (Peterhouse);
and though, from 1797 onwards, a declared opponent of Pitt (with
whom he fought a blank duel in the following year), he was not a
favourite of Fox, and, indeed, for a time, carried on the struggle
against Pitt on his own account, as nobody's friend, unless it was
as the friend of humanity. His later career was equally varied,
though he attained to a leading, rather than a commanding,
position. His ability as a debater made him a most formidable,
as he was a most vigilant and tenacious, adversary and he may be
regarded as the last of the great parliamentarians of the revo-
lutionary period. His speeches seem to have been often colloquial
in manner, but never deficient in point, and to have excelled in
the art of restating an adversary's case so as to turn it inside out.
Unlike lord Castlereagh, the extraordinary faultiness of whose
1 See his Defence of the Whigs in vol. xv of The Pamphleteer (1820).


## p. 122 (#152) ############################################

I 22
[CH.
Political Orators
style, in both speech and writing, seems to reflect shortcomings
which have been allowed to weigh too heavily against such merits
as should be conceded to his foreign policy, George Canning,
whose star shone forth in full splendour as that of Castlereagh
sank below the horizon, had long been famed for the force of his
political oratory as well as for the irresistible wit of his political
writing. He gained a place among the foremost orators of the
day by his great speech in December 1798 against the resumption
of negotiations with France; among the tributes paid to the mighty
spirit of Pitt after his death in 1806, Canning's soared into the
loftiest sphere of eulogy. In 1808, he vindicated the seizure of
the Danish fleet-for which, as foreign secretary, he was primarily
responsible—in a speech of extraordinary power. But his great
popularity began with his addresses to the constituency of
Liverpool; and it was, in the first instance, the fire of his oratory
which prepared the triumph of his statesmanship. After he
had begun to rise to the height of his parliamentary position,
and had delivered the great speech (28 April 1825) upholding the
principle of pacific non-intervention in the case of Spain, he
returned to the subject in a memorable address at Plymouth
which strikes a note of far-sighted grandeur such as no other
political orator has reached in England since the days of Burke.
When the recognition of the Spanish American colonies was an
accomplished fact, Canning, in the famous defence of his policy,
12 December 1826, spoke of himself as having called in the new
world to redress the balance of the old. When he became prime
minister of Great Britain, without even then commanding the
firm support of either king or parliament, his strength still lay
in the popularity which, in a free community-be it Athens or
England-always sustains the statesman who has mounted to the
foremost place among its leaders; and this Periclean supremacy
was the direct offspring of his oratory as well as of his states-
manship. The duke of Wellington—at least a candid critic-
pronounced Canning the finest speaker he had ever heard; and
this admiration extended to his state papers. Although, in his
published speeches, it is not often, except in the greatest of them,
that we can catch a notion of his completeness in matter united
1 A characteristic example of Canning at his best will be found in the long speech
On unlawful Societies in Ireland' in vol. v of the 6 vol. edition of his Speeches (1828).
The grand personal note (in regard to himself as part cause of the Peninsular war) is
not wanting here, nor are humorous quotations, ranging from Dr Johnson to Mrs
Malaprop.


## p. 123 (#153) ############################################

11] Canning. Brougham 123
to perfection in manner-of the 'rich, gay, aspiring eloquence'
ascribed to him by lord Morley—there is a family likeness in
them all. Imaginative power and wit, often inimitably apt, are
sustained by a scholarship which abhors an unpolished corner in
the structure; and, through all, there is visible a large-mindedness
beyond the common range of public oratory, and a large-heartedness
inviting that kind of popularity which Canning was not ashamed
to allow he loved. Of vagueness or of violence, there is nothing
in his speeches; and, when defending himself against misrepre-
sentation, he could grandly say: 'If you have not heard me in
vain, it is well; if you have, I have troubled you too long, but
it has been for the last time. '
The other great orator of Canning's later years, and beyond,
was Henry lord Brougham, whose oratorical powers, exercised, in
one way or another, during a period of some years, are, together
with his other gifts, to be described only by the word prodigious.
His resources were infinite, and the aptness of his use of them
unrivalled; but his forte—we should rather say his fortissimo
-must have lain in conversation, in which his exuberance of life
and spirit were altogether incomparable. His speeches, on the
other hand, as Greville, whose pages sparkle with Broughamiana,
happily puts it, were too long by reason of the perpetual bubbling-up
of new ideas. And there was (can it be denied ? ) something else
which interfered with his full success as an orator, as, of course
in a profounder sense, it did with the completeness of his political
career. He was, in public life, trusted by neither friend nor foe;
and, with all his brilliancy and all his force, he conveyed an
undefinable impression that he had no strong opinions on any
subject that he took up for attack or defence. Yet, when all
deductions have been made, the power and the versatility of his
oratory, due, in no small measure, to the care which he bestowed
upon his efforts, remain one of the wonders in the history of genius.
The scornful fire of his invective burnt itself into the hearts and
souls of its victims, and he was not less himself in long and
elaborate discourses, on subjects outside the ordinary range of
political controversy. His eloquence associated itself with his
labours as a law reformer, with his services to education and the
advance of science and with a vast miscellaneous literary produc-
tivity; but its fame outstripped that of all his other achievements,
and will make him remembered when much that he did and all
that he wrote will have fallen into oblivion.
One of the few speakers, whether on legal or on other themes,


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124
[CH.
Political Orators
whom Brougham was unable to crush was John Singleton Copley,
lord Lyndhurst, who, according to Greville, was master of the one
thing, which, in the end, the house of lords preferred to every-
thing else, and which Brougham could never compass-conciseness.
Lyndhurst, whose career and views present certain points of
resemblance to those of his friend Disraeli, made his way to
eminence by an unusual union of qualifications, which included an
oratory of rare polish and point. It showed itself to particular
advantage in those annual reviews which adorned the close, and
pointed the failure, of many a parliamentary session, and which,
though Melbourne called them Lyndhurst's exercitationes, were
certainly not academical in the sense of innocuousness. On the
udicial bench, he had excelled in summing up; and a famous
judgment of his', though afterwards reversed on an appeal which
he resisted in a second address of extraordinary ability, is
described, by one who was no kindly chronicler (lord Campbell),
as 'by all accounts the most wonderful ever heard in Westminster
Hall. '
Among later luminaries of the bar and bench who played a
prominent part in English political life, it is impossible to pass by
Sir Richard Bethell, afterwards lord Westbury, who combined with
extraordinary acumen and lucidity of statement a gift of sarcastic
innuendo which voice and manner rendered absolutely intolerable.
Sir Roundell Palmer, afterwards first earl of Selborne, a refined
scholar and devout churchman, who, as an equity pleader, was
inferior neither to Westbury nor to Hugh M Calmont, afterwards
first earl, Cairns, became one of the greatest judicature reformers
of the age.