I have frequently been asked to write my Memoirs , or I should rather say, my Recollections . I have serious doubts as to whether I recollect anything of value; and, even if I do, I have no time at present to commit it to paper. But, as the University, when I first knew it, was a very different place from what it is now; and as it has fallen to my lot to write several biographical notices of distinguished Cambridge men, in the course of which I have noted incidentally a good many of the constitutional and social changes of later years, I venture to republish what I have written. Such compositions, many of which were dashed off on the spur of the moment, under the influence of strong feeling, with no opportunity for correction or amplification, are, I am aware, defective as a serious vi record of lives which ought to have been told at greater length. But, that they gain in sincerity what they lose in detail, will, I hope, be conceded by those who take the trouble to read them.

Most of these articles are reprinted as they were written, with only obvious and necessary corrections. The Life of Dr Whewell has been slightly enlarged; and that of Bishop Thirlwall has been revised, though not substantially altered. Any merit that this Life may possess is due to the kindness of the late Master of my College, Dr Thompson. I myself had never so much as seen Thirlwall, and undertook the article with great reluctance. But my difficulties vanished as soon as I had consulted Dr Thompson. He had been one of Thirlwall’s intimate friends, and not only supplied me with information about him which I could not have learnt from any other source, but revised the article more than once when in type.

The article on Dr Luard is practically new. Soon after his death I contributed a short sketch of his Life to the Saturday Review , and afterwards another, in a somewhat different style, to a Trinity College Magazine called The vii Trident . Out of these, with some additions, the present article has been composed.

It has been suggested to me that an article on Richard Owen, in a series devoted entirely, with that exception, to Cambridge men, needs justification. I would urge in my defence that the Senate coopted Owen by selecting him, in 1859, as the first recipient of an honorary degree under the new statutes.

My cordial thanks are due to Dr Jackson, Fellow and Prælector of Trinity College, for much valuable criticism, and assistance in preparing the volume for the press.

I have also to thank the proprietors of the Church Quarterly Review , and those of the Saturday Review , for their kindness in allowing me to reprint articles of which they hold the copyright.

Full materials for the life of Dr Whewell are at last before the public. We say ‘at last,’ because ten years elapsed from his death in 1866 before the first instalment of his biography appeared, and fifteen years before the second. Haste, therefore, cannot be pleaded for any faults which may be found in either of them. Nor, indeed, is it our intention to carp at persons who have performed a difficult task as well as they could. Far rather would we take exception to the strange resolution of Dr Whewell’s executors and friends to have his life written in separate portions. It was originally intended that there should be three 2 of these published simultaneously: (1) the scientific, (2) the academic, (3) the domestic. As time went on, however, it was found impossible to carry out this scheme; and Mr Todhunter published the first instalment before anyone had been found to undertake either of the others. At last, after repeated failures, the second and third portions were thrown together, and entrusted to Mrs Stair Douglas, Dr Whewell’s niece by marriage. The defects of such a method are obvious; events scarcely worth telling once are told twice; documents that would have been useful to one biographer appear in the work of the other, and the like. For this, however, the authors before us deserve less blame than the scheme which they were compelled to follow.

Few lives, we imagine, have been so many-sided as to need a double, not to say a triple, narrative in order to set them fully before the public; and we assert most distinctly that Dr Whewell was the last man whose biography should have been so treated. His life, notwithstanding his diverse occupations and his widespread interests, presented a singular unity, due to his unflinching determination to subordinate his pursuits, his actions, and his thoughts 3 to what he felt to be his work in the world, viz. the advancement, in the fullest sense the word can be made to bear, of his College and his University. He himself made no attempt to subdivide his time, so as to carry out some special work at the expense of other occupations. He found time for everything. His extraordinary energy, and his power of absorbing himself at a moment’s notice in whatever he had to do, whether scientific research or University business, enabled him to get through an astonishing amount of work in a single day. Much of what he did must have been very irksome and repulsive to him. He particularly disliked detail, especially that relating to finance. ‘I hate these disgusting details,’ was his way of putting aside, or trying to put aside, economical discussions at College meetings; and it was often hard to make him understand the real importance of these apparently small matters. Again, he always found time to go into society; to keep himself well acquainted with all that was going forward in politics, literature, art, music, science; and to carry on a vast correspondence with relatives, friends, and men of science in England and on the Continent. A considerable number of these letters have of 4 course perished; but the extent of the collection is evident from Mr Todhunter’s statement that he had examined more than 3,500 letters written to Dr Whewell, and more than 1,000 written by him. His opinion of the latter, after this wide experience, is well worth quotation:

‘I do not think that adequate justice can be rendered to Dr Whewell’s vast knowledge and power by any person who did not know him intimately, except by the examination of his extensive correspondence; such an examination cannot fail to raise the opinion formed of him by the study of his published works, however high that opinion may be. The evidence of his attainments and abilities which is furnished by the fact that he was consulted and honoured by the acknowledged chiefs of many distinct sciences is most ample and impressive. United with this intellectual eminence we find an attractive simplicity and generosity of nature, an entire absence of self-seeking and assertion, and a warm concern in the fortunes of his friends, even when they might be considered in some degree as his rivals.’

The academic side of Dr Whewell’s life has no doubt been imperfectly related in both the works before us; and the due recognition of his merits will have to wait until the intellectual history of the University during the nineteenth century shall one day be written. On the other hand, we owe our warmest thanks to Mrs Stair Douglas for having brought prominently into notice, as only an affectionate woman could do, 5 the softer side of Dr Whewell’s character. No one who did not know him as she did could have suspected the almost feminine tenderness, the yearning for sympathy, which were concealed under that rough exterior. These qualities, though much developed by his marriage, were characteristic of him throughout his whole life. The following passage, which has not before been printed, from a letter written in 1836 to the Marchesa Spineto, his oldest and most valued Cambridge friend, while he was busy writing his History of the Inductive Sciences , shows how necessary female sympathy was to him even when he was most occupied:

‘It appears to me long since I have seen you, and I am disposed to write as if your absence were a disagreeable and unusual privation; although it is very likely that if you had been here I might have seen just as little of you and might have felt just as lonely. And perhaps if I send you this sheet of my ruminations, it will find you in the middle of a new set of interests and employments, with only a little bit of your thoughts and affections at liberty to look this way; and so I shall be little the better for the habit you have taught me of depending upon you for unvarying kindness and love. Perhaps you will tell me I am unjust in harbouring such a suspicion, but do not be angry with me if I am; for you know such thoughts come into my head whether I will or no; and then go away the sooner for being put into words.’

University life changes with such rapidity, 6 that no matter how great a man may have been, it is inevitable that he should soon become little more than a tradition to those who succeed him. Few of the present Fellows of Trinity College can have even seen Dr Whewell; and though his outward appearance has been handed down to posterity by a picture in the Lodge, a bust in the Library, and a statue in the Chapel, neither canvas nor marble, no matter how skilfully they may be handled, can convey the impression which that king of men made upon his contemporaries. These portraits give a fairly just idea of his lofty stature, broad shoulders, and large limbs, but the features are inadequately rendered in all of them. The proportions are probably correct, but the expression has been lost. The artists have been so anxious to render the philosopher, that they have forgotten the man. His expression, except on very solemn occasions, was never so grave as they have made it. His bright blue eye had nearly always a merry twinkle in it, and his broad mouth was ever ready to break into a smile. His nature was essentially joyous; and he dearly loved a good joke, a funny story, or a merry party of friends, in which his laugh was always the loudest, and his pleasure the keenest. 7 Nor did he disdain the pleasures of the table; a good dinner, followed by a good bottle of port, was not without its charm for him, though it may be doubted whether he enjoyed these matters for their own sake so much as for the society they brought with them. He could not bear to be alone, and was not particular into what company he went, provided he could get good conversation, and plenty of it. He used to say that he liked to hear a dinner in ‘full cry’; and, if we may adopt his own simile without offence to the memory of one whom we love and revere, he was himself the leader of the pack. He could hardly be called a good talker; he was too fond of the sound of his own loud cheery voice, and engrossed the conversation too much. He would take up a subject started by somebody else, and handle it in a masterly fashion, as if he were in a lecture room, while the rest sat by and listened. He laid down the law, too, in a style that did not admit of reply. We remember an occasion when the conversation turned on Longfellow’s Golden Legend , then just published, and Whewell was asked to say what he thought of it. ‘I think it is a bad echo of a bad original, Goethe’s Faust ,’ thundered out the great man; after 8 which, of course, there was a dead silence. Again, he was no respecter of persons, nor was he too careful to observe the ordinary rules of politeness. If anybody said a silly thing, even if the person were a lady, and in her own house, he thought nothing of crushing her with ‘Madam, no one but a fool would have made that observation’; but his company was so delightful, his stores of information so varied and so vast, his readiness to communicate them so unusual, and his memory so retentive, that these eccentricities in ‘Rough Diamond,’ as a clever University jeu d’esprit called him, were readily forgiven. He was far too well aware of his own supremacy to be afraid of unbending; and years after he became Master of Trinity he has been seen to kneel down on the carpet to play with a Skye terrier. He was a special favourite with young people, especially with young ladies, from the heartiness with which he threw himself into their pursuits and pleasures, talked with them, romped with them, wrote verses and riddles and translated German poems for their amusement, and assisted approvingly at the musical parties which were the fashion when he was a young man. There were indeed several houses in Cambridge and its neighbourhood 9 in which we should have ventured to say that he was ‘a tame cat,’ had there been anything feline in that rugged and vehement nature.

Those who wish to draw for themselves a life-like portrait of Whewell in his best days must take into account the fact that his health was always excellent. There is a legend that as a boy he was delicate; but, if this were ever the case, which we doubt, he put it aside with other childish things. When he came to man’s estate no rebellious liver ever troubled his repose, or made him look upon life with a jaundiced eye. It was his habit to sit up late; but, notwithstanding, he appeared regularly at morning chapel, then at 7 a.m., fresh and radiant, and ready for the day’s work. This vigour of body enabled him to appreciate everything with a keenness which age could not dull, nor the most poignant grief extinguish, except for very brief intervals. He thoroughly appreciated ‘the mere joy of living’; and whatever was going forward attracted him so powerfully that he was never satisfied until he had found out all about it. He went everywhere: to public ceremonials and exhibitions; to new plays, new music, new pictures; to London 10 drawing-rooms and smart country houses; to quiet parsonages and canonical residences; to foreign cities and English cathedrals; always deriving the keenest enjoyment from what he saw, and delighting in new experiences because they were new. There was but one exception to the universality of his interests. When he was a resident Fellow of Trinity, it was the fashion for College Dons to dabble in politics, and more than one of his Trinity friends made their fortune by their Liberal opinions. He did not imitate their example. He always described himself as no politician. As a young man he seemed inclined to take a Liberal line, for he opposed a petition from the University against the Roman Catholic claims in 1821, and in the following year voted against ‘our dear, our Protestant Bankes’ for the same reason. But in those stormy days of the Reform Bill, when so many ancient friendships were destroyed, he took no decided line; and latterly he abstained from politics altogether. We do not mean that he shut his eyes to what was going forward in the world—far from it, but he seemed to consider that one Administration was as good as another, and provided no violent change was threatened, he left the 11 destinies of the Empire to take care of themselves. As he grew older, his mind became engrossed by thoughts of the suffering which even the most glorious achievements must of necessity entail. The events of the Indian Mutiny, for instance, were followed by him with the closest interest; but he was more frequently heard to deplore the severity dealt out to the natives than to admire the heroism of their victims.

Whewell’s natural good health was no doubt maintained by his love of open air exercise. No matter how busy he was, or how bad the weather, he rarely missed his daily ride. On most afternoons he might be seen on his grey horse ‘Twilight,’ usually with his inseparable friend Dr Worsley, either galloping across country, or joining quieter parties along the roads. He was never a good rider, but a very bold one, as will be seen from the following story, the accuracy of which we once tested by reference to Sebright, the veteran huntsman of the Fitzwilliam hounds. Whewell was staying with Viscount Milton, we believe in 1828. One morning his host said to him at breakfast, ‘We are all going out hunting; what would you like to do?’ He replied, ‘I have never been 12 out hunting, and I should like to go too.’ So he was mounted on a first-rate horse, well up to his weight, and told to keep close to the huntsman. Whewell did as he was bid, and followed him over everything. They had an unusually good run across a difficult country, in the course of which Sebright took an especially stout and high fence. Looking round to see what had become of the stranger, he found him at his side, safe and sound. ‘That, sir, was a rasper,’ he said. ‘I did not observe that it was anything more than ordinary,’ replied Whewell. So on they went, till at last his horse pulled up, quite exhausted, to Whewell’s great indignation, who exclaimed, ‘I thought a hunter never stopped.’

We are not presumptuous enough to suppose that we can add any new facts to those which have been already collected in the volumes before us; but we think that even after their publication there is room for a short essay, which shall bring into prominence certain points in Whewell’s academic career, and attempt to determine the value of what he did for science in general, and for his own College and University in particular. His life divides itself naturally into three periods of about equal 13 length, the first extending from his birth in 1794 to his appointment as assistant-tutor of Trinity College in 1818, the second from 1818 to his appointment as Master in 1841, and the third from 1841 to his death in 1866.

Whewell came up to Cambridge at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term, 1812. Those who are familiar with the exciting spectacle presented by the splendid intellectual activity of the Cambridge of to-day—accommodating itself with flexibility and readiness to requirements the most diverse, appointing new teachers in departments of study the most unusual and the most remote on the bare chance of their services being required, flinging open its doors to all comers, regardless of sex, creed, or nationality, and thronged with students whose numbers are increasing year by year, eager to take advantage of the instruction which their elders are equally eager to supply them with—will find it difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the totally different state of things which existed at that time. Were we asked to express its characteristic by a single word, we should answer, dulness. It must be remembered that communication in those days was slow; news did not arrive until it was stale; travelling, 14 especially for passengers, was expensive, so that, at least for the shorter vacations, many persons did not leave Cambridge at all; and some remained there during the whole year—we might say, in some cases, during their whole lives. For the same reasons strangers rarely visited the University. The same people dined and supped together day after day, with no novelty to diversify their lives or their conversation. No wonder that they became narrow, prejudiced, eccentric, or that their habits were tainted with the grosser vices which there was no public opinion to repudiate. The undergraduates, most of whom came from the upper classes, were few. In the fifteen years between 1800 and 1815 the yearly average of those who matriculated did not exceed 205: less than one-fourth of those who now present themselves ^[2] . The only road to the Honour Degree was through the Mathematical Tripos. The amusements were as little varied as the studies. There was riding for those who could afford it; and a few boated and played cricket or tennis; but the majority contented themselves with a 15 walk. With the undergraduates, as with their seniors, the habit of hard drinking was unfortunately still prevalent. But the great changes through which the country passed between 1815 and 1834 produced a totally different state of things. The old order changed; slowly and almost imperceptibly at first, but still it changed. As the wealth of the country increased, a new class of students presented themselves for education; ideas began to circulate with rapidity; old forms of procedure and examination were given up; academic society was purified from its coarseness and vulgarity, and lost much of its exclusiveness; new studies were admitted upon an all but equal footing with the old ones; and, lastly, the new political principles asserted themselves by gradually sweeping away, one after another, all restrictive enactments. This last change, however, was not consummated until 1871. The other changes with which what may be called modern Cambridge was inaugurated are thus enumerated with characteristic force by Professor Sedgwick in one of his ‘Letters to the Editor of the Leeds Mercury ,’ written in 1836, with which he demolished that infamous slanderer of the University, Mr R. M. Beverley:

16 ‘It is most strange that in a letter on the present state of Cambridge no notice should be taken of the noble institutions which have of late years risen up within it; of the glories of its Observatory; of the newly-chartered body, the Philosophical Society, organized among its resident members in the year 1819, and now known to the world of science by its “Transactions,” the records of many important original discoveries; of the new Collections in Natural History; of the magnificent new Press; of the new School and Museum of Comparative Anatomy; of the noble extension of the collegiate buildings, made at some inconvenience and much personal cost to the present Fellows, and entailing on them and their successors the weight of an enormous debt; of the general spirit of inquiry pervading the members of the academic body, young and old; of the eight or nine new courses of public lectures (established within the last twenty-five years) both on the applied sciences and the ancient languages; of the general activity of the professors, and of their correspondence with foreign establishments organized for objects like their own, whereby Cambridge is now, at least, an integral part of the vast republic of literature and science; of the crowded class at the lecture of Modern History [by Professor Smyth]; of the great knowledge of many of our younger members in modern languages; of the recent Professorship of Political Economy bestowed on a gentleman [Mr Pryme] who had been lecturing for years, and was a firm and known supporter of Liberal opinions.’

When Whewell came to the University these improvements had not been so much as thought of. He was himself to be the prime mover in bringing several of them about. It 17 must be remembered, however, while we confess to a special enthusiasm for our hero, that he did not stand alone as the champion of intellectual development in the University. Indeed it will become evident as we proceed that he was not naturally a reformer. He had so strong a respect for existing institutions that he hesitated long before he could bring himself to sanction any change, no matter how self-evident or how salutary. As a young man, however, he found himself one of a large body of enthusiastic workers, who, while they differed widely, almost fundamentally, on the methods to be employed, were all animated by the same spirit, and stimulated one another to fresh exertions in the common cause. It was one of the most remarkable characteristics of the period of which Professor Sedgwick has sketched the results, that it was hardly more distinguished for the changes produced than for the men who brought them about.

But to return to the special subject of our essay. Of Whewell’s boyhood, school days, and undergraduateship, few details have been preserved. His father was a master carpenter, residing at Lancaster, where William, the eldest of his seven children, was born in 1794. His 18 father is mentioned as a man of probity and intelligence; but his mother, whom he unfortunately lost when he was only eleven years old, appears to have been a woman of superior talents and considerable culture, who enriched the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of the weekly Lancaster Gazette with occasional contributions in verse. William was about to be apprenticed to his father, when his superior intelligence attracted the attention of Mr Rowley, curate of the parish and master of the grammar school. The father objected at first: ‘He knows more about parts of my business than I do,’ he said, ‘and has a special turn for it.’ However, after a week’s reflection, he yielded, mainly out of deference to Mr Rowley, who further offered to find the boy in books, and educate him free of expense. Of his school experiences, Professor Owen, who was one of his schoolfellows, has contributed some delightful reminiscences. After mentioning that he was a tall, ungainly youth, he adds:

‘The rate at which Whewell mastered both English grammar and Latin accidence was a marvel; and before the year was out he had moved upward into the class including my elder brother and a dozen boys of the same age. Then it was that the head-master, noting to them the ease with which Whewell mastered the exercises and 19 lessons, raised the tale and standard. Out of school I remember remonstrances in this fashion: “Now, Whewell, if you say more than twenty lines of Virgil to-day, we’ll wallop you.” But that was easier said than done. I have seen him, with his back to the churchyard wall, flooring first one, then another, of the “walloppers,” and at last public opinion in the school interposed. “Any two of you may take Whewell in a fair stand-up fight, but we won’t have any more at him at once.” After the fate of the first pair, a second was not found willing. My mother thought “it was extremely ungrateful in that boy Whewell to have discoloured both eyes of her eldest so shockingly.” But Mr Rowley said, “Boys will be boys,” and he always let them fight it fairly out.’

In after years Whewell spoke of the good training he had received in arithmetic, geometry, and mensuration from Mr Rowley; but it is believed that his recollections of his first school were not wholly agreeable; and probably he was not sorry when he was removed to the grammar school at Heversham, in Westmoreland. This took place in 1810. The reason for it was that he might compete for an exhibition of 50 l. per annum, at Trinity College, which he was so fortunate as to obtain. At his second school he paid great attention to classical studies, and practised versification in Greek and Latin.

In October 1812 he commenced residence at Trinity College as a sub-sizar. His first 20 University distinction was the Chancellor’s gold medal for English Verse, the subject being ‘Boadicea.’ In after years he was fond of expressing the theory that ‘a prize-poem should be a prize-poem’: by which he probably meant that the subject should be treated in a conventional fashion, with no eccentric innovations of style or metre. It must be admitted that his own work conformed exactly to this standard. The poem was welcomed with profound admiration in the family circle at home; but his old master took a different view of the question. Professor Owen relates that Mr Rowley called one day at his mother’s house, and began as follows:

‘“I’ve sad news for you, Mrs Owen, to-day. I’ve just had a letter from Cambridge; that boy Whewell has ruined himself, he’ll never get his Wranglership now!” “Why, good gracious, Mr Rowley, what has Whewell been doing?” “Why, he has gone and got the Chancellor’s gold medal for some trumpery poem, ‘Boadicea,’ or something of that kind, when he ought to have been sticking to his mathematics. I give him up now. Taking after his poor mother, I suppose.”’

The letters which he wrote home give us some pleasant glimpses of his College life, which he evidently thoroughly enjoyed. For the first time in his life he had access to a good library—that 21 of Trinity College—and he speaks of ‘an inconceivable desire to read all manner of books at once,’ adding that at that very moment there were two folios and six quartos of different works upon his table. The success which he afterwards achieved is a proof that he entered heartily into the studies of the place; and among his friends were men who were studious then, and afterwards became eminent. Among these we may mention Mr, afterwards Sir John, Herschel, Mr Richard Jones, Mr Julius Charles Hare, and Mr Charles Babbage. A correspondent of his, writing so late as 1841, recalls the ‘Sunday morning philosophical breakfasts,’ at which they used to meet in 1815; and there are indications in the letters of similar feasts of reason and flows of soul. It must, on the other hand, be admitted that a few indications of an opposite character may be produced. He admits, in a half-bantering, half-serious way, that he had laid himself open to the charge of idleness; and he describes the diversions of himself and his friends during the long vacation of 1815 as ‘dancing at country fairs, playing billiards, tuning beakers into musical glasses,’ and the like. It need be no matter of surprise that a young man of high spirits and strong 22 bodily frame, brought up in the seclusion of Lancashire, should have taken the fullest advantage of the first opportunity which presented itself of appreciating the lighter and brighter side of existence. This, however, was all. Whewell knew perfectly well where to stop. No scandal ever attached itself to his name; and he ‘wore the white flower of a blameless life’ through a period when the customs prevalent in the University were such as are more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

He proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1816, when he was second Wrangler and second Smith’s Prize-man. On both occasions he was beaten by a Mr Jacob, of Caius College, who was his junior by two years. It is a Cambridge tradition that Mr Jacob’s success was a surprise to everybody, for he had intentionally affected to be an idle man, and showed himself on most days riding out in hunting costume, the truth being that he kept his books at a farm-house, where he pursued his studies in secrecy and quiet. He was a young man of the greatest promise; and it was expected that he would achieve a conspicuous success at the Bar. But his lungs were affected, and he died of consumption at an early age. 23 As Mr Todhunter remarks, his fame rests mainly on the fact that he twice outstripped so formidable a competitor as the future Master of Trinity. Whewell mentions him as ‘a very pleasant as well as a very clever man,’ and adds, ‘I had as soon be beaten by him as by anybody else.’

The labours of reading for the degree over, Whewell had leisure to turn his studies in any direction whither his fancy led him. No doubt he fully appreciated the, to him, unusual position, for he tells his sister that few people could be ‘more tranquilly happy than your brother, in his green plaid dressing-gown, blue morocco slippers, and with a large book before him.’ The time had come, however, when he was to experience the first of the inevitable inconveniences of a College life. Two of his most intimate friends, Herschel and Jones, left Cambridge, and he bitterly deplores their loss. Indeed it probably needed all the attachment to the place, which he proclaims in the same letter, to prevent his following their example. He appears at one time to have thought seriously of going to the Bar. He began, however, to take pupils: an occupation which becomes a singularly absorbing one, especially 24 when the tutor takes the interest in them which apparently he did. One of those with whom he spent the summer of 1818, in Wales, Mr Kenelm Digby, afterwards author of the Broadstone of Honour , who admits that he was so idle that his tutor would take no remuneration from him, has recorded that—

‘I had reason to regard Whewell as one of the most generous, open-hearted, disinterested, and noble-minded men that I ever knew. I remember circumstances that called for the exercise of each of those rare qualities, when they were met in a way that would now seem incredible, so fast does the world seem moving away from all ancient standards of goodness and moral grandeur.’

This testimony is important, if only for comparison with the far different feelings with which his more official pupils regarded him in after years. In these occupations he spent the two years succeeding his degree; for the amount of special work done for the Fellowship Examination was probably not great. He was elected Fellow in October 1817; and in the summer of the following year was made one of the assistant-tutors. With this appointment the first part of his University career ends, and the second begins.

His connexion with the educational staff of Trinity College, first as assistant-tutor, then as 25 sole tutor, lasted for just twenty years. These were the most occupied of his busy life; and in justification of what we said at the outset of the multifarious nature of his occupations, we proceed to give a rapid chronological sketch of them. His career as an author began, in 1819, with an Elementary Treatise on Mechanics . It went through seven editions, in each of which, as Mr Todhunter says, ‘the subject was revolutionized rather than modified; and the preface to each expounded with characteristic energy the paramount merits of the last constitution framed.’ The value of the work was greatly impaired by these proceedings, for an author can hardly expect to retain the unwavering confidence of his readers while his own opinions are in constant fluctuation. In 1820 he was Moderator, and travelled abroad for the first time. In 1821 he was working at geology seriously, and took a geological tour in the Isle of Wight with Sedgwick, who had been made Woodwardian Professor three years before. Later in the year he explored the Lake Country, and was introduced to Mr Wordsworth. Their acquaintance subsequently ripened into a friendship, which appears in numerous letters, and notably in the dedication prefixed to the Elements 26 of Morality . A Treatise on Dynamics was published in 1823, which was treated in much the same fashion as its fellow on Mechanics . The summer vacation was spent in a visit to Paris for the first time, and an architectural tour in Normandy with Mr Kenelm Digby. In 1824 he took a prominent part in the resistance to the Heads of Colleges in their attempt to nominate to the Professorship of Mineralogy; and later in the year he went again to Cumberland with Sedgwick, ‘rambling about the country, and examining the strata’; visiting Southey and Wordsworth; and, in the intervals of geology, seeing cathedrals and churches. In 1825, as the chair of Mineralogy was about to be vacated by Professor Henslow, promoted to that of Botany, Whewell announced himself a candidate; and by way of preparation spent three months in Germany, studying crystallography at the feet of Professor Mohs, of Freiburg: a subject on which he had already made communications to the Royal Society and to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. This was his first introduction to Germany, in whose language and literature he thenceforward took the greatest interest. He even modified his way of writing English in accordance with 27 German custom, as is shown by the plentiful scattering of capitals through his sentences, and by a certain ponderosity of style which savours of German originals. The dissensions as to the mode of election to the Mineralogical chair caused it to remain vacant for three years; so that Whewell, about the choice of whom there never seems to have been any doubt, had no immediate opportunity of turning to account his newly-acquired knowledge. He therefore, with even more than characteristic energy, turned his attention to two most opposite subjects, Theology, and the Density of the Earth.

In the summer of 1826 he commenced a series of investigations on the latter subject at Dolcoath Mine, Cornwall, in conjunction with Mr Airy. The essential part of the process was to compare the time of vibration of a pendulum at the surface of the earth with the time of vibration of the same pendulum at a considerable depth below the surface. Unfortunately the experiments, which were renewed in 1828, failed to lead to any satisfactory result, partly through an error in the construction of the pendulum, partly through a singular fatality, by which, on both occasions, they were frustrated by a serious accident. The account he 28 gives of himself, and of the way in which the researches were regarded by the Cornishmen, is too amusing not to be quoted. It is contained in a letter to his friend Lady Malcolm, and is dated ‘Underground Chamber, Dolcoath Mine, Camborne, Cornwall, June 10, 1826:

‘I venture to suppose that you never had a correspondent who at the time of writing was situated as your present one is. I am at this moment sitting in a small cavern deep in the recesses of the earth, separated by 1,200 feet of rock from the surface on which you mortals tread. I am close to a wooden partition which has been fixed here by human hands, through which I ever and anon look, by means of two telescopes, into a larger cavern. That larger den has got various strange-looking machines, illumined here and there by unseen lamps, among which is visible a clock with a face most unlike common clocks, and a brass bar which swings to and fro with a small but never-ceasing motion. I am clad in the garb of a miner, which is probably more dirty and scanty than anything you may have happened to see in the way of dress. The stillness of this subterranean solitude is interrupted by the noise, most strange to its walls, of the ticking of my clock, and the chirping of seven watches. But besides these sounds it has noises of its own which my ear catches now and then. A huge iron vessel is every quarter of an hour let down through the rock by a chain above a thousand feet long, and in its descent and ascent dashes itself against the sides of the pit with a violence and a din like thunder; and at intervals, louder and deeper still, I hear the heavy burst of an explosion when gunpowder has been used to rend the rock, which seems to pervade every part of the earth like 29 the noise of a huge gong, and to shake the air within my prison. I have sat here for some hours, and shall sit five or six more, at the end of which time I shall climb up to the light of the sky in which you live, by about sixty ladders, which form the weary upward path from hence to your world. I ought not to omit, by way of completing the picturesque, that I have a barrel of porter close to my elbow, and a miner stretched on the granite at my feet, whose yawns at being kept here so many hours, watching my inscrutable proceedings, are most pathetic. This has been my situation and employment every day for some time, and will be so for some while longer, with the alternation of putting myself in a situation as much as possible similar, in a small hut on the surface of the earth. Is not this a curious way of spending one’s leisure time? I assure you I often think of Sir John’s favourite quotation from Leyden, “Slave of the dark and dirty mine! What vanity has brought thee here?” and sometimes doubt whether sunshine be not better than science.

‘If the object of my companion and myself had been to make a sensation, we must have been highly gratified by the impression which we have produced upon the good people in this country. There is no end to the number and oddity of their conjectures and stories about us. The most charitable of them take us to be fortune-tellers; but for the greater part we are suspected of more mischievous kinds of magic. A single loud, insulated, peal of thunder, which was heard the first Sunday after our arrival, was laid at our door; and a staff which we had occasion to plant at the top of the cliff, was reported to have the effect of sinking all unfortunate ships which sailed past.

‘I could tell you many more such histories; but I think this must be at least enough about myself, if I do not wish to make the quotation from Leyden particularly applicable.’

30 Whewell had been ordained priest on Trinity Sunday, 1826, and this circumstance had probably directed him to a more exact study of theology than he had previously attempted. The result was a course of four sermons before the University in February 1827. The subject of these, which have never been printed, may be described as the ‘Relation of Human to Divine Knowledge.’ They attracted considerable attention when delivered; and it was even suggested that the author ought to devote himself to theology as a profession, and try to obtain one of the Divinity Professorships; but the advice was not taken. A theological tone may, however, be observed in most of his scientific works; he loved to point out analogies between scientific and moral truths, and to show that there was no real antagonism between science and revealed religion.

In 1828 the new Professor of Mineralogy entered upon his functions, and after his manner rushed into print with an Essay on Mineralogical Classification and Nomenclature , in which there is much novelty of definition and arrangement. He was conscious that he had been somewhat precipitate; for he writes to his friend, Mr Jones, who was trying to make 31 up his mind on certain problems of political economy, and declined to print until he had done so:

‘I avoid all your anxieties about authorship by playing for lower stakes of labour and reputation. While you work for years in the elaboration of slowly-growing ideas, I take the first buds of thought and make a nosegay of them without trying what patience and labour might do in ripening and perfecting them ^[3] .’

At the beginning of the year 1830 there appeared an anonymous publication entitled Architectural Notes on German Churches, with Remarks on the Origin of Gothic Architecture . The author need not have tried to conceal his name; in this, as in other similar attempts, his style betrayed his identity at once. The work went through three editions, in each of which it was characteristically altered and enlarged, so that what had appeared as an essay of 118 pages in 1830, was transformed into a work of 348 pages in 1842. Architecture had been from the first one of Whewell’s favourite studies. In a letter to his sister in 1818 he speaks of a visit to Lichfield and Chester for the purpose of studying their cathedrals; many of his subsequent tours were undertaken for similar objects; and his numerous note-books and sketch-books (for 32 he was no mean draughtsman) contain ample evidence of the pains he bestowed on perfecting himself in architectural details. The theory, or ‘ground-idea,’ as his favourite Germans would have called it, which he puts forward, is, that the pointed arch, even if it was really introduced from the East, which he evidently doubts, was improved and developed through the system of vaulting, which the Gothic builders learnt from the Romans. This theory has not been generally accepted; but the mere statement of it may have been of value, as the author suggests, ‘in the way of bringing into view relations and connexions which really exerted a powerful influence on the progress of architecture’; and the sketch of the differences between the classical and the Gothic styles is certainly extremely good. It has been sometimes suggested that the whole book was written in a spirit of rivalry to the Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages , by Professor Willis. A glance at the dates of publication is enough to refute this view; for the work of Professor Willis was published in 1835, the first edition of Dr Whewell’s in 1830. In the course of this summer he made an architectural tour with Mr Rickman in Devon 33 and Cornwall; and, as if in order that his occupations might be as sharply contrasted as possible, investigated also the geology of the neighbourhood of Bath.

In 1831 we find Whewell reviewing three remarkable books: Herschel’s Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy ; Lyell’s Principles of Geology , vol. i.; and Jones On the Distribution of Wealth . As Mr Todhunter remarks, scarcely any person but himself could have ventured on such a task. These reviews are not merely critical; they contain much of the author’s own speculations, much that went beyond the interest of the moment, and might be considered to possess a permanent value. Herschel was delighted with his own share. He writes to Whewell, thanking him for ‘the splendid review,’ and declaring that he ‘should have envied the author of any work, if a stranger, which could give occasion for such a review.’ Lyell wrote in much the same strain; and we are rather surprised that he did so; for his reviewer not only stubbornly refused to accept his theory of uniformity of action, in opposition to the cataclysmic views of the Huttonians, but treated the whole question in a spirit of good-humoured banter, in which 34 even Herschel thought that he had gone too far. The article on his friend Mr Jones’ work—which appeared in the British Critic —is rather an exposition of his views, which were original, than a criticism. It was Whewell’s first appearance in print on any question of political economy, except a short memoir in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, called a Mathematical Exposition of some Doctrines of Political Economy ; and therefore marks a period when he had added yet one more science to those which he had already mastered. In this year he gave much time to a controversy which was agitating the University on the question of the best plans to be adopted for a new Public Library; and contributed a bulky pamphlet to the literature of the subject, in opposition to his friend Mr Peacock. The whole question is a very interesting one; but our space will not allow us to do more than mention it, as another instance of the diversity of Whewell’s interests.

The next year (1832) was even a busier one than its predecessor; he was occupied in revising some of his mathematical text-books; in drawing up a Report on Mineralogy for the British Association, described as ‘an example 35 of the unrivalled power with which he mastered a subject with which his previous studies had had but little connexion’; and in writing one of the Bridgewater Treatises, a work which, with most men, would have been enough to occupy them fully during the whole of the three years which had elapsed since the President of the Royal Society had selected him as one of the eight writers who should carry out the intentions of the Earl of Bridgewater. The subject of his treatise is Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology . It is one of Whewell’s most thoughtful and justly celebrated works, on which he must have bestowed much time. During the intervals, however, of its composition, he had not only written the reviews we have mentioned, and others also, to which we can only allude, but had commenced those researches on the Tides, which are embodied in no fewer than fourteen memoirs in the Transactions of the Royal Society, and for which he afterwards received the Royal Medal. No wonder that even he began to feel overworked, and resigned the Professorship of Mineralogy early in the year. He writes to his friend Mr Jones, whom he was always 36 striving to inspire with some of his own restless activity of thought and composition:

‘I am plunging into term-work, hurried and distracted as usual; the only comfort is the daily perception of what I have gained by giving up the Professorship. If I can work myself free so as to have a little command of my own time, I think I shall be wiser in future than to mortgage it so far. Quiet reflexion is as necessary as fresh air, and I can scarcely get a breath of it.’

His friend must have smiled as he read this, for he probably knew what such resolutions were worth. Whewell might have said, with Lord Byron—

for, notwithstanding these promises and many others like them, we shall find that in future years he took upon himself a greater rather than a less amount of work, which he did not merely get through in a perfunctory fashion, but discharged with a thoroughness as rare as it is marvellous.

The Bridgewater Treatise appeared in 1833, a year in which he delivered an address to the British Association, at its meeting at Cambridge; contributed a paper On the Use of Definitions to the Philological Museum; and 37 increased his stock of architectural and geological knowledge by tours with Messrs Rickman, Sedgwick, and Airy. He was now generally recognized as the first authority on scientific language; and we find Professor Faraday deferring to him on the nomenclature of electricity. In 1834 he invented an anemometer , or instrument for measuring the force and direction of the wind; it was employed for some time at York, by Professor Phillips, but has since been superseded by more convenient contrivances.

The real meaning of his longing for leisure soon became manifest. In July 1834 he expounds to his friend Mr Jones the plan of the History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences , which he was prosecuting vigorously. This great work occupied him, almost to the exclusion of other matters, for the whole of 1835 and 1836. We say almost , because, even at this time, with his usual habit of taking up some new subject just before he had completed an extensive labour on an old one, he was beginning to study systematic morality, and in 1835 published a preface to Sir James Mackintosh’s Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy , a subject which he further 38 considered in 1837, when he preached before the University Four Sermons on the Foundation of Morals . In this year he succeeded Mr Lyell as President of the Geological Society, an office which must have been given to him rather in recognition of his general scientific attainments and the work he had done in the kindred science of mineralogy, than on account of any special publications on geology. He seems to have made an excellent President. Sir Charles Lyell ^[4] speaks of him with enthusiasm, and points out his sacrifices of time, not only in attending the meetings of the Society, but in supervising the details of its organization. The extra work which the office involved is thus described in a letter to his sister, dated November 18, 1837:

‘My old complaint of being overwhelmed with business, especially at this time of year, is at present, I think, rather more severe than ever. For, besides all my usual employments, I have to go to London two days every fortnight as President of the Geological Society, and am printing a book which I have not yet written, so that I am obliged often to run as fast as I can to avoid the printers riding over me, so close are they at my heels. I am, in addition 39 to all this, preaching a course of sermons before the University; but this last employment, though it takes time and thought, rather sobers and harmonizes my other occupations than adds anything to my distraction.’

In this same year (1837) the History of the Inductive Sciences was published, to be followed in less than three years by the Philosophy of the same. This encyclopædic publication—for the two books must be considered together—marks the conclusion of that part of his life which had been devoted, in the main, to pure science; and it gives the reason for his having thrown himself into occupations so diverse. It was not his habit to write on that which he had not completely mastered; and he therefore thought, wrote, and published on most of the separate sciences while tracing their history and developing their philosophy.

In this rapid sketch we have not been able to do more than indicate the principal works which Whewell had had in hand. It must not be forgotten that at the same time he was engaged in a large and ever-increasing correspondence; writing letters—which, as he used to say himself, ought to be ‘postworthy’—not merely to scientific men, as we know from Mr Todhunter’s book, but—as we now know from 40 Mrs Stair Douglas—to his sisters and other ladies, on all sorts of subjects which he thought would interest them. Then he was a wide reader, as is proved by notes he made on the books which he had read from 1817 to 1830: ‘books in almost all the languages of Europe; histories of all countries, ancient or modern; treatises on all sciences, moral and physical. Among the notes is an epitome of Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft , a work which exercised a marked influence on all his speculations in mental philosophy.’ Whatever he read, he read thoroughly. Mr Todhunter illustrates this by a story given on the authority of one of his oldest friends. He was found reading Henry Taylor’s Philip van Artevelde , which then had just appeared. Not content with the poem alone, however, he had Froissart by his side, and was carefully comparing the modern drama with the ancient chronicle. Lastly—and we put the subject we are now about to mention last, not because it was least, but because it was, or ought to have been, the most important of all his occupations—he held the office of tutor of one of the three sides , as they were called, into which Trinity College was then divided, first alone, and next in 41 conjunction with Mr Perry, from 1823 to 1838.

At that time the College was far smaller than it is at present, and a tutor was able, if he chose, to see much more of his pupils, to form some appreciation of their tastes and capacities, and personally to direct their studies. A man who combines the varied qualities which a thoroughly good tutor ought to possess is not readily found. It is a question of natural fitness rather than of training. In the first place, he must be content to forego all other occupations, and to be at the beck and call of his pupils and their parents whenever they may choose to come to him. Secondly, he must never forget that the dull, the idle, and the vicious demand even more care and time than the clever and the industrious. It may seem almost superfluous to mention that nothing which concerns his pupils must be beneath his notice. Petty details which concern their daily life, their rooms, their bills, their domestic relations, their amusements, have all to be referred to the tutor; and the most trivial of these may not seldom be of the greatest importance in giving occasion for exercising influence or administering advice. We are sorry to 42 have to admit that Whewell was hardly so successful as he ought to have been in discharging these arduous duties. The period of his tutorship was, as we have shown, precisely that during which he was most occupied with his private studies; he threw his energies into them, and disposed of his College work in a perfunctory fashion. His letters are full of such passages as: ‘I have got an infinitude of that trifling men call business on my hands’; ‘During the last term I have been almost too busy either to write or read. I took upon myself a number of employments which ate up almost every moment of the day’; and the like; and his delight at having transferred the financial part of the work to his colleague Mr Perry, in 1833, was unbounded. The result was inevitable; he could not give the requisite time to his pupils, and, in fact, hardly knew some of them by sight. A story used to be current about him which is so amusing that we think it will bear repeating. We do not vouch for its accuracy; but we think that it would hardly have passed current had it not been felt to be applicable. One day he gave his servant a list of names of certain of his pupils whom he wished to see at a wine-party 43 after Hall, a form of entertainment then much in fashion. Among the names was that of an undergraduate who had died some weeks before. ‘Mr Smith, sir; why he died last term, sir!’ objected the man. ‘You ought to tell me when my pupils die,’ replied the tutor sternly; and Whewell could be stern when he was vexed. Again, his natural roughness of manner was regarded by the undergraduates as indicating want of sympathy. They thought he wanted to get rid of them and their affairs as quickly as possible. Those who understood him better knew that he was really a warm-hearted friend; and we have seen that with his private pupils he had been exceedingly popular; but those who came only occasionally into contact with him regarded him with fear, not with affection. On the other hand, he was inflexibly just, whatever gossip or malevolence may have urged to the contrary. He had no favourites. No influence of any kind could make him swerve from the lofty standard of right which he had prescribed for himself.

We left Whewell completing the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences ; and for the future we 44 shall find him turning his attention exclusively—so far as he could be said to do anything exclusively—to Moral Philosophy. In 1838 he was elected to the Knightbridge Professorship, founded in 1677 by the Rev. John Knightbridge, who directed his Professor of ‘Moral Theology or Casuistical Divinity,’ as he termed it, to read five lectures in the Public Schools in every term, and, at the end of it, to deliver them, fairly written out, to the Vice-Chancellor. Various pains and penalties were enjoined against those who failed to perform these duties; but, notwithstanding, the office had remained a sinecure for more than a century; indeed we are doubtful whether it had ever been anything else. The suggestion that Whewell should become a candidate for it was made by his old friend, Dr Worsley, Master of Downing, who was Vice-Chancellor in that year, and, by virtue of his office, one of the electors. Whewell determined to inaugurate a new era, and at once commenced a course of lectures, which were regularly continued in subsequent years. We have seen that he had prepared himself for these pursuits by previous studies; and his letters show that he had made up his mind to devote himself to them for some years 45 to come. In 1845 he produced his Elements of Morality , wherein the subject is treated systematically; and subsequently he wrote, or edited, works devoted to special parts of it, as Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England ; Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis ; and the Platonic Dialogues for English Readers . The permanent influence which Grotius exercised upon his mind is marked by his munificent foundation of a Professorship and Scholarships in International Law, in connexion with two additional courts for Trinity College, one of which was built during his life-time, while for the other funds were provided by his Will. The most sober-minded of men may sometimes be a visionary; and the motto Paci sacrum , which Whewell placed on the western façade of his new buildings, would seem to prove that he seriously believed that his foundation would put an end to war, and inaugurate ‘a federation of the world.’

As time went on, and Whewell approached his fiftieth year, he began to feel that ‘College rooms are no home for declining years.’ His friends were leaving, or had left; he did not make new ones; and he was beginning to lead a life of loneliness which was very oppressive 46 to him. In 1840 he thought seriously of taking a College living, but his friend Mr Hare dissuaded him; and the letters that passed between them on this subject are among the most interesting in Mrs Stair Douglas’ volume. In 1841 he made up his mind to settle in Cambridge as a married man, with his Professorship and his ethical studies as an employment. The lady of his choice was Miss Cordelia Marshall. They were married on October 12, 1841, and on the very same day, Dr Wordsworth, Master of Trinity, wrote to him at Coniston, where he was spending his honeymoon, announcing his intention of resigning, ‘in the earnest desire , hope , and trust , that you may be, and will be, my successor.’ The news, which seems to have been quite unexpected, spread rapidly among the small circle of Whewell’s intimate friends; and succeeding posts brought letters from Dr Worsley and others, urging him ‘not to linger in his hymeneal Elysium,’ but to go up to London at once, and solicit the office from the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel. Dr Whewell describes himself as ‘vehemently disturbed’; most probably he was unwilling to comply with what seems to us to have been extraordinary advice. He 47 did comply, however, and went to London, where he found a letter from Sir Robert, offering him the Mastership. It is pleasant to be able to record that the offer was made spontaneously, before any solicitations had reached the Minister. Whewell accepted it on October 18; had an interview with Sir Robert on the 19th; returned to Coniston by the night mail; and on the 23rd (according to Mr Todhunter) had sufficiently recovered from his excitement to sit down to compose the first lecture of a new course on Moral Philosophy.

The appointment was felt to be a good one, though it must be admitted that there were dissentient voices. It was notorious that Dr Wordsworth had resigned soon after the fall of Lord Melbourne’s administration, in order to prevent the election of either Dean Peacock or Professor Sedgwick, both of whom were very popular with the Fellows. The feeling in College, therefore, was rather against the new Master than with him. Nor was he personally popular. We now know, from the letters which, in reply to congratulations, he wrote to Lord Lyttelton, Bishop Thirlwall, Mr Hare, and others, how diffident he was of his fitness for the office, and how anxious to discharge its 48 high duties becomingly. Mr Hare had evidently been giving advice with some freedom, as was his wont, for Whewell replies:

‘I perceive and feel the value of the advice you give me, and I have no wish, I think, either to deny or to defend the failings you point out. In a person holding so eminent a station as mine will be, everything impatient and overbearing is of course quite out of place; and though it may cost me some effort, my conviction of this truth is so strong that I think it cannot easily lose its hold. As to my love of disputation, I do not deny that it has been a great amusement to me; but I find it to be so little of an amusement to others that I should have to lay down my logical cudgels for the sake of good manners alone.’

The writer of these sentences was far too straightforward not to have meant every word that he wrote; and we feel sure that he tried to carry out his good intentions. We are compelled, however, to admit that he failed. He was impatient and he was overbearing; or he was thought to be so, which, so far as his success as a Master went, came to the same thing. He had lived so long as a bachelor among bachelors—giving and receiving thrusts in argument, like a pugilist in a fair fight—that he had become somewhat pachydermatous. It is probable, too, that he was quite ignorant of the weight of his own blows. He forgot those he received, and expected his antagonist to have 49 an equally short memory. Again, the high view which he took of his position as Master laid him open to the charge of arrogance. We believe the true explanation to be that he was too conscientious, if such a phrase be admissible; too inflexible in exacting from others the same strict obedience to College rules which he imposed upon himself. There are two ways, however, of doing most things; and he was unlucky in nearly always choosing the wrong one. For instance, his hospitality was boundless; whenever strangers came to Cambridge, they were entertained at Trinity Lodge; and, besides, there were weekly parties at which the residents were received. The rooms are spacious, and the welcome was intended to be a warm one; but the parties were not successful. Even at those social gatherings he never forgot that he was Master; compelling all his guests to come in their gowns, and those who came only after dinner to wear them during the entire evening. Then an idea became current that no undergraduate might sit down. So far as this notion was not wholly erroneous, it was based on the evident fact that the great drawing-room, large as it is, could not contain more than a very limited number of guests, supposing them 50 all to sit; and that the undergraduates were obviously those who ought to stand. A strong feeling against anybody, however, resembles a popular panic; argument is powerless against it; and the victim of it must be content to wait until his persecutors are weary with fault-finding. In Dr Whewell’s case it seemed to matter very little what he did, or what he left undone; he was sure to give offence. The inscription commemorating himself on the restored oriel window of the Lodge ^[5] ; the motto, Lampada tradam , which he adopted for his arms; his differences with Her Majesty’s judges about their entertainment at the Lodge; his attempts to stop the disorderly interruptions of undergraduates in the Senate House; and a hundred other similar matters, were all made occasions for unfavourable comment both in and out of College. The 51 comic literature of the day not unfrequently alluded to him as the type of the College Don and the University Snob; and in 1847, when he actively promoted the election of the Prince Consort as Chancellor, a letter in the Times newspaper, signed ‘Junius,’ informed Prince Albert that he had been made ‘the victim chiefly of one man of notoriously turbulent character and habits. Ask how HE is received by the University whenever he appears,’ &c.; and a second letter, signed ‘Anti-Junius,’ affecting to reply to these aspersions, described in ironical language, with infinite humour, ‘the retiring modesty, the unfeigned humility, the genuine courtesy’ of the ‘honoured and beloved Whewell ^[6] .’ We are happy to be able to say that he outlived much of this obloquy; his temper grew gradually softer—a change due partly to age, partly to the genial influence of both his wives; and before the end came he had achieved respect, if not popularity. The notion that he was arrogant and self-asserting may still be traced in the epigrams to which the essay on The Plurality of Worlds gave occasion. Sir Francis Doyle wrote:

Even better than this was the remark that ‘Whewell thinks himself a fraction of the universe, and wishes to make the denominator as small as possible.’ These, however, were harmless sallies, at which he was probably as much amused as any one.

No one who knew Whewell well can avoid admitting, as we have done, that there was much in his manner and conduct that might with advantage have been different. But what we wish to maintain is that these defects were not essential to his character: that they arose either from a too precise adherence to views that were in themselves good and noble, or from a certain vehemence and impulsiveness that swept him away in spite of himself, and landed him in difficulties over which he had to repent at leisure. And in this place let us draw attention to one of his most pleasing traits—his generosity. We do not merely refer to the numerous cases of distress which he alleviated, delicately and secretly, but to the magnanimity of temperament with which he treated those from whom he 53 had differed, or whose conduct he had condemned. He had no false notions of dignity. If he felt that he had said what he had better have left unsaid, or overstepped the proper limits of argument, he would sooth the bruised and battered victims of his sledgehammer with some such words as these: ‘I am afraid that I was hasty the other day in what I said to you. I am very sorry.’ He never bore a grudge, or betrayed remembrance of a fault, or repeated a word of scandal. There was nothing small or underhand about him. He would oppose a measure of which he disapproved, fairly and openly, by all legitimate expedients; but, when beaten, he cordially accepted the situation, and never alluded to the subject again.

His conduct at the contested election for a University Representative in 1856 affords a good illustration of what we have here advanced. The candidates were Mr Walpole and Mr Denman; and it was decided, after conference with their rival committees, that the poll should extend over five days, on four of which votes were to be taken in the Public Schools from half-past seven to half-past eight in the evening, in addition to the usual hours in the Senate House, namely, from ten to four. The proceedings 54 excited an unusual interest among the undergraduates, who on the first morning occupied the galleries of the Senate House in force, and made such a noise that the University officers could not hear each others’ voices, and the business was transacted in dumb show. In consequence they represented to the Vice-Chancellor that they could not do their work unless he ‘took effectual means for the prevention of this inconvenience.’ Whewell hated nothing so much as insubordination, and had on former occasions addressed himself to the repression of this particular form of it. It is therefore probable that he was not indisposed to take the only step that, under the circumstances, seemed likely to be effectual, namely, to exclude the undergraduates from the Senate House for the rest of the days of polling. On the second and third days peace reigned within the building, but, when the Vice-Chancellor appeared outside, he was confronted by a howling mob, through which he had to make his way as best he could. He was advised to go by the back way; but, with characteristic pluck, he rejected this counsel, and went out and came in by the front gate of his College. A few Masters of Arts acted as a body-guard; 55 but further protection was thought necessary, and on the third afternoon the University beheld the extraordinary spectacle of the Vice-Chancellor proceeding along Trinity Street with a prize-fighter on each side of him. On the evening of that day Mr Denman withdrew from the contest, a step which probably averted a serious riot. When the excitement had subsided a little Whewell drew up a printed statement, which, though marked Private , is in fact an address to the undergraduate members of the University. He points out the necessity for acting as he had done, both as regards the business in hand and because it was his duty to enforce proper behaviour in a public place as a part of education. He concludes with the following passage:

‘I the more confidently believe that the majority of the Undergraduates have a due self-respect, and a due respect for just authority temperately exercised, because I have ever found it so, both as Master of a College, and as Vice-Chancellor. One of the happiest recollections of my life is that of a great occasion in my former Vice-Chancellorship ^[7] , when I had need to ask for great orderliness and considerable self-denial on the part of the Undergraduates. This demand they responded to with a dignified and sweet-tempered obedience which endeared them to me then, as many good qualities which I have seen in successive 56 generations of students have endeared them to me since. And I will not easily give up my trust that now, as then, the better natures will control and refine the baser, and that it will be no longer necessary to put any constraint upon the admission of Undergraduates to the Galleries of the Senate-house.’

After the poll had been declared the Proctors brought him a list of the rioters. He said, ‘The election is over, they will not do it again,’ and threw the record into the fire. Not long afterwards he went, as was his frequent custom, to a concert of the University Musical Society. The undergraduates present rose and cheered him. Whewell was so much affected, that he burst into tears, and sat for some time with his face hidden in the folds of his gown.

Those who recollect Whewell, or even those who know him only by his portraits, will smile incredulously at an assertion we are about to make. But it is true, no matter how severely it may be criticised. Whewell was, in reality, an extremely humble-minded man, diffident of himself, and sure of his position only when he had the approval of his conscience for what he was doing. Then he went forward, regardless of what might bar his passage, and too often regardless also of those who chanced to differ from him. The few who were admitted to the 57 inner circle of his friendship alone knew that he really was what his enemies called him in sarcastic mockery, modest and retiring. If he appeared to be, as one virulent pamphlet said he was, an ‘imperious bully ^[8] ,’ the manner which justified such a designation was manner only, and due not to arrogance but to nervousness. He disliked praise, even from his best friends, if he thought that it was not exactly merited. For instance, when Archdeacon Hare spoke enthusiastically of his condemnation of ‘Utilitarian Ethics’ in the Sermons on the Foundation of Morals , and exclaimed: ‘May the mind which has compast the whole circle of physical science find a lasting home, and erect a still nobler edifice, in this higher region! May he be enabled to let his light shine before the students of our University, that they may see the truth he utters ^[9] ,’ Whewell requested that the passage might be altered in a new edition. He wrote (26 February, 1841):

‘You have mentioned me in a manner which I am obliged to say is so extremely erroneous that it distresses me. The character which you have given of me is as far as 58 possible from that which I deserve. You know, I think, that I am very ignorant in all the matters with which you are best acquainted, and the case is much the same in all others. I was always very ignorant, and am now more and more oppressed by the consciousness of being so. To know much about many things is what I never aspired at, and certainly have not succeeded in. If you had called me a persevering framer of systems, or had said that in architecture, as in some other matters, by trying to catch the principle of the system, I had sometimes been able to judge right of details, I should have recognised some likeness to myself; but what you have said only makes me ashamed. You will perhaps laugh at my earnestness about this matter, for I am in earnest; but consider how you would like praise which you felt to be the opposite of what you were, and not even like what you had tried to be ^[10] .’

It would be unbecoming to intrude domestic matters into an essay like the present, in which we have proposed to ourselves a different object; but we cannot wholly omit to draw attention to the painful, but deeply interesting, chapters in which Mrs Stair Douglas describes her uncle’s grief at the loss of his first wife in 1855, and of his second wife in 1865. His strong nature had recovered after a time from the first of these terrible shocks, under which he had wisely distracted his mind by the composition of his essay on The Plurality of Worlds , and by again accepting the Vice-Chancellorship. 59 The second, however, fell upon him with even greater severity. He was ten years older, and therefore less able to bear up against it. Lady Affleck died a little before midnight on Saturday, April 1, 1865; and her heart-broken husband, true to his theory that the chapel service ought to be regarded as family prayers, appeared in his place at the early service on Sunday morning, not fearing to commit to the sympathies of his College ‘the saddest of all sights, an old man’s bereavement, and a strong man’s tears ^[11] .’ We can still recall the look of intense sorrow on his face; a look which, though he tried to rouse himself, and pursue his usual avocations, never completely wore off. He survived her for rather less than a year, dying on March 6, 1866, from injuries received from a fall from his horse on February 24 previous. It was at first hoped that these, like those he had received on many similar occasions, for he used to say that he had measured the depth of every ditch in Cambridgeshire by falling into it, were not serious; but the brain had sustained an injury, and he gradually sank. 60 His last thoughts were for the College. On the very last morning he signified his wish that the windows of his bedroom might be opened wide, that he might see the sun shine on the Great Court, and he smiled as he was reminded that he used to say that the sky never looked so blue as when framed by its walls and turrets. Among the numerous tributes to his memory which then appeared, none we think are more appropriate than the following lines, the authorship of which we believe we are right in ascribing to the late Mr Tom Taylor ^[12] :

We have not thought it necessary to go through the events of Whewell’s Mastership in order, because progressive development of thought and occupation had by that time ended, and his efforts were chiefly directed towards establishing in the University the changes which his previous studies had led him to regard as necessary, and which, from the vantage-ground of that influential position, he was enabled to enforce. In his own College, so far as its education was concerned, he had little to do except to maintain the high standard which already existed. As tutor he had been successful in increasing the importance of the paper of questions in Philosophy in the Fellowship Examination; and subsequently he had introduced his Elements of Morality , his preface to Mackintosh’s Ethical Philosophy , and his edition of Butler’s Three Sermons into the examination at the end of the Michaelmas Term. None, however, of those fundamental measures which have achieved for Trinity College its present position of pre-eminence will 63 in the future be associated with his name, unless the abolition of the Westminster Scholars be thought sufficiently important to be classed in this category. On the contrary, it is remarkable what slight influence he exerted on the College while Master. He saw but little of any of the Fellows, and became intimate with none. In theory he was a despot, but in practice he deferred to the College officers; and, with the exception of certain domestic matters, such as granting leave to studious undergraduates to live in College during the Long Vacation, and the formation of a cricket-ground for the use of the College, to which he and Lady Affleck both contributed largely, he originated nothing. As regards the constitution of the College, he was strongly opposed to change. The so-called Reform of the Statutes in 1842 amounted to nothing more than the excision of certain obsolete usages, and the accommodation in some few other points of the written law to the usual practice of the College. The proposals for a more thorough reform brought forward by certain of the Fellows in 1856, when called together in accordance with the Act of Parliament passed in that year, met with his vehement disapproval. It was a 64 mental defect with him that he could never be brought to see that others had as much right as himself to hold special views. If he saw no defect in a statute or a practice, no one else had any right to see one. Here is a specimen of the language he used respecting the junior Fellows, all, it must be remembered, men of some distinction, whom he himself had had a hand in electing:

‘It is a very sad evening of my College life, to have the College pulled in pieces and ruined by a set of schoolboys. It is very nearly that kind of work. The Act of Parliament gives all our Fellows equal weight for certain purposes, and the younger part of them all vote the same way, and against the Seniors. Several of these juveniles are really boys, several others only Bachelors of Arts, so we have crazy work, as I think it ^[13] .’

As regards the University, as distinct from the College, he deserves recognition as having effected important educational changes. These range over the whole of his life, commencing with the novelties which he introduced, in conjunction with Herschel, Peacock, and Babbage, into the study of mathematics, so early as 1819. It was his constant endeavour, whatever office he held—whether Moderator, Examiner, or College lecturer—to keep the improvement 65 and development of the Mathematical Tripos constantly before the University. But, before we enumerate the special improvements or developments with which he may be credited, let us consider what was his leading idea. He held that every man who was worth educating at all, had within him various faculties, such as the mathematical, the philological, the critical, the poetical, and the like; and that the truly liberal education was that which would develop all of these, some more, some less, according to the individual nature. A devotion to ‘favourite and selected pursuits’ was a proof, according to him, of ‘effeminacy of mind.’ We are not sure that he would have been prepared to introduce one or more classical papers into the Mathematical Tripos, though he held that a mere mathematician was not an educated man; but he was emphatic in wishing to preserve the provisions by which classical men were obliged to pass certain mathematical examinations. He did not want ‘ much mathematics’ from them, he said, writing to Archdeacon Hare in 1842; ‘but a man who either cannot or will not understand Euclid, is a man whom we lose nothing by not keeping among us.’ He was no friend to examinations. He ‘repudiated emulation as 66 the sole spring of action in our education,’ but did not see his way to reducing it. It was probably this feeling that made him object to private tuition so strongly as he always did. In opposition to private tutors, he wished to increase attendance at Professors’ lectures; and succeeded in ‘connecting them with examinations,’ as he called it; in other words, in making attendance at them compulsory for precisely those men who were least capable of deriving benefit from the highest teaching which the University can give, namely, the candidates for the Ordinary Degree.

The first definite novelty in the way of public examinations which he promoted was the examination in Divinity called, when first established, the Voluntary Theological Examination. Whewell was a member of the Syndicate which recommended it, in March, 1842; and subsequently, he took a great interest in making it a success. As Vice-Chancellor, he brought it under the direct notice of the Bishops. Subsequently, in 1845, he advocated, in his essay Of a Liberal Education in General , the establishment of ‘a General Tripos including the Inductive Sciences, or those which it was thought right by the University 67 to group together for such a purpose.’ The basis of University education was still to be the Mathematical Tripos; but, after a student had been declared a Junior Optime, he was free to choose his future career. He might become a candidate either for the Classical Tripos, or for the suggested new Tripos, or for any other Tripos that the University should subsequently decide to establish. With these views it was natural that Whewell should be in favour of the establishment of a Moral Sciences Tripos (to include History and Law), and of a Natural Sciences Tripos; and in consequence we find him not only a member of the Syndicate which suggested them, but urging their acceptance upon the Senate (1848). Further, he offered two prizes of £15 each, so long as he was Professor, to be given annually to the two students who shewed the greatest proficiency in the former examination. It is worth noticing that he did not insist upon a candidate becoming a Junior Optime before presenting himself for either of these new Triposes, but was satisfied with the Ordinary Degree. He wished to encourage, by all reasonable facilities, the competition for Honours in them; but when the Senate (in 1849) threw open the 68 Classical Tripos to those who had obtained a first class in the examination for the Ordinary Degree, he deplored it as a retrograde step. Before many years, however, had passed, he had modified his views to such an extent that he could sign (in 1854) a Report which began by stating ‘that much advantage would result from extending to other main departments of study, generally comprehended under the name of Arts, the system which is at present established in the University with regard to Candidates for Honours in the Mathematical Tripos’; and proceeded to advocate the establishment of a Theological Tripos, and the concession, with reference to the Classical Tripos, the Moral Sciences Tripos, and the Natural Sciences Tripos, that in and after 1857 students who obtained Honours in them should be entitled to admission to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. We may therefore claim Whewell as one of the founders of the modern system of University education.

Whewell’s wish to develop Professorial tuition has been already alluded to. It may be doubted if he would have been so earnest on the subject had he foreseen the development of teaching by the University as opposed 69 to teaching by the colleges, which a large increase in the number of Professors was certain to bring about. So far back as 1828, he had brought before the University the want of proper lecture-rooms and museums; and, as a matter of course, he promoted the erection of the present museums in 1863. We are justified, therefore, in claiming for him no inconsiderable share in that development of natural science which is one of the glories of Cambridge; and when we see the crowds which throng the classes of the scientific professors, lecturers, and demonstrators, we often wish that he could have been spared a few years longer to enter into the fruit of his labours.

As regards the constitution of the University he earnestly deprecated the interference of a Commission. He held that ‘University reformers should endeavour to reform by efforts within the body, and not by calling in the stranger.’ He therefore worked very hard as a member of what was called the ‘Statutes Revision Syndicate,’ first appointed in 1849, and continued in subsequent years. His views on these important matters have been recorded by him in his work on a Liberal Education. 70 It is worth remarking that while he was in favour of so advanced a step as making College funds available for University purposes, he strenuously maintained the desirability of preserving that ancient body, the Caput . One of the most vexatious provisions of its constitution was that each member of it had an absolute veto on any grace to which he might object. As the body was selected, the whole legislative power of the University was practically vested in the Heads of Houses, who are not usually the persons best qualified to understand the feeling of the University. Dr Whewell has frequently recorded, in his correspondence, his vexation when graces proposed by himself were rejected by this body; and yet, though he knew how badly the constitution worked, his attachment to existing forms was so great, that he could not be persuaded to yield on any point except the mode of election.

We have spoken first of Whewell’s work in his College and University, because it was to them that he dedicated his life. We must now say a word or two on his literary and scientific attainments. He wrote an excellent English style, which reflects the personality of the writer to a more than usual extent. As might 71 be expected from his studies and tone of mind, he always wrote with clearness and good sense, though occasionally his periods are rough and unpolished, defects due to his habit of writing as fast as he could make the pen traverse the paper. But, just as it was not natural to him to be grave for long together, we find his most serious criticisms and pamphlets—nay, even his didactic works—lightened by good-humoured banter and humorous illustrations. On the other hand, when he was thoroughly serious and in earnest, his style rose to a dignified eloquence which has rarely been equalled, and never surpassed. For an illustration of our meaning we beg our readers to turn to the final chapters of the Plurality of Worlds . He was always fond of writing verse; and published more than one volume of poems and translations, of which the latter are by far the most meritorious. Nor must we forget his valiant efforts to get hexameters and elegiacs recognized as English metres. Example being better than precept, he began by printing a translation of Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea , in the metre of the original, which he at first circulated privately among his friends; but subsequently he discussed the subject in several papers, in 72 which he laid down the rules which he thought were required for successful composition of the metre. His main principle is to pay attention to accent, not to quantity, and to use trochees where the ancients would have used spondees; in other words, where according to the classical hexameter we should have two strong syllables, we are to have a strong syllable followed by a weak one. Here is a short specimen from the Isle of the Sirens :

Mrs Stair Douglas has acted wisely in reprinting the elegiacs written after the death of Mrs Whewell. We cannot believe that the metre will ever be popular; but in the case of this particular poem eccentricities of style will be forgiven for the sake of the dignified beauty of the thoughts. With the exception of In Memoriam , we know of no finer expression 73 of Christian sorrow and Christian hope. We will quote a few lines from the first division of the poem, in which the bereaved husband describes the happiness which his wife had brought to him:

It is painful to be obliged to record that Whewell’s executors found that the copyright of his works had no mercantile value. He perhaps formed a true estimate of his own powers when he said that all that he could 74 do was to ‘systematize portions of knowledge which the consent of opinions has brought into readiness for such a process ^[14] .’ His name will not be associated with any great discovery, or any original theory, if we except his memoir on Crystallography, which is the basis of the system since adopted; and his researches on the Tides, which have afforded a clear and satisfactory view of those of the Atlantic, while it is hardly his fault if those of the Pacific were not elucidated with equal clearness ^[15] . It too often happens that those who originally suggest theories are forgotten in the credit due to those who develop them; and we are afraid that this has been the fate of Whewell. Even as a mathematician he is not considered really great by those competent to form a judgment. He was too much wedded to the geometrical fashions of his younger days, and ‘had no taste for the more refined methods of modern analysis ^[16] .’ In science, as in other matters, his strong conservative bias stood in his way. He was constitutionally unable to accept a thorough-going 75 innovation. For instance, he withstood to the last Lyell’s uniformity, and Darwin’s evolution ^[17] . Much, therefore, of what he wrote will of necessity be soon forgotten; but we hope that some readers may be found for his Elements of Morality , and that his great work on the Inductive Sciences may hold its own. It is highly valued in Germany; and in England Mr John Stuart Mill, one of the most cold and severe of critics, who differed widely from Whewell in his scientific views, has declared that ‘without the aid derived from the facts and ideas contained in the History of the Inductive Sciences , the corresponding portion of his own System of Logic would probably not have been written.’

We have felt it our duty to point out these shortcomings; but it is a far more agreeable one to turn from them, and conclude our essay by indicating the lofty tone of religious enthusiasm which runs through all his works. As Dr Lightfoot pointed out in his funeral sermon, ‘the world of matter without, the world of thought 76 within, alike spoke to him of the Eternal Creator the Beneficent Father; and even his opponent, Sir David Brewster, who more strongly than all his other critics had denounced what he termed the paradox advanced in The Plurality of Worlds , that our earth may be ‘the oasis in the desert of the solar system,’ was generous enough to admit that posterity would forgive the author ‘on account of the noble sentiments, the lofty aspirations, and the suggestions, almost divine, which mark his closing chapter on the future of the universe.’

Until a few years ago biographies of Bishops were remarkable for that decent dullness which Sydney Smith has noted as a characteristic of modern sermons. The narrative reproduced, with painful fidelity, the oppressive 78 decorum and the conventional dignity; but kept out of sight the real human being which even in the Georgian period must have existed beneath official trappings. But in these matters, as in others, there is a fashion. The narratives which describe the lives of modern Bishops reflect the change that has come over the office. As now-a-days ‘a Bishop’s efficiency is measured, in common estimation, by his power of speech and motion ^[19] ,’ his biography, if he has overtopped his brethren in administration, or eloquence, or statesmanship, becomes an entertaining, and sometimes even a valuable, production. It reflects the ever-changing incidents of a bustling career; it is spiced with good stories; and it reveals, more or less indiscreetly, matters of high policy in Church and State, over which a veil has hitherto been drawn. In a word, it is the portrait of a real person, not of a lay figure: and, if the artist be worthy of his task, a portrait which faithfully reproduces the original. The life of Bishop Thirlwall could not have been treated in quite the same way as the imaginary biography we have just indicated; but, in good hands, it might have been made quite as entertaining, and much 79 more valuable. Dr Perowne has told us that his life was not eventful. It was not, in the ordinary sense of that word. He rarely quitted his peaceful retreat at Abergwili; but, paradoxical as it sounds, he was no recluse. He took part in spirit, if not in bodily presence, in all the important events, political, religious, and literary, of his time; and when he chose to break silence, in speech or pamphlet, no one could command a more undivided attention, or exercise a more powerful influence.

What manner of man was this? By what system of education had his mind been developed? What were his tastes, his pursuits, his daily life? To these questions, which are surely not unreasonable, the editors of the five volumes before us vouchsafe no adequate reply, for the meagre thread of narrative which connects together the Letters Literary and Theological , may be left out of consideration. Thirlwall’s life, as we understand the word, has yet to be written; and we fear that death has removed most of those who could perform the task in a manner worthy of the subject. For ourselves, all that we propose to do is to try to set forth his talents and his character, by the help of the materials before us, and of such 80 personal recollections as we have been able to gather together.

Connop Thirlwall was born February 11, 1797. His father, the Rev. Thomas Thirlwall, minister of Tavistock Chapel, Broad Court, Long Acre, Lecturer of S. Dunstan, Stepney, and chaplain to the celebrated Thomas Percy, Lord Bishop of Dromore, resided at Mile End. We can give no information about him except the above list of his preferments; and of Connop’s mother we only know that her husband describes her as ‘pious and virtuous,’ and anxious to ‘promote the temporal and eternal welfare’ of her children. She had the satisfaction of living long enough to see her son a bishop ^[20] . Connop must have been a fearfully precocious child. In 1809 the fond father published a small duodecimo volume entitled ‘ Primitiæ; or, Essays and Poems on Various Subjects, Religious, Moral, and Entertaining . By Connop Thirlwall, eleven years of age.’ The first of these essays is dated ‘June 30, 1804. Seven years old’; and in the preface the father says:

‘In the short sketch which I shall take of the young author, and his performance, I mean not to amuse the 81 reader with anecdotes of extraordinary precocity of genius; it is, however, but justice to him to state, that at a very early period he read English so well that he was taught Latin at three years of age, and at four read Greek with an ease and fluency which astonished all who heard him. From that time he has continued to improve himself in the knowledge of the Greek, Latin, French, and English languages. His talent for composition appeared at the age of seven, from an accidental circumstance. His mother, in my absence, desired his elder brother to write his thoughts upon a subject for his improvement, when the young author took it into his head to ask her permission to take the pen in hand too. His request was of course complied with, without the most remote idea he could write an intelligible sentence, when in a short time he composed that which is first printed, “On the Uncertainty of Life.” From that time he was encouraged to cultivate a talent of which he gave so flattering a promise, and generally on a Sunday chose a subject from Scripture. The following essays are selected from these lucubrations.’

We will quote a passage from one of these childish sermons, written when he was eight years old. The text selected is, ‘Behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years’ (Isaiah xiii. 6); and, after some commonplaces on the condition of Hezekiah, the author takes occasion from the day, January 1, 1806, to make the following reflections:

‘I shall now consider what resolutions we ought to form at the beginning of a new year. The intention of God in giving us life was that we might live a life of righteousness. 82 The same ever is His intention in preserving it. We ought, then, to live in righteousness, and obey the commandments of God. Do we not perceive that another year is come, that time is passing away quickly, and eternity is approaching? and shall we be all this while in a state of sin, without any recollection that the kingdom of heaven is nearer at hand? But we ought, in the beginning of a new year, to form a resolution to be more mindful of the great account we must give at the last day, and live accordingly: we ought to form a resolution to reform our lives, and walk in the ways of God’s righteousness; to abhor all the lusts of the flesh, and to live in temperance; and resolve no more to offend and provoke God with our sins, but repent of them. In the beginning of a new year we should reflect a little: although we are kept alive, yet many died in the course of last year; and this ought to make us watchful ^[21] .’

There is not much originality of thought in this; indeed, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that the paternal sermons, to which the author doubtless listened every Sunday, suggested the form, and possibly the matter, of these essays. What meaning could a child of eight attach to such expressions as ‘the lusts of the flesh,’ or ‘repentance,’ or ‘eternity’? Still, notwithstanding this evident imitation of others in the matter, the style has a remarkable individuality. Indeed, just as the portrait of the child which is prefixed to the volume recalls 83 forcibly the features of the veteran Bishop at seventy years of age, we fancy that we can detect in the style a foreshadowing of some of the qualities which rendered that of the man so remarkable. There is the same orderly arrangement of what he has to say, the same absence of rhetoric, the same logical deduction of the conclusion from the premisses. As we turn over the pages of the volume we are struck by the extent of reading which the allusions suggest. The best English authors, the most famous men of antiquity, are quoted as if the writer were familiar with them. The themes, too, are singularly varied. We find ‘An Eastern Tale,’ which, though redolent of Rasselas , is not devoid of originality, and has considerable power of description; an ‘Address’ delivered to the Worshipful Company of Drapers at their annual visit to Bancroft’s School, which is not more fulsome than such compositions usually are; and, lastly, half a dozen poems, which are by far the best things in the book. Let us take, almost at random, a few lines from the last: ‘Characters often Seen, but little Marked: a Satire.’ A young lady, called Clara, is anxious to break off a match, and lays her plot in the following fashion:

Here, again, there may not be much originality of thought, but the versification is excellent, and the whole piece of surprising merit, when we reflect that it was written by a child of eleven. Yet, whatever may be the worth of this and other pieces in the volume before us as a promise of future greatness, we cannot but pity the poor little fellow, stimulated by the inconsiderate vanity of his parents to a priggish affectation of teaching others when he ought to have been either learning himself or at play with his schoolfellows; and we can thoroughly sympathize with the Bishop’s feelings respecting the book. The lady to whom the Letters to a Friend were written had evidently asked him for a copy, and obtained the following answer:

‘I am sure that if you knew the point in my foot which gives me pain you would not select that to kick or tread 85 upon; and I am equally sure that if you had been aware of the intense loathing with which I think of the subject of your note you would not have recalled it to my mind. When Mrs P——, in the simplicity of her heart, and no doubt believing it to be an agreeable topic to me, told me at dinner on Thursday that she possessed the hated volume, it threw a shade over my enjoyment of the evening, and it was with a great effort that, after a pause, I could bring myself to resume the conversation. If I could buy up every copy for the flames, without risk of a reprint, I should hardly think any price too high. Let me entreat you never again to remind me of its existence ^[23] .’

In 1809 young Thirlwall was sent as a day-scholar to the Charterhouse, the choice of a school having very likely been determined by the fact that his father resided at the east end of London. The records of his school days are provokingly incomplete; nay, almost a blank. We should like to know whether he was ever a boy in the ordinary sense of the word; whether he played at games ^[24] , or got into mischief, or obtained the distinction of a flogging. As far as his studies were concerned, he was fortunate in going to the Charterhouse when that excellent scholar Dr Raine was 86 head master, and in being the contemporary of several boys who afterwards distinguished themselves, among whom may be specially mentioned his life-long friend, Julius Charles Hare, and George Grote, with whom, in after years, he was to be united in a common field of historical research. His chief friend, however, at this period was not one of his schoolfellows, but a young man named John Candler ^[25] , a Quaker, resident at Ipswich. Several of the letters addressed to him during the four years spent at Charterhouse have fortunately been preserved. When we remember that these were written between the ages of twelve and sixteen, they must be regarded as possessing extraordinary merit. They are studied and rather stilted compositions, evidently the result of much thought and labour, as was usual in days when postage cost eightpence; but they reveal a wonderfully wide extent of reading, and an interest in passing events not usual in so ardent a student as the writer evidently 87 had even then become. Young Candler was ‘a friend to liberty,’ and an admirer of Sir Francis Burdett. His correspondent criticizes with much severity the popular hero and the mob, who, ‘after having broken the ministerial windows and pelted the soldiers with brickbats, have gone quietly home and left him to his meditations upon Tower Hill.’ Most thoughtful boys are fond of laying down the lines of their future life in their letters to their schoolfellows; but how few there are who do not change their opinions utterly, and end by adopting some profession wholly different from that which at first attracted them! This was not the case with Thirlwall. We find him writing at twelve years old in terms which he would not have disdained at fifty. ‘I shall never be a bigot in politics,’ he says; ‘whither my reason does not guide me I will suffer myself to be led by the nose by no man ^[26] .’ ‘I would ask the advocates for confining learning to the breasts of the wealthy and the noble, in whose breasts are the seeds of sedition and discontent most easily sown? In that of the unenlightened or well-informed peasant? In that of a man incapable of judging either of 88 the disadvantages of his station or the means of ameliorating it?... These were long since my sentiments ^[27] .’ And, lastly, on the burning question of Parliamentary Reform: ‘Party prejudice must own it rather contradictory to reason and common sense that a population of one hundred persons should have two representatives, while four hundred thousand are without one. These are abuses which require speedy correction ^[28] .’ He had evidently been taken to see Cambridge, and was constantly looking forward to his residence there. His anticipations, however, were not wholly agreeable. At that time he did not care much for classics. He thought that they were not ‘objects of such infinite importance that the most valuable portion of man’s life, the time which he passes at school and at college, should be devoted to them.’ In after-life he said that he had been ‘injudiciously plied with Horace at the Charterhouse,’ and that, in consequence, ‘many years elapsed before I could enjoy the most charming of Latin poets ^[29] .’ He admits, however, that he is looking forward ‘with hope and pleasing anticipation to the time when I 89 shall immure myself’ at Cambridge; and he makes some really admirable reflections, most unusual at that period, on University distinctions and the use to be made of them:

‘There is one particular in which I hope to differ from many of those envied persons who have attained to the most distinguished academical honours. Several of these seem to have considered the years which they have spent at the University, not as the time of preparation for studies of a more severe and extended nature, but as the term of their labours, the completion of which is the signal for a life of indolence, dishonourable to themselves and unprofitable to mankind. Literature and science are thus degraded from their proper rank, as the most dignified occupations of a rational being, and are converted into instruments for procuring the gratification of our sensual appetites. This will not, I trust, be the conduct of your friend. Sorry indeed should I be to accept the highest honours of the University were I from that time destined to sink into an obscure and useless inactivity ^[30] .’

An English translation of the Pensées of Pascal had fallen in his way; and, in imitation of that great thinker, he had formed a resolution, of which he begs his friend to remind him in future years, to devote himself wholly to such studies (among others to the acquisition of a knowledge of Hebrew) as would fit him for the clerical profession. We shall see that 90 he never really faltered from these intentions; for, though he was at one time beset with doubts as to his fitness to perform the practical duties of a clergyman, he was from first to last a theologian, and only admitted other studies as ancillary to that central object.

Thirlwall left Charterhouse in December 1813, and proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October of the following year. How he spent the interval has not been recorded: possibly, like many other boys educated at a purely classical school, he was doing his best to acquire an adequate knowledge of mathematics, to his deficiency in which there are frequent references. He was so far successful in his efforts that he obtained the place of 22nd senior optime in 1818, when he proceeded in due course to his degree. Meanwhile, however great his distaste for the classics might have been at school, he had risen to high distinction in them; for he obtained the Craven University scholarship when only a freshman, as well as a Bell scholarship, and in the year of his degree the first Chancellor’s medal ^[31] . 91 In the autumn of the same year he was elected Fellow of his college. It is provoking to have to admit that our history of what may be termed the first part of his Cambridge career must begin and end here. Of the second portion, when he returned to his college and became assistant tutor, we shall have plenty to say hereafter; but of his undergraduate days no record has been preserved. He had the good fortune to know Trinity College when society there was exceptionally brilliant; among his contemporaries were Sedgwick, Whewell, the two Waddingtons, his old friend Hare, who gained a Fellowship in the same year as himself, and many others who contributed to make that period of University history a golden age. We can imagine him in their company ‘moulding high thought in colloquy serene,’ and taking part in anything which might develop the general culture of the place; but beyond the facts that he was secretary to the Union Society in 1817, when the ‘debate was interrupted by the entrance of the proctors, who laid on its members the commands of the Vice-Chancellor to disperse, and on no account to resume their 92 discussions ^[32] ,’ and that he had acquired a high reputation for eloquence as a speaker there ^[33] , we know nothing definite about him. He does not appear to have made any new friends; but as Julius Hare was in residence during the same period as he was, the two doubtless saw much of each other; and it is probably to him that Thirlwall owed the love of Wordsworth which may be detected in some of his letters, 93 his fondness for metaphysical speculation, and his wish to learn German. The only letters preserved are addressed to his old correspondent Mr Candler, and to his uncle Mr John Thirlwall, and they give us no information relevant to Cambridge. In writing to the latter he dwells on his fondness for ancient history, on his preference for that of Greece over that of Rome; he records the addition of the Italian and German languages to his stock of acquirements; and he describes with enthusiasm his yearning for foreign travel, which each year grew stronger:

‘I certainly was not made to sit at home in contented ignorance of the wonders of art and nature, nor can I believe that the restlessness of curiosity I feel was implanted in my disposition to be a source of uneasiness rather than of enjoyment. Under this conviction I peruse the authors of France and Italy, with the idea that the language I am now reading I may one day be compelled to speak, and that what is now a source of elegant and refined entertainment may be one day the medium through which I shall disclose my wants and obtain a supply of the necessaries of daily life. This is the most enchanting of my day dreams; it has been for some years past my inseparable companion. And, apt as are my inclinations to fluctuate, I cannot recollect this to have ever undergone the slightest abatement ^[34] .’

The letter from which we have selected the 94 above passage was written to his uncle in 1816; in another, written a few months later to his friend Mr Candler, he enters more fully into his difficulties and prospects. The earlier portion of the letter is well worth perusal for the insight it affords into the extent of his reading and the originality of his criticisms; but it is the concluding paragraph which is specially interesting to a biographer. We do not know to what influences the change was due, but it is evident that his mind was passing through a period of unrest; his old determinations had been, at least for the moment, uprooted, and he looked forward with uncertain eyes to an unknown future. ‘My disinclination to the Church,’ he says, ‘has grown from a motive into a reason.’ The Bar had evidently been suggested to him as the only alternative, and on that dismal prospect he dilates with unwonted bitterness. It would take him away from all the pursuits he loved most dearly, and put in their place ‘the routine of a barren and uninteresting occupation,’ in which not only would the best years of his life be wasted, but—and this is what he seems to have dreaded most—his loftier aspirations would be degraded, and, when he had become rich enough 95 to return to literature, he would feel no inclination to do so.

The Fellowship examination of 1818 having ended in Thirlwall’s election, he was free to go abroad, and at once started alone for Rome. At that time Niebuhr was Prussian Envoy there, and Bunsen his Secretary of Legation. Thirlwall was so fortunate as to bring with him a letter of introduction to Madame Bunsen, who had been a Miss Waddington, cousin to Professor Monk, and had married Bunsen about a year before Thirlwall’s visit. The following amusing letter from Madame Bunsen to her mother gives an interesting picture of Thirlwall in Rome:

‘ March 16, 1819. —Mr Hinds and Mr Thirlwall are here.... My mother has, I know, sometimes suspected that a man’s abilities are to be judged of in an inverse ratio to his Cambridge honours; but I believe that rule is really not without exception, for Mr Thirlwall is certainly no dunce, although, as I have been informed, he attained high honours at Cambridge at an earlier age than anybody except, I believe, Porson. In the course of their first interview Charles heard enough from him to induce him to believe that Mr Thirlwall had studied Greek and Hebrew in good earnest, not merely for prizes ; also, that he had read Mr Niebuhr’s Roman History proved him to possess no trifling knowledge of German; and, as he expressed a wish to improve himself in the language, Charles ventured to invite him to come to us on a Tuesday evening, whenever 96 he was not otherwise engaged, seeing that many Germans were in the habit of calling on that day. Mr Thirlwall has never missed any Tuesday evening since, except the moccoli night and one other when it rained dogs and cats. He comes at eight o’clock, and never stirs to go away till everybody else has wished good night, often at almost twelve o’clock. It is impossible for any one to behave more like a man of sense and a gentleman than he has always done—ready and eager to converse with anybody that is at leisure to speak to him, but never looking fidgety when by necessity left to himself; always seeming animated and attentive, whether listening to music, or trying to make out what people say in German, or looking at one of Goethe’s songs in the book, while it is sung. And so there are a great many reasons for our being very much pleased with Mr Thirlwall; yet I rather suspect him of being very cold, and very dry; and although he seeks, and seeks with general success, to understand everything, and in every possible way increase his stock of ideas, I doubt the possibility of his understanding anything that is to be felt rather than explained , and that cannot be reduced to a system. I was led to this result by some most extraordinary questions that he asked Charles about Faust (which he had borrowed of us, and which he greatly admired nevertheless, attempting a translation of one of my favourite passages, which, however, I had not pointed out to him as being such), and also by his great fondness for the poems of Wordsworth, two volumes of which he insisted on lending to Charles. These books he accompanied with a note, in which he laid great stress upon the necessity of reading the author’s prose essays on his own poems , in order to be enabled to relish the latter. Yet Mr Thirlwall speaks of Dante in a manner that would seem to prove a thorough taste for his poetry, as well as that he has really and truly studied it; for he said to me that he thought no person who had taken the trouble to understand 97 the whole of the Divina Commedia would doubt about preferring the “ Paradiso ” to the two preceding parts, an opinion in which I thoroughly agree ^[35] .

‘As Mr Thirlwall can speak French sufficiently well to make himself understood, and as he has something to say , Charles found it very practicable to make him and Professor Bekker acquainted, though Professor Bekker has usually the great defect of never speaking but when he is prompted by his own inclination, and of never being inclined to speak except to persons whom he has long known—that is, to whose faces and manners he has become accustomed, and whose understanding or character he respects or likes.... In conclusion, I must say about Mr Thirlwall, that I was prepossessed in his favour by his having made up in a marked manner to Charles, rather than to myself. I had no difficulty in getting on with him, but I had all the advances to make; and I can never think the worse of a young man, just fresh from college and unused to the society of women, for not being at his ease with them at first ^[36] .’

It is vexatious that Thirlwall’s biographers should have failed to discover—if indeed they tried to discover—any information about his Roman visit, to which he always looked back with delight, occasioned as much by the friends he had made there as by ‘the memorable scenes and objects’ he had visited ^[37] . So far as we know, the above letter is the only authority 98 extant. We should like to have heard whether Thirlwall had, or had not, any personal intercourse with Niebuhr, whom we have reason to believe he never met; and to what extent Bunsen influenced his future studies. We find it stated in Bunsen’s life that he determined Thirlwall’s wavering resolutions in favour of the clerical profession ^[38] . This, as we shall presently shew, is clearly a mistake; but, when we consider the strong theological bias of Bunsen’s own mind, it does seem probable that he would direct his attention to the modern school of German divinity. We suspect that Thirlwall had been already influenced in this direction by the example, if not by the direct precepts, of Herbert Marsh, then Lady Margaret’s Professor of Theology at Cambridge ^[39] , who had stirred up a great controversy by translating Michaelis’ Introduction to the New Testament , and by promoting a more free criticism of the Gospels than had hitherto been thought permissible. However this may be, it is certain that the friendship which began in Rome was one of the strongest and most 99 abiding influences which shaped Thirlwall’s character, and just half a century afterwards we find him referring to Bunsen as a sort of oracle in much the same language that Dr Arnold was fond of employing.

We must pass lightly and rapidly over the next seven years of Thirlwall’s life. He entered as a law student at Lincoln’s Inn in February 1820, and in 1827 returned to Cambridge. In the intervening period he had given the law a fair trial; but the more he saw of it the less he liked it. It is painful to think of the weary hours spent over work of which he could say, four years after he had entered upon it, ‘It can never be anything but loathsome to me ^[40] ’; ‘my aversion to the law has not increased, as it scarcely could, from the first day of my initiation into its mysteries’; or to read his pathetic utterances to Bunsen, describing his wretchedness, and the delight he took in his brief excursions out of law into literature, consoling himself with the reflection that perhaps he gained in intensity of enjoyment what he lost in duration. With these feelings it would have been useless for him to persevere; but we 100 doubt if the time spent in legal work was so entirely thrown away as he imagined. It might be argued that much of his future eminence as a bishop was due to his legal training. As a friend has remarked, ‘he carried the temper, and perhaps the habit, of Equity into all his subsequent work’; and to the end of his life he found a special delight in tracking the course of the more prominent causes célèbres of the day, and expressing his judgment upon them ^[41] . Even in these years, however, law was not allowed to engross his whole time. From the beginning he had laid this down as a fixed principle. He spent his vacations in foreign travel, and every moment he could snatch from his enforced studies was devoted to a varied course of reading, of which the main outcome was a translation of Schleiermacher’s Critical Essay on the Gospel of S. Luke ^[42] , to which his friend Hare had introduced him. Why should Thirlwall have selected, as a specimen of the new school of German theology, a work which, at this distance of time, does not appear to be 101 specially distinguished for merit or originality ^[43] ? It is evident, from what he says in his Introduction , that he had a sincere admiration for the talents of Dr Schleiermacher, whom he describes as ‘this extraordinary writer,’ whose fate it has been ‘to open a new path in every field of literature he has entered, and to tread all alone.’ But the real motive for the selection is to be found, we think, in the opportunity it afforded him for studying the whole question of the origin and authorship of the synoptic Gospels, and, as the title page informs us, for dealing with the contributions to the literature of the subject which had appeared since Bishop Marsh’s Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of our three first Canonical Gospels , published in 1801. In this direct reference to Marsh’s work we find a confirmation of our theory that Thirlwall owed to him his position as a critical theologian, though we can hardly imagine a greater difference than that which must have existed in all other matters between 102 the passionate Toryism of the one and the serene Liberalism of the other.

Thirlwall’s gallant attempt to follow an uncongenial profession could have but one termination; and we can imagine his friends watching with some curiosity for the moment and the cause of the final rupture. The moment was probably determined by the prosaic consideration that his fellowship at Trinity College would terminate in October 1828, unless he were in Priest’s Orders. We do not mean that he became a clergyman in order to secure a comfortable yearly income; but, that having decided in favour of the clerical profession, joined to those literary pursuits which his position as a fellow of Trinity College would allow, he took the necessary steps in good time. He returned to Cambridge in 1827, and, having been ordained deacon in the same year, and priest in the year following, at once undertook his full share of college and University work ^[44] . His friend Hare had set the example in 1822 by accepting a classical lectureship at Trinity College at the urgent 103 request of Mr Whewell, then lately appointed to one of the tutorships ^[45] , and Thirlwall had paid visits to him in the Long Vacations of 1824 and 1825. It is probable that at one of these visits the friends had planned their translation of Niebuhr’s History of Rome , for the first volume was far advanced in 1827, and was published early in 1828. The second did not appear until 1832. The publication of what Thirlwall rightly terms ‘a wonderful masterpiece of genius’ in an English dress marked an epoch in historical and classical literature in this country. Yet, notwithstanding its pre-eminent excellence, the work of the translators was bitterly attacked in various places, and particularly in a note appended to an article in the Quarterly Review , a criticism which would long ago have been forgotten if it had not called forth a reply which we have heard described as ‘Hare’s bark and Thirlwall’s bite ^[46] .’ The pamphlet consists of sixty-three pages, of 104 which sixty belong to the former, and a ‘Postscript,’ of little more than two, to the latter. It is probable that Hare’s elaborate vindication of his author, his brother translator, and himself, had but little effect on any one; Thirlwall’s indignant sarcasms—worthy of the best days of that controversial style in which he subsequently became a master—are still remembered and admired. We will quote a few sentences, of an application far wider than the criticism to which they originally referred. The reviewer had expressed pity that the translators should have wasted ‘such talents on the drudgery of translation.’ Thirlwall took exception to the phrase, and pointed out that their intellectual labour did not deserve to be so spoken of.

‘On the other hand, intellectual labour prompted and directed by no higher consideration than that of personal emolument appears to me to deserve an ignominious name; nor do I think such an employment the less illiberal, however great may be the abilities exerted, or the advantages purchased. But I conceive such labour to become still more degrading, when it is let out to serve the views and advocate the opinions of others. It sinks another step lower in my estimation, when, instead of being applied to communicate what is excellent and useful, it ministers to the purpose of excluding from circulation all such intellectual productions as have not been stampt with the seal of the party to which it is itself subservient. But when I see it 105 made the instrument of a religious, political, or literary proscription, forging or pointing calumny and slander to gratify the malice of hotter and weaker heads against all whom they hate and fear, I have now before me an instance of what I consider as the lowest and basest intellectual drudgery. I leave the application of these distinctions to the Quarterly Reviewer .’

In 1831 the two friends started the publication of the Philological Museum . It had a brief but glorious career. Only six numbers were published, but they contained ‘more solid additions to English literature and scholarship’ than had up to that time appeared in any journal. We are glad to see that seven of Thirlwall’s contributions have been republished, and that among them is the well-known essay On the Irony of Sophocles . Those who read these articles, and still more those who turn to the volumes from which they have been extracted, and look through the whole series of Thirlwall’s contributions, will be as much impressed by the writer’s erudition as by his critical insight; and, if a translation from the German should fall under their notice, they will not fail to remark the extraordinary skill with which he has turned that difficult language into sound English. Thirlwall would have smiled with polite incredulity had any one 106 told him that he was setting an example in those writings of his which would bear fruit in years to come; but we maintain that this is what really happened. More than one of his successors in the field of classics at Cambridge was directly stimulated by what he had done to undertake an equally wide course of reading; and it may be argued with much probability that the thoroughness and breadth of illustration with which classical subjects are treated by the lecturers in Trinity College is derived from his initiative.

In 1832, when Hare left Cambridge, his friend succeeded him as assistant tutor, to give classical lectures to the undergraduates on Whewell’s ‘side.’ For a time all went well. His lectures were exceedingly popular with those capable of appreciating them, as was shown by the large attendance not only of undergraduates, but of the best scholars in the college, men who had already taken their degrees, and who were working for the Fellowship Examination or for private improvement. They were remarkable for translations of singular excellence, and for an exhaustive treatment of the subject, as systematic as Hare’s had been desultory, as we learn from traditions 107 of them which still survive, and from two volumes of notes which now lie before us, taken down at a course on the Ethics of Aristotle. Moreover Thirlwall was personally popular. He was the least ‘donnish’ of the resident Fellows, and sought the society of undergraduates, inviting the men who attended his lectures to walk with him or to take wine at his rooms after Hall. He delighted in a good story, and used to throw himself back in his chair, his whole frame shaking with suppressed merriment, when anything struck his fancy as especially humorous. He had one habit which, had it been practised with less delicacy, might have marred his popularity. He was fond of securing an eager but inconsiderate talker, whom he drew out, by a series of subtle questions, for the amusement of the rest. So well known was this peculiarity among his older friends that after one of his parties a person who had not been present has been heard to inquire from another who had just left his rooms, ‘Who was fool to-day?’

In 1834 Thirlwall’s connection with the educational staff of the college was rudely severed by a controversy respecting the 108 admission of Dissenters to degrees. This debate has been long since forgotten in the University; but the influence which it exercised on Thirlwall’s future career, as well as its own intrinsic interest, point it out for particular notice. We had occasion in a recent article ^[47] to sketch the changes which took place in the University between 1815 and 1830. It will be remembered that the stormy period of our political history which is associated with the first Reform Bill fell between those dates. It was hardly to be expected that Cambridge should escape an influence by which the country was so profoundly affected. Indeed, it may be cited as a sign of the absorbing interest of that question, that it did affect the University very seriously; for there is ample evidence that in the previous century external events, no matter how important, had made but little impression. In 1746 we find the poet Gray lamenting that his fellow academicians were so indifferent to the march of the Pretender; and even the French Revolution excited but a languid enthusiasm, though Dr Milner, the 109 Vice-Chancellor, and his brother Heads, did their best to draw attention to it by expelling from the University Mr Frend, of Jesus College, for writing a pamphlet called Peace and Union , which advocated the principles of its leaders. With the Reform Bill of 1830, however, the case was very different. Sides were eagerly taken; discussions grew hot and angry; old friends became estranged; and, years afterwards, when children of the next generation asked questions of their parents about some one whose name was mentioned in their hearing, but with whom they were not personally acquainted, it was not unusual for them to be told: ‘That is Mr So-and-so; he used to be very intimate with us before the Reform Bill; but we never speak now.’

One of the grievances then discussed was the exclusion of Dissenters from participation in the advantages of the Universities. The propriety of imposing tests at matriculation, and on proceeding to degrees, especially to degrees in the faculties of law and physic, had been from time to time debated, both in the University and in the House of Commons. The ancient practice had, notwithstanding, been steadily maintained. On one occasion, in 1772, 110 the House had even gone so far as to decline, by a majority of 146, to receive a petition on the subject. In December 1833, however, Professor Pryme offered Graces to the Senate for appointing a Syndicate to consider the abolition or the modification of subscription on graduation. The ‘Caput ^[48] ’ rejected them. In February of the following year, Dr Cornwallis Hewett, Downing Professor of Medicine, offered a similar Grace to consider the subject with special reference to the faculty of medicine. This also was rejected by the ‘Caput’ on the veto of the Vice-Chancellor, Dr King, President of Queens’ College. These two rejections, following so closely upon each other, made it evident that the authorities of the University were not disposed so much as to consider the subject. It was therefore determined to extend the field of the controversy, and at once to apply to the Legislature. A meeting was held at Professor Hewett’s rooms in Downing 111 College, at which it was agreed to present an identical petition to both Houses of Parliament. The document began by stating the attachment of the petitioners to the Church of England, and to the University as connected therewith; and further, their belief ‘that no civil or ecclesiastical polity was ever so devised by the wisdom of man as not to require, from time to time, some modification from the change of external circumstances or the progress of opinion.’ They then suggested—this was the word employed—

‘“That no corporate body, like the University of Cambridge, can exist in a free country in honour and safety unless its benefits be communicated to all classes as widely as may be compatible with the Christian principles of its foundation”; and urged “the expediency of abrogating by legislative enactment every religious test exacted from members of the University before they proceed to degrees, whether of Bachelor, Master, or Doctor, in Arts, Law, or Physic.”’

This petition was signed by sixty-two resident members of the Senate. Among them were two Masters of Colleges, Dr Davy, of Caius, and Dr Lamb, of Corpus Christi; and nine Professors, Hewett, Lee, Cumming, Clark, Babbage, Sedgwick, Airy, Musgrave, Henslow; some of whom were either Conservatives, or 112 very moderate Liberals. It was presented to the House of Lords by Earl Grey, and to the House of Commons by Mr Spring-Rice, member for the town of Cambridge. As might have been expected, it was met, after an interval of about ten days, by a protest, signed by 110 residents; which was shortly followed by a counter-petition to Parliament, signed by 258 members of the Senate, mostly non-residents—a number which would no doubt have been greatly enlarged had there been more time for collecting signatures ^[49] . These expressions of opinion, however, which showed that even resident members of the University were not unanimous in desiring the proposed relief, while non-residents were probably strongly opposed to it, did not prevent the introduction of a Bill into the House of Commons to make it ‘lawful for all his Majesty’s subjects to enter and matriculate in the Universities of England, and to receive and enjoy all degrees in learning conferred therein (degrees in Divinity alone excepted), without being required to subscribe any articles of religion, or to make any declaration 113 of religious opinions respecting particular modes of faith and worship.’ The third reading of this Bill was carried by a majority of 89; but it was rejected in the House of Lords by a majority of 102.

It will easily be imagined that these proceedings were watched with the greatest interest at Cambridge. Public opinion had risen to fever-heat, and a plentiful crop of pamphlets was the result. It is difficult nowadays to read without a smile these somewhat hysterical productions, with their prophecies of untold evils to come, should the fatal measure suggested by the petitioners ever pass into the Statute-book. Among these pamphlets that which most concerns our present purpose was by Dr Thomas Turton, then Regius Professor of Divinity, and afterwards Lord Bishop of Ely, entitled, Thoughts on the Admission of Persons, without regard to their Religious Opinions, to certain Degrees in the Universities of England . Dr Turton was universally respected, and his pamphlet attracted great attention on that account, and also from the ability and ingenuity of the argument. He adopted the comparative method; and endeavoured to prove that evils would ensue 114 from the intercourse of young men who differed widely from one another in theological beliefs, by tracing the history of the Theological Seminary for Nonconformists, commenced by the celebrated Dr Doddridge, in 1729, at Northampton, and subsequently removed to Daventry in 1751. The gauntlet thus thrown down was taken up by Thirlwall, who lost but little time in addressing to him a Letter on the Admission of Dissenters to Academical Degrees . After stating briefly that what he was about to say would be said on his own responsibility, and that he did not come forward as ‘the organ or advocate’ of those who had taken the same side as himself, many of whom, he thought, would not agree with him, he proceeded to attack the analogy between Cambridge and Daventry which Dr Turton had attempted to establish. ‘Our colleges,’ he boldly asserted, ‘are not theological seminaries. We have no theological colleges, no theological tutors, no theological students.’ The statement was literally true; it might even be said to be as capable of demonstration as any simple mathematical proposition; but uttered in that way, in a controversial pamphlet, in support of a most unpopular cause, it must have sounded 115 like the blast of a hostile trumpet. This, however, was not all. Dr Turton had claimed for the Universities the same privilege which was enjoyed by Nonconformists, viz. the possession of colleges where ‘those principles of religion alone are taught which are in agreement with their own peculiar views.’ Thirlwall, therefore, proceeded to inquire whether the colleges, though not theological seminaries, might be held to be schools for religious instruction. This question again he answered in the negative; and his opponent having placed in the foremost rank among the privileges long exercised by the Universities (1) the relation of tutor to pupil, (2) the chapel services, (3) the college lectures, he proceeded to examine whether these could ‘properly be numbered among the aids to religion which this place furnishes.’ To him it appeared impossible, under any circumstances, to instil religion into men’s minds against their will. ‘We cannot even prescribe exercises, or propose rewards for it, without killing the thing we mean to foster.’ The value of the three aids above enumerated had been, he thought, greatly exaggerated; and compulsory attendance at chapel—‘the constant repetition of a heartless, 116 mechanical service’—he denounced as a positive evil.

‘My reason for thinking that our daily services might be omitted altogether, without any material detriment to religion, is simply that, as far as my means of observation extend, with an immense majority of our congregation it is not a religious service at all, and that to the remaining few it is the least impressive and edifying that can well be conceived ^[50] .’

He had no fault to find with the decorum of the service, but he criticised it as follows:

‘If this decorum were to be carried to the highest perfection, as it might easily be, if it should ever become a mode and a point of honour with the young men themselves, the thing itself would not rise one step in my estimation. I should still think, that the best which could be said of it would be, that at the end it leaves every one as it found him, and that the utmost religion could hope from it would be to suffer no incurable wounds.

‘As to any other purposes, foreign to those of religion, which may be answered by these services, I have here no concern with them. I know that it is sometimes said that the attendance at chapel is essential to discipline; but I have never been able to understand what kind of discipline is meant: whether it is a discipline of the body, or of the mind, or of the heart and affections. As to the first, I am very sensible of the advantage of early rising; but I think this end might be attained by a much less circuitous process; and I suppose that it will hardly be reckoned among the uses of our evening service, that it sometimes proves a seasonable interruption to intemperate gaiety. But I confess 117 that the word discipline, applied to this subject, conveys to my mind no notions which I would not wish to banish: it reminds me either of a military parade, or of the age when we were taught to be good at church ^[51] .’

As a remedy for the existing state of things he suggested a weekly service, ‘which should remind the young men of that to which they have, most of them, been accustomed at home.’ Such a service as this, he thought, ‘would afford the best opportunity of affording instruction of a really religious kind, which should apply itself to their situation and prospects, and address itself to their feelings.’

Next he took the college lectures in divinity, and proceeded to show, that, for the most part, they had no claim to be called theological. This part of his pamphlet excited even greater dissatisfaction than the other; and it must be admitted that it was by far the weakest part of his case. His statements under this head were presently examined, and completely refuted, by Mr Robert Wilson Evans, then a resident Fellow of Trinity, who published a detailed account of the lectures on the New Testament which he had given during the past year in his own college.

118 Up to this time Mr Whewell had taken no part in the controversy, because he had felt himself unable ‘fully to agree with either of the contending parties.’ But his position as tutor of the college whence the denunciation of the existing system had emanated—for the system of Trinity College was practically the system of all the other colleges in the University also—compelled him, though evidently with the greatest reluctance, to break silence. He argued that Thirlwall’s opinion, that we cannot prescribe exercises or propose rewards for religion without killing that which we fain would foster, strikes at the root of all connexion between religion and civil institutions, such as an Established Church and the like; that external influences have always been recognized by Christian communities, and must have been used even in the case of those services at home which his opponent approved. Chapel service is nothing more than family prayers. If, therefore, we teach our students that compulsion is destructive of all religion, shall we not make them doubt the validity of the religion which was instilled into their minds at home? The aim of such ordinances and safeguards is to throw a religious character over all the business 119 of life; to bind religious thought upon us by the strongest of all constraints—the constraint of habit. He admitted that all was not perfect in the chapel services as they existed; and lamented that the task of those who wished to make the undergraduates more devout would henceforward be harder than it had ever been before, through their consciousness of a want of unanimity among their instructors. A stated method is of use in religion as it is in other studies. What would become of men under the voluntary system? It is interesting to remark that in a subsequent pamphlet written a few months later—in September 1834—he spoke in favour of such a change in the Sunday service as Thirlwall had suggested. Towards the close of his Mastership this change was effected, and a sermon was introduced at the second of the two morning services on Sundays. We are not aware, however, that the movement which resulted in this alteration was regarded with any special favour by the Master ^[52] .

120 Thirlwall’s pamphlet is dated May 21, 1834; Whewell’s four days later. On the 26th the Master, Dr Wordsworth, wrote to Mr Thirlwall, calling upon him to resign the assistant-tutorship. The words used were:

‘I trust you will find no difficulty in resigning the appointment of assistant-tutor which I confided to you somewhat more than two years ago. Your continuing to retain it would, I am convinced, be very injurious to the good government, the reputation, and the prosperity of the college in general, to the interests of Mr Whewell in particular, and to the welfare of the young men, and of many others.’

In another passage he went further still:

‘With respect to the letter itself, I have read it with some attention, and, I am sorry to say, with extreme pain and regret. It appears to me of a character so out of harmony with the whole constitution and system of the college that I find some difficulty in understanding how a person with such sentiments can reconcile it to himself to continue a member of a society founded and conducted on principles from which he differs so widely.’

The Heads of Houses of that day regarded themselves as seated upon an academic Olympus, from whose serene heights they surveyed the common herd beneath them with a sort of contemptuous pity; and they not only exacted, 121 but were commonly successful in obtaining, the most precise obedience from their subjects. In Trinity College, however, at least since the days of Dr Bentley, the Master had usually been in the habit of consulting the Seniors before taking any important step; but, on this occasion, it is quite clear that the Seniors were not consulted. The Master probably thought that as he appointed the assistant-tutors he could also remove them. We believe, however, that even in those days the Master usually consulted the tutors before appointing their subordinates; and common courtesy would have suggested a similar course of action before dismissing a distinguished scholar ^[53] .

Thirlwall lost no time in obeying the 122 Master’s commands, and then issued a circular to the Fellows of the college, enclosing a copy of the Master’s letter, in order that they might learn what was ‘the power claimed by the Master over the persons engaged in the public instruction of the college, and the manner in which it has been exercised;’ and, secondly, that he might learn from them how far they agreed with the Master as to the propriety of his continuing a member of the Society. On this point he entreated each of them to favour him with a ‘private, explicit, and unreserved declaration’ of his opinions. It is needless to say that one and all desired to retain him among them; and the Master’s conduct was condemned by a large majority. It must not, however, be supposed that Thirlwall’s own conduct was held to be free from fault. He was much blamed for having resigned so hastily, without consulting any one, as it would appear, except Whewell and Perry. Moreover, many of the Fellows, among whom was Mr Hare, condemned the Master’s action, and censured Thirlwall’s rashness in publishing such sentiments while holding a responsible office, with almost equal severity. This feeling explains, as we imagine, the very slight resistance 123 made to an act which, under any other circumstances, would have caused an explosion. The Fellows felt that the victim had put himself in the wrong; and that, much as they regretted the necessity of submission, it was the only course to be taken. Thirlwall mentions in a letter to Professor Pryme that when he showed the Masters communication to Whewell, the latter ‘expressed great regret,’ but ‘did not intimate that there could be any doubt as to our connexion being at an end.’

It has often been said that Whewell did not exert himself as he might have done to avert the catastrophe. We are glad to know, as we now do most distinctly, from a letter written by him to Professor Sedgwick ^[54] , full of grief at what had happened, and of apprehension at its probable consequences, that he had done all in his power to stay the Master’s hand. He does not say, in so many words, that the Master had consulted him before he sent the letter; but he does say that ‘the Master’s request to him (Mr Thirlwall) to resign the tuition I entirely disapprove of, and expressed my opinion against it to the 124 Master as strongly as I could.’ If Thirlwall felt some resentment against Whewell at first—as we believe he did—the feeling soon died away, and towards the end of September he wrote him a long letter which ended with the following passage:

‘Besides the explanations which I desired, your letter has afforded me a still higher satisfaction, in shewing me that I am indebted to you for an obligation on which I shall always reflect with pleasure and gratitude—in the attempt which you made to avert the evil which my imprudence had drawn upon me. And as this is the strongest proof you could have given of the desire you felt to continue the relation in which we stood with one another, so it encourages me to hope that I may still find opportunities, before I leave this place, of co-operating with you, though in a different form, for the like ends. But at all events I shall never cease to retain that esteem and regard with which I now remain yours most truly,

125 In reviewing the whole controversy at a distance of more than half a century, with, we must admit, a strong bias in Thirlwall’s favour, it is impossible not to admit that he had made a mistake. In all questions of college management it is most important that the authorities should appear, at any rate, to be unanimous; and the words ‘my imprudence,’ which occur in the passage quoted above from his letter to Whewell, indicate that by that time he had begun to take the same view himself. It is easy to see how he had been drawn into an opposite course. He had never considered that he had anything to do with the chapel discipline; he had agreed to attend himself, but he did not consider that such attendance implied approval of the system. His own attendance, as we learn from a contemporary, was something more than formal; he was rarely absent, morning or evening; and his behaviour was remarkable for reverence and devotion. With him, religion had nothing to do with discipline; and it was infinitely shocking to his pure and thoughtful mind to defile 126 things heavenly with things earthly. The far too rigorous rules of attendance which were then in force had exasperated the undergraduates, and their behaviour, without being absolutely profane, was careless and irreverent. Talking was very prevalent, especially on surplice nights, when the service is choral. Thirlwall probably knew, from the friendly intercourse which he maintained with the younger members of the College, what their feelings were, and determined to do his best to get a system altered which produced such disastrous results. It must be remembered that at that time the Act of Uniformity prevented any shortening of the service. Whewell’s mind was a very different one. Without being a bigot, he had a profound respect for the existing order of things; shut his eyes to any defects it might have, even when they were pointed out to him; and regarded attempts to subvert it, or even to weaken it, as acts of profanity.

It will be readily conceived that these events rendered Cambridge no pleasant place of residence for Thirlwall, deprived of his occupation as a teacher and unsupported by any particularly strong force of liberal opinion in the University. Yet he had the courage to make the experiment 127 of continuing to live in college. He went abroad for the Long Vacation of 1834, and returned at the beginning of the October term. In a few weeks, however, the course of his life was changed by an unexpected event. Lord Melbourne’s first Ministry broke up, and just as Lord Chancellor Brougham was regretting that Sedgwick and Thirlwall were the only clergymen who had deserved well of the Liberal party for whom he had been unable to provide, came the news of the death of a gentleman who was both canon of Norwich and rector of Kirby Underdale, a valuable but very secluded living in Yorkshire. He at once offered the canonry to Sedgwick and the rectory to Thirlwall. Both offers were accepted, we believe, without hesitation; and both appointments, though evidently made without regard to the special fitness of the persons selected, were thoroughly successful. Sedgwick threw himself into the duties of a cathedral dignitary with characteristic vigour; and Thirlwall, whose only experience of parochial work had been at Over, in Cambridgeshire, a small village without a parsonage, of which he was vicar for a few months in 1829, became a zealous and popular parish priest. We are told that ‘the recollection still survives of 128 regular services with full and attentive congregations, including incomers from neighbouring villages; of the frequent visits to the village school; of the extempore prayers with his flock, of which the larger number were Dissenters; of the assiduous attentions to the sick and poor.’ And his old friend Hare, writing to Whewell in 1840, describes his work in his parish as ‘perfect,’ and holds up his example as ‘an encouragement’ to his correspondent to go and do likewise ^[56] .

Thirlwall did not revisit Cambridge until 1842, when he stayed in Trinity College for two days during the installation of the Duke of Northumberland as Chancellor. Such an occasion, however, does not give much opportunity for judging of the real state of the University. He paid a similar visit in 1847, when Prince Albert was installed. After this he did not see Cambridge again until the spring of 1869, when he stayed at Trinity Lodge with his old friend Dr Thompson, and on Whitsunday, May 16, preached before the University in Great S. Mary’s Church. He has himself recorded that he was never so much pleased with the place since he went 129 up as a freshman, and has given an amusing description of a leisurely stroll round the backs of the colleges and through part of the town ^[57] , which, he might have added, he insisted upon taking without a companion. Those who conversed with him on that occasion remember that he was much struck by the changes which had taken place in the University since he had left it; and that he observed with pleasure the increased numbers of the undergraduates, and the movement and activity which seemed to reign everywhere.

It was at Kirby Underdale that Thirlwall wrote the greater part of the work on which his reputation as a scholar and a man of letters will chiefly rest—his History of Greece —of which the first volume had been published before he finally left Cambridge ^[58] . It is, perhaps, fortunate for the world that he had bound himself to produce the volumes at regular intervals ^[59] , and that his editor, Dr Dionysius Lardner (whom he used to call ‘Dionysius 130 the Tyrant’), was not a man to grant delays; for, had the conditions been easier, parochial cares and new interests might have retarded the production of it indefinitely, or even stopped it altogether. From the first Thirlwall had applied himself to the work with strenuous and unremitting energy. At Cambridge he used to work all day until half-past three o’clock in the afternoon, when he might be seen leaving his rooms for a half-hour’s rapid walk before dinner in Hall, then served at four o’clock; and in the country he is said to have spent sixteen hours of the twenty-four in his study. We do not know what was the original design of the work, as part of the Cabinet Cyclopædia , but we have it on Thirlwall’s own authority that it was ‘much narrower than that which it actually reached ^[60] ,’ and before long it was further expanded into eight goodly octavos. The first of these was scarcely in the hands of the public when Grote’s History of Greece , published, like its predecessor, volume by volume, began to make its appearance. It was mentioned above that Grote and Thirlwall had been school-fellows; but, though they met not unfrequently in London afterwards, Thirlwall 131 knew so little of his friend’s intentions that he had been heard to say, ‘Grote is the man who ought to write the History of Greece.’ When it did appear, he at once welcomed it with enthusiasm. ‘High as my expectations were of it,’ he writes to Dr Schmitz, ‘it has very much surpassed them all, and affords an earnest of something which has never been done for the subject either in our own or any other literature ^[61] ’; and to Grote himself, when the publication of four volumes had enabled him to form a maturer judgment, he not only used stronger words of praise, but contrasted it with his own History in terms which for generosity and sincerity can never be surpassed. After alluding to ‘the great inferiority’ of his ‘own performance,’ he concludes as follows: ‘I may well be satisfied with that measure of temporary success and usefulness which has attended it, and can unfeignedly rejoice that it will, for all highest purposes, be so superseded ^[62] .’ It would be beside our present purpose to attempt a comparison of the relative merits of these two works, which, by a curious coincidence, had been elaborated simultaneously. 132 They have many points of resemblance. Both originated in a desire to apply to the history of Greece those principles of criticism which Niebuhr had applied so successfully to the history of Rome; both were intended to counteract the misrepresentations of Mitford; both were the result of long and careful preparation. Grote has a decided advantage in point of style; he writes vigorous, ‘newspaper’ English, as might be expected from a successful pamphleteer; while Thirlwall’s periods are laboured and somewhat wooden. Grote has infused animation into his work by being always a partisan. We do not mean that he wilfully misrepresents facts; he certainly does not; but he unconsciously finds ‘extenuating circumstances’ for those with whom he sympathizes, and condemns remorselessly those whose springs of action are alien to his own. Thirlwall, on the contrary, holds the judicial balance with a firm hand. In estimating character his serene intellect is never warped by partisanship, or by a wish to present old facts under a new face; while from his scholarship and critical power there is no appeal.

After a residence of five years at Kirby Underdale Thirlwall was unexpectedly made 133 Bishop of S. David’s by Lord Melbourne. Lord Houghton, an intimate friend of both the Bishop and the Minister, has recorded that Lord Melbourne was in the habit not merely of reading, but of severely judging and criticising the writings of every divine whom he thought of promoting. By some accident the translation of Schleiermacher’s essay had fallen in his way soon after it appeared; he had formed a high opinion of Thirlwall’s share in the work, and so far back as 1837 had done his best to send the author to Norwich instead of Dr Stanley. On this occasion the bishops whom the Minister consulted regarded the orthodoxy of the views sustained in the essay as questionable, and Thirlwall’s promotion was deferred. In 1840, however, Lord Melbourne got his way, and the bishopric of S. David’s was offered in due form to the Rector of Kirby Underdale. His first impulse was to refuse; but his friends persuaded him to go to London, and at least have an interview with Lord Melbourne. We do not vouch for the literal accuracy of the following scene, but it is too amusing not to be related. The time is the forenoon; the place, Lord Melbourne’s bedroom. He is 134 supposed to be in bed, surrounded by letters and newspapers. On Thirlwall’s entrance he delivers the following allocution:

‘Very glad to see you; sit down, sit down. Hope you are come to say you accept? I only wish you to understand that I don’t intend, if I know it, to make a heterodox bishop. I don’t like heterodox bishops. As men they may be very good anywhere else, but I think they have no business on the bench. I take great interest,’ he continued, ‘in theological questions, and I have read a good deal of those old fellows,’ pointing to a pile of folio editions of the Fathers. ‘They are excellent reading, and very amusing. Some time or other we must have a talk about them. I sent your edition of Schleiermacher to Lambeth, and asked the Primate (Howley) to tell me candidly what he thought of it; and look, here are his notes in the margin. Pretty copious, you see. He does not concur in all your opinions, but he says there is nothing heterodox in your book. Had he objected I would not have appointed you ^[63] .’

We should like to know how Thirlwall answered this strange defender of the faith; but tradition is silent on the point. Before leaving, however, the offer was accepted; and, with as little delay as possible, the Bishop removed to his diocese and entered upon his duties.

Thirlwall’s life as a bishop did not differ much, at least in its outward surroundings, 135 from his life as a parish clergyman. The palace at S. David’s having been allowed to fall to ruin, the Bishop is compelled to live at Abergwili, a small village near Carmarthen, distant nearly fifty miles from his cathedral. Most persons would have regretted the isolation of such a position, but to Thirlwall the enforced solitude of Abergwili was thoroughly congenial. There he could read, as he delighted to do, ‘literally from morning till night.’ Except in summer time he rarely quitted ‘Chaos,’ as he called his library, where books lined the walls and shared with papers and letters the tables, chairs, and floor. It is curious that a man with so orderly a mind should have had such disorderly habits. His letters are full of references to lost papers; and when offers to arrange his drawers were made he would answer regretfully, ‘I can find nothing in them now, but if they were set to rights for me I should certainly find nothing then.’ Books accompanied him to his meals; and when he went out for a walk or a drive he read steadily most of the time. He does not seem to have had any favourite authors; he read eagerly new books in all languages and on all subjects. We believe that he took no notes of what 136 he read; but his singularly powerful memory enabled him to seize all that he wanted, and, as may be seen from the collection of his writings which is now before us, to retain it until required for use. His charges, essays, and serious correspondence reveal his mastery of theological literature, both past and present; the charming Letters to a Friend give us very pleasant glimpses of the gentler side of his character. We find from them that he took a keen interest in the general literature of England and the Continent, whether in philosophy, science, history, biography, fiction, poetry; and, as he and his young correspondent exchanged their sentiments without restraint, we can enjoy to the full his criticisms, now serious, now playful, on authors and their productions, his generous appreciation of all that is noble in life or art. We must find room for one passage on George Eliot’s last story, written in 1872, when he was seventy-five years old.

‘I suppose you cannot have read Middlemarch , as you say nothing about it. It stands quite alone. As one only just moistens one’s lips with an exquisite liqueur to keep the taste as long as possible in one’s mouth, I never read more than a single chapter of Middlemarch in the evening, dreading to come to the last, when I must wait two months for a renewal of the pleasure. The depth of humour has certainly 137 never been surpassed in English literature. If there is ever a shade too much learning that is Lewes’s fault ^[64] .’

But there was another reason for his enjoyment of Abergwili. Student as he was, he delighted in the sights, the sounds, the air of the country. He never left it for his annual migration to London without regret, partly because it was so troublesome to move the mass of books without which he could not bear to leave home, but still more because the bustle and dust of London annoyed him; and in the midst of congenial society, and the enjoyment of music and pictures, his thoughts reverted with longing regret to his trees, his flowers, and his domestic pets. He had begun his social relations with dogs and cats in Yorkshire, and an amusing story is told of the way in which the preparations for his formal reception when he came home after accepting the bishopric of S. David’s, were completely disconcerted by the riotous welcome of his dogs, who jumped on his shoulders and excluded all human attentions ^[65] . At Abergwili he extended his affections to birds, and kept peacocks, pheasants, canaries, swans, and tame geese, which he regularly fed every morning, no matter what 138 the weather might be. They treated him with easy familiarity, for they used to seize his coattails with their beaks to show their welcome. His flowers had to yield to the tastes of his four-footed friends. One day his gardener complained, ‘What am I to do, my Lord? The hares have eaten your carnations.’ ‘Plant more carnations,’ was his only reply. Fine summer weather would draw him out of ‘Chaos’ into the field or garden; and one of his letters gives a delicious picture of his enjoyment of a certain June, sitting on the grass while the haymakers were at work in the field beyond, reading The Earthly Paradise , and watching the movements of ‘a dear horse’ who paced up and down with a ‘system of hay rakes behind him to toss it about and accelerate its maturity ^[66] .’

It must not, however, be supposed that Bishop Thirlwall lived the life of an indolent man of letters. No bishop ever performed the duties of his position more thoroughly, or with greater sacrifice of personal ease and comfort. His first care was to learn Welsh, and in a little more than a year he could read prayers and preach in that language. In his large and little-known diocese locomotion was not easy, and 139 accommodation was often hard to obtain. Yet he visited every part of it, personally inspected the condition of the schools and churches (deplorable enough in 1840), and regularly performed the duties of confirmation, preaching, and visitation. In the charge of 1866 he reviewed the improvements which had been accomplished up to that time, and could mention 183 churches to the restoration of which the Church Building Society had made grants, and more than thirty parishes in which either new or restored churches were in progress. Besides these, there were some which had been restored by private munificence; others, including the cathedral, by public subscription; many parsonages had been built, livings had been augmented, and education had been largely increased ^[67] . To all these excellent objects he had himself been a munificent contributor, and we believe that between the beginning and the end of his episcopate he had spent nearly £40,000 in charities of various kinds ^[68] . Yet with all these claims on the gratitude of the 140 clergy we are sorry to have to admit that he was not personally popular. It would have been more wonderful perhaps had he been so. The Welsh clergy forty years ago were a rough and uncultivated body of men, narrow-minded and prejudiced, and with habits hardly more civilized than those of the labourers around them. They were ill at ease with an English man of letters. He was to them an object of curiosity, possibly of dread. The new Bishop intimated his wish that the clergy should come to his house without restraint, and when there should be treated as gentlemen and equals. This was of itself an innovation. In his predecessor’s time when a clergyman called at Abergwili he entered by the back door, and if he stayed to dinner he took that meal in the housekeeper’s room with the upper servants. Thirlwall abolished these customs, and entertained the clergy at his own table. This was excellent in intention, but impossible in practice. The difference in tastes, feelings, manners, between the entertainer and the entertained made social intercourse equally disagreeable to both parties; and the Bishop felt obliged to substitute correspondence for visits, so far as he could, reserving personal intercourse for 141 the archdeacons, or those clergymen whose education enabled them to appreciate his friendship ^[69] . Again, the peculiar tone of his mind must be remembered. He was nothing if not critical; and, further, as one of his oldest friends once said in our hearing, ‘he was the most thoroughly veracious man I ever knew.’ He could not listen to a hasty, ill-considered, remark without taking it to pieces, and demonstrating, by successive questions, put in a slow, deliberate tone of voice, the fallacy of the separate parts of the proposition, and, by consequence, of the whole. Hence he was feared and respected rather than beloved; and those who ought to have been proud of having such a man among them wreaked their small spite against him by accusing him of being inhospitable, of walking out attended by a dog trained to know and bite a curate, and the like. These slanders, of 142 which we hope he was unconscious, he could not answer; those who attacked him in public he could and did crush with an accuracy of exposition, and a power of sarcasm, for which it would be hard to find a parallel. We need only refer to his answers to Sir Benjamin Hall, M.P. for Marylebone, on the general question of the condition of the churches in his diocese, appended to his charge for 1851, and on the special case of the Collegiate Church of Brecon, in two letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury; or to the Letter to the Rev. Rowland Williams , published in 1860. Mr Williams had published some sermons, entitled Rational Godliness , the supposed heterodoxy of which had alarmed the clergy of his diocese, seventy of whom had signed a memorial to the Bishop, praying him to take some notice of the book; in other words, to remove the author from the college at Lampeter, of which he was vice-principal. The Bishop had declined to interfere, and in his charge of 1857 had discussed the question at length, considering it, as was his manner, from all points of view, and, while he found much to blame, defending the author’s intentions, on the ground of the high opinion of his personal character which he himself 143 held. This, however, did not satisfy Mr Williams. We cannot help suspecting that he was longing for a martyr’s crown; and, indignant at not having obtained one, he addressed the Bishop at great length in what he called An Earnestly Respectful Letter on the Difficulty of bringing Theological Questions to an Issue . He described the charge as ‘a miracle of cleverness,’ but deplored its indefiniteness; he drew a picture of ‘a preacher in our wild mountains’ who came to seek counsel from his bishop and got only evasive answers—‘in all helps for our guidance Abergwili may equal Delphi in wisdom, but also in ambiguity ^[70] ’—and entreated the Bishop to declare plainly his own opinion on the questions raised. For once Bishop Thirlwall’s serenity was fairly ruffled. Stung by the ingratitude of a man whom he had steadily befriended, and whose aim was, as he thought, to draw him into admissions damaging to himself, he struck with all his might and main, and, as was said at the time, ‘you may hear every bone in his adversary’s body cracking.’ One specimen of the remarkable 144 power of his reply must suffice. On the comparison of himself to the Delphic oracle he remarked:

‘Even if I had laid claim to oracular wisdom I should have thought this complaint rather unreasonable; for the oracle at Delphi, though it pretended to divine infallibility, was used to wait for a question before it gave a response. But I wish above all things to be sure as to the person with whom I have to do. I remember to have read of one who went to the oracle at Delphi, “ ex industriâ factus ad imitationem stultitiæ ”; and I cannot help suspecting that I have before me one who has put on a similar disguise. The voice does not sound to me like that of a “mountain clergyman”; while I look at the roll I seem to recognize a very different and well-known hand. The “difficulties” are very unlike the expression of an embarrassment which has been really felt, but might have been invented in the hope of creating one. They are quite worthy of the mastery which you have attained in the art of putting questions, so as most effectually to prevent the possibility of an answer ^[71] .’

But if Thirlwall’s great merits were not fully appreciated in his own diocese, there was no lack of recognition of them in the Church at large. His seclusion at Abergwili largely increased his influence. It was known that he thought out questions for himself, without consulting his episcopal brethren or his friends, and without being influenced in any way, as even the most conscientious men must be, in 145 despite of themselves, by the opinions which they hear expressed in society. Hence his utterances came to be accepted as the decisions of a judge; of one who, standing on an eminence, could take ‘an oversight of the whole field of ecclesiastical events ^[72] ,’ and from that commanding position could distinguish what was of permanent importance from that which possessed a merely controversial interest as a vexed question of the day. We have spoken of the advantages which he derived from his secluded life; it must be admitted that it had also certain disadvantages. The freshness and originality of his opinions, the judicial tone of his independent decisions, gave them a permanent value; but his want of knowledge of the opinions of those from whom he could not wholly dissociate himself, and, we may add, his indifference to them, caused him to be not unfrequently misunderstood, and to be charged with holding views not far removed from heresy. ‘I will not call him an unbeliever, but a misbeliever,’ said a very orthodox bishop, whose love of epigram occasionally got the better of his charity. His brother bishops, like the Welsh clergy, feared him more than they loved 146 him; they knew his value as an ally, but they knew also that he would never, under any circumstances, become a partisan, or adopt a view which he could not wholly approve, merely because it seemed good to his Order to exhibit unanimity. It was probably for this reason, as much as for his eloquence and power, that he had the ear of the House of Lords on the rare occasions when he addressed it. The Peers knew that they were listening to a man who had the fullest sense of the responsibilities of the episcopate, but who would neither defend nor oppose a measure because ‘the proprieties’ indicated the side on which a bishop would be expected to vote. Two only of his speeches are republished in the collection before us—on the Civil Disabilities of the Jews (1848), and on the Disestablishment of the Irish Church (1869). We should like to have had added to these that on the grant to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth (1845), which seems to us to be equally worth preserving. On these occasions Bishop Thirlwall took the unpopular side at periods of great excitement; his arguments were listened to with the utmost attention; and in the case of the Irish Church it has been stated that no speech had a greater effect in favour of the measure than his.

147 In all Church matters he was a thorough Liberal. His view of the Church of England cannot be better stated than by quoting a passage from one of his Letters to a Friend . He had been reading Mr Robertson’s sermons; and after saying that their author was specially recommended to him by the hostility of the Record , ‘which I consider as a proof of some excellence in every one who is its object,’ he thus proceeds:

‘He was certainly not orthodox after the Record standard, but might very well be so after another. For our Church has the advantage—such I deem it—of more than one type of orthodoxy: that of the High Church, grounded on one aspect of its formularies; that of the Low Church, grounded on another aspect; and that of the Broad Church, striving to take in both, but in its own way. Each has a right to a standing-place, none to exclusive possession of the field. Of course this is very unsatisfactory to the bigots of each party—at the two extremes. Some would be glad to cast the others out; and some yearn after a Living Source of Orthodoxy, of course on the condition that it sanctions their own views. To have escaped that worst of evils ought, I think, to console every rational Churchman for whatever he finds amiss at home.’ ^[73]

Had the Bishop added that he wished each of these parties to have fair play, but that none should be exalted at the expense of the others, 148 we should have had a summary of the principles which regulated his public life. Let it not, however, be supposed that he was an indifferent looker-on. He held that truth had many sides; that it might be viewed in different ways by persons standing in different positions; but still it was to him clear, and definite, and based upon a rock which no human assailant could shake. This, we think, is the keynote which is struck in every one of those eleven most remarkable Charges which are now for the first time collected together. We would earnestly commend them to the study of all who are interested in the history of the Church of England during the period which they cover. Every controversy which agitated her, every measure which affected her welfare, is discussed by a master; the real question at issue is carefully pointed out; the trivial is distinguished from the important; moderation and charity are insisted upon; angry passions are allayed; and, while the liberty of the individual is perpetually asserted, the duty of maintaining her doctrines is strenuously inculcated. As illustrations of some of these characteristics we would contrast his exhaustive analysis of the Tractarian movement or the Gorham controversy, with his 149 conduct respecting Essays and Reviews . In the former cases he hesitated to condemn; he preferred to allay the terror with which his clergy were evidently inspired. In the latter, though always ‘decidedly opposed to any attempt to narrow the freedom which the law allows to every clergyman of the Church of England in the expression of his opinion on theological subjects,’ he joined his brother bishops in signing the famous ‘Encyclical,’ which we now know was the composition of Bishop Wilberforce, because he thought that in this case the principles advocated led to a negation of Christianity.

Thirlwall’s position towards theological questions has been called ‘indefinable ^[74] .’ In a certain sense this statement is no doubt true. It was quite impossible to label him as of this or that party or faction; or to predict with any approach to certainty what he would do or say on any particular occasion. He had no enthusiasm (in the ordinary sense of the word) and no sentiment, and therefore, when a question was submitted to him, he did not decide it in the light of previous prejudices, or welcome it as a 150 point gained towards some cherished end. He considered it as if it were the only question in the world at that moment, and as if he had never heard of it, or anything like it, before; he looked all round it, and balanced the arguments for and against it with the accuracy of a man of science in a laboratory. As a result of this process he frequently came to no resolution at all, and frankly told his correspondent that he would leave the matter referred to him to the decision of others. But, if what he held to be truth was assailed, or the conduct of an individual unjustly called in question, Thirlwall’s hesitation vanished. We have already mentioned his conduct in the House of Lords; but it should never be forgotten that he was one of the four Bishops who dissented from the resolution to inhibit Bishop Colenso from preaching in the various dioceses of England; and that he stood alone in withholding his signature from the address requesting him to resign his see. Again, when Mr J. S. Mill was a candidate for Westminster in 1865, and his opponents circulated on a placard some lines from his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy intended to shock the minds of the electors as irreverent if not blasphemous,—a 151 proceeding which was eagerly followed up by the Record and the Morning Advertiser in leading articles—Thirlwall at once wrote to the Spectator , maintaining that this passage contained “the utterance of a conviction in harmony with ‘the purest spirit of Christian morality’; that nothing but ‘an intellectual and moral incapacity worthy of the ‘Record’ and its satellite could have failed to recognise its truth’; and that it ‘thrilled’ him ‘with a sense of the ethical sublime’ ^[75] .”

There were many other duties besides the care of the diocese of S. David’s to which the Bishop devoted himself, but these we must dismiss with a passing notice. We allude to his work as a member of the Ritual Commission, as chairman of the Old Testament Revision Company, and in Convocation. Gradually, however, as years advanced, his physical powers began to fail, and he resolved to resign his bishopric. This resolution was carried into effect in 1874. He retired to Bath, where he was still able to continue many of his old pursuits, and, by the help of his nephew and his family, notwithstanding blindness and deafness, to maintain his old interests. He died 152 rather suddenly, July 27, 1875, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where, by a singularly felicitous arrangement, his remains were laid in the same grave as those of George Grote.

Regret has been often expressed that Bishop Thirlwall did not write more. We do not share this feeling. Had he written more he would have thought less, studied less, possessed in a less perfect degree that ‘ cor sapiens et intelligens ad discernendum judicium ^[76] ’ which was never weary of trying to impart to others a portion of its own serenity. At seventy-six years of age, just before his resignation, he could say, ‘I should hesitate to say that whatever is is best; but I have strong faith that it is for the best, and that the general stream of tendency is toward good’; and in the last sentence of his last charge he bade his clergy remark that even controversies were ‘a sign of the love of truth which, if often passionate and one-sided, is always infinitely preferable to the quiet of apathy and indifference.’

It is much to be regretted that Lord Houghton did not write his own biography. Those who know his delightful Monographs, Social and Personal , can form some idea of how he would have treated it. From his early years he lived in society—not merely the society to which his birth naturally opened the door, but a varied society of his own creating. He had an insatiable curiosity. It is hardly too much to say that in his long life he was present at every ceremony of importance, from the Eglinton Tournament to the Œcumenical Council; he knew everybody who was worth knowing, both at home and abroad—not merely as chance acquaintances, but as friends with whom he maintained a correspondence; he was 154 both a politician and a man of letters, a friend of the unwashed and the associate of princes. What a book might have been written by such a man on such a subject! But, alas! though he often spoke of writing his own life, he died before he had leisure even to begin it; and, instead, we have to content ourselves with the volumes before us. They are good—unquestionably good; they abound with amusing stories and brilliant witticisms; but we confess that we laid them down with a sense of disappointment which it is hard to define. Perhaps it was beyond the writer’s ability to draw so complex a character—a man of many moods, a creature of contradictions, a master of what not to do and not to say, as a lady of fashion told him to his face; perhaps he was overweighted by a wish to bring into prominence those solid qualities in his hero which society often failed to discover, while judging only ‘the man of fashion, whose unconventional originality had so far impressed itself upon the popular mind that there was hardly any eccentricity too audacious to be attributed to him by those who knew him only by repute ^[78] .’ We are not so presumptuous as to suppose that we can 155 paint a portrait of Lord Houghton that will satisfy those who were his intimate friends; but we hope to present to our readers at least a faithful sketch of one for whom we had a most sincere admiration and respect.

Richard Monckton Milnes was born in London, June 19, 1809. His father, Robert Pemberton Milnes, then a young man of twenty-five, and M.P. for the family borough of Pontefract, had just flashed into sudden celebrity in the House of Commons by a brilliant speech in favour of Mr Canning, which saved the Portland Administration, and would have made Mr Milnes’s political fortune, had he been so minded. But when Mr Perceval offered him a seat in the Cabinet, either as Chancellor of the Exchequer or as Secretary of War, he exclaimed, ‘Oh, no: I will not accept either; with my temperament, I should be dead in a year.’ That he had entered Parliament with high hopes, and confidence in his own powers to win distinction there, is plain from the well-known story (which his son evidently believed) that he laid a bet of 100 l. that he would be Chancellor of the Exchequer in five years. But, when the time came, he declined to ‘take occasion by the hand,’ and sat down under the 156 oaks of Fryston to spend the rest of his life, just half a century, in the placid uniformity of a country gentleman’s existence. His abandonment of public life, and his refusal to return to it in any form, even when, late in life, Lord Palmerston offered him a peerage, were unsolved riddles to his contemporaries. Those who read these volumes will have but little difficulty in finding the answer to it. He was endowed with a proud independence of judgment which could never bind itself to any political party, and a critical fastidiousness which made him hesitate over every question presented to him. These two qualities of mind were conspicuous in his son, and barred to some extent his advancement, as they had barred his father’s. It must not, however, be imagined that the elder Milnes was an indolent man. Far from it. He was a daring rider to hounds, a scientific agriculturist, an active magistrate, a stimulator of the waning Toryism of Yorkshire by speeches which showed what the House of Commons had lost when he left it, and ardently curious about men of note and events of interest—another characteristic which descended to his son. Occasionally, too, he yielded to a love of excitement which Yorkshire 157 could not gratify, and revisited London, to tempt the fickle goddess who presides over high play—a taste which cost him dear, for it compelled him to pass several years of his life in comparative obscurity abroad, while the rents in his fortune, due to his own and his brother’s extravagance, were being slowly repaired. We have been told, by one who knew him late in life, that he was a singularly loveable person—the delight of children and young people—full of jokes, and fun, and persiflage . ‘You could never be sure whether he spoke in jest or in earnest,’ said our informant. Here again one of the most obvious characteristics of his son makes its appearance.

The boyhood of Richard Milnes may be passed over in a sentence. A serious illness when he was ten years old put an end to his father’s intention of sending him to Harrow, and he was educated at home, or near it, till he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1827. He was entered as a fellow-commoner—a position well suited to the training he had received, for it gave him the society of men older than himself, while he was looking out for congenial friends among men of his own age. His college tutor was Mr Whewell, 158 and it was doubtless at his suggestion that he went to read classics with Thirlwall, then one of the resident Fellows. On one of his later visits to Cambridge Lord Houghton told an interesting story of their relations as pupil and instructor. After a few days’ trial Thirlwall said to him: ‘You will never be a scholar. It is no use our reading classics together. Have you ever read the Bible?’ ‘Yes, I have read it, but not critically,’ was the reply. ‘Very well,’ said Thirlwall, ‘ then let us begin with Genesis.’ And so the rest of the term was spent in the study of the Old Testament. Mr Reid is, no doubt, right in saying that, for ‘the making of his mind,’ Milnes was more deeply indebted to Thirlwall than to any other man. But Thirlwall was not merely the Gamaliel at whose feet Milnes was willing to sit; he became the chosen friend of his heart. Lord Houghton was once asked to name the most remarkable man whom he had known in his long experience. Without a moment’s hesitation he replied ‘Thirlwall’; and the numerous letters which Mr Reid has printed show that the friendship was equally strong on both sides.

The most picturesque of Roman historians said of one of his heroes that he was felix 159 opportunitate mortis ; it might be said of Milnes, with regard to Cambridge, that he was felix opportunitate vitæ . It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a period in which so many men who afterwards made their mark in the world have been gathered together there; and, with a happy facility for discovering and attracting to himself whatever was eminent and worth knowing, it was not long before he became intimate with the best of them. Nearly forty years afterwards, in 1866, on the occasion of the opening of the new rooms of the Union Society, he commemorated these friends of his early years in a speech of singular beauty and sincerity:

‘There was Tennyson, the Laureate, whose goodly bay-tree decorates our language and our land; Arthur, the younger Hallam, the subject of In Memoriam , the poet and his friend passing, linked hand in hand, together down the slopes of fame. There was Trench, the present Archbishop of Dublin, and Alford, Dean of Canterbury, both profound Scriptural philologists who have not disdained the secular muse. There was Spedding, who has, by a philosophical affinity, devoted the whole of his valuable life to the rehabilitation of the character of Lord Bacon; and there was Merivale, who—I hope by some attraction of repulsion—has devoted so much learning to the vindication of the Cæsars. There were Kemble and Kinglake, the historian of our earliest civilization and of our latest war—Kemble as interesting an individual as ever was portrayed by the 160 dramatic genius of his own race; Kinglake, as bold a man-at-arms in literature as ever confronted public opinion. There was Venables, whose admirable writings, unfortunately anonymous, we are reading every day, without knowing to whom to attribute them; and there was Blakesley, the “Hertfordshire Incumbent” of the Times . There were sons of families which seemed to have an hereditary right to, a sort of habit of, academic distinction, like the Heaths and the Lushingtons. But I must check this throng of advancing memories, and I will pass from this point with the mention of two names which you would not let me omit—one of them, that of your Professor of Greek, whom it is the honour of Her Majesty’s late Government to have made Master of Trinity; and the other, that of your latest Professor, Mr F. D. Maurice, in whom you will all soon recognize the true enthusiasm of humanity’ (vol. ii. p. 161).

Mr Reid tells us that Tennyson sought Milnes’s acquaintance because ‘he looks the best-tempered fellow I ever saw.’ Hallam proclaimed him to be ‘a kindhearted fellow, as well as a very clever one, but vain and paradoxical.’ Milnes himself put Hallam at the head of those whom he knew. ‘He is the only man of my standing,’ he wrote, ‘before whom I bow in conscious inferiority in everything.’

It was hardly to be expected that Milnes, with his taste for the general in literature rather than the particular, would achieve distinction in the Cambridge of 1830. We have seen how 161 Thirlwall disposed of his classical aspirations, and in mathematics he fared no better. He read hard, and hoped for distinction in the college examination. But he had overtaxed his energies; his health gave way, and he was forced to give up work altogether for some days. Happily, the benefit a man derives from his three years at a university need not be measured by his honours, and we may be sure that the experience of men and books that Milnes gained there was of greater service to him than a high place in any Tripos would have been. He roamed in all directions over the fields of knowledge; phrenology, anatomy, geology, political economy, metaphysics, by turns engaged his attention; he dabbled in periodical literature; he acted Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing , and Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals ; he made an excursion in a balloon with the celebrated aeronaut, Mr Green; he wrote two prize-poems, Timbuctoo and Byzantium , but only to be beaten by Tennyson and Kinglake; he obtained a second prize for an English declamation, and a first prize for an English essay, On the Homeric Poems ; he became a member of the club known as ‘The Apostles,’ in which he maintained a kindly interest to the 162 end of his life; and last, but by no means least, he was a constant speaker at the Union.

It is impossible, at a distance of just sixty years, to form an exact estimate of the success of Milnes in those debates. But that it was something more than ordinary, is, we think, certain; for otherwise he would not have ventured to present himself at the Oxford Union in December 1829, in the character of a self-selected missionary, who hoped to carry light and leading into the dark places of the sister University. As this expedition has been twice described by Milnes himself, first in a letter to his mother soon after his return to Cambridge, and secondly in a speech at the opening of the new building of the Cambridge Union Society in 1866; and also, more or less fully, by four of his contemporaries, Sir Francis Doyle, Mr Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, and Dean Blakesley, it is clear that it was regarded by himself and his friends, both at the time and afterwards, as something uncommon and remarkable, and we feel sure that we shall be excused if we try to give a connected narrative of what really took place.

Doyle had ‘brought forward a motion at the Oxford Union that Shelley was a greater 163 poet than Byron ^[79] .’ According to Blakesley, ‘the respective moral tendency of the writings of Shelley and Byron ^[80] ’ was the subject under debate. Doyle states that he acted ‘under Cambridge influences’; and that his motion was ‘an echo of Cambridge thought and feeling,’ words which probably refer to the then recent reprint of Shelley’s Adonais at Cambridge. The debate, he proceeds, ‘was attended by three distinguished members of the Cambridge Union, Arthur Hallam, Richard Milnes, and Sunderland’; or, to use the words of what may be called his second account, taken from a lecture on Wordsworth delivered forty-three years afterwards, ‘friends of mine at Cambridge took the matter up and appeared suddenly on the scene of action.’ That this was the true state of the case, and that there was little or no premeditation about the excursion, is made still clearer by Milnes’ first account. After mentioning that he had been to Oxford, he proceeds:

‘I wanted much to see the place and the men, and had no objection to speak in their society; so, as they had a 164 good subject for debate (the comparative merits of Shelley and Byron), and Sunderland and Hallam were both willing to go—and the Master, when he heard what was our purpose, very kindly gave us an Exeat —we drove manfully through the snow, arriving in time to speak that evening....

‘Sunderland spoke first after Doyle, who opened, then Hallam, then some Oxonians, and I succeeded. The contrast from our long, noisy, shuffling, scraping, talking, vulgar, ridiculous-looking kind of assembly, to a neat little square room, with eighty or ninety young gentlemen, sprucely dressed, sitting on chairs or lounging about the fire-place, was enough to unnerve a more confident person than myself. Even the brazen Sunderland was somewhat awed, and became tautological, and spoke what we should call an inferior speech, but which dazzled his hearers. Hallam, as being among old friends, was bold, and spoke well. I was certainly nervous, but, I think, pleased my audience better than I pleased myself ^[81] .’

In his second account, written thirty-six years afterwards, Milnes gives greater prominence to the Union Society than, we think, is consistent with the facts. It might easily be argued, after reading it, that the three Cambridge undergraduates had been selected by the Society to represent it. This exaggeration of the part played by the Union was perhaps only natural on an occasion when the speaker must have felt almost bound to magnify the influence of that Society on all departments 165 of Cambridge life. After mentioning Arthur Hallam and Sunderland, he says:

‘It was in company with Mr Sunderland and Arthur Hallam that I formed part of a deputation sent from the Union of Cambridge to the Union of Oxford; and what do you think we went about? Why, we went to assert the right of Mr Shelley to be considered a greater poet than Lord Byron. At that time we in Cambridge were all very full of Mr Shelley. We had printed the Adonais for the first time in England, and a friend of ours suggested that as Shelley had been expelled from Oxford, and greatly ill-treated, it would be a very grand thing for us to go to Oxford and raise a debate upon his character and powers. So, with full permission of the authorities ^[82] we went....

We had a very interesting debate ... but we were very much shocked, and our vanity was not a little wounded, to find that nobody at Oxford knew anything about Mr Shelley. In fact, a considerable number of our auditors believed that it was Shenstone, and said that they only knew one poem of his, beginning, “My banks are all furnished with bees.” We hoped, however, that our apostolate was of some good... ^[83] .’

Sir Francis Doyle is provokingly brief in his account of the performances of his Cambridge allies. Sunderland, he tells us, ‘spoke with great effect, though scarcely, I believe, 166 with the same fire that he often put forth on more congenial subjects. Then followed Hallam, with equal if not superior force.’ Of Milnes he says but little. After recounting the discomfiture of a speaker from Oriel, who while declaiming against Shelley suddenly caught sight of him, he adds: ‘Lord Houghton then stood up, and showed consummate skill as an advocate.... After him there was silence in the Union for several minutes, and then Mr Manning of Baliol rose.’ He was on the side of Byron; and when the votes were taken the members present agreed with him.

Mr Gladstone, in a conversation with the author of the life of Cardinal Manning, has given a rather different account of the matter:

‘There was an invasion of barbarians among civilized men, or of civilized men among barbarians. Cambridge men used to look down upon us at Oxford as prim and behind the times. A deputation from the Society of the Apostles at Cambridge, consisting of Monckton Milnes and Henry [Arthur] Hallam, and Sunderland, came to set up among us the cult of Shelley; or at any rate, to introduce the School of Shelley as against the Byronic School at Oxford—Shelley that is, not in his negative, but in his spiritual side. I knew Hallam at Eton, and, I believe, was the intermediary in bringing about the discussion ^[84] .’

167 This view, that the commission of the three knights-errant emanated from the Apostles, and not from themselves, or from the Union Society, is borne out to some degree by Blakesley’s account. But for this we have no space. We will conclude with Manning’s admirable description of the scene. It occurs in a letter dated 3 November, 1866—just after Lord Houghton had made his speech at the Cambridge Union.

‘I do not believe that I was guilty of the rashness of throwing the javelin over the Cam. It was, I think, a passage of arms got up by the Eton men of the two Unions. My share, if any, was only as a member of the august committee of the green baize table. I can, however, remember the irruption of the three Cambridge orators. We Oxford men were precise, orderly, and morbidly afraid of excess in word or manner. The Cambridge oratory came in like a flood into a mill-pond. Both Monckton Milnes and Henry [Arthur] Hallam took us aback by the boldness and freedom of their manner. But I remember the effect of Sunderland’s declaration and action to this day. It had never been seen or heard before among us; we cowered like birds, and ran like sheep.... I acknowledge that we were utterly routed. Lord Houghton’s beautiful reviving of those old days has in it something fragrant and sweet, and brings back old faces and old friendships, very dear as life is drawing to its close.’

Mr Milnes had always wished that his son should become distinguished in that House 168 of Commons where he had himself made so brilliant a début . With this object in view, he had urged him to cultivate speaking in public, and probably the only part of his Cambridge career which he viewed with complete satisfaction was his interest in, and success at, the Union Debating Society. But even in this they did not quite agree. Mr Milnes urged his son to take a decided line, and to lead the Union. But the only answer he could get was, ‘If there is one thing on which I have ever prided myself, it is on having no politics at all, and judging every measure by its individual merits. A leader there must be a violent politician and a party politician, or he must have a private party. I shall never be the one or have the other.’ Again, they were at variance on the burning question of the day, the Reform Bill. Mr Milnes, though a Conservative, was in favour of it; his son described it as ‘the curse and degradation of the nation.’ Further, while exhorting his son to prepare himself for public life, with a singleness of purpose that, if adhered to, would have excluded other and more congenial pursuits, Mr Milnes warned him that his circumstances would not allow him to enter parliament. No 169 wonder, therefore, that the young man became perplexed and melancholy, and more than ever anxious to find a refuge for his aspirations in literature.

While these questions were pending between father and son, the pecuniary embarrassments to which we have already alluded entered upon an acute stage, and in 1829 the whole family left England for five years. If Mr Milnes ever submitted his own actions to the test of rigorous examination, he must have concluded that he had himself brought about the very result which he was most anxious to prevent; for it was this enforced residence on the Continent which, more than any other influence, shaped the character of his son. Mr Milnes evidently wished him to become a country gentleman like himself, and, if he must write, to be ‘a pamphleteer on guano and on grain.’ Instead of this, while he kept his loyalty to England with unbroken faith, he divested himself of English narrowness, and acquired that intimate knowledge of the other members of the European family, and, we may add, that catholicity of taste, for which he was so conspicuous. Probably no public man of the present century understood the Continent so 170 well as Milnes. In many ways he was a typical Englishman; but he was also a citizen of the world.

The first resting-place of the family was Boulogne, and there Milnes made his first acquaintance with Frenchmen and their literature. The romantic school was beginning to engross public attention, and Victor Hugo—then, as afterwards, the ‘stormy voice of France’—became his favourite French poet. But, great as was the interest which Milnes felt in France, he was too eager for knowledge to be content with one language and one literature, and, rejecting his father’s suggestion that he should spend some time in Paris, he spent most of the summer and autumn of 1830 at Bonn, in order to learn German. We suspect that he must have taken this step at the suggestion of Thirlwall, for it was he who introduced him to Professor Brandis, and probably also to the veteran Niebuhr. Thence, his family having migrated to Milan, he crossed the Alps, and made his first acquaintance with Italy, which became, we might almost say, the country of his adoption. He felt a deep sympathy for the Italian people in their aspirations for liberty, and though, as was natural at 171 his age, he enjoyed the society of the Austrian vice-regal Court, he longed to see the foreigner expelled from Italy. Other Italian cities were visited in due course, and, lastly, Rome. Where-ever he went, he managed, with a skill that was peculiarly his own, to know the most interesting people, and to be welcomed with equal warmth by persons of the most opposite opinions. It was no small feat to have known both Italians and Austrians at Milan; but at Rome, besides his English acquaintances, he formed lasting friendships with the Chevalier Bunsen and his family, and with Dr Wiseman, M. Rio, M. Montalembert, and other catholics of distinction. The Church of Rome must always have great attractions for a young man of deep feeling and with no settled principles of faith, and we gather that Milnes was at one time not indisposed to join it. His feelings in that time of unrest and perplexity are well indicated in the following lines, written at Rome in 1834:

An interesting picture of Milnes at about this period has been drawn by Mr Aubrey de Vere, whom he visited in Ireland during one of his brief absences from Italy.

‘He remained with us a good many days, though when he left us they seemed too few. We showed him whatever of interest our neighbourhood boasts, and he more than repaid us by the charm of his conversation, his lively descriptions of foreign ways, his good-humour, his manifold accomplishments, and the extraordinary range of his information, both as regards books and men. He could hardly have then been more than two-and-twenty, and yet he was 173 already well acquainted with the languages and literatures of many different countries, and not a few of their most distinguished men, living or recently dead. I well remember the vivid picture which he drew of Niebuhr’s profound grief at the downfall of the restored monarchy in France, at the renewal of its Revolution in 1830. He was delivering a series of historical lectures at the time, and Milnes was one of the young men attending the course. One day they had long to wait for their Professor; at last the aged historian entered the lecture-hall, his form drooping, and his whole aspect grief-stricken. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I have no apology for detaining you; a calamity has befallen Europe which must undo all the restorative work recently done, and throw back her social and political progress—perhaps for centuries. The Revolution has broken out again’ (vol. i. p. 115).

One episode of these foreign experiences deserves a separate notice. In 1832 Milnes spent some months in Greece with his friend Mr Christopher Wordsworth, a scholar whose Athens and Attica has long been a classical text-book. But Milnes was more powerfully attracted by the sight of Grecian independence than by the relics of her ancient glory. The volume which he published on his return, called Memorials of a Tour in some parts of Greece, chiefly Poetical (his first independent literary venture, it may be remarked), contains but scanty references to antiquity. He was keenly interested in the efforts of Greece to obtain a 174 settled government of her own, and through all the drawbacks and discomforts which, as a traveller, he had to endure from the Greeks, he firmly adhered to the cause of freedom. He even advocated the immediate restoration of the Elgin marbles to the Parthenon. But Milnes had a mind which was singularly free from prejudice, and even in those early days he had learnt to consider both sides of every question, and to keep his sympathies controlled by his judgment. He probably approached Greece with the enthusiasm for a liberated nation which had so deeply stirred even the most indifferent in England; but he left it ‘with an affection for the Turkish character which he never entirely lost, and which enabled him in very different days, then far distant, to understand the political exigencies of the East better than many politicians of more pretentious character and fame.’

We have dwelt on Milnes’s early years at some length, because their history throws considerable light on his subsequent career, and accounts for most of the difficulties that he experienced when he made his first entrance into London society. ‘Conceive the man,’ said Carlyle: ‘a most bland-smiling, semi-quizzical, 175 affectionate, high-bred, Italianised little man, who has long olive-blonde hair, a dimple, next to no chin, and flings his arm round your neck when he addresses you in public society!’ If the rough Scotch moralist was not in an unusually bad humour when he wrote these words, it is not to be wondered at that Milnes was regarded for a time as a dangerous person, ‘anxious to introduce foreign ways and fashions into the conservative fields of English life.’ But this dislike of him was very transient, and in less than a year after his return to England he had ‘made a conquest of the social world.’ That he was still looked upon as an oddity seems certain, and even his intimate friend Charles Buller could exclaim: ‘I often think how puzzled your Maker must be to account for your conduct;’ but people soon became willing to accept him on his own terms for the sake of his wit and brilliancy, and, we may add, of his kind heart. Some nicknames that survived long after their application had lost its point, are worth remembering as illustrations of what was once thought of him; perhaps still more for the sake of the letter which Sydney Smith wrote on being accused, quite groundlessly, of having invented them.

176 ‘ Dear Milnes ,—Never lose your good temper, which is one of your best qualities, and which has carried you hitherto safely through your startling eccentricities. If you turn cross and touchy, you are a lost man. No man can combine the defects of opposite characters. The names of “Cool of the evening,” “London Assurance,” and “In-I-go Jones,” are, I give you my word, not mine. They are of no sort of importance; they are safety-valves, and if you could by paying sixpence get rid of them, you had better keep your money. You do me but justice in acknowledging that I have spoken much good of you. I have laughed at you for those follies which I have told you of to your face; but nobody has more readily and more earnestly asserted that you are a very agreeable, clever man, with a very good heart, unimpeachable in all the relations of life, and that you amply deserve to be retained in the place to which you had too hastily elevated yourself by manners unknown to our cold and phlegmatic people. I thank you for what you say of my good-humour. Lord Dudley, when I took leave of him, said to me: “You have been laughing at me for the last seven years, and you never said anything that I wished unsaid.” This pleased me.

‘ Sydney Smith ^[86] .’

When we read that Milnes ‘made a conquest of society,’ it must not be supposed that he was a mere pleasure-seeker. On the contrary, as Mr Reid says in another place, ‘he had too great a reverence for what was good and pure and true, too consuming a desire to hold his own with the best intellects of his 177 time, and, above all, too deep a sympathy with the suffering and the wronged to allow him to fall a victim to these temptations.’ From the first, then, he ‘sought to combine the world of pleasure and the world of intellect.’ A list of his friends would contain the names of the best-known men of the day, but, at the same time, men who had but little in common: Carlyle, Sterling, Maurice, Spedding, Thackeray, Tennyson, Landor, Hallam, Rogers, Macaulay, Sydney Smith. ‘He became an intimate member of circles differing so widely from each other as those of Lansdowne House, Holland House, Gore House, and the Sterling Club’; and as a host he was notorious for mingling together the most discordant social elements. Disraeli sketched him in Tancred under a disguise so thin that nobody could fail to penetrate it:

‘Mr Vavasour saw something good in everybody and everything, which is certainly amiable, and perhaps just, but disqualifies a man in some degree for the business of life, which requires for its conduct a certain degree of prejudice. Mr Vavasour’s breakfasts were renowned. Whatever your creed, class, or merit—one might almost add, your character—you were a welcome guest at his matutinal meal, provided you were celebrated. That qualification, however, was rigidly enforced. He prided himself on figuring as the social 178 medium by which rival reputations became acquainted, and paid each other in his presence the compliments which veiled their ineffable disgust’ (vol. i. p. 337).

When some one asked if a celebrated murderer had been hanged, the reply he got was: ‘I hope so, or Richard will have him at his breakfast-table next Thursday;’ and Thirlwall, when his friend was on the brink of marriage, thus alludes to past felicity:

‘It is very likely, nay certain, that you will still collect agreeable people about your wife’s breakfast-table; but can I ever sit down there without the certainty that I shall meet with none but respectable persons? It may be an odd thing for a Bishop to lament, but I cannot help it’ (vol. i. p. 448).

After all it seems probable that Milnes himself, and not the lion of the hour, was the chief attraction at those parties. He delighted in the best sort of conversation—that which he called ‘the rapid counterplay and vivid exercise of combined intelligences,’ and he did his best to revive the practice of that almost forgotten art— l’art de causer . As Mr Reid says:

‘How brilliant and amusing he was over the dinner-table or the breakfast-table was known to all his friends. Overflowing with information, his mind was lightened by a bright wit, whilst his immense stores of appropriate anecdotes enabled him to give point and colour to every topic which was brought under discussion’ (vol. i. p. 189).

179 At the same time he did not fall into the fatal error of taking the talk into his own hands, and delivering a monologue, as too many social celebrities have done before and since. He had the happy art of making his guests talk, while he listened, and threw in a remark from time to time, to give new life when the conversation seemed to flag. Carlyle, in a letter written to his wife during his first visit to Fryston, gives us a lifelike portrait of Milnes when thus engaged:

‘Richard, I find, lays himself out while in this quarter to do hospitalities, and of course to collect notabilities about him, and play them off one against the other. I am his trump-card at present. The Sessions are at Pontefract even now, and many lawyers there. These last two nights he has brought a trio of barristers to dine, producing champagne, &c.... Last night our three was admitted to be a kind of failure, three greater blockheads ye wadna find in Christendee. Richard had to exert himself; but he is really dexterous, the villain. He pricks you with questions, with remarks, with all kinds of fly-tackle to make you bite, does generally contrive to get you into some sort of speech. And then his good humour is extreme; you look in his face and forgive him all his tricks’ (vol. i. p. 256).

As a pendant to this we will quote Mr Forster’s description of Milnes and Carlyle together:

180 ‘Monckton Miles came yesterday and left this morning—a pleasant, companionable little man—delighting in paradoxes, but good-humoured ones; defending all manner of people and principles in order to provoke Carlyle to abuse them, in which laudable enterprise he must have succeeded to his heart’s content, and for a time we had a most amusing evening, reminding me of a naughty boy rubbing a fierce cat’s tail backwards, and getting in between furious growls and fiery sparks. He managed to avoid the threatened scratches’ (vol. i. p. 387).

Milnes entered Parliament in 1837 as Conservative member for Pontefract. His friends were rather surprised at his selection of a party, for even then his views on most subjects were decidedly Liberal. Thirlwall, for instance, wrote:

‘I can hardly bring myself now to consider you a Tory, or indeed as belonging to a party at all; and although I am aware how difficult, and even dangerous, it is for a public man to keep aloof from all parties, still my first hope as well as expectation as to your political career is that it may be distinguished by some degree of originality’ (vol. i. p. 199).

These hopes were realized to an extent that none of Milnes’s friends would have expected or perhaps desired. From the outset he maintained an independence of thought and action which did him the utmost credit as a man of honour, but which ruined his chances 181 of obtaining that success which is measured by the attainment of official dignity. And yet, as Mr Reid tells us, he was more ambitious of political than of literary distinction. But the fates were against him. In the first place, his oratorical style did not suit the House, though as an after-dinner speaker he was conspicuously successful. He ‘had modelled himself on the old style of political oratory, and gave his hearers an impression of affectation.’ Then he would not vote straight with his party. He took a line of his own about Canada and the Ballot; he voted on the opposite side to Peel on the question of a large remission of capital punishments; and he wrote One Tract More , ‘an eloquent and earnest plea for toleration for the Anglo-Catholic enthusiasm,’ which shocked the Protestants in general, and the electors of Pontefract in particular. Perhaps he was too much in earnest; perhaps he was not a sufficiently important person to be silenced by office; perhaps, as Mr Reid says, ‘public opinion in England always insists upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the man of letters and the man of affairs;’ but, whatever might be the reason, Sir Robert Peel passed him over 182 when forming his Administration in 1841—nay, rather, appears never to have turned his thoughts in his direction. Milnes was grievously disappointed, but with characteristic lightheartedness set at once to work to make himself more thoroughly fit for the post he specially coveted, the Under-Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs. He went to Paris, got intimate with Guizot, De Tocqueville, Montalembert—‘that English aristocrat foisted into the middle of French democracy’—and other leading statesmen. Through them, and by help of his natural gift of knowing everybody he wished to know, he managed to include Louis Philippe among those by whom he was accepted as a sort of unaccredited English envoy. He kept Peel informed of the views of Guizot and the King, and Peel replied with a message to the former in a letter which shows that he was quite ready to make use of Milnes, though not to reward him. On his return he gave Peel a general support on the Corn Laws, while regretting that his ‘measures were not of a more liberal character;’ he interested himself in the passing of the Copyright Bill, a measure in respect of which he was accepted as the representative of men of letters; and 183 he travelled in the East, no doubt to study Oriental politics on the spot. A letter he wrote to Peel from Smyrna is full of shrewd observation and far-reaching insight into the Eastern Question; but, on his return, he published a volume of poems called Palm Leaves . Now Peel, like a certain Hanoverian monarch who hated ‘boetry and bainters,’ hated literature; and, as Milnes’s father told him, ‘every book he wrote was a nail in his political coffin.’ Again, Milnes was in favour of the endowment of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, and had written a pamphlet called The Real Union of England and Ireland , on which, we may note, in passing, Mr Gladstone’s remark, that he had ‘some opinions on Irish matters that are not fit for practice.’ With these views he supported Peel’s grant to Maynooth, a step which brought him into such disgrace at Pontefract that he thought seriously of giving up parliamentary life altogether. In fact he applied for a diplomatic post, but without success. Before long we find him again running counter to his chief’s policy, supporting Lord Ashley against the Government, and seconding a motion of Charles Buller’s against Lord Stanley. After this it 184 cannot excite surprise that Peel passed him over when he rearranged his Administration in 1845. With his second disappointment Milnes’s career as a professional politician came to an end. Ten years later Palmerston offered him a lordship of the Treasury, but he declined it. As he said himself in a letter written shortly afterwards:

‘ Via media never answers in politics, and somehow or other I never can get out of it. My Laodicean spirit is the ruin of me. From having lived with all sorts of people, and seen good in all, the broad black lines of judgment that people usually draw seem to me false and foolish, and I think my own finer ones just as distinct, though no one can see them but myself’ (vol. i. p. 360).

Before long Milnes found a more congenial position on the opposite side of the House. But it must not be supposed that he rushed into sudden and rancorous opposition to his old leader. So long as Peel remained in office, he allowed no personal considerations to interfere with his support of him; and he steadily refused to join those who rebelled when he announced his conversion to Free Trade. Meanwhile, his interest in the burning question of the day being little more than formal, he turned his attention to a social question in which he had long been interested, and introduced 185 a Bill for the establishment of reformatories for juvenile offenders. Among the many combinations of opposite tastes and tendencies with which Milnes was fond of startling the world, could one more curious be imagined than this—the literary exquisite and the criminal unwashed? But in fact this is only a single instance out of many which could be produced to show that the cynical selfishness he affected was only a mask which hid his real nature; perhaps assumed for the sake of concealing from his left hand what his right hand was doing so well. The proposal, we are told, ‘was scoffed at by many politicians of eminence when it was first put forward.’ But Milnes was not to be daunted by rebuffs, and ‘he persevered with his proposal, until he had the great happiness of seeing reformatories established under the sanction of the law, and of becoming himself the president of the first and greatest of these noble institutions, that at Redhill.’ His very genuine sympathy with the poor and the unfortunate, especially when young, is testified to by one of his intimate friends, Miss Nightingale:

‘His brilliancy and talents in tongue or pen—whether political, social, or literary—were inspired chiefly by good-will 186 towards man; but he had the same voice and manners for the dirty brat as he had for a duchess, the same desire to give pleasure and good. Once, at Redhill, where we were with a party, and the chiefs were explaining to us the system in the court-yard, a mean, stunted, villainous-looking little fellow crept across the yard (quite out of order, and by himself), and stole a dirty paw into Mr Milnes’s hand. Not a word passed; the boy stayed quite quiet and quite contented if he could but touch his benefactor who had placed him there. He was evidently not only his benefactor, but his friend’ (vol. ii. p. 7).

Milnes had been called a Liberal-Conservative during the first ten years of his parliamentary life. He now became a Conservative-Liberal; but the transposition of the adjective made little, if any, change in his political conduct. He was as insubordinate in the latter position as he had been in the former. He took Lord Palmerston as his leader and chosen friend; but he did not always side with him. In the debates on the Conspiracy Bill, after the attempt of Orsini to assassinate Napoleon III., Milnes spoke and voted against his chief; and on the measure for abolishing the East India Company he was equally indifferent to the claims of party. As time went on, he drifted out of party politics altogether; and both in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, which he entered in 1863, 187 it was to measures of a private character, or to measures of social reform, that he gave his attention. He advocated help to Lady Franklin in her expedition to clear up the mystery of her husband’s fate; he was in favour of female suffrage; of the abolition of public executions; and he led the agitation for legalising marriage with a deceased wife’s sister. At the same time he cordially supported the Liberal party on all great occasions. Speaking of the abortive Reform Bill of 1866, Mr Reid remarks:

‘Houghton held strongly to the Liberal side throughout the movement, and again afforded proof of the fact that his elevation to the House of Lords had strengthened, rather than weakened, his faith in the people and in popular institutions. Early in April he presided at one of the great popular meetings in favour of Reform. The scene of the meeting was the Cloth Hall at Leeds—a spot famous in the political history of the West Riding—and Lord Houghton’s speech was as advanced in tone as the most thoroughgoing Reformer could have wished it to be. He was, indeed, one of the very few peers who took an open and pronounced part in the agitation of the year’ (vol. ii. p. 151).

This is only one instance, out of many that could be adduced. It would be interesting to know what he would have thought of some of the later developments of his party. It is almost needless to say that he never regarded 188 Lord Beaconsfield as a serious politician. On the eve of his return from Berlin in 1878, he writes: ‘I hope to be in my place on Thursday, to see the reception of the Great Adventurer. Whether from knowing him so well, or from the sarcastic temperament of old age, the whole thing looks to me like a comedy, with as much relation to serious politics as Punch to real life.’ At the same time he had not been a thoroughgoing supporter of Mr Gladstone’s agitation against the Turks, and he had warned that statesman so far back as 1871, that ‘a demon, not of demagoguism, but of demophilism, is tempting you sorely.’

Advancing years and disappointed hopes caused no abatement in his interest in foreign affairs. The events of 1848 had been specially interesting to him; and at the close of that year he produced what Mr Reid well describes as ‘a striking and instructive’ pamphlet, entitled A Letter to the Marquis of Lansdowne . The author reviews the events of the year, and supports the thesis that ‘the Liberals of the Continent had not proved themselves unworthy of the sympathy of England.’ We have no room for an analysis of this masterly work, but we cannot refrain from quoting one remarkable 189 passage in which he foreshadows French intervention in Italy. After describing measures by which Austria intended to make the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom a second Poland, he proceeds:

‘And France, whatever be her adventures in government, will not easily have so dulled her imagination or quelled her enthusiasm as to be unmoved by appeals to the deeds of Marengo and Lodi, and to suffer an expiring nation at her very door to cry in vain for help and protection, not against the restraints of an orderly authority, but against fierce invaders intent upon her absolute destruction’ (vol. i. p. 413).

This pamphlet made a great sensation. In England it was received, for the most part, with dislike and apprehension. Carlyle was almost alone in praising it. ‘Tell him,’ he said, ‘it is the greatest thing he has yet done; earnest and grave, written in a large, tolerant, kind-hearted spirit, and, as far as I can see, saying all that is to be said on that matter.’ But the strongest proof of the power of the pamphlet is the fact that the Austrians stopped the writer on the Hungarian frontier when travelling with his wife in 1851, as a person who could not breathe that revolutionary atmosphere without danger to the empire. In his later years foreign travel became almost a 190 necessity to Lord Houghton; and as he had then fewer ties to bind him to England, his absences were more frequent and more prolonged. He travelled in France, no longer as an envoy without credentials, but for his private information, or to be the guest of Guizot and De Tocqueville; he became the friend of the accomplished Queen of Holland; he represented the Geographical Society at the opening of the Suez Canal; he made a triumphal progress through the United States; and only three years before his death he went again to Egypt and Greece.

Throughout his life Milnes approached public events with a singular sobriety of judgment. He was never led away by popular clamour, but formed his opinions, on principle, after mature deliberation. It is almost needless to add that he generally found himself on the unpopular side. When England went mad over the Crimean war, Milnes wrote calmly: ‘For my own part I like neither of the combatants, though I prefer a feeble and superannuated despotism as less noxious to mankind than one young and vigorous, and assisted by the appliances of modern intelligence.’ During the American civil war, he ‘broke away from 191 his own class, and ranged himself on the side of the friends of the North, with an earnestness not inferior to that of Mr Bright and Mr Forster.’ Mr Reid tell us that this conduct won for Milnes that popularity with the masses, especially in Yorkshire and Lancashire, which all his previous efforts had failed to obtain, and that he found himself, to his great surprise, one of the popular idols. In 1870, again, he was on the unpopular side: ‘I am Prussian to the backbone,’ he wrote, ‘which is a pure homage to principle, as they are the least agreeable people in the world.’

We have been at pains to set forth Milnes’s political acts and convictions in some detail, because he has been frequently represented as a gay farceur , who took up politics as a pastime. It is not, however, as a politician that he will be remembered, but as a man of letters. In his younger days he achieved distinction as a writer of verse, and Landor hailed him as ‘the greatest poet now living in England.’ This judgment may nowadays provoke a smile; but, though it is not to be expected that his poems will recover their former popularity, they hardly deserve to have fallen into complete neglect. As Mr Reid says:

192 ‘A great singer he may not have been; a sweet singer with a charm of his own he undoubtedly was; nor did his charm consist alone in the melody of which he was a master. In many of his poems real poetic thought is linked with musical words; whilst in everything that he wrote, whether in verse or in prose, one may discern the brightest characteristics of the man himself: the catholicity of his spirit; the tenderness of his sympathy with weakness, suffering, mortal frailty in all its forms; the ardour of his faith in something that should break down the artificial barriers by which classes are divided, and bring into the lives of all a measure of that light and happiness which he relished so highly for himself’ (vol. ii. p. 438).

For his prose works, or at least for some of them, we predict a very different fate. We do not like even to think of an age that will refuse to admire the charming style, the real dramatic power, the exquisite tact, and the fine taste which distinguish his Life of Keats , and his Monographs , to which we have already alluded. Other essays, probably of equal merit, lie scattered in Reviews and Magazines. We hope that before long we may see the best of these collected together. Such a series, which would cover a period of nearly sixty years, would form a most important chapter in the history of English literature.

Besides his reputation as a writer, Milnes occupied an unique position towards the world 193 of letters, which it is not quite easy to define. It is not enough to say that he was a Mæcenas, though he knew and entertained the whole literary community both in London and at Fryston—a house which, as Thackeray said, ‘combined all the graces of the château and the tavern’; or that he was always ready to lend a helping hand to those in distress, though he spent a fortune in generously and delicately assisting others. His peculiar characteristics were a rare gift in detecting merit, and an untiring energy in bringing it out, and setting it in a position where it could bloom and flourish and be recognized by other people. In effecting this he spared no pains, and shrank from no annoyance. Often, indeed, he must have risked his own popularity by his importunity for favours to be conferred on others. Mr Reid describes at length the amusing scene between him and Sir Robert Peel, when he solicited and obtained pensions for Tennyson and Sheridan Knowles, of neither of whom the Minister had ever heard; and to Milnes must also be allowed the credit of having been the first, or nearly the first, to bring into prominent recognition the merits of Mr John Forster. He possessed, too, in a very high degree, the 194 gift of sympathy, and, as a consequence, of influence. ‘Ever since I knew you,’ said his friend Macarthy, ‘you have been the chief person in my life; a friend and brother and confessor—the end and aim of all my actions and hopes’; and Robert Browning, in a long and most interesting letter, written to ask Milnes to use his interest to get him appointed secretary to the minister whom England, as he then believed, ‘must send before the year ends to this fine fellow, Pio Nono ^[87] ,’ admits that his own interest in Italy was due in the first instance to Milnes’s influence. ‘One gets excited,’ he says, ‘at least here on the spot, by this tiptoe strained expectation of poor dear Italy, and yet, if I had not known you, I believe I should have looked on with other bystanders.’ We have said that he was charitable; but to say this is to give an imperfect idea of the efforts he would make for literary men in difficulties. When Hood was in distress he found that he ‘preferred to receive assistance in the shape of gratuitous literary work for his magazine rather than in money.’ Milnes not only contributed himself, but ‘canvassed right and left among his friends for contributions.’ 195 Nor was his help confined to the person whose work he valued. ‘The interest and friendship which the genius had aroused,’ says Mr Reid, ‘was extended to his or her friends and connexions. Many a widow and many an orphan had occasion to be thankful that the husband or father had during his lifetime excited the admiration of Milnes. Years after the death of Charlotte Brontë we find him trying to smooth the path of her father, and to secure preferment in the Church for her husband.’ This is only one instance out of many that might be adduced. Again, he seemed to regard his critical faculty as a trust for the benefit of others, and was never more congenially employed than in drawing attention to some young poet who had no influential friends. In proof of this we will only refer our readers to the touching story of poor David Gray, whom he nursed with almost feminine tenderness, and whose poem, The Luggie , he edited; and to his early recognition of the genius of Mr Swinburne, to whose merits he drew attention by an article in the Edinburgh Review . In close connexion with this kind help to men of whom he knew little or nothing may be mentioned his interest in the Newspaper Press 196 Fund. The formation of such a fund was strenuously resisted, we are told, by the most influential members of the Press; but Milnes, from the first, brought the whole weight of his social influence to its support, and contributed, more than any other man, to its permanent and successful establishment.

Nor should his kindness to young men be forgotten. He may have sought their society in the first instance from the pleasure he took in all that was bright, and entertaining, and unaffected; but, as we have already tried to point out, his motives were commonly underlaid by some serious purpose which it was not always easy to discover. We do not maintain that he was specially successful in drawing young men out, for his own talk was often scrappy, anecdotical, and difficult to follow; still less do we mean that he tried to influence them in any particular direction by improving conversation, or the enunciation of any special opinions in politics or literature. But he certainly made his juniors feel sure of his sympathy and his good-will.

Of Milnes’s religious opinions it is difficult to give any positive account. His family had been Unitarian; at college he became an 197 Evangelical; soon afterwards he fell under the influence of Irving, whom he proclaimed to be ‘the apostle of the age.’ Then, during his residence in Italy, as we have already mentioned, he chose Dr Wiseman for his intimate friend, and the higher Roman Catholic clergy had hopes of his conversion. ‘Mezzofanti,’ wrote one of his friends in 1832, ‘is full of hopes that you will return to the bosom of her whom Carlyle calls “the slain mother”.’ But, during this same period, while passing through what he calls ‘the twilight of his mind,’ he was the friend of Sterling and Maurice and Thirlwall, under whose influence he was hardly likely to submit to an infallible Church. He himself said that he was prevented from joining the Church of Rome by the uprising of a Catholic school in the Church of England. To this movement, as we have seen, he was deeply attached, and both spoke and wrote in its defence. In one of his commonplace books he called himself a Puseyite sceptic; sometimes he said he was a crypto-Catholic, and to the last he never entirely shook off the impressions of his youth. But Mr Reid is probably right in describing him as ‘a tolerant, liberal-minded man, apt to look at religion from many different 198 points of view.’ We are not aware that he ever took part in any directly religious movement, or ever declared his allegiance to the Church of England except as a political organization. Partly from a love of paradox, partly from a habit of looking round a question rather than directly at it, he would have had something to say in defence of almost any system of religion, while his unfeigned charity would induce him to adopt that which recognized most fully the claims of suffering humanity.

Lord Houghton died at Vichy, August 11, 1885. He had been in failing health for some time, but the end was sudden and unexpected. Only a few hours before it came he had been entertaining a mixed company at the table d’hôte by the brilliancy and variety of his conversation. It might almost be said that he died, as he had lived, in society.

We have tried to eliminate what we believe to have been the real Milnes from a cloud of misrepresentations and erroneous judgments—for both of which, it must be remembered, he was himself directly responsible. We leave to our readers the task of passing sentence on a singularly amiable, if eccentric, personality. Some opinions expressed by those who understood 199 him and valued him will appropriately close this article. When he was young his friends recognized in him what Dr Johnson would have called the potentiality of greatness, though they doubted whether he would have sufficient steadiness of purpose to achieve it. ‘Your gay and airy mind,’ wrote Tennyson in 1833, ‘must have caught as many colours from the landscape you moved through as a flying soap-bubble—a comparison truly somewhat irreverent, yet I meant it not as such.’ ‘I think you are near something very glorious,’ said Stafford O’Brien, ‘but you will never reach it.’ Mr Aubrey de Vere decided that ‘he had not much solid ambition. The highlands of life were not what interested him much; its mountains cast their shadows too far and drew down too many clouds.’ But, if Milnes’s well-wishers were compelled to abandon their hopes of any great distinction for their friend, they recognized, with one accord, his charity and his sincerity. If they did not admire him, they loved him. ‘You are on the whole a good man,’ said Carlyle, ‘though with terrible perversities.’ Forster declared that he himself had ‘many friends who would be kind to him in distress, but only 200 one who would be equally kind to him in disgrace.’ A distinguished German said of him, ‘Is it possible that an Englishman can be so loveable?’ and Mr Sumner described him as ‘a member of Parliament, a poet and a man of fashion, a Tory who does not forget the people, and a man of fashion with sensibilities, love of virtue and merit among the simple, the poor, and the lowly.’ Lastly, let us cite his own whimsical character of himself, which, though expressed in the language of paradox, is probably, in the main, nearer to the truth than one drawn by any critic could be:

‘He was a man of no common imaginative perceptions, who never gave his full conviction to anything but the closest reasoning; of acute sensibilities, who always distrusted the affections; of ideal aspirations and sensual habits; of the most cheerful manners and of the gloomiest philosophy. He hoped little and believed little, but he rarely despaired, and never valued unbelief, except as leading to some larger truth and purer conviction’ (vol. ii. p. 491).

A dramatist who undertakes to write a play which is to be almost devoid of incident, and to depend for interest on the development of an eccentric character, with only a single strong situation, even though that situation be one of surpassing power, is considered by those learned in such matters to be almost courting failure. Such a work is therefore rarely attempted, and is still more rarely successful. Yet this is what Mr Besant has had to do in writing the Life of Edward Henry Palmer; and we are glad to be able to say at once that he has discharged a delicate and difficult task 202 in a most admirable fashion. For in truth he had a very unpromising subject to deal with. It is always difficult to interest the general public in the sayings and doings of a man of letters, even when he has occupied a prominent position, and thrown himself with ardour into some burning question of the day, political or social. Palmer, however, was not such a man at all. He did ‘break his birth’s invidious bar,’ but alas! it was never given to him, until the end was close at hand, ‘to grasp the skirts of happy chance,’ or to rise into a position where he could be seen by the world. It is melancholy now to speculate on what might have been had he returned in safety from the perilous enterprise in which he met his death, for it is hardly likely that the Government would have failed to secure, by some permanent appointment, the services of a man who had proved, in so signal a manner, his capacity for dealing with Orientals. As it was, however, with the exception of the journeys to the Sinaitic Peninsula and the Holy Land, he lived a quiet student-life; not wholly retired, for he was no book-worm, and enjoyed, after a peculiar fashion of his own, the society of his fellow-men; but still a life which did not really 203 bring him beyond the narrow circle of the few intimate friends who knew him thoroughly, and were proportionately devoted to him. He took no part in any movement; he was not ‘earnest’ or ‘intense.’ He did not read new books, or any of the ‘thoughtful’ magazines; nor had he any particular desire to alter the framework of society. The world was a good world so far as he was concerned; and men were strange and interesting creatures whom it was a pleasure to study, as a naturalist studies a new species; why alter it or them? The interest which attaches to such a life depends wholly on the way in which the central character is presented to the public. That Mr Besant should have succeeded where others would have failed need not surprise us. The qualities which have made him a delightful novelist are brought to bear upon this prose In Memoriam , with the additional incentives of warm friendship and passionate regret. It is clear that he realized all the difficulties of his task from the outset; and he has treated his materials accordingly, leading the reader forward with consummate art, chapter by chapter, to the final catastrophe, which is described with the picturesqueness of a romance, and the 204 solemn earnestness of a tragedy. Such a book is almost above criticism. A mourner by an open grave, pronouncing the funeral oration of his murdered friend, has a prescriptive right to apportion praise and blame in what measure he thinks fit; and we should be the last to intrude upon his sacred sorrow with harsh and inconsiderate criticism. But we should be failing in our duty if we did not draw attention to one point. It has been Mr Besant’s object to show the difficulties of all kinds against which his hero had to contend—ill-health, heavy sorrows, debt—and how he came triumphant through them all, thanks to his indomitable pluck and energy; and further, as though no element of interest should be wanting, he has represented him as smarting under a sense of unmerited wrong done to him by his University, which ‘went out of the way to insult and neglect’ him. This is no mere fancy of Mr Besant’s; we know from other sources that Palmer himself thought he had not been treated at Cambridge as he ought to have been, and that he was glad to get away from it. We shall do our best to show that this was a misconception on his part, and we regret that his biographer should have given such prominence to it. But, 205 though Mr Besant may have been zealous overmuch on this particular point, his book is none the less fascinating, and we venture to predict that it will live, as a permanent record of a very remarkable man. We are sensible that much of its charm will disappear in the short sketch which we are about to give, but if our remarks have the effect of sending our readers to the original, we shall not have written in vain.

Edward Henry Palmer was born in Green Street, Cambridge, 7 August, 1840. His father died when he was an infant, and his mother did not long survive her husband. Her place was supplied to some extent by an aunt, then unmarried, who took the orphan child to her own home and educated him. She was evidently a person who combined great kindness with great good sense. Palmer, we read, ‘owed everything to her,’ and ‘never spoke of her in after years without the greatest tenderness and emotion.’ Of his real mother we do not find any record; but the father, who kept a small private school, was ‘a man of considerable acquirements, with a strong taste for art.’ We do not know whether any of Palmer’s peculiar talents had ever been 206 observed in the father, or whether he can be said to have inherited anything from his family except a tendency to asthma and bronchial disease. From this, of which the father died before he was thirty, the son suffered all his life. He grew out of it to a certain extent, but it was always there, a watchful enemy, ready to start forth and fasten upon its victim.

The beginning of Palmer’s education was of the most ordinary description, and little need be said about it. He was sent in the first instance to a private school, and afterwards to the Perse Grammar School. There he made rapid progress, arriving at the sixth form before he was fifteen; but all we hear about his studies is that he distinguished himself in Greek and Latin, and disliked mathematics. By the time he was sixteen he had learnt all that he was likely to learn at school, and was sent to London to earn his living. He became a junior clerk in a house of business in East-cheap, where he remained for three years, and might have remained for the term of his natural life, had he not been obliged to resign his situation on account of ill-health. Symptoms of pulmonary disease manifested themselves, and he got worse so rapidly that he was told 207 that he had little hope of recovery. He returned to Cambridge, with the conviction that he had but a few weeks to live, and that he had better die comfortably among his relations, than miserably among strangers. But after a few weeks of severe illness he recovered, suddenly and strangely. Mr Besant tells a curious story, which Palmer is reported to have believed, that the cure had been effected by a dose of lobelia , administered by a herbalist. That Palmer swallowed the drug—of which, by the way, he nearly died—is certain, and that he recovered is equally certain; but that the dose and the recovery can be correlated as cause and effect is more than we are prepared to admit. We are rather disposed to accept a less sensational theory, expressed by a gentleman who at that period was one of his intimate friends:

‘Careful watchfulness on the part of his aunt, open air, exercise, and freedom from restraint, were the principal means of patching him up. He had frequent attacks of blood-spitting afterwards, and was altogether one of those wonderful creatures that defy doctors and quacks alike, and won’t die of the disease which is theirs by inheritance. How little any of us thought that he would die a hero!’

Palmer’s peculiar gift of acquiring languages had manifested itself even before he went to 208 London. Throughout his whole career his strength as a linguist lay in his extraordinary aptitude for learning a spoken language. The literature came afterwards. We are not aware that he was ever what is called a good scholar in Latin or in Greek, simply for the reason, according to our view, that those languages are no longer spoken anywhere. He did not repudiate the literature of a language; far from it. Probably few Orientalists have known the literatures of Arabia and Persia better than he knew them; but he learnt to speak Arabic and Persian before he learnt to read them. In this he resembled Cardinal Mezzofanti, who had the same power of picking up a language for speaking purposes from a few conversations—learning some words, and constructing for himself first a vocabulary and then a grammar. When Palmer was still a boy at school he learnt Romany. He learnt it, says Mr Besant, ‘by paying travelling tinkers sixpence for a lesson, by haunting the tents, talking to the men, and crossing the women’s palms with his pocket-money in exchange for a few more words to add to his vocabulary. In this way he gradually made for himself a Gipsy dictionary.’ In time he became a proficient in 209 Gipsy lore, and Mr Besant tells several curious stories about his adventures with that remarkable people. We will quote the narrative supplied to him by Mr Charles Leland—better known as Hans Breitmann—Palmer’s intimate friend and brother in Romany lore.

‘In one respect Palmer was truly remarkable. He combined plain common sense, clear judgment, and great quickness of perception into all the relations of a question, with a keen love of fun and romance. I could fill a volume with the eccentric adventures which we had in common, particularly among the gipsies. To these good folk we were always a first-class mystery, but none the less popular on that account. What with our speaking Romany “down to the bottom crust,” and Palmer’s incredible proficiency at thimble-rig, “ringing the changes,” picking pockets, card-sharping, three-monté, and every kind of legerdemain, these honest people never could quite make up their minds whether we were a kind of Brahmins, to which they were as Sudras, or what. Woe to the gipsy sharp who tried the cards with the Professor! How often have we gone into a tan where we were all unknown, and regarded as a couple of green Gentiles! And with what a wonderful air of innocence would Palmer play the part of a lamb, and ask them to give him a specimen of their language; and when they refused, or professed themselves unable to do so, how amiably he would turn to me and remark in deep Romany that we were mistaken, and that the people of the tent were only miserable “mumpers” of mixed blood, who could not rakker ! Once I remember he said this to a gipsy, who retaliated in a great rage, “How could I know that you 210 were a gipsy, if you come here dressed up like a gorgio and looking like a gentleman?”

‘One day, with Palmer, in the fens near Cambridge, we came upon a picturesque sight. It was a large band of gipsies on a halt. As we subsequently learned, they had made the day before an immense raid in robbing hen-roosts and poaching, and were loaded with game, fowls, and eggs. None of them knew me, but several knew the Professor as a lawyer. One took him aside to confide as a client their late misdoings. “We have been,” said he——

‘“You have been stealing eggs,” replied Palmer.

‘“How did you know that?”

‘“By the yolk on your waistcoat,” answered the Professor in Romany. “The next time you had better hide the marks ^[89] .”’

These experiences among the gipsies took place in 1874 or 1875, when Palmer had perfected himself in their language, and we must go back for a moment to the period spent in London. There, in his leisure hours, he managed to learn Italian and French, by a process similar to that by which he had previously acquired the rudiments of Romany.

‘The method he pursued is instructive. He found out where Italians might be expected to meet, and went every evening to sit among them and hear them talk. Thus, there was in those days a café in Titchborne Street frequented by Italian refugees, political exiles, and republicans. Here Palmer sat and listened and presently began to talk, and so became an ardent partisan of Italian unity. 211 There was also at that time—I think many of them have now migrated to Hammersmith—a great colony of Italian organ-grinders and sellers of plaster-cast images in and about Saffron Hill. He went among these worthy people, sat with them in their restaurants, drank their sour wine, talked with them, and acquired their patois . He found out Italian waiters at restaurants and talked with them; at the docks he went on board Italian ships, and talked with the sailors; and in these ways learned the various dialects of Genoa, Naples, Nice, Livorno, Venice, and Messina. One of his friends at this time was a well-known Signor Buonocorre, the so-called “Fire King,” who used to astonish the multitude nightly at Cremorne Gardens and elsewhere by his feats. For Palmer was always attracted by people who run shows, “do” things, act, pretend, persuade, deceive, and in fact are interesting for any kind of cleverness. However, the first result of this perseverance was that he made himself a perfect master of Italian, that he knew the country speech as well as the Italian of the schools, and that he could converse with the Piedmontese, the Venetian, the Roman, the Sicilian, or the Calabrian, in their own dialects, as well as with the purest native of Florence.

‘Also while he was in the City he acquired French by a similar process. I do not know whether he carried on his French studies at the same time with the Italian, but I believe not. It seems certainly more in accordance with the practice which he adopted in after life that he should attempt only one thing at a time. But as with Italian so with French; he joined to a knowledge of the pure language a curious acquaintance with argot ; also—which points to acquaintance made in cafés —he acquired somehow in those early days a curious knowledge and admiration of the French police and detective system ^[90] .’

212 The illness which compelled Palmer to give up London had evidently been very serious, and his convalescence was tedious. Nor, when supposed to be well, did he feel any inclination to resume work as a clerk. So he stayed in Cambridge at his aunt’s house, with no definite aim in life, but taking up now one thing, now another, after the manner of clever boys when they are at home for the holidays. He did a little literature in the way of burlesques, one of which, Ye Hole in ye Walle , a legend told after the manner of Ingoldsby, was afterwards published by Messrs Macmillan; he wrote a farce, which was acted in that temple of Thespis, once dear to Cambridge undergraduates, the old Barnwell Theatre; he acted himself with considerable success, and for a week or so thought of adopting the stage as a profession; he tried conjuring, in which in after years he became an adept, and ventriloquism, where he failed; he took up various forms of art, as wood-engraving, modelling, drawing, painting, photography; in all of which, except the last, he arrived at creditable results. His aunt is reported to have borne her nephew’s changeable tastes with exemplary patience, until photography 213 came to the front; but ‘the waste of expensive materials, the damage to clothes, stair carpets—he could always be traced—his disreputable piebald appearance,’ and (last, but not least!) ‘the results on glass,’ were too much for even her good-nature. The camera was banished, and the artist was bidden to adopt some pursuit less annoying to his neighbours. The one really useful study of this period was shorthand-writing; and in after years, when he practised as a barrister, he found the usefulness of it.

Up to this time—the year 1860—he had never turned his attention to Oriental literature, and very likely had never seen an Oriental character. The friend whose reminiscences we have quoted more than once already says that he remembers ‘going one morning into his bedroom (he was a very late riser) and finding him looking at some Arabic characters. They interested him; he liked the look of them; it was an improvement on shorthand; he would find it all out; and so he did!’ He set to work without delay to find somebody he could talk to about his new fancy, and, as the supply of Oriental scholars is necessarily limited even at one of the Universities, he was led at once 214 to the only two persons competent to instruct him—the Rev. George Skinner, and a Mohammedan named Syed Abdullah. The former was a Master of Arts of the University, who had published a translation of the Psalms; the latter was a native of Oudh, who had resided in England since 1851, and who about this time came to Cambridge to prepare students for the Civil Service of India. Under the guidance of these gentlemen, Palmer plunged into Oriental languages with the same enthusiasm with which he had followed the various pursuits we have mentioned above. There was this difference, however, between the new love and the old; there was no turning back; the day of transient fancies was over; that of serious work had begun. His ardour now knew no abatement; he is said to have worked at this time eighteen hours a day. This may well be doubted; but without pressing such a statement too closely, we may admit that he gave himself up to his new studies with unwonted perseverance, and that his progress was rapid. Mr Skinner used to take him out for walks in the country, and discourse to him on Hebrew grammar. Hebrew, however, was a language which did not attract him greatly, 215 and in after years he used to say that he did not know it. Syed Abdullah gave him more regular and systematic instruction in Urdú, Persian, and Arabic. Palmer was ‘constantly writing prose and verse exercises for him.’ They became intimate friends; and it was probably through his representations that Palmer was allowed to give up all thoughts of resuming work as a clerk, and to take up Oriental languages and literature as a profession. Through him, too, he was introduced to the Nawab Ikbal ud Dawlah, son of the late Rajah of Oudh, who took a very warm interest in Palmer’s studies, allowed him to live in his house when he pleased, and gave him the assistance of two able native instructors. Next he struck up a friendship with a Bengalee gentleman named Bazlurrahim, with whom he spent some time, composing incessantly under his supervision in Persian and Urdú. Besides these he was on terms of intimacy with other Orientals resident at that time in England, and also with Professor Mir Aulad Ali, of Trinity College, Dublin, ‘who was constantly his adviser, critic, teacher, friend, and sympathizer.’ Hence, as Mr Besant points out, we may see that he had no lack of instructors; and may at once dismiss from our 216 minds two common misconceptions about him—first that Oriental languages ‘came natural’ to him; and, secondly, that he was a poor, friendless, solitary student, burning the midnight lamp in a garret, and learning Arabic all alone. On the contrary, he never felt any pressure of poverty, and was helped, sympathized with, encouraged, by all those with whom he came in contact. His progress was rapid, and in 1862 he was able to send a copy of original Arabic verses to the Lord Almoner’s Reader in that language, who described them as ‘elegant and idiomatic.’

Up to this time Palmer does not appear to have known much of University men, or to have thought of becoming a member of the University himself. He would probably have never joined S. John’s College had he not been accidentally ‘discovered,’ as Mr Besant happily puts it, by two of the Fellows. The result of this discovery was that he was invited to become a candidate for a sizarship in October 1863, and in the interval prepared himself for the examination by reviving his former studies in classics, and in working at mathematics. He was assisted in this preparation by one of the Fellows, who tells us that, though he 217 declared that he knew no mathematics at all, he ‘always did what I set him, passed the examinations very easily, and presumably obtained his sizarship on it.’ His known proficiency in Oriental languages was evidently not taken into account at the outset of his University career, but some two years afterwards, in 1865 or 1866, a scholarship was given to him on that account only. He took his degree in 1867, and, as there was no Oriental Languages Tripos in those days, he presented himself for the Classical Tripos, in which he obtained only a third class. Such a place cannot, as a general rule, be considered brilliant; but in his case it should be regarded as a distinction rather than a failure, for it shows that he must have possessed a more than respectable knowledge of Latin and Greek, and, moreover, have been able to write composition in those languages. At the time of his matriculation (November 1863) he could have known but little of either; and during the succeeding three years he had been much occupied with vigorous prosecution of his Oriental studies, with taking pupils in Arabic, and with making catalogues of the Oriental manuscripts in the libraries of the University, of King’s 218 College, and of Trinity College. But he always had a surprising power of getting through an enormous quantity of work without ever seeming to be in a hurry. A friend tells us that Palmer

‘Did not strike one as a man of method, as an economist of time, as moving about wrapped in thought. You met him apparently lounging along, ready for a talk, perhaps in company with a rather idle man; yet when you came to measure up his work you were puzzled to know how any one man could do it.’

Palmer’s proficiency in Oriental languages at this time, 1867—only seven years, it should be remembered, after he had begun to study them—is abundantly attested by a very remarkable body of testimonials ^[91] which he obtained when a candidate for the post of interpreter to the English embassy in Persia. His old friend the Nawab said:

‘Notwithstanding the fact that he has never visited any Eastern kingdom, or mixed with Oriental nations, he has yet, by his own perseverance, application, and study, acquired such great proficiency, fluency, and eloquence, in speaking and writing three Oriental tongues—to wit, Urdú (Hindoostani), Persian, and Arabic—that one would say he must have associated with Oriental nations, and studied for a lengthened period in the Universities of the East.’

219 We have no room for quotations from the curious and flowery compositions in which numerous learned Orientals held up his excellencies of every sort to admiration; but we will cite a short passage from what was said by Mr Bradshaw, Librarian to the University of Cambridge, who had naturally seen a great deal of him while working at the manuscripts:

‘What was at once apparent was the radical difference of his knowledge of these languages [Arabic and Persian] from that of any other Orientalist I had met. It was the difference between native knowledge and dictionary knowledge; between one who uses a language as his own and one who is able to make out the meaning of what is before him with more or less accuracy by help of a dictionary.’

In the autumn of 1867, a fellowship at S. John’s College being vacant, the then Master, Dr Bateson, knowing Palmer’s reputation as an Orientalist, asked Professor Cowell, then recently made Professor of Sanskrit, to examine him. Professor Cowell writes:

‘I undertook to examine him in Persian and Hindustani, as I felt that my knowledge of Arabic was too slight to justify my venturing to examine him in that language. I well remember my delight and surprise in this examination. I had never had any intercourse with Palmer before, as I had been previously living in India; and I had no idea that he was such an Oriental scholar. I remember well that I set him for translation into Persian prose a florid description 220 from Gibbon’s chapter on Mohammed. Palmer translated it in a masterly way, in the true style of Persian rhetoric, every important substantive having its rhyming doublet, just as in the best models of Persian literature. In fact, his vocabulary seemed exhaustless. I also set him difficult pieces for translation from the Masnaví, Khondemir, and I think Saudá; but he could explain them all without hesitation. I sent a full report to the Master, and the college elected him at once to the vacant fellowship ^[92] .’

It has now become an understood thing at Cambridge that a man who is really distinguished in any branch of study has a good chance of a fellowship; but twenty years ago this was not the case, and we believe that Palmer was the first, at least in the present century, to obtain that blue ribbon of Cambridge life for proficiency in other languages than those of Greece and Rome. Such a distinction meant more to him than it would have meant to most men. No further anxieties on the score of money need trouble him for the future; he need no longer be dependent on the generosity of relations who were not themselves overburdened with the goods of this world. He might study Oriental languages to his heart’s content without let or hindrance from anybody; and it was more than probable 221 that one piece of good fortune would be the parent of another—a distinction so signal would bring him into notice, and obtain for him the offer of something which would be worth accepting. He had not long to wait. In less than a year a post was offered to him which presented, in delightful combination, study, travel, some emolument, and a reasonable prospect of fame and fortune if he worked hard and was successful. At the suggestion of the Rev. George Williams, then a resident Fellow of King’s College, he was asked to take part in the exploration of the Holy Land, and to accompany an expedition then about to start for the survey of Sinai and the neighbourhood. He was to investigate the names and traditions of the country, and to copy and decipher the inscriptions with which the rocks in the so-called ‘Written Valley’ and in other places are covered. He accepted without hesitation, and left England in November 1868.

The results of this expedition will be found in The Desert of the Exodus ^[93] , a delightful book, in which Palmer has narrated in a pleasing style the daily doings of the surveyors, and the conclusions at which they arrived. His 222 own proceedings are kept modestly in the background; but a careful reader will soon discover that, in addition to his appointed task as collector of folk-lore, he did his full share of topographical investigation, in which he evidently took a keen and growing interest, all the more remarkable as he could have had but little previous preparation for it. A detailed analysis of the results achieved would occupy far more space than we have at our disposal. We will only mention that the investigations of the expedition ‘materially confirmed and elucidated the history of the Exodus’; that objections founded on the supposed incapacity of the peninsula to accommodate so large a host as that of Israel were disposed of by pointing out abundant traces of ancient fertility; that the claims of Jebel Musa to be the true Sinai were vindicated by a comparison of its natural features with the Bible narrative, and by the collection of Arab and Mohammedan traditions; and, lastly, that the site of Kibroth Hattaavah was determined, partly on geographical grounds, partly on the traditions still current among the Towarah Bedouin, whose language Palmer mastered, and of whose manners and customs he has drawn up a very full and interesting 223 account. The intimate acquaintance which he thus formed with one of these tribes stood him in good stead in the following year, when he took a far more responsible journey. The ease with which he spoke the Arab language was, however, one of the least of his many gifts: he thoroughly understood Arab character, and was generally successful, not merely in making the natives do what he wanted, but, what is far more wonderful, in making them speak the truth to him. He thus sums up his method of dealing with them:

‘An Arab is a bad actor, and with but a very little practice you may infallibly detect him in a lie; when directly accused of it, he is astonished at your, to him, incomprehensible sagacity, and at once gives up the game. By keeping this fact constantly in view, and at the same time endeavouring to win their confidence and respect, I have every reason to believe that the Bedawín gave us throughout a correct account of their country and its nomenclature.

‘When once an Arab has ceased to regard you with suspicion, you may surprise a piece of information out of him at any moment; and if you repeat it to him a short time afterwards, he forgets in nine cases out of ten that he has himself been your authority, and should the information be incorrect will flatly contradict you and set you right, while if it be authentic he is puzzled at your possessing a knowledge of the facts, and deems it useless to withhold from you anything further ^[94] .’

224 The survey of Sinai had been completed but a few months when Palmer left England again, for a second journey of exploration. It is evident that he must have taken a more prominent part in the management of the first expedition than the precise terms of his engagement with the explorers would have led us to expect, and that he had thoroughly satisfied those responsible for it, for this second expedition was practically entrusted to him to arrange as he pleased. He was instructed in general terms to clear up, first, certain disputed points in the topography of Sinai; next, to examine the country between the Sinaitic Peninsula and the Promised Land—the ‘Desert of the Wanderings’; and, lastly, to search for inscriptions in Moab. He determined to take with him a single companion only, Mr Charles Tyrwhitt-Drake, of Trinity College, Cambridge, who had had already some experience of the East, and who proved himself in every way to be the man of men for rough journeys in unknown lands; to travel on foot, without dragoman, servant, or escort; and to take no more baggage than four camels could carry. The two friends started from Suez on December 16, 1869, and reached Jerusalem in 225 excellent health and spirits on February 26, 1870. They had performed a feat of which anybody might well be proud. They had traversed ‘the great and terrible desert,’ the Desert of El Tih, and the Negeb, or ‘south country’ of Palestine, exactly as they had proposed to do—on foot, with no attendants except the owners of the baggage-camels. They had walked nearly 600 miles; but this fact, though it says much for their endurance, gives but little idea of the real fatigues of such a journey. The mental strain must have been far more exhausting than the physical fatigue. They were not tourists, but explorers, whose duty it was to observe carefully, to record their observations on the spot, to make plans and sketches, and to collect such information as could be extracted from the inhabitants. These various pursuits—in addition to their domestic arrangements—had to be carried on in the midst of an Arab population always suspicious, and sometimes openly hostile, who worried them from daybreak until far into the night, and against whom their only weapons were incessant watchfulness, tact, and good humour. Readers of Palmer’s narrative will not be surprised to find him hinting, not 226 obscurely, that the only way to solve the ‘Bedouin question’ is to adopt what was called a few years afterwards, with reference to another not wholly dissimilar race, ‘the bag and baggage policy.’ This deliberate opinion, expressed by one who knew the Arabs well, and who had obtained singular influence over them, is worthy of careful attention, as, indeed, are all the chapters in the second part of The Desert of the Exodus , where this journey is fully described and illustrated. After reading that narrative no one can be surprised that the mission which ended so triumphantly and so fatally twelve years afterwards should have been entrusted to Palmer.

After a brief repose in Jerusalem they started afresh, and, passing again through the South Country by a different route, travelled eastward of the Dead Sea through the unknown lands of Edom and Moab. They made numerous observations of great value to Biblical students; but they failed to find what they had come to seek—inscriptions—though they succeeded in inspecting every known ‘written stone’ in the country; and the conclusion at last forced itself upon them, ‘that, above ground at least, there does not exist 227 another Moabite stone ^[95] .’ It will be remembered that the famous inscription of King Mesha was found built into a wall of late Roman work, the ancient Moabite city being buried some feet below the present surface of the ground. This fact induced Palmer to adopt the following opinion:

‘If a few intelligent and competent men, such as those employed in the Jerusalem excavations, could be taken out to Moab, and certain of the ruins be excavated, further interesting discoveries might be made. Such researches might be made without difficulty if the Arabs were well managed and the expedition possessed large resources; but it must be remembered that the country is only nominally subject to the Turkish Government, and is filled with lawless tribes, jealous of each other and of the intrusion of strangers, and all greedily claiming a property in every stone, written or unwritten, which they think might interest a Frank.

‘That many treasures do lie buried among the ruins of Moab there can be but little doubt; the Arabs, indeed, narrated to us several instances of gold coins and figures having been found by them while ploughing in the neighbourhood of the ancient cities, and sold to jewellers at Nablous, by whom they were probably melted up ^[95] .’

But, though there was no inscription to bring home as visible evidence of what had been done, the expedition was not barren of results. In the first place, the possibility of 228 exploring the little-known parts of Palestine at a comparatively trifling cost had been demonstrated; and, secondly, numerous sites had been discovered where further research would probably yield information of the greatest value. It is a misfortune that Palmer was not able in after years to give undivided attention to these interesting problems of Biblical topography. Unless we are much mistaken, he would have made a revolution in many of them, and notably in the architectural history of the city of Jerusalem, upon which he did throw new light from an unexpected quarter—the Arab historians. He would, in fact, have pursued for the Temple area at Jerusalem the method which Professor Willis pursued so successfully for some of our own cathedrals; he would have marshalled in chronological order the notices of the Arab works there; and then, by comparing the historical evidence with the existing structures, have assigned their respective dates with certainty to each of them.

Palmer returned to England in the autumn of 1870, and soon afterwards became a candidate for the Professorship of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. He was unsuccessful, and we should have contented ourselves with 229 recording the fact without comment, had not Mr Besant stated the whole question in a way reflecting so unfavourably on the electors, and through them on the University, that we feel compelled to investigate the circumstances in detail. This is what he says:

‘In the same year Palmer experienced what one is fully justified in calling the most cruel blow ever dealt to him, and one which he never forgot or forgave.

‘The vacancy of the Professorship of Arabic in 1871 seemed to give him at last the chance which he had been expecting.... He became a candidate for the vacant post; the place in fact belonged to him ; it was his already by a right which it is truly wonderful could have been contested by any—the right of Conquest. The electors were the Heads of the colleges.

‘Consider the position: Palmer by this time was a man known all over the world of Oriental scholarship; he was not a single untried student and man of books; he had proved his powers in the most practical of all ways, viz. by relying on his knowledge of the language for safety on a dangerous expedition; he had written, and written wonderfully well, a great quantity of things in Persian, Urdú, and Arabic; he was known to everybody who knew anything at all about the subject; he had been greatly talked about by those who did not; he was a graduate of the University and Fellow of S. John’s, an honour which, as was well known, he received solely for his attainments in Oriental languages; he had a great many friends who were ready to testify, and had already testified, in the strongest terms, to his extraordinary knowledge; he was, in fact, the only Cambridge man who could, with any show of fairness 230 justice at all, be elected. He was also young, and full of strength and enthusiasm; if Persian and Arabic lectures and Oriental studies could be made useful or attractive at the University, he would make them so. What follows seems incredible.

‘On the other hand, the electing body consisted, as stated above, of the Heads of colleges. It is in the nature of things that the Heads, who are mostly men advanced in years, who have spent all their lives at the University, should retain whatever old prejudices, traditions, and ancient manner of regarding things, may be still surviving. There were—it seems childish to advance this statement seriously, and yet I have no doubt it is true and correct—two prejudices against which Palmer had then to contend. The first was the more serious. It was at that time, even more than it is now, the custom at Cambridge to judge the abilities of every man entirely with regard to his place in one of the two old Triposes; and this without the least respect or consideration for any other attainments, or accomplishments, or learning. Darwin, for instance, whose name does not occur in the Honour list at all, never received from his college the slightest mark of respect until his death. Long after he had become the greatest scientific man in Europe the question would have been asked—I have no doubt it was often asked—what degree he took. Palmer’s name did occur in the Classical Tripos—but alas! in the third class. Was it possible, was it probable, that a third-class man could be a person worthy of consideration at all? Third-class men are good enough for assistant-masters in small schools, for curacies, or for any other branch of labour which can be performed without much intellect. But a third-class man must never, under any circumstances, consider that he has a right to learn anything or to claim distinction as a scholar. I put the case strongly; but there is no Cambridge man who will deny the fact that, in whatever 231 branch of learning distinction be subsequently attained, the memory of a second or third class is always prejudicial. Palmer, therefore, went before the grave and reverend Heads with this undeniable third class against a whole sheaf of proofs, testimonials, letters, opinions, statements, and assertions of attainments extraordinary, and, in some respects, unrivalled. To be sure they were only letters from Orientals and Oriental scholars. What could they avail against the opinion of the Classical Examiners of 1867 that Palmer was only worth a third class?

‘As I said above, it seems childish. But it is true. And this was the first prejudice.

‘The second prejudice was perhaps his youth. He was, it is true, past thirty, but he had only taken his degree three or four years, and therefore he only ought to have been five-and-twenty. He looked no more than five-and-twenty; he still possessed—he always possessed—the enthusiasm of youth; his manners, which could be, when he chose, full of dignity even among his intimates, were those of a man still in early manhood; he had been talked about in connection with his adventures in the East; and stories were told, some true and some false, which may have alarmed the gravity of the Heads. There must be no tincture of Bohemianism about a Professor of the University. Perhaps rumours may have been whispered about the gipsies and the tinkers, or the mesmerizing, or the conjuring; but I think the conjuring had hardly yet begun.

‘In speaking of this election, I beg most emphatically to disclaim any comparison between the most eminent and illustrious scholar who was elected and the man who was rejected. I say that it is always the bounden duty of the University to give her prizes to her own children if they have proved themselves worthy of them. Not to do so is to discourage learning and to drive away students. Now, the Professorship of Arabic was vacant; the most brilliant 232 Oriental scholar whom the University has produced in this century—perhaps in any century—became a candidate for it; he was the only Cambridge man who could possibly be a candidate; the Heads of Houses passed him by and elected a scholar of wide reputation indeed, but not a member of the University.

‘There were other circumstances which made the election more disappointing. It was known, before the election, that Dr Wright had been spoken to on the subject; it was also known that he would not stand because the stipend of the post, only 300 l. a year, was not sufficient to induce him to give up the British Museum. It seemed, therefore, that the result of Palmer’s candidature would be a walk over. But the day before the election the Master of Queens’—then Dr Phillips, who was himself a Syriac scholar—went round to all the electors, and informed them that Dr Wright would be put up on the following day. He was put up; he was elected; and very shortly afterwards was made a Fellow of Queens’ probably in consequence of an understanding with Dr Phillips that, in the event of his election to the Professorship, an election to a Queens’ Fellowship should follow. Of course, one has nothing to say against the Fellowship. Probably a Queens’ Fellowship was never more honourably and usefully bestowed; but yet the man who ought to have obtained the Professorship, the man to whom it belonged, was kept out of it. Palmer was the kindest-hearted and most forgiving of men, and the last to think or speak evil; but this was a deliberate and uncalled-for injustice, an insult to his reputation which could never be forgotten. It embittered the whole of his future connexion with the University: it never was forgotten or forgiven ^[96] .’

We notice two errors of fact in the above 233 narrative. The election did not take place in 1871, but in 1870; and secondly, the Professorship was then worth only £70 a year. The stipend was not raised to £300 until the following November. The second of these errors is not of much importance; but the first is very material, as we shall show presently.

We will next give an exact narrative of what actually took place. Professor Williams, who had held the Arabic chair since 1854, died in the Long Vacation of 1870, and on October 1 the Vice-Chancellor announced the vacancy, and fixed the day of election for Friday, October 21. The only candidates who presented themselves in the ordinary way were Palmer and the Rev. Stanley Leathes, M.A., of Jesus College, a gentleman who had obtained the Tyrwhitt Hebrew Scholarship in 1853. It was thought that his merits were little known, and that he would not prove a formidable opponent; and Palmer, as Mr Besant rightly states, looked upon the Professorship as as good as won. However, on the day before, or the day but one before, the election, the President of Queens’ College left a card on each of the electors, to say that Dr Wright would be voted for. One of these cards was 234 given to Palmer, we do not know by whom. He showed it to a friend, who asked, ‘What does it mean?’ ‘It means that it is all up with me,’ was Palmer’s reply; and events proved that he was right in his forebodings. When the electors met, the Masters of Trinity Hall and Emmanuel were not present, and the Master of Gonville and Caius declined to vote. The remaining fourteen voted in the following way:—for Dr Wright, eight; for Mr Palmer, five; for Mr Leathes, one. Dr Wright, therefore, was declared to be elected.

It will be seen from what is here stated—and the accuracy of our facts is, we know, beyond question—that it was not the Heads of Houses in their collective capacity who rejected Palmer, but less than half of them. Again, we submit that there is no evidence that those who voted against him were actuated by either of the prejudices which Mr Besant imputes to them. A high place in a tripos is no longer regarded at Cambridge as indispensable, unless the candidate be trying for a post the duties of which are in direct relation to the tripos in which he has sought distinction. Four years afterwards, the resident members of the Senate chose as Woodwardian Professor 235 of Geology a gentleman who had taken an ordinary degree, in opposition to one who had been placed thirteenth in the first class of the mathematical tripos, on the ground that they believed him to be a better geologist than his opponent. It will be said they were not the Heads of Colleges; but we would remark that, even in the election we are discussing, the case against them breaks down on this point; for the successful candidate was not even a member of the University, and surely an indifferent degree is better than no degree at all. As to the second prejudice against Palmer, we simply dismiss it with contempt. We never heard of a Cambridge elector who was influenced by hearsay evidence; and, as a matter of fact, Palmer was supported by the Master of his own College, who must have known more about his habits than all the other Heads put together. If we consider the result arrived at by the light of subsequent events, it is natural for those who, like his biographer and ourselves, are strongly prepossessed in Palmer’s favour, to regret that he was unsuccessful; and we are delighted to find Mr Besant asserting, as he does, that University distinctions ought to be given, ceteris paribus , to University men. But 236 if we try to put ourselves in the position of the electors, and survey the two candidates as they surveyed them, there is, we feel bound to assert, ample justification for the selection they made, having regard to the particular post to be filled at that time. They had, in fact, to choose between a tried and an untried man. Dr Wright was known to have received a regular education in Oriental languages in Germany and in Holland, and to be thought highly of by the most competent judges in those countries. He had given proof of sound scholarship in various publications, and it was considered by several scholars in the University that the studies to which he had given special attention, viz.—Syriac, Samaritan, Ethiopic, and the Semitic group of languages generally—would be specially useful there. He had held a Professorship in Trinity College, Dublin, where he had been distinguished as a teacher; he was personally known in Cambridge, not merely to Dr Phillips, but to the University at large, at whose hands he had received the honorary degree of Doctor of Law in 1868. Moreover, he was already an honorary Fellow of Queens’ College, and therefore it was not strange that a Society which had already gone so far should signify to him their 237 intention of proceeding a step further, in the event of his consenting to come and reside at Cambridge as a Professor. He was accordingly elected Fellow January 5, 1871 ^[97] .

Palmer, on the other hand, had submitted to the electors testimonials which testified to his wonderful knowledge of Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic as spoken languages; he was known to have given special attention to the languages of India; he had catalogued the Oriental MSS. in the Libraries of the University, of King’s College, and of Trinity College; he had translated Moore’s Paradise and the Peri into Arabic verse; and he had published a short treatise on the Sufistic and Unitarian Theosophy of the Persians. But here the direct evidence of his acquirements ceased; and it is at this point that the date of the election becomes material. None of his more important works had as yet appeared. The official Report of his journeys in the East was not published until January 1871; and the preface to his Desert of the Exodus is

238 dated June of the same year ^[98] . The Heads, therefore, could not know that he ‘had relied on his knowledge of the language for safety in a dangerous expedition.’

After a disappointment so severe as the loss of the much-coveted professorship, it might have been expected that Palmer’s connexion with Cambridge would soon have been severed; that he would have sought and obtained a lucrative appointment elsewhere. On the contrary, it was written in the book of fate, as one of his favourite Orientals would have said, that he should not only remain at Cambridge, but remain there in connexion with Oriental studies. Cambridge has two chairs of Arabic: a Professorship founded by Sir Thomas Adams in 1632; and a Readership, founded by King George I. in 1724, at the instance of Lancelot Blackburn, Bishop of Exeter and Lord Almoner. It is endowed with an income of £50 a year, paid out of the Almonry bounty, but reduced by fees to £40. 10 s. If, however, the income be small the duties are none—or, rather, none are attached to the office as such; 239 and moreover the Reader is technically regarded as a Professor, and has a Professor’s privilege of retaining a College Fellowship for life as a married man. The previous holder of the office, the Rev. Theodore Preston, Fellow of Trinity College, had regarded it as a sinecure, and moreover had generally been non-resident. On his resignation in 1871, the Lord Almoner for the time being, the Hon. and Rev. Gerald Wellesley, Dean of Windsor, gave the office to Palmer. At last, therefore, he seemed to have obtained his reward—congenial occupation in a place which had been the first to find him out and help him, where he had many devoted friends, and where he was now enabled to establish himself as a married man; for on the very day after he received his appointment he married a lady to whom he had been engaged for some years.

Palmer took a very different view of his duties as Reader in Arabic from what his predecessor had done. He delivered his inaugural lecture on Monday, 4 March, 1872, choosing for his subject ‘The National Religion of Persia; an Outline Sketch of Comparative Theology ^[99] ,’ and during the Easter and 240 Michaelmas terms he lectured on six days in each week, devoting three days to Persian and three to Arabic. To these subjects there was subsequently added a course in Hindustani. In consequence of this large amount of voluntary work the Council of the Senate recommended (February 24, 1873) ^[100] ‘that a sum of £250 per annum should be paid to the present Lord Almoner’s Reader out of the University Chest,’ and that he should be authorized to receive a fee of £2. 2 s. in each term for each course of lectures from every student attending them, provided he declared in writing his readiness to acquiesce in certain regulations, of which the first was: ‘That it shall be his ordinary duty to reside within the precincts of the University for eighteen weeks during term time in every academical year, and to give three courses of lectures—viz. one course in Arabic, one in Persian, and one in Hindustani.’ The Senate accepted this proposal March 6, 1873, and Palmer signed the new regulations five days afterwards. In recording this transaction Mr Besant remarks: ‘It must be acknowledged that the University got full value for their money.’ We reply to this sneer 241 that the University asked no more from Palmer than it asked from every other professor whose salary was augmented. The clause imposing residence had been accepted in the same form by all the other professors; and one course of lectures in each term is surely the very least that a teaching body can require from one of its staff. It must also be remembered that the Lord Almoner’s Readership is an office to which the University does not appoint, which therefore it cannot control, and which, until Palmer held it, had been practically useless. He, however, being disposed to reside, and to discharge his self-imposed duties vigorously, the University came forward with an offer which was meant to be generous, in recognition of his personal merits; for the whole arrangement, it will be observed, had reference to the present Reader only—that is, to himself. The precise amount offered, £250, was evidently selected with the intention of placing the Lord Almoner’s Reader on the same footing as a professor, for the salaries of nearly all the professorial body had been already raised to £300; and, if a comparison between the Reader and the Professor of Arabic be inevitable, it may be remarked that while the 242 University offered £250 to the former, they offered only £230 to the latter. The intention, we repeat, was generous, and we protest with some indignation against Palmer’s bitter words: ‘The very worst use a man can make of himself is to stay up at Cambridge and work for the University.’ The truth is that University life did not suit him, and though he tried hard for ten years to believe that it did, the attempt ended in failure, and it is much to be regretted that it was ever made.

We must pass rapidly over the next ten years. They were years of incessant labour, labour which must have been often most painful and irksome, for it had to be undertaken in the midst of heavy sorrow, ill-health, pecuniary difficulties—everything, in short, which damps a man’s energies and takes the heart out of his work. His married life began brightly enough: he had an assured income of nearly £600 a year, which he could increase at pleasure, and we know did increase, by literary work. In 1871 he entered at the Middle Temple, probably with the intention of practising at the Indian bar at some future time; but after he had given up all thoughts 243 of India he joined the Eastern Circuit, and attended assizes and quarter sessions regularly. He had a fair amount of business, and is said to have made a good advocate, though he could have had little knowledge of law, and, in fact, regarded his legal work as a relaxation from severer studies. These he pursued without intermission. Besides his lectures, which he gave regularly, he produced work after work with amazing rapidity. In 1871, in addition to the Desert of the Exodus , he published a History of Jerusalem , written in collaboration with his friend Mr Besant; in 1873 he undertook to write an Arabic Grammar, which appeared in the following year; in 1874 he wrote Outlines of Scripture Geography , and a History of the Jewish Nation , for the Christian Knowledge Society, and began a Persian Dictionary, of which the first part was published in 1876; in 1876—77 he edited the works of the Arabian poet Beda ed din Zoheir for the Syndics of the University Press, the text appearing in 1876 and the translation in 1877; and during the next few years he was at work upon a Life of Haroun Alraschid , a new translation of the Koran, and a revision of Henry Martyn’s translation of the 244 New Testament into Persian. Besides this vast amount of solid work it would be easy to show that he produced nearly as great a quantity of that other literature which, when we consider the labour which it entails upon him who writes it, it is surely a misnomer to call ‘light.’ Professor Nicholls, of Oxford, gives an account, in a most interesting appendix to Mr Besant’s book, of the quantity of Persian, Arabic, and Hindustani which Palmer was continually writing. In the last-mentioned language there were a poem on the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, and a wonderful account of the visit of the Shah to England, which occupied thirty-six columns of the Akhbar , a space equivalent to about twenty columns of the Times ; and, although Palmer admitted that ‘the writing of such things is a laborious and artificial task to me, as I am not as familiar with the Urdú of everyday life as I am with the Persian,’ he still went on writing them. How familiar he was with Arabic and Persian is shown by the curious fact that whenever he was under strong emotion he would plunge abruptly into one or other language, sometimes writing a whole letter in it, sometimes only a sentence or two, or a few verses. Besides 245 these Oriental ‘trifles’ as he would probably have called them, we find continual contributions to English periodical literature, and three volumes of poetry: English Gipsy Songs in Romany (1875); the Song of the Reed, and other Pieces (1876); and Lyrical Songs , &c. by John Ludwig Runeberg (1878). In the first of these he collaborated with Mr Leland, whom we mentioned before, and Miss Janet Tuckey; and in the last with Mr Magnusson; but the second is entirely his own. We regret that we cannot find room for a specimen of these graceful verses. Those who have leisure to look into the Song of the Reed , or the translation of Zoheir, will find themselves introduced to a new literature by one who, if not a poet, was unquestionably, as Mr Besant says, a versifier of a high order, and in the very front rank of translators.

We have said that most of this work—were it grave or gay, it mattered not—had to be got through in the midst of serious anxieties. Mrs Palmer’s health began to fail before they had been married long, and it soon became evident that her lungs were affected. It was necessary that she should leave Cambridge. In the spring of 1876, Wales was tried, with 246 results which were so reassuring that it was decided to complete her cure (as it was then believed) by a winter in Paris. There, however, she got worse instead of better, and early in the following year her husband began to realize that she would die. In the autumn of 1877, they returned home to try Wales once more, and then, as a last resource, Bournemouth. There, in the summer of 1878, Mrs Palmer died. The expenses of so long an illness, added to journeyings to and fro, and the cost of keeping up two establishments (for he was obliged to continue his Cambridge lectures all the while), crippled his resources, and produced embarrassments from which he never became wholly free. His own health, too, never strong, gave way under his fatigues and worries, and he became only not quite so ill as his wife. Yet he never complained; never said a word about his troubles to any of his friends. Those who were most with him at this dreary time have recorded that he always met them with a smiling face, and went about his work as calmly as if he had been well and happy.

It was fortunate for him that he had a singularly joyous nature, which could never 247 be saddened for long together. He was always surrounded by a pleasant atmosphere of cheerfulness, which not only did good to those about him, but had a salutary effect upon himself, enabling him to maintain his elasticity and vigour, even in the face of sorrow and ill-health. Most things have their comic side, if only men are not blind to it; and he could see the humorous aspect of the most melancholy or the most perilous situation. To the last he was full of life and fun. Though he no longer, as of old, wrote burlesques, he could draw clever caricatures of his friends and acquaintances; tell stories which convulsed his hearers with laughter; and sing comic songs—especially a certain Arab ditty, in which he turned himself into an Arab minstrel with really wonderful power of impersonation. Again, whatever he came across—especially in great cities like London or Paris—was full of interest for him. Without being a philanthropist, or, indeed, having a spark of humanitarian sentiment in his nature, he took a pleasure in investigating his fellow-creatures, talking to men and finding out all about them. He was endowed in the highest degree with the gift of sympathy; and this, while it made him the 248 most loveable of friends, made him also a singularly acute investigator, and gave him a power of influencing others which was truly wonderful. He possessed, too, great manual dexterity, and took a pleasure in finding out how all those things were done which depend for their success upon sleight of hand; and in all such he became a proficient himself. He was a first-rate conjuror, and besides doing the tricks, ordinary and extraordinary, of professed conjurors, he took much satisfaction in reproducing the most startling phenomena of spiritualism, which he regarded as a debased form of conjuring—‘a swindle of the most palpable and clumsy kind.’ It was in such pursuits that he found the recreation which other men find in hard exercise. Of this he took very little. Even in his younger days he did not care for games, and his one attempt at cricket was nearly fatal to the wicket-keeper, whom he managed to hit on the head with his bat; but he was an expert gymnast, and loved boating and fishing in the Fens, to which he used to retire from time to time with one of his friends. It may be doubted whether he cared about the sport and the fresh air so much as the absolute repose; the old-world 249 character of that curious corner of England; the total absence of convention. There he could dress as he pleased; and he took full advantage of his liberty. It is recorded that once, as he was coming home to College, he happened to meet the Master, Dr Bateson, who, casting his eye over the water-boots and flannels, stained with mud and weather, in which the learned Professor had encased himself, remarked, ‘This is Eastern costume, I suppose.’ ‘No, Master; Eastern Counties costume,’ was the reply.

It is pleasant to be able to record that the happiness which had been so long delayed came at last. In about a year after his wife’s death he married again. His choice was fortunate, and for the last three years of his life he was able to enjoy that greatest of all luxuries—a thoroughly happy home. He stood sorely in need of such consolation, for in other directions he had plenty to distress and worry him. His pecuniary difficulties pressed upon him as hardly as ever, and his relations with the University began to be somewhat strained. He had had the mortification of seeing Professor Wright’s salary raised to £500 a year, with no hint of any corresponding proposition 250 being made for him ^[101] ; and when the Commissioners promulgated their scheme his office was not included in it, a suggestion for raising his salary which had been made by the Board of Oriental Studies being wholly disregarded by them. Moreover, the undertaking to deliver three courses of lectures in each year turned out to be infinitely more laborious than he had expected. Candidates for the Indian Civil Service increased in number; and the pupils of any given term were pretty sure to want to go on with their work in the next, when he was teaching a different language, so that he was compelled in practice to give, not one, but two, or even three, courses in each term. Moreover, the elementary nature of much of this instruction—the ‘teaching boys the Persian alphabet,’ as he called it—became every year more and more irksome. We are not surprised that he got disgusted with the University; but at the same time we cannot agree with Mr Besant that the University was wholly to blame. They were in no wise responsible 251 for the conduct of the Commissioners; in fact, all that could be done to make them take a different view was done. Had Palmer resided continuously in the University, and pressed his own claims, things might have been very different. But this he had been unable to do, for reasons which, as we have seen, were beyond his own control, and for which, therefore, he is not to be blamed; but the fact cannot be denied that for some years he had been practically non-resident. There was also another cause which has to be taken into consideration—his own disposition. The life of a University is a peculiar life, which does not suit everybody, and certainly did not suit him. He felt ‘cabined, cribbed, confined,’ in it; and he said afterwards that ‘he never really began to live till he was emancipated from academic trammels.’ Our wonder is, not that he left Cambridge when he did, but that he remained so long connected with it. The final break took place in 1881, when he voluntarily rescinded the engagement which he had made to lecture, and, retaining the Readership and the Fellowship at S. John’s College—neither of which he could afford to resign—took up his abode in London, where he obtained 252 a place on the staff of the Standard newspaper. He readily adapted himself to this new life, and soon became a successful writer. One of the assistant-editors at that time, Mr Robert Wilson, has recorded that

‘Palmer considered his career as a journalist in London, short as it was, one of the pleasantest episodes of his life. Those who were associated with him in that career professionally can say that they reckoned his companionship one of the brightest and happiest of their experiences. He was

and what he was to me he was to all who worked with him.’

It will be well, before we relate the heroic achievement with which the career of our friend closed, to try to estimate his position as an Oriental scholar, for as such he will be remembered, especially in Cambridge. For this purpose Mr Besant has, most judiciously, supplied ample materials to those competent to use them, by printing an essay by Professor Nicholls, of Oxford, which we have already quoted, and a paper by Mr Stanley Lane Poole. The former points out Palmer’s extraordinary facility in the use of Persian and Arabic, and gives a minute, and in the main 253 highly laudatory, criticism of some of his performances, which ends with these words: ‘In him England loses her greatest Oriental linguist, and readiest Oriental scholar.’ From the latter we will quote a few sentences:

‘Palmer was a scholar of the kind that is born, not made. No amount of mere teaching could develop that wonderful instinct for language which he possessed. He stood in strongly-marked contrast to the other scholars of his time. Most of them were brought up on grammars and dictionaries; he learned Arabic by the ear and mouth. Others were careful about their conjugations and syntax; Palmer dashed to the root of all grammatical rules, and spoke or wrote so and so because it would not be spoken or written any other way. To him strange idioms that a book-student could not understand were perfectly clear; he had used them himself in the Desert again and again ^[102] .’

He then proceeds to examine Palmer’s principal Arabic works, and decides that while the edition of Zoheir is the most finished of them, and the translation represents the original with remarkable skill, the version of the Koran ‘is a very striking performance.’

‘It has the grave fault of immaturity; it was written, or rather dictated, at great speed, and is consequently defaced by some oversights which Palmer was incapable of committing if he had taken more time over the work. But, in spite of all the objections that may be urged against it, his 254 translation has the true Desert ring in it; we may quarrel with certain renderings, puzzle over occasional obscurities, regret certain signs of haste or carelessness; but we shall be forced to admit that the translator has carried us among the Bedawí tents, and breathed into us the strong air of the Desert, till we fancy we can hear the rich voice of the Blessed Prophet himself as he spoke to the pilgrims on Akabah ^[103] .’

Lastly, Mr Poole points out the peculiar excellence of Palmer’s Arabic Grammar, which is arranged on the Arab system, in bold defiance of the usual custom of treating Arabic in the same way that one treats Latin. To these favourable criticisms of works beyond our powers of appreciation we should like to add a word of praise of our own for the historical introduction to the Koran, in which the career of Mahomet is sketched in a few bold, vigorous lines, and the scope and object of the work are analysed and explained. We regret that Palmer was not able to devote more time to history; the above Introduction , and the Life of Haroun Alraschid , seem to us to show that he would have excelled in that style of composition. He could read the native authorities with facility, and he knew how to put his materials to a good use. But alas! all these peaceful studies were to be closed for ever by 255 an enterprise as masterly in its execution as it was terrible in its conclusion.

The suppression of Arabi’s revolt in Egypt created the greatest enthusiasm in this country. The British Public dearly loves a war, and every event in which our troops were concerned was eagerly read and proudly commented on by enthusiastic sympathizers. But there were probably not many who so much as read the scanty paragraphs which noted, first, the anxiety respecting the fate of some Englishmen who had gone into the Desert on a certain day in August 1882; and, subsequently, the certainty of their murder. Palmer’s wonderful achievement has been told for the first time by Mr Besant with a fulness of detail, a vividness of descriptive power, and, we may add, a bitterness of grief, that only those who read it carefully more than once can appreciate as such a piece of work deserves to be appreciated. We shall try to set before our readers the principal circumstances of those eventful days, treading in his steps, and often using his very words.

Early in the month of June 1882, when it became evident that the Egyptian revolt must be put down by force, two great causes 256 of anxiety arose: (1) the safety of the Suez Canal; (2) the amount of support which Arabi was likely to receive, and the allies on whom he could depend. These two questions were of course closely connected with each other; and it is now known that as regards the second of them, Arabi hoped to obtain the support of the Arabs of the Desert on both sides of the Canal, and by their aid to seize, and, if possible, to destroy, the Canal itself. These Arabs, it is important to recollect, rise or remain quiet at the command of their sheikhs. The sheikhs, therefore, had to be won over. This he hoped to accomplish by the assistance of the governors of the frontier castles of El Arish on the Mediterranean, Kulat Nakhl, Suez, Akabah, and Tor on the west coast of the Sinaitic Peninsula, all of whom, at the beginning of the rebellion, were his frantic partisans. He had therefore an easy means of access to the Bedouin sheikhs. The number of men whom they could put into the field was estimated by Palmer himself at about 50,000; but this was not all. It was feared that if a single tribe joined Arabi, it would be followed by all the others, and that the Bedouin of the Syrian and Sinaitic deserts might presently be joined by 257 their kinsfolk of Arabia and the Great Desert, a countless multitude.

It was on the evening of Saturday, June 24, that Captain Gill, whose unhappy fate it was to perish with Palmer on the expedition which they planned together, was sent to him from the Admiralty, to ask him for information respecting ‘the character, the power, the possible movement, of the Sinai Arabs.’ The interview was short, but long enough for Palmer to sketch the position of affairs, and to convince Gill that a man whom the Government could thoroughly trust must be sent out to arrange matters personally with the sheikhs. When Gill had left, Palmer said to his wife, ‘They must have a man to go to the Desert for them; and they will ask me, because there is nobody else who can go.’ On Monday Captain Gill came again, and the whole question was carefully talked over.

‘It was agreed that no time ought to be lost in detaching the tribes from Arabi, in preventing any injury to the Canal, and in quieting fanaticism, which might assume such proportions as to set the whole East aflame. It now became perfectly evident to Gill that Palmer was the only man who knew the sheikhs, and could be asked to go, and could do the work; it was also perfectly evident to Palmer that he would be urged to undertake this difficult and delicate 258 mission; he had, in fact, already laid himself open by speaking of the ease with which these people may be managed by one who can talk with them. When Gill left him on that Monday morning he was already more than half-persuaded to accept the mission.’

It is evident that after this interview Captain Gill returned to the Admiralty, and gave a glowing account to his superiors of the man whom he had discovered, and the information he had obtained; for in the course of the same afternoon Palmer received an invitation to breakfast with Lord Northbrook on the following morning, Tuesday, June 27, which he accepted. The interest which he had already excited is proved by the fact

‘that all the notes and reports which Gill had made during the interviews on the subject were already set up in type and laid on the table. The whole conversation at breakfast was concerning the tribes, and how they might be prevented from giving trouble. Palmer stated again his belief that the sheikhs might, if some one could be got to go, be persuaded to sit down and do nothing, if not to take an active part against the rebels.’

At this point it is material to notice that the Government did not send for Palmer and ask him to undertake a certain mission to the East; neither did Palmer communicate with the Government and volunteer, in the ordinary sense of that word; but that in the course of 259 three successive interviews it became evident to the Government that the mission must be undertaken by somebody; and to Palmer, that if he did not go himself the chance would be lost. No one equally fit for such a mission was available at that moment; no one knew the sheikhs personally as he did, and could travel among them as an old friend, for it must always be remembered that the country he was about to visit was the same which he had traversed with Drake in 1869-70. He did not exactly wish to go; he was too fondly devoted to his wife and children to find any pleasure in courting dangers of which he was fully sensible; but he seems to have felt that his duty to his country demanded the sacrifice; and perhaps the thought may have crossed his mind that, if he ran the risk and came out of it safe and successful, his fortune would be made; and therefore, when Lord Northbrook inquired, ‘Do you know anyone who would go?’ he replied, ‘I will go myself.’

This decision was not arrived at until Thursday, June 29. On the following evening he left London, and on Tuesday, July 4, he was on board the Tanjore , between Brindisi and Alexandria, writing to his wife:

260 ‘I am sure this trip will do me an immense deal of good, for I wanted a change of air and complete rest from writing, and now I have got both. Of course, the position is not without its anxieties, but I have no fear.... It is such a chance!’

Such a chance! It was worth while running the risk, for, though there was danger in it, there was fame and fortune beyond the danger: there would be no more debt and difficulty; no more days and nights of uncongenial toil. No wonder as he sat under the awning, ‘like a tent,’ as he said, and did nothing, that these thoughts came into his mind, and found their way on to his paper—it was a chance indeed!

It seems certain that the plan of the enterprise had been laid down before Palmer left London, though no formal instructions were given to him in writing. It was understood between him and the Government that he was to travel about in the Desert and Peninsula of Sinai, and ascertain the disposition of the tribes; secondly, that he was to attempt the detachment of the said tribes from the Egyptian cause, in order to effect which he was to make terms with the sheikhs; thirdly, that he was to take whatever steps he thought best for an effective guard of the banks of the Canal, and for the repair of the Canal, in case Arabi should 261 attempt its destruction. Lastly, he was instructed, probably at Alexandria, to ascertain what number of camels could be purchased, and at what price.

Arrived at Alexandria, Palmer put himself under the orders of Admiral Lord Alcester, then Sir Beauchamp Seymour, who, after a few words of welcome and encouragement, ordered him to go at once to the Desert and begin work. It was decided that he should proceed by steamer to Jaffa, thence to Gaza, and across the Desert to Tor in the Sinaitic Peninsula, where he could be taken up and join the fleet at Suez. On the morning of July 9 he reached Jaffa, where he bought his camp-equipage and stores, hired a servant, and opened communications with certain Arabs of the Desert, whom he ordered to meet him at Gaza. We know the details of this time from a long letter which he wrote to his wife just before he left Jaffa.

‘It is bad enough here where I find plenty of people to talk to and be civil to me; but how will it be when I am in the Desert with no one but wild Arabs to talk to? Not that I am a bit afraid of them, for they were always good friends to me; but it will be lonely, and you may be sure that when I sit on my camel in the burning sun, or lie down in my little tent at night, my thoughts will always be with you and our dear happy home. I am quite sure of 262 succeeding in my mission, and don’t feel anything to fear except the being away for a few months.... I feel very homesick, but quite confident.’

He got to Gaza on July 13, and on July 15 plunged into the Desert. Here Professor Palmer disappears, and we have instead a Syrian officer, dressed in Mohammedan costume, known as the Sheikh Abdullah, the name which had been given to him by the Arabs on his former journey. The expedition occupied just a fortnight, for Suez was reached on August 1. He was fortunately able to keep a brief journal, which he sent home by post from Suez. This invaluable document, with two or three letters written to friends, and a formal Report addressed from Suez to the Government, but not yet printed, enables us to ascertain what he did, and what sufferings and dangers he endured in the accomplishment of it. It was the middle of the summer, and apparently an unusually hot and stormy summer, for we read of even the natives being overcome by the heat, wind, and dust. His business admitted of no delay; whether well or ill, he must ride forward, in the full glare of the sun, with the thermometer ‘at 110 in the shade in the mountains, and in the plains 263 about twice that’; and yet never show, by the slightest hint, that he was either overcome by the physical exertion, or alarmed at the imminent peril which he ran at every moment. So well was the bodily frame sustained by the brave heart within, that he could write cheerfully, nay humorously, even before he had reached a place of safety. Here is an extract from one of his letters, dated ‘Magharah, in the Desert of the Tih, July 22’:

‘This country is not exactly what you would call, in a truthful spirit, safe just now. I have had to dodge troops and Arabs, and Lord knows what, and am thankful and somewhat surprised at the possession of a whole skin....

‘I wish to remark that about the fifth consecutive hour (noon) of the fifth consecutive day’s camel-ride, with a strong hot wind blowing the sand in your face, camel-riding loses, as an amusement, the freshness of one’s childhood’s experience at the Zoo....

‘I am now two days from Suez, and before the third sun sets shall be either within reach of beer and baths, or be able to dispense altogether with those luxuries for the future. The very equally balanced probabilities lend a certain zest to the journey....

‘My man stole some melons from a patch near some water (if I may use the expression), and I feel better for the crime. Still I am dried up, and burnt, and thirsty, and bored.’

Let us now extract from the Journal a few passages bearing directly on the main object of 264 the journey. All of these, we ought to state are fully corroborated by the subsequently written Report, and by incidental allusions in the telegrams embodied in the Blue Book.

‘ July 15. —My sheikh has just come, and I have had a long and very satisfactory talk with him. I think the authorities will be very pleased with the report I shall have for them.

‘ July 16. —I now know where to find and how to get at every sheikh in the Desert, and I have already got the Teyáhah, the most warlike and strongest of them all, ready to do anything for me. When I come back I shall be able to raise 40,000 men! It was very lucky that I knew such an influential tribe.

‘ July 18. —I have been quite well to-day, but as usual came in very fatigued. I had an exciting time, having met the great sheikh of the Arabs hereabouts ^[104] . I, however, quite got him to accept my views.... It was really a most picturesque sight to see the sheikh ride into my camp at full gallop with a host of retainers, all riding splendid camels as hard as they could run; when they pulled up, all the camels dropped on their knees, and the men jumped off and came up to me. I had heard of their coming, so was prepared, and not at all startled, as they meant me to be. I merely rose quietly, and asked the sheikh into my tent.

‘ July 19. —I have got hold of some of the very men whom Arabi Pasha has been trying to get over to his side, and when they are wanted I can have every Bedawin at my call from Suez to Gaza.

‘ July 20. —The sheikh, who is the brother of Suleiman, is one who engages all the Arabs not to attack the caravan of 265 pilgrims which goes to Mecca every year from Egypt, so that he is the very man I wanted. He has sworn by the most solemn Arab oath that, if I want him, he will guarantee the safety of the Canal even against Arabi Pasha.... In fact, I have already done the most difficult part of my task, and as soon as I get precise instructions the thing is done, and a thing which Arabi Pasha failed to do, and on which the safety of the road to India depends.... Was I not lucky just to get hold of the right people?... I have seen a great many other sheikhs, and I know that they will follow my man, Sheikh Muslih.

‘ July 21. —I am anxious to get to Suez, because I have done all I wanted by way of preliminaries, and as soon as I get precise instructions, I can settle with the Arabs in a fortnight or three weeks, and get the whole thing over. As it is, the Bedouins keep quite quiet, and will not join Arabi, but will wait for me to give them the word what to do. They look upon Abdullah Effendi—that is what they call me—as a very grand personage indeed!

‘ July 22. —I have got the man who supplies the pilgrims with camels on my side too, and as I have promised my big Sheikh 500 l. for himself, he will do anything for me.... It may seem a vain thing to say, but I did not know that I could be so cool and calm in the midst of danger as I am, and I must be strong, as I have endured tremendous fatigue , and am in first-rate health. I am very glad that the war has actually come to a crisis, because now I shall really have to do my big task, and I am certain of success .

‘ July 26. —I have had a great ceremony to-day, eating bread and salt with the Sheikhs, in token of protecting each other to the death ^[105] .’

This Journal, it will be remarked, speaks 266 of the expedition as preliminary to something else. What this was is explained by the Report above alluded to, and by the telegrams which Sir William Hewett and Sir Beauchamp Seymour sent to the Admiralty after Palmer’s arrival at Suez. On August 4 Sir William Hewett telegraphs:

‘Professor Palmer confident that in four days he will have 500 camels, and within ten or fifteen days, 5,000 more.

‘He waits return of messenger sent for 500, so he cannot start for Desert before Monday.’

On August 6 Sir Beauchamp Seymour telegraphed to the Admiralty:

‘Palmer, in letter of August 1 at Suez, writes that, if precisely instructed as to services required of Bedouin, and furnished with funds, he believes he could buy the allegiance of 50,000 at a cost of from 20,000 l. to 30,000 l. ’

On the receipt of this telegram the Admiralty telegraphed to Sir William Hewett:

‘Instruct Palmer to keep Bedouins available for patrol or transport on Canal. A reasonable amount may be spent, but larger engagements are not to be entered into until General arrives and has been consulted.’

The Admiralty must have been satisfied with what Palmer had accomplished in the Desert, or they would not have directed him to proceed with his ‘big task’; and it came out afterwards that in consequence of promises made to him 267 one at least of the tribes refused to join Arabi. Meanwhile he was appointed Interpreter-in-Chief to her Majesty’s Forces in Egypt, and placed on the Admiral’s staff. It is important to note this, as it gave him the command of money, brought him into prominence, and paved the way for the disaster which was so soon to overtake him. Captain Gill joined him at Suez on the morning of the same day, August 6. He brought £20,000 with him, which he considered to be paid to Palmer, as appears from his Journal, and Palmer took the same view. Sir William Hewett, however, after the receipt of Lord Northbrook’s telegram, determined to limit the preliminary expenditure to £3,000, which was paid to Palmer on August 8. Soon after Gill’s arrival at Suez, he and Palmer had a long discussion, in which they agreed to combine their respective duties. Gill had been ordered to cut the telegraph wires from Kartarah to Constantinople, and so destroy Arabi’s communications with Turkey, and Palmer had made arrangements for a meeting of the sheikhs at Nakhl. We have seen that the Journal mentions presents to the sheikhs (as much as £500 had been promised to Misleh), and these would 268 have to be conveyed to them before they were likely to arm their followers. The rest of the £20,000 was intended to be spent in fair payment for services rendered when the General should give the order to engage the Bedouin; and the word ‘buy,’ in Sir Beauchamp Seymour’s telegram of August 6, need not be interpreted to mean ‘bribe.’ The purchase of camels was another object which Palmer had before him in going to the Desert; but this, we take it, was quite subsidiary to the former, though perhaps, as a matter of policy, it was occasionally made prominent, in order to disarm suspicion. That much more important business than buying camels was intended is also proved by a letter from Palmer to Admiral Hewett, in which he said that ‘it would be most desirable that an officer of her Majesty’s Navy should accompany me on my journey to the Desert, as a guarantee that I am acting on the part of her Majesty’s Government ^[106] .’

It must now be mentioned that on Palmer’s first journey, when staying in the camp of Sheikh Misleh, he had been introduced by him to a man of about seventy years of age, of 269 commanding stature, and haughty, peremptory manner, named Meter ibn Sofieh. This man Misleh had represented to be the Sheikh of the Lehewat tribe, occupying all the country east of Suez. This was not true. Meter was not a sheikh of the Lehewats, and the Lehewats as a tribe do not live east of Suez, but on the south border of Palestine. Meter was a Lehewat, but he was simply the head of a family who had left the tribe, and taken up their abode near Suez, where they had collected together two or three other families, who called themselves the Sofieh Tribe, but had no power or influence. Palmer, however, believed Meter’s story about himself, called him his friend, and trusted him implicitly. It was Meter whom he sent into Suez from Misleh’s camp to fetch his letters; Meter who conducted him thence to the place called ‘The Wells of Moses’ between July 27 and July 31; Meter with whom he corresponded respecting his second journey; and there is little doubt that it was Meter who betrayed him.

In the Report which Palmer addressed to the Admiralty on August 1 he stated that when he started on his second journey a company of 300 or 400 Bedouin should go with him, ‘for 270 the sake of effect.’ Most unfortunately, this precaution was not taken. On August 7, Meter, accompanied by his nephew, Salameh ibn Ayed, came to Moses’ Wells, and asked Mr Zahr, one of the native Christians who reside there, to read a letter which he had received from Palmer. The letter, signed ‘Abdullah,’ contained a request that Meter would bring down one hundred camels and twenty armed men. Meter then crossed over to Suez by water, Mr Zahr’s son going with him, saw Palmer, who did not, so far as we know, express surprise that he came without men or camels, and in the evening was presented to Consul West and Admiral Hewett, from whom he received a naval officer’s sword, as a mark of confidence and respect. This sword Meter subsequently gave secretly to Mr Zahr’s son to take care of for him, saying that he was going to the Desert with some English gentlemen, and was afraid that the Bedouin might kill him if they saw him with a sword, as they were not quiet at that time. After the murder, Mr Zahr’s son brought the sword to the English Consul, and told the above story.

The following day was spent in making preparations for the journey. During the 271 afternoon, Palmer received a package containing three bags, each containing £1,000 in English sovereigns. These bags were taken intact into the Desert. The party, consisting of Professor Palmer, Captain Gill, Lieutenant Charrington, of the Euryalus (who had been selected by Palmer out of seven officers who volunteered to go with him), Gill’s dragoman, a native Christian, and the servant whom Palmer had engaged at Jaffa, a Jew, named Bokhor, crossed over to Moses’ Wells in a boat after sunset, and passed the night in a tent supplied by Mr Zahr. Next morning they started soon after sunrise, and, after the usual midday halt, pitched their camp for the night in Wady Kahalin, a shallow watercourse, about half-a-mile wide, and distant eighteen miles from Moses’ Wells. So far their proceedings can be followed with certainty; but after this it becomes a most difficult task to compose an exact narrative of what befell them. We have followed the account drawn up by Colonel Warren, through whose persevering energy some of the murderers were brought to justice, supplementing it, in a few places, by facts stated in the Blue Book, generally on the same authority.

272 On Thursday, August 10, the travellers were unable to start at dawn as they had intended, because it was found that two of their camels had been stolen during the night, probably with the intention of delaying the start, and so giving time to warn the Bedouin appointed to waylay them. Several hours elapsed before the camels were found, and they were not able to start until 3 p.m. Meter is said to have suggested that the baggage should be left to follow slowly (both the stolen camels and those which had been sent out to bring them back being tired), and that the three Englishmen and the dragoman should ride forward with him, taking with them only their most valuable effects, among which was a black leather bag containing the £3,000, and Palmers despatch-box containing £235 more. At about 5 p.m. they reached the mouth of the Wady Sudr. This valley is described as a narrow mountain-gorge, bounded by precipices which, on the northern side, are from 1,200 to 1,600 feet in height; on the southern side they are much lower, not exceeding 300 or 400 feet. They turned into the Wady, and rode up it, intending no doubt not to halt again until they reached Meter’s camp, at a place called Tusset 273 Sudr. Shortly before midnight they were suddenly attacked by a party of about twenty-five Bedouin, who fired upon them, disabled one of the camels, and took prisoners Palmer, Gill, Charrington, and the dragoman. The accounts of the attack are very conflicting, but it appears certain that Meter deserted his charge at once, and escaped up the Wady to his own camp, which he reached at sunrise; while his nephew, Salameh ibn Ayed, who had been riding with Palmer on one of his uncle’s camels, rode rapidly off in the opposite direction, down the Wady, taking with him the bag containing the £3000, and the despatch-box. It has been affirmed that he struck Palmer off the camel; but, as it is stated in evidence that the attacked party knelt down behind their camels and fired at their assailants, the truth of this rumour may be doubted. It is certain, however, that had he not been at least a thief, if not a traitor, he would have warned the men in charge of the baggage of what had occurred, for it was proved afterwards, by the tracks of his camel, that he had passed within a few feet of them; or, if he really missed them in the dark, that he would have gone straight on to Moses’ Wells and given the alarm there, or 274 even to Suez, as it was deposed he was desired to do. As it was, he rode straight on to the mouth of the Wady, and thence by a circuitous route to Meter’s camp, having hid part of the money and the despatch-box in the Desert. What he did with the remainder will probably never be known.

Meanwhile the four prisoners were stripped of everything except their underclothing, which, being of European make, was useless to Arabs, and taken down to a hollow among the rocks about 200 yards from the place of attack. Here they were left in charge of two of the robbers. The rest, disappointed at finding no money, rode off, some to pursue Salameh, some to look for the baggage. They were presently followed by one of the two guards, so that for several hours the Englishmen were left with only one man to watch them. The drivers were just loading their camels for a start, when they were attacked, disarmed, and the baggage taken from them. Palmer’s servant was made prisoner, but the camel-drivers were not molested, and were even permitted to take their camels away with them. The robbers then retraced their steps, and rode up the valley for about three miles. There they halted, and 275 laid out the spoil, with the view of dividing it; but they could not agree, and finally each kept what he had taken. This matter settled, they mounted their camels again, and went to look after their prisoners, taking Palmer’s servant with them.

We will now return to Meter ibn Sofieh. On arriving at his own camp he collected his four sons and several other Bedouin, and came down to the place of attack. This they were able to recognize by the dead or wounded camel, which had not then been removed. Finding nobody there, they shouted, and were answered by the prisoners in the hollow. Meter and another went down to them and found them unguarded, their guard having run away on the approach of strangers. Had Meter really come to save them—and it is difficult to explain his return from any other motive than that of a late repentance—there was not a moment to be lost. Much valuable time, however, was wasted in useless expressions of pity and exchange of Bedouin courtesies, and they had hardly reached Meter’s camels before the hostile party came in sight. It is reported that Meter’s men said, ‘Let us protect the Englishmen,’ and raised their 276 guns; but that Meter answered, ‘No, we must negotiate the matter,’ and allowed his men to be surrounded by a superior force. What happened next will never be known with certainty. Meter himself swore that he offered £30 for each of the five; others, that he offered thirty camels for the party; while there is a general testimony that Palmer offered all they possessed if their lives could be spared, adding, ‘Meter has all the money.’ The debate did not last long, not more than half an hour, and then Meter retired, it being understood that the five ^[107] prisoners were all to be put to death. The manner of the execution of this foul design had next to be determined, and it seems to have been regarded as a matter requiring much nicety of arrangement. The captors belonged to two tribes, the Debour and the Terebin, and it was finally arranged that two should be killed by the Debour, and three by the Terebin. The men who were to strike the blow were next selected, one for each victim; and when this had been done the prisoners were driven before their captors for upwards of a mile, over rough ground, to the 277 place of execution. It was now near the middle of the day, and the unfortunate men had no means of protecting their heads from the August sun. It is to be hoped, therefore, that they were nearly unconscious before the spot was reached. At that part of the Wady Sudr a ledge or plateau of rock, some twenty feet wide, runs for a considerable distance along the steep face of the cliffs; and below it the torrent cuts its way through a narrow channel, not more than eighteen feet wide, with precipitous sides, about fifty feet high. At the spot selected for the murder a mountain stream, descending from the heights above, works its way down the cliffs to the water below. The bed of this stream was then dry; but it would be a cataract in the rainy season, and might be trusted to obliterate all traces of the crime. The prisoners were forced down the mountain side until the plateau was reached, and then placed in a row facing the torrent, the selected murderer standing behind each victim. Some of the Bedouin swore that they were all shot at a given signal, and that their bodies fell over the cliff; others that Abdullah was shot first, and that the remaining four, seeing him 278 fall, sprang forward, some down the cliff, some along the edge of the gully. Three were killed, so they said, before they reached the bottom; the fourth was despatched in the torrent-bed by an Arab who followed him down. There is, however, reason for believing that some at least were wounded or killed before they were thrown into the abyss; for the rocks above were deeply stained with blood. It may be that one or more of them had been wounded in the first encounter, or intentionally maimed by their captors; and this may explain what seems to us so strange, that they made no effort to escape during the long hours they were left unguarded. At the moment of death Palmer alone is said to have lifted up his voice, and to have uttered a solemn malediction on his murderers. He knew the Arab character well, and he may have thought that the last chance of escape was to terrify his captors by the thought of what would come to pass if murderous hands were laid upon him and his companions.

Justice was not slow to overtake the criminals. In less than two months Colonel Warren, to whom the direction of the search-expedition 279 was entrusted ^[108] , had discovered who they were, and had found some scattered remains of their unfortunate victims in the gulf which they hoped would conceal them for ever. In January 1883 he read the solemn burial service of the Church at the spot in the presence of the brother and sister of Lieutenant Charrington; after which, according to military custom, the officers present fired three volleys across the torrent. On the hill above they raised a huge cairn, 17 feet in diameter, and 13 feet in height, surmounted by a cross, which the Bedouin were charged, at their peril, to preserve intact. Of the actual murderers three were executed, as also were two headmen for having incited them to the crime. Others were imprisoned for various terms of years, and the Governor of Nakhl, who was proved to have been privy to the murder, and near the place at the time, was imprisoned for a year and dismissed the service. The end of Meter ibn Sofieh was strangely retributive. He had led the party out of their way into an ambuscade ^[109] , 280 probably for the paltry gain of £3000, for we have seem that his nephew escaped with the gold, and £1000 was afterwards found in the place where he knew it was hid; he had betrayed the man with whom he had solemnly eaten bread and salt in Misleh’s camp only a month before; he hid himself in the Desert for awhile, then he gave himself up, and told as much of the story as he probably dared to tell; then he fell ill—his manner had been strange ever since the murder, it was said—he was taken to the hospital at Suez, and there he died. These, however, were only instruments in the hands of others. The influence which Sheikh Abdullah was exercising in the Desert was soon known at Cairo, and the Governor of El Arish was sent out to bring him in dead or alive; the Bedouin swore that Arabi had promised £20 for every Christian head; the murder itself was planned at Cairo, by men high in place, for Colonel Warren complains over and over again that the Shedides thwarted his proceedings, and let guilty men escape. 281 And after the guilt of Egypt comes the guilt of Turkey: Hussein Effendi, a Turkish notable at Gaza—a man who might have been of the greatest service—was not allowed by the Porte to help in bringing the guilty to justice; and there were other indications that further inquiry was not desired. The murder in the Wady Sudr is one more count in the long indictment against the Turk which the Western Powers will one day be compelled to hear; and, after hearing, to pronounce sentence.

The remains discovered by Colonel Warren were reverently gathered together and sent home to England, and in April, 1883, they were interred in the crypt of S. Paul’s Cathedral. A single tablet, placed near the grave, records the names of the three Englishmen and their faithful attendants who died for their country in the Wady Sudr, and now find a fitting resting-place among those whose deeds have won for them a world-wide reputation.

On Sunday evening last the news reached Cambridge that Professor Balfour had met with a fatal accident in the Alps near Courmayeur ^[110] . It was only in November of last year that we drew attention to the extraordinary merits of his Treatise on Comparative Embryology , then just completed ^[111] . We felt that a ‘bright particular star’ had risen on the scientific horizon; and we expected, from what we knew of the great abilities and unremitting energy of the author, that year by year his reputation would be increased by fresh discoveries. But

283 the pride which the University took in one of her most popular and distinguished members is changed to an outburst of passionate regret; and all that his friends can do is to attempt a brief record of a singularly brilliant career, a tribute of affection to be laid upon his grave.

Mr Balfour was a younger son of the late Mr J. M. Balfour of Whittinghame, near Prestonkirk, and of the late Lady Blanche Balfour, a sister of Lord Salisbury. He entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, from Harrow, in October 1870. He brought from school the reputation of being a clever boy, whom the masters liked and respected, but of not sufficient ability to distinguish himself remarkably at Cambridge. Those who expressed this opinion overlooked the fact that he had already evinced a decided bent for Natural Science, and had published a brief memoir on the geology of his native county, Haddingtonshire. In his very first term he was fortunately induced to attend the biological lectures of the Trinity Prælector in Physiology, Mr Michael Foster; he made rapid progress, and at Easter 1871 he obtained the Natural Science Scholarship at Trinity College. He at once commenced original research in the direction in which he was afterwards 284 to be so distinguished; and after two years’ work published a paper on The Development of the Chick in the Microscopical Journal for July, 1873. Indeed, we believe that the time spent on this and kindred investigations diminished somewhat the brilliancy of his degree, for he was placed second instead of first, as had been expected, in the Natural Sciences Tripos of 1873.

In November of that year he was nominated by the Board of Natural Science Studies to work at the Zoological Station at Naples, then lately established by Dr Anton Dohrn. His object in going there was to continue his investigations on Development, and before starting he had determined to study the Elasmobranch Fishes (Sharks and Rays), as it seemed likely, from their pristine characters, that their development would throw great light on the early history of vertebrate animals. The result showed how wisely he had made his selection. He made discoveries of the highest value in reference to the development of certain organs, and the origin of the nerves from the spinal cord—points which had baffled the most acute previous observers. These were not merely valuable for the history of the 285 special group from which they were derived, but threw a flood of light upon the connexion between vertebrates and invertebrates, and their derivation from a common ancestry; views which he expanded afterwards in his work on Embryology. The results of his Neapolitan researches were embodied in the dissertation upon which he rested his candidature for a Fellowship at Trinity College; and were afterwards printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1875. Fortunately for him, a Natural Science Fellowship was vacant in 1874, to which he was elected, in consequence of the value of this dissertation. It is what is called an open secret that its great merits were at once recognized by Professor Huxley, to whom it had been referred.

From that time forward Balfour devoted himself unremittingly to continuous research in preparation for his systematic treatise on Embryology, the plan of which he had already sketched out, and which was finally completed and published in 1881. Before this appeared, however, he had published numerous papers of great value, covering nearly the whole range of his subject. Many of these will be found in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science , 286 of which he was one of the editors. As an original investigator he had no equal. He was skilful in manipulation, and observed rapidly and exactly, so that no point escaped his notice. His mind was calm and wholly free from prejudice, with a singularly broad and original grasp, which enabled him to seize, with readiness and sureness, the principle which lay under a number of apparently discordant facts. At the same time, like every true genius, he was singularly modest and retiring, always ready to depreciate the value of his own work, and to put forward that of others, especially of men younger than himself. We know of many students, now rising to distinction, who owe their first success to his generous encouragement, and, we may add, in some cases to his bountiful assistance, given with a delicacy which doubled the value of the gift. It was this strong desire to encourage others to work at Natural Science that induced him, in 1875, to undertake a class in Animal Morphology, or, as it used to be called, Comparative Anatomy. At first only a few students presented themselves, and one small room at the New Museums was sufficient for their accommodation. The class, however, grew 287 with surprising rapidity; and, after Mr Balfour’s appointment as Natural Science Lecturer to Trinity College, it became necessary to build new rooms for his use. During the year 1881 the numbers had reached an average of nearly sixty in each term; and just before he left England for the excursion which has ended so fatally he had superintended the plans for a yet further extension of the Museum Buildings.

His reputation as a successful teacher soon became known far and wide; students came from a distance to work under his direction; and he received tempting offers to go elsewhere. It need no longer be a secret that, after the death of Professor Wyville Thompson, the Chair of Natural History at Edinburgh was offered to him; or that, after the death of Professor Rolleston, he was strongly urged by the leading men in Natural Science at Oxford to accept the Linacre Professorship of Anatomy and Physiology. But he was devoted to Cambridge, and nothing would induce him to leave it. His refusal of posts so honourable induced the University, somewhat tardily perhaps, to recognize his merits, and a new Professorship was established in the course of last term for that especial purpose. We extract a few 288 sentences from the Report in which the Council of the Senate recommended this step ^[112] :

The successful and rapid development of biological teaching in Cambridge, so honourable to the reputation of the University, has been formally brought to the notice of the Council. It appears that the classes are now so large that the accommodation provided but a few years ago has already become insufficient, and that plans for extending it are now occupying the attention of the Museums and Lecture-Rooms Syndicate.

It is well known that one branch of this teaching, viz. that of Animal Morphology, has been created in Cambridge by the efforts of Mr F. M. Balfour, and that it has grown to its present importance through his ability as a teacher and his scientific reputation.

The service to the interests of Natural Science thus rendered by Mr Balfour having been so far generously given without any adequate Academical recognition, the benefit of its continuance is at present entirely unsecured to the University, and the progress of the department under his direction remains liable to sudden check.

It has been urgently represented to the Council that the welfare of biological studies at Cambridge demands that Mr Balfour’s department should be placed on a recognized and less precarious footing, and in this view the Council concur. They are of opinion that all the requirements of the case will be best met by the immediate establishment of a ‘Professorship of Animal Morphology’ terminable with the tenure of the first Professor.

It is a melancholy satisfaction, when we 289 think how short his life was—for he would not have been thirty-one years of age until November next—that so many honours had been showered upon him. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1878; in the autumn of 1881 he received the Royal Medal; and in 1882 he was elected a member of the Council. He was President of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and became General Secretary of the British Association at the York Meeting in August 1881.

But it is not merely as a man of science that Mr Balfour will be remembered. He was not one of those enthusiasts who can see nothing beyond the limits of their own particular studies. He was a man of wide sympathies and interests. He devoted much time and attention to College and University affairs; and was an active member of numerous Syndicates, to whose special business he applied himself with infinite energy. He was also a keen politician on the Liberal side, and an ardent University reformer. His complete mastery of facts, his retentive memory, and his admirable powers of reasoning, made him a formidable antagonist in argument; but, though he rarely let an opportunity for vindicating his 290 own opinions go by without taking full advantage of it, we never heard that he either lost a friend or made an enemy. He was so thoroughly a man “who bore without abuse the grand old name of gentleman,” that he could never be a mere disputant. He approached every subject with the earnestness of sincere conviction, and he invariably gave his opponents credit for a sincerity equal to his own. It was only when he found himself opposed to presumption, shallowness, or ignorance, that the natural playfulness of his manner ceased, his mild and delicate features darkened to an unwonted sternness, and his habitually gentle voice grew cold and severe. We have heard it said that he was too uniformly earnest, that he took life too seriously, and that he lacked the saving grace of humour. But his earnestness was perfectly genuine, and he would have joined hands with the Philistines in scorning the follies of the “intense.” With the undergraduates he was immensely popular. Besides his great success as a teacher, he had the inestimable gift of sympathy; they felt that they had in him a friend who thoroughly understood them, and they trusted him implicitly; while the members of his own special class 291 regarded him with a veneration which it has been the lot of few teachers to inspire. Nor was his influence upon men older than himself less remarkable. They were fascinated by his exquisite courtesy; his quiet, high-bred dignity; his respect for the opinions and feelings of others. No one of late years has exerted so strong a personal influence in the University. It was the vigour of this personality which enabled Natural Science to take the place it now occupies in Cambridge life. He began to teach at a time when the rising popularity of science was regarded with dislike and suspicion by not a few persons. He left it accepted as one of the studies of the place. What will happen now that he has been taken away it is hard to foresee. We hope and believe that Natural Science is too deeply rooted at Cambridge to be permanently affected by even his loss. We trust that the strong efforts which will be made to keep together the school which he had created may be successful; but we fear that it will soon be evident that the members of the University have lost not merely a very dear friend, but also a master.

29 July, 1882.

The past twelve months have been singularly fatal to Cambridge; but no loss has caused grief so widespread and so sincere as that of the distinguished scholar and man of letters who passed quietly away while sitting at his library-table on the night of last Wednesday week ^[113] . If proof were needed of the respect in which he was held, we have only to point to the vast assemblage of past and present members of the University which filled the chapel of King’s College on Monday last to do honour to his funeral. Nor will the grief be confined to Cambridge. Though Mr Bradshaw rarely quitted his own University, and took no trouble to bring himself into notice, few men were more highly appreciated, both at home and abroad. It is hardly necessary to observe that this recognition of his merits was 293 of no sudden growth. We can recall the time when he was working silently and unknown, and when even a small circle of devoted friends had not realised the extent and thoroughness of those studies which he carefully kept in the background. But gradually the world of letters became aware that there were many points in bibliography and kindred subjects which could not be set on a right footing unless the inquirer were willing to pay a visit to him. No one who did so had any cause to regret his journey. He was certain to be received with a courtesy which, we regret to say, is nowadays commonly called old-fashioned, and to find himself before he left far richer than when he came. Mr Bradshaw was the most unselfish of men; and the stores of his knowledge were invariably laid open, freely and ungrudgingly, to every inquirer, provided he was satisfied that the work proposed would be thoroughly well done. He was modest to a fault; and we believe that he really preferred to remain in the background, while others, at his suggestion and with his help, worked out the subjects in which he took special interest. It was no fault of theirs if his share in their work remained a secret. His generous wish to help others forward made 294 him refuse more than once, as we well know, to allow his name to appear in connexion with work that he had really done; and posterity will have to tax its ingenuity to discover, from a few words in a preface or a line in a note, how much belongs of right to him. Nor was it only in subjects with which he was specially familiar that his help was valuable. He seemed equally at home in all branches of knowledge. He knew so thoroughly how materials should be used, and in what form the results would be best presented, that, whether the subject were art, or archeology, or history, or bibliography, or early English texts, his clear and accurate judgment went straight to the point, and reduced the most tangled facts to order. But, devoted student as he was, he was no bookworm. He took the liveliest interest in all that was going on around him. His strong common sense, his kind, charitable nature, and his habit of going to the bottom of every question presented to him, enabled him to sympathize with those who had arrived at conclusions widely different from his own. As a younger man he was too reserved, too diffident of himself, to feel at ease in the society of men of his own standing. He 295 thought they disliked him, and this idea increased his natural sensitiveness and his love of retirement. The truth was that he was too honest to be popular. Like Alceste in Le Misanthrope , he would rebuke insincerity and pretentiousness with a few blunt stern words that made the offender tremble; and, if he disliked anybody, as happened sometimes, he took no pains to conceal it. Hence he was respected, but he was not liked. By slow degrees, however, the natural geniality of his disposition gained the upper hand, and the warm heart which beat under that calm exterior was allowed to assert itself. The old severity of denunciation, instead of being exercised on individuals, was reserved for slovenly work, unjust criticism, or unfair treatment. He began to go more into society, in which he took a keen pleasure, though he would rarely allow himself to spend what he called an idle evening. At all times he had sought the company of young people. At a period when undergraduates hardly ventured to speak to men older than themselves, his quiet kindness attracted them to him, and obtained their confidence. In him they were certain of a friend whose sympathy never failed them, and 296 from whom, no matter what trouble or difficulty had befallen them, they were sure of advice and help. Many a man now successful in life may thank him for the influence which, exercised at a critical time, determines a career for good; and not a few have been enabled by his generosity to begin the studies in which they are now distinguished.

The events of such a life are not numerous. Mr Bradshaw was born 2 February, 1831. He was educated at Eton College, on the foundation, and came up to King’s College, Cambridge, in February, 1850. He proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1854. At that time members of King’s College were not obliged to submit themselves to University examinations, but he and some others availed themselves of the permission then accorded to them to do so, and he was placed tenth in the second class of the Classical Tripos. Soon afterwards he accepted a mastership at S. Columba’s College, near Dublin, then under the direction of his old friend, the late Mr George Williams; but finding tuition, after a few months’ trial, uncongenial to his tastes, he returned to Cambridge, and to those studies which ended only with his life. His connexion 297 with the University Library began two years afterwards. In 1856 he was appointed principal assistant, a post which he resigned in 1858. In 1859 he returned to the Library as Keeper of the Manuscripts, an office specially created for the purpose of retaining his services, the value of which had even then been discovered. This office he held until 1867, when, on the resignation of Mr J. E. B. Mayor, he was elected librarian. From a boy he had been distinguished for a love of books; but it was not until his return to Cambridge from Ireland that he was able to devote himself seriously and systematically to the study of bibliography in its widest sense, with all that is subsidiary to it. Most of us know what a dreary subject bibliography is when treated from the ordinary point of view. In his hands, however, it acquired a human interest. He studied specimens of early printing, not for themselves, but for the sake of the men who produced them. In following out this system he went far more thoroughly than an ordinary bibliographer cares to do into every particular of the book before him. Paper, type, signature, tailpiece, were all taken into account, so as to settle not only who printed the volume, but 298 in what relation he stood to his predecessors and successors.

Bradshaw had an unerring eye for detecting small differences in style, a memory which never failed him, and an instinct of discovery little short of marvellous. Again and again in well-known libraries, both in England and on the Continent, he has been able, after a brief examination, to point out important facts which scholars who had worked there for the best part of their lives had failed to notice.

In the same spirit of discovery he applied himself to the study of Chaucer. Silently and secretly, as was his wont, he examined all the manuscripts within his reach, and then set to work to determine (1) what was Chaucer’s own work; (2) what is the real order of the Canterbury Tales . In the course of his researches it occurred to him that the rhymes used would prove a test of what was Chaucer’s and what was not. Without assistance from any one he wrote out a complete rhyme-list—an astonishing labour for an individual, when it is remembered that the Tales contain some eight thousand lines, every one of which must have been registered twice, and many three or four times. The labour, however, was not 299 thrown away. The rhymes employed turned out to be a true test, and Mr Bradshaw was enabled to publish in 1867 ‘The Skeleton of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales : an attempt to distinguish the several Fragments of the Work as left by the Author.’ We regret to say that this pamphlet of fifty-four octavo pages is all that the world is ever likely to see of this splendid piece of work. With characteristic self-depreciation he says, in a note appended in 1871, ‘Mr Furnivall’s labours have put far out of date any work that I have ever done upon this subject’; but it is gratifying to turn to Mr Furnivall, and read, ‘There is only one man in the world, I believe, who thoroughly understands this subject, Mr Henry Bradshaw.’ He welcomed Mr Furnivall with habitual generosity, and placed in his hands, without reserve, all that he had got ready for the edition of Chaucer which he at one time intended to publish himself. Publication, however, was what he could rarely be persuaded to attempt. It was not criticism that he feared; but he had set up in his own mind such a lofty standard of excellence that he could not bear to abandon a piece of work while it was yet possible to add some trifling detail, or to correct some 300 imperfection which his own fastidious taste would alone have been able to detect. It is sad to think how much has perished with him. His excellent memory enabled him to dispense with notes to a far greater extent than most persons, and those which he did put down were written on a system to which we fear it will be impossible now to find the key. What he actually published amounts to very little. When we have mentioned eight short octavo pamphlets, which he called ‘Memoranda’; a few papers printed by the Cambridge Antiquarian Society; some communications to Notes and Queries and other periodicals; and an admirable edition of the new Statutes for the University of Cambridge, and for the Colleges within it , we fear that the list is complete. He had made important discoveries respecting the old Breton language in connexion with the early collection of canons known as the Hibernensis , and had collected materials for a Breton glossary which would have placed him in the first rank of philologers; he had worked at Irish literature with the special object of elucidating the history of early Irish printing; in knowledge of ancient service-books he was probably second to none, and at the time of 301 his death he was writing a preface to the new edition of the Sarum Breviary; and, lastly, he had made considerable progress towards a catalogue of the fifteenth-century books in the University Library. On all these subjects considerable materials exist; but who is fit to take his place and make use of them?

20 February, 1886.

The death of the Master of Trinity College has severed almost the last of the links which connect the present life of Cambridge with the past. From 1828 until his death ^[114] in 1886 his connexion with his college was unbroken; for a brief absence soon after his election to a Fellowship, and the periods of canonical residence at Ely need hardly be taken into account. He was, therefore, up to a certain point, a typical Trinity man of the older school; a firm believer in the greatness of his college, and in the obligation laid upon him personally to increase that greatness by every means in his power. But he did not admire blindly. He could recognize, if he did not welcome, the necessity for changes in the old order from time to time; and he was known throughout the best period of his intellectual life as a 303 Liberal and a reformer. He was a rare combination of a student without pedantry, and a man of the world without foppishness, or want of principle.

As an undergraduate he was fortunate in obtaining the friendship of men who afterwards became celebrated in the world of letters, most of them members of that famous coterie of which Tennyson and Hallam were the most notable figures. Indeed it is not impossible that the poet may have intended to include Thompson himself among those who

In their society he laid the foundation of that wide knowledge of literature, that keen interest in whatever was going forward, that habit of weighing all things in the nicely-adjusted balance of thoughtful criticism, which made what he wrote so valuable, and what he said so delightful. Nor, after he had obtained his Fellowship, and was free to do as he liked, was he content to become a student and nothing more. He was careful to add a knowledge of men and manners to what he was learning from 304 books. He travelled abroad, and acquired a competent knowledge of more than one modern language; he was fond of art, and a good judge of pictures and sculpture. Nor did he forget the friends of his undergraduate days. He was a welcome, and we believe a frequent, guest at their houses both in town and country, where his fine presence, his courteous bearing, and his quiet, epigrammatic conversation were keenly appreciated. To the influence of these social surroundings he owed that absence of narrowness which is inseparable from a University career, if it be not tempered by influences from the outside.

Academic lives usually contain few details to arrest the biographer, and his was no exception to the rule. His father was a solicitor at York, and he was born in that city 27 March, 1810. He was educated at a private school, which he left when thirteen years old, and was then placed under the care of a tutor, with whom he remained until he came up to Trinity in the Michaelmas Term, 1828, as one of the pupils of Mr Peacock, afterwards Dean of Ely. To his watchful care and sound advice Thomson felt himself under deep obligation, and in after-life he used to describe him as “the best and wisest of 305 tutors.” It had been at first intended that he should enter as a sizar; but this decision was reversed at the last moment, and he matriculated as a pensioner. He obtained a scholarship in 1830, and one of the Members’ prizes for a Latin Essay in 1831. At that time candidates for Classical Honours could not present themselves for the Classical Tripos until they had satisfied the examiners for the Mathematical. Thompson must have devoted a considerable portion of his time to that subject, for he appears in the Tripos of 1832 as tenth Senior Optime. In the Classical Tripos of the same year he obtained the fourth place, being beaten by Lushington, Shilleto, and Dobson, the first of whom beat him again in the examination for the Chancellor’s medals, of which he won only the second. He was elected Fellow of his College in 1834. His reputation as a scholar marked him out for immediate employment as one of the assistant-tutors; but for a time either no vacancy presented itself, or men senior to himself were appointed. Meanwhile he accepted a mastership in a school at Leicester, work which, we believe, he did not find congenial. In October 1837 he was recalled to Cambridge by the offer of an assistant-tutorship. 306 In 1844, on the retirement of Mr Heath, he became tutor, an office which he held until he obtained the Regius Professorship of Greek in 1853. The other candidates on that occasion were Shilleto and Philip Freeman, but the electors were all but unanimous in their choice of Thompson. In the spring of 1866, on the death of Dr Whewell, he was appointed to the Mastership of Trinity College.

In attempting to estimate the value of his work as a classical teacher, it must be remembered that he was the direct heir of the system introduced into Trinity College by Hare and Thirlwall. We are not aware that he attended the lectures of the former, though he may well have done so, but we have heard from his own lips that he derived great benefit from those of the latter, which were as systematic as Hare’s had been desultory. Those distinguished scholars, while not neglecting an author’s language, were careful to direct the attention of their pupils to his matter. They did not waste time unduly on the theories of this or that commentator, though they had carefully digested them, but they showed how their author might be made to explain himself. In fine, the discovery of his thoughts, not the dry elucidation 307 of his words, was the object of their teaching. Translation, again, received from them a larger share of attention than it had done from their predecessors. In this particular Thompson attained an unrivalled excellence. His translations never smelt of the lamp, though it may be easily imagined that this perfection had not been arrived at without much preliminary study. But, when presented to the class, toil was carefully kept out of sight. The lecturer stood at his desk and read his author into English, with neither manuscript nor even notes before him, as though the translation was wholly unpremeditated, in a style which reflected the original with exact fidelity, whatever the subject selected might be. He seemed equally at home in a dialogue of Plato, a tragedy of Euripides in which, like the Bacchae , the lyric element predominates, or a comedy of Aristophanes. He did not labour in vain. The lecture-room was crowded with eager listeners; and the happiest renderings were passed from mouth to mouth, and so made the round of the University. But we are glad to think that his fame as a scholar rests on a firmer foundation than traditions of the lecture-room, however brilliant. The author of his choice was Plato, and though ill-health 308 and a too fastidious criticism of his own powers, which made him unwilling to let a piece of work go out of his hands so long as there was any chance of making it better, stood in the way of the complete edition, or, at any rate, translation, of the author, which he once meditated, yet he has left enough good work behind him to command the gratitude of future scholars. To this study he was doubtless directed, in the first instance, by natural predilection; but, if we mistake not, he was confirmed in it by the scholars above-mentioned, either directly or by their suggesting to him the study of Schleiermacher, whose writings were first introduced to English readers by their influence. That critic’s theory—that Plato had a comprehensive and precise doctrine to teach, which he deliberately concealed under the complicated machinery of a series of dialogues, leaving his readers to combine and interpret for themselves the dark hints and suggestions afforded to them—was followed by Thompson with great learning, unerring tact, and firm grasp. His editions of the Phaedrus (1868) and the Gorgias (1871) are models of what an edition, based on these principles, ought to be; and the paper on the Sophistes , long lost sight of in the Transactions 309 of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, but republished in the Journal of Philology (1879), is a masterpiece. Nor must we omit an introductory lecture on the Philebus , written in 1855, and published in the same journal (1882), which is a piece of literature as well as a piece of criticism; or the learned and instructive notes to Archer Butler’s Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy , the first edition of which appeared in 1855.

Thompson discharged the difficult duties of a college tutor with admirable patience and discretion. Those who knew him imperfectly called him cold, hard, and sarcastic; and his bearing towards his brother Fellows gave occasionally, we must admit, some colour to the accusation. But in reality he was an exceedingly modest man, diffident of himself, reserved, and at first somewhat shy in the society of those whom he did not know well. Again, it must be recollected that nature had dealt out to him a measure of ‘irony, that master-spell,’ of a quality that a Talleyrand might have envied. Hence, especially when slightly nervous, he got into a habit of letting his words fall into well-turned sarcastic sentences almost unconsciously. The most ordinary remark, when 310 uttered by him, became an epigram. We maintain, however, that he never said an unkind word intentionally, or crushed anybody who did not richly deserve it. For the noisy advocate of crude opinions, or the pretender to knowledge which he did not possess, were reserved those withering sentences which froze the victim into silence, and, being carefully treasured up by his friends, and repeated at intervals, clung to him like a brand. To his own pupils Thompson’s demeanour was the reverse of this. At a time when the older men of the University—with the exception, perhaps, of Professor Sedgwick—were not in sympathy with the rising generation, he made them feel that they had in him a friend who would really stand in loco parentis to them. Somewhat indolent by nature, on their behalf he would spare no trouble; but, on the other hand, he would allow of no interference. ‘He is a pupil of mine, you had better leave him to me,’ he would say to the Seniors, when an undergraduate on his ‘side’ got into trouble; but it may be questioned whether many a delinquent would not have preferred public exposure to the awful half-hour in his tutor’s study by which his rescue was succeeded. Nor 311 did his interest in his pupils cease when they left college. He was always glad to see them or to write to them, and few, we imagine, took any important step in life without consulting him.

When Thompson became Greek Professor, a canonry at Ely was still united to the office—an expedient for augmenting the salary which, we are glad to say, will not trouble future Professors. To most men, trained as he had been, the new duties thus imposed upon him would have been thoroughly distasteful; and we are not sure that he ever took a real pleasure in his residences at Ely. In fact, more than one bitter remark might be quoted to prove that he did not. Notwithstanding, he made himself extremely popular there, both with the Chapter and the citizens, and he soon became a good preacher. It is to be regretted that only one of his sermons—that on the death of Dean Peacock—has been printed; that one is in its way a masterpiece.

He became Master rather late in life, when the habits of a bachelor student had grown upon him; and he lacked the superabundant energy of his great predecessor. But notwithstanding, the twenty years of his Mastership 312 were years of activity and progress; and he took his due share of University and College business. He was alive to the necessity for reform, and the statutes framed in 1872, as well as those which received the royal assent in 1882, owed much to his criticism and support. It should also be recorded that he was an excellent examiner, appreciating good work of very different sorts. Gradually, however, as his health grew worse, he was compelled to give up much that he had been able to do when first elected, and to withdraw from society almost entirely. Yet he did not become a mere lay figure. Even strangers who caught a glimpse in chapel of that commanding presence, the dignity of which was enhanced by singularly handsome features, and silvery hair ^[115] , were compelled to recognize his power. There was an innate royalty in his nature which made his Mastership at all times a reality, and he contrived, from the seclusion of his study, to exert a stronger influence and to maintain a truer sympathy with the Society than Whewell, with all his activity, had ever succeeded in

313 establishing. His very isolation from the worry and bustle of the world gave authority to his advice; those who came to seek it felt, as they sat by his armchair, that they were listening to one who was not influenced by considerations of the moment, but who was giving them some of the garnered treasures of mature experience.

9 October, 1886.

The Society of Trinity College had long been aware of the critical condition of their Vice-Master’s health, and his numerous friends in the wider circle of the University had shared their alarm. And yet, though everybody had been expecting the worst for several weeks, the news that the end had really come ^[116] fell upon the University with the stunning force of a wholly unexpected event. The full extent of the loss can only be measured by time; for the moment we can but feel that the University of Cambridge misses an influence which pervaded and animated every department of her affairs. For the last fifteen years no one has been so completely identified with what may be termed modern Cambridge; no one has been admitted to so large a share in her councils, or has devoted 315 himself with such unremitting diligence to the administration of her complex organization.

Mr Trotter proceeded to his degree in 1859. He was thirty-seventh wrangler, and third in the second class of the Classical Tripos. It is evident, however, that his acquirements must not be measured by his place in these two Triposes, for he was soon after elected to a Fellowship in his college, where, as is well known, the proficiency of candidates is tested by a fresh examination. After his election he took Holy Orders, and devoted himself for a time to active clerical work. For this, however, after a fair trial, he found himself unsuited, and, resigning his curacy, he returned to college. Between the years 1865 and 1869 he spent a considerable portion of his time in German universities. In 1869 he became Lecturer in Natural Science in Trinity College, and in due course succeeded to the Tutorship. In 1874 he was elected a member of the Council of the Senate—a position which he occupied, without interruption, until his death. In early life he had been a staunch Conservative; but, as time went on, his views changed, and he became not only a Liberal in politics, but an ardent University reformer. In the latter capacity he 316 threw himself energetically into the movement for reform which led to the present University and College statutes—to which, in their actual shape, he largely contributed. We have said that he was a Liberal and a reformer. This position placed him, it is almost needless to remark, in direct antagonism to many of those with whom he was called upon to act; but his conciliatory manners, his excellent temper, and his perfect straightforwardness, not only disarmed opposition, but enabled him to make friends even among those who differed from him most widely. In fact, what was sometimes called in jest ‘the Trotterization of the University’ was so complete that he had come to be regarded as indispensable; and his name will be found at one time or another on all the more important Boards and Syndicates. But it was not merely his knowledge of University business and detail that placed him there. He was gifted with an intelligence of extraordinary quickness. He could grasp the bearings of a complicated question swiftly and readily—disentangle it, so to speak, from all that was not strictly essential to it—and while others were still talking about it, doubtful how to act, he would commit to paper a draft of a report 317 which was commonly accepted by those present as exactly resuming the general sense of the meeting. He was in favour of a wide enlargement of University studies, especially in the scientific direction—a course which was impossible without funds; but at the same time no man ever loved his college more dearly than he did—no man held more closely to the old idea of duty to the college as a corporation; and it may be added that no Vice-Master ever dispensed the hospitality incidental to the office with greater geniality.

We have dwelt on Mr Trotter’s University career at some length; but let it not be supposed that he was immersed in the details of University business to the exclusion of other subjects. Though modest and retiring almost to a fault, his interests were wide, and his knowledge extensive and accurate. He had no mean acquaintance with physical science, on which he gave collegiate lectures; he spoke and read several modern languages, and was familiar with their literature; he took great interest in music; he travelled extensively, and had a singularly minute knowledge of out-of-the-way parts of the Alps, and of the little visited country towns of Italy, to which he was 318 attracted partly by their history, partly by their art-treasures. He wrote easily and clearly, though he never cared to cultivate a particularly elegant style; and as a speaker he was always forcible, and sometimes exceedingly happy in the utterance of tersely-worded, epigrammatic sentences, which resumed much thought in few words.

We have dwelt of necessity in these brief remarks almost exclusively on Mr Trotter’s public career. But there was another side to his character. He was a generous and warm-hearted friend, whose friendship was all the more sincere because it was so quiet and undemonstrative. Few had the rare privilege of his intimacy; but those few will never forget that kindly face, that bright smile of welcome, that charity which found excuses for everybody—that liberality which, while it eschewed publicity, was always ready to help the deserving, whether it was a cause or an individual.

10 December, 1887.

The death of Dr Okes, though he had reached the mature age of ninety-one, has taken the University by surprise ^[117] . He had become an institution of the place. While everything around him changed, and old things became new, his venerable figure remained unaltered, like a monument of an older faith which has survived the attacks of successive iconoclasts, to tell the younger generation what manner of men the Dons of the past had been. He was fond of saying that the first public event he could distinctly remember was the battle of Trafalgar. He had been a Master at Eton when Goodall was Provost and Keate Head-master, and he had begun to rule over King’s College when the University of Cambridge differed as widely from what it is now 320 as the Europe of Napoleon from its present condition. Still, his load of years sat so lightly upon him, his interest in what was going forward was still so keen, that there seemed to be no reason why he should not complete his century of life. The slight infirmities from which he suffered did not prevent him, until quite lately, from attending service in chapel, at least on Sundays; his hearing was but little affected; his sight was good; and he could still enjoy the society of his friends. Only a few days before his death he was reading Miss Burney’s Evelina to his daughters. When it became known on Sunday last that he had really passed away, it was hard to believe that the sad news could possibly be true.

Richard Okes was born in Cambridge, 15 December, 1797. His father, Thomas Verney Okes, was a surgeon in extensive practice. Tradition is silent respecting the future Provost’s childhood and early education; but, as in those days boys began their lives at Eton at a very early age, it is probable that when he was little older than a child he was sent to fight his battles among the collegers, in what even devoted Etonians have called ‘a proverb and a reproach’—Long 321 Chamber. In 1816, when he was rather more than eighteen, he obtained a scholarship at King’s College; but it appears from the University records that he did not formally matriculate until November in the following year. In those days, be it remembered, King’s College was a very different place from what it is now, both structurally and educationally. The magnificent site, on which Henry VI. intended to place an equally magnificent college, was occupied by no structures of importance except the Chapel, and the Fellows’ Building, part of a second grand design which, like the first, was never completed. The scholars, or at all events the greater part of them, were packed into Old Court—the small, irregular quadrangle west of the University Library, to which the founder intended originally to limit his college. It must have been a curious structure—picturesque and interesting from an archeological point of view, but unwholesome and uncomfortable as a place of residence. The very nicknames given to some of the chambers—“the Tolbooth,” “the Block-house,” and the like—are a sufficient proof of their discomfort. In one of these, on the ground floor, facing Clare Hall, young Okes resided; 322 and until a few months ago, when the last remnant of this part of the old college was absorbed by the University Library, the present generation could form a fairly correct idea of the gloom and damp that their ancestors were obliged to put up with. But members of Kings College had to endure something far worse than physical discomfort. It had been the object of their founder to make his college independent of the University, and, as a consequence of these well-intentioned provisions, scholars of King’s were not allowed to compete for University honours, but obtained their degrees as a matter of course. The result is not difficult to conceive. In every society there will be some whose love of letters, or whose ardour for distinction, is so strong that nothing can check it; but, as a rule, the young Etonians who were obliged to spend three years in Cambridge threw learning to the winds, and enjoyed to their hearts’ content the liberty, not to say license, of their new surroundings. It was a bad state of things; and that Okes felt it to be so is proved by the eagerness with which he, a strong Conservative, set himself to get it abolished as soon as he had the power to do so. We do not claim for the late 323 Provost any specially studious habits as a young man; he was too genial and too fond of society to have ever been a very hard reader; but his scholarship in after years would not have been as accurate as it certainly was had he wasted his time at Cambridge; and, as a proof that he aimed at distinction, it should be mentioned that he obtained Sir William Browne’s prize for Greek and Latin Epigrams in 1819 and 1820. To the very end of his life he was fond of writing Latin verse; and when the Fellows of his college congratulated him on his ninetieth birthday in Latin and English poems, he replied in half-a-dozen Latin lines which many a younger scholar could not have turned so neatly.

He proceeded to his degree in 1821, and was in due course elected Fellow of his college. Soon afterwards he returned to Eton as an Assistant-Master. Mr Gladstone was one of the first set of boys who, in Eton phrase, were ‘up to him’ in school. He filled his difficult position with a judicious blending of severity and kindliness that made him thoroughly respected by everybody, and at the same time beloved by those boys who saw enough of him 324 to discover that his dignified and slightly pompous demeanour concealed a singularly warm and sympathetic heart. His house was well-conducted and deservedly popular; and though in those days masters did not see much of their pupils in private, he contrived to turn several of his boys into life-long friends. In 1838 he became Lower Master—an office which he held until he returned to Cambridge in 1850. While in that influential position he introduced at least one reform into the school; he got what was called ‘an intermediate examination’ established, by which the collegers were enabled to test their capacities before submitting to the final examination which was to determine their chances of obtaining a scholarship at King’s.

In November 1850, the Provostship of King’s College having been vacated by the death of the Rev. George Thackeray, Dr Okes was elected his successor. So anxious was he to abolish the anomalous position of King’s-men with regard to University degrees that, on his way from Eton to Cambridge to be inducted into his new dignity, he stayed a few hours in London to take counsel with the Bishop of Lincoln, as Visitor of the college, on the best way of effecting an alteration. The needful 325 negotiations were pressed forward without loss of time, and on the 1st May, 1851, the college informed the University of their willingness to abolish the existing state of things. The University, as might have been expected, took time to consider the matter; and it was not until February 18, 1852, that the Senate accepted the proposed reform. Meanwhile Dr Okes had been elected Vice-Chancellor, and, in virtue of that office, had the pleasure of signing the report which concluded the negotiations. His year of office as Vice-Chancellor ended, he took but little part in University business. He served on the Council of the Senate from 1864 to 1868, and he was occasionally a member of Syndicates; but, with these exceptions, he devoted himself to the affairs of his college.

When he returned to the University the ancient constitution still subsisted, and it may be doubted whether he could ever have brought himself into cordial sympathy with the changes inaugurated by the statutes which came into operation in 1858. The abolition of the old Caput , and the virtual dethronement of the Heads of Colleges, must have seemed to him to be changes which savoured of sacrilege. 326 Still, when a reform had been once carried he accepted it loyally, and never tried by underhand devices to thwart its provisions, or to diminish its force. He was too straight-forward to pretend that he liked change, but he was too honest to take away with one hand the assent that he gave with the other. In regard to his own college he was before all things an Etonian, and he clung to the ancient system by which King’s was recruited exclusively from Eton. But, when it was decided, in 1864, to throw the college open, under certain restrictions, to all comers, he offered no violent resistance to the scheme, though he did not like it; and it may be doubted whether he ever felt that the newcomers were really King’s-men. His sense of duty, as well as his natural kindliness, compelled him to accept them; but he looked upon them as aliens. This strong conservative bias, opposed to the liberal instincts of a society which his own reform had created, sometimes brought him into collision with his Fellows; but such differences were not of long duration. He was never morose. He never bore a grudge against any one. His sense of humour, and his natural gaiety of spirits, carried him through difficulties which 327 his habitual tone of mind would hardly have enabled him to surmount. When his portrait was painted by Herkomer, the artist showed him as he lived, with a smile on his kind face. It was objected that so jocose a countenance was at variance with the dignity of his position. ‘What would the Provost of King’s be without his jokes?’ was the reply of a sarcastic contemporary. The remark had a deeper meaning than its author either imagined or intended.

1 December, 1888.

Nearly half a century has elapsed since Dr Luard became a member of Trinity College. When he came up, the University was a very different place from what it is now; the Statutes of Elizabeth were still in force; and the only study which obtained official recognition was that of mathematics. It is true that a Classical Tripos existed, but anybody who wished to be examined in it was obliged to obtain an honour in Mathematics first. The first Commission was not appointed until 1850, the year in which he proceeded to the degree of Master of Arts. Nor were the changes that resulted from their labours so sweeping as to alter, to any overt and material extent, the character of the University. The University of our own time, due to more recent legislation, did not come into being until he had reached middle life.

329 These prefatory sentences are necessary to explain his character, which has often been misunderstood. He passed his youth and many years of his manhood in the old University, and though he was compelled, intellectually, to admit the advantage of many of the changes which have taken place in recent years, I doubt if he ever cordially accepted them. He was a man of the older generation, who had lived down into the present, and though he made friends in it, and derived many substantial advantages from it, he was always casting lingering looks behind, and sighing for a past which he could not recall. He remembered the time when the resident Fellows of his college were few in number, when they all lived in college rooms, and met every day at the service in Chapel or the dinner in Hall, and commonly took their daily exercise, a walk or a ride, in each other’s company. As his older friends passed away, he found a difficulty in making new ones; he felt out of his element; he was distracted by the multiplicity of tastes and studies; and vehemently disapproved of the modifications in the collegiate life which the new statutes have brought about. Though he himself, by a strange irony of fate, was the first 330 Fellow to take advantage of the power of marrying and still retaining the Fellowship, he bitterly regretted that such a clause had ever become law; and it is hardly too much to say that he predicted the ruin of the college from such an innovation. And yet he was by no means an unreasoning or unreasonable Conservative. In many matters he was a Reformer; I have even heard him called a Radical; but, when his beloved college was concerned, the force of early association was too strong, and he regarded fundamental change as sacrilege.

Luard was fourteenth wrangler in 1847, a place much lower than he had been led to expect. The cause of his failure is said to have been ill-health. His disappointment, however, was speedily consoled by a Fellowship, a distinction to which he is said to have aspired from his earliest years. A friend who sat next him when he was a student at King’s College, London, remembers his writing down, “Henry Richards Luard, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,” and asking, “How do you think that looks?” But, though he was really a first-rate mathematician, his heart was elsewhere. He delighted in classical studies, especially 331 Greek, and to the end of his life continued to collect early editions, and more, to read Greek authors. Not long ago, in the interval between two pieces of hard work, I think between two volumes of his edition of Matthew Paris, I found him reading the Supplices of Euripides. He complained that it was dull, but he went through with it. His acquaintance with Greek scholarship was very accurate and remarkable. He knew all about the emendations in which the scholars of the last century displayed their ingenuity; he spoke of Bentley, Porson, Gaisford, Elmsley, and the rest, as though they had been his personal friends, and he could quote from memory, even to the last, many of their most brilliant achievements. For Porson he had a special cult, and the Life of him which he contributed to the Cambridge Essays (1857) is a model of what such a composition should be, as remarkable for good taste and temperate criticism, as for erudition. He resented any slights on Porson as almost a personal affront; and spoke with unmeasured denunciation of any edition of a Greek Play, or other classical work, in which Porson did not seem to be fully appreciated. He had a priceless collection of Porsoniana , books which 332 had belonged to Porson, and had been annotated by him, with notices of his life and labours, all of which he bequeathed to the Library of Trinity College; and he edited Porson’s Correspondence , and the Diary of Edward Rud , which throws so much light on the history of the college during the stormy reign of Dr Bentley. It must be confessed that Luard’s affection for these giants of classical criticism rather blinded him to the merits of their successors in our own time. He had a particular dislike for English notes; and I had rather not try to remember what I have heard him say about English translations printed side by side with the original text.

Let it not be supposed, however, that Luard confined his attention in literature to the classics. He was an insatiable reader of books on all subjects, and if the book was a new one he was particular that his copy should be uncut. He liked to read sitting in his armchair, and to cut the leaves as he went along. What he began, he considered it a point of honour to finish. It was a joke against him that he had read every word of The Cornhill Magazine , which he had taken in from the beginning; and I have heard him admit, more 333 than once, that this was really the case. I think it quite likely that he had submitted the volumes published under the authority of the Master of the Rolls, to the same searching investigation; for he could give a curiously minute account of the merits and demerits of each work, supported, as usual with him, by numerous quotations, cited with much volubility of utterance, and, it may be added, with unerring accuracy. The pace at which he got through a ponderous volume—without skipping, be it remarked—was really astonishing, and when he had come to the end he could not only give a clear and connected account of what he had read, but it became part of himself, and he could quote long afterwards any passage that had specially struck him.

The variety of Luard’s interests at all periods of his life, was remarkable, especially when it is remembered that he was a genuine student, with a horror of superficiality, and a conscientious determination to do whatever he took in hand as well as it could be done. But he was no Dry-as-dust. He was keenly alive to all that was passing in the world, and unlike a contemporary Cambridge antiquary who was once heard to ask, “Is the Times still published?” 334 he not only read the paper through every day, but had his own very definite opinions on men and measures. There was nothing narrow about him; he was a patriotic Englishman, but he did not ignore the existence of the Continent, and his favourite relaxation was foreign travel. As a young man he had travelled extensively, not only in Europe, but in Egypt, where he had ascended the Nile as far as the second cataract: and, as he grew older, he still sought refreshment in going over parts of his old tours, especially in those by-ways of Central Italy which lie within the limits of what he affectionately called “dear old Umbria.” He spoke more than one foreign language fluently; and, being entirely destitute of British angularity, and British prejudices in politics and religion, he always got on exceedingly well with foreigners, especially with foreign ecclesiastics. I feel that I am saying only what is literally true when I affirm that few Englishmen have understood the creed and the practice of the Roman clergy in Italy so thoroughly as he did. In illustration of this view I would refer my readers to an article called Preaching and other matters in Rome in 1879 which he contributed to the Church 335 Quarterly Review ^[119] . Further, he took an intelligent interest in antiquities of all sorts, and had an acquaintance with art that was something more than respectable. Here his excellent memory stood him in good stead, for he never forgot either a picture which he had once seen, or the place in which he had seen it.

In politics he called himself a Tory, and he certainly did vote on that side; but he was in no sense of the word a party-man. For instance, when his friend Mr George Denman came forward as a Liberal candidate for the representation of the University in 1855, Luard was an active member of his committee. His knowledge of Italy made him watch the course of events there in 1859 with an enthusiastic sympathy, which was divided almost equally between the Italians and their French allies. With a curious perversity, which was not uncommon in his appreciation of men and his judgment of events, he hated Garibaldi as much as he admired Victor Emmanuel and Cavour. But from the first he never doubted of the cause of freedom, and astonished his Conservative friends by offering a wager across the high table at Trinity as to the time it would 336 take the combined French and Italian forces to occupy Milan. So far as I can remember, he was right almost to the very day.

From his boyhood Luard had been an ardent collector of books, and it was probably this taste that induced him to take a further excursion into the past, and begin the study of manuscripts. Professor Mayor tells me that the influence and example of Dr S. R. Maitland turned his attention to the Middle Ages in the widest sense—their history, their literature, and their life. This may well have been the case, for I know, from many conversations, that he had the profoundest respect and admiration for Dr Maitland’s character, and for the thoroughness of his studies and criticisms. I do not know how Luard acquired his very accurate knowledge of medieval handwriting; but I remember that in 1855 or 1856 he gave me some lessons of the greatest value. In the second of these years the first volume of the Catalogue of Manuscripts in the University Library was published, into the preparation of which he had thrown himself with characteristic enthusiasm. As time went on, the direction of the work was left more and more to him; he became the editor, and to him the excellent 337 index, published in 1867, is mainly, if not entirely, due.

From the study of manuscripts to their transcription and publication the transition is easy, and we need therefore find no difficulty in accounting for his employment by the Master of the Rolls. He began his work on that series in 1858 by editing certain Lives of Edward the Confessor , written in old French. This work, on which he had bestowed infinite pains, was not free from errors. The study of the language in which it is written was not understood at that time as it is now, and it is no discredit to Luard’s memory to admit that he was not fully prepared for the task. But such mistakes as he made are no justification for the savage and personal attack to which he was subjected, eleven years afterwards, by a critic who ought to have known better. I do not feel that this is the place to criticise, or even to mention, the long list of historical works that Luard subsequently edited, the last of which appeared not long before his death. His labours in this field of research have been better appreciated in Germany than in England, but even here scholars like Bishop Stubbs and Professor Freeman have spoken with cordial appreciation 338 of the value of his work. It is worth noting too that here his passion for old methods of editing deserted him; nothing can be more thoroughly modern than his treatment of these ancient records. Nor can I leave this part of my subject without noticing his indexes. He was the very prince of index-makers; every sheet, before it was finally passed for press, was fully indexed, with the result that not only were mistakes recognised and corrected, but the index itself, worked out on a definite system conceived from the beginning, was carried through to a satisfactory conclusion without haste or weariness, and became a real catalogue of the subjects referred to in the work itself.

Luard was Registrary of the University from 1862 to his death in 1891. To this work he brought the same painstaking accuracy, and the same unselfish readiness to endure hard work, that distinguished his other labours. The ordinary duties of his office were discharged with marvellous rapidity, and almost painful attention to detail; and the records were admirably re-arranged. Mr Romilly, his predecessor, had brought order out of confusion, and prepared an excellent catalogue on 339 modern lines; but Luard went a step farther. He bound the contents of Mr Romilly’s bundles in a series of volumes, each of which he indexed with his own hand. These separate indexes were then transcribed, and finally bound together so as to form a complete catalogue of the contents of the Registry. Every paper can now be found with the least possible loss of time, while each bound volume contains a complete history of the subject to which it relates, so far as it can be illustrated by documents in the Registry.

Luard’s duties as Registrary, added to the continuous strain of his historical work, would have been enough for most people; but he never forgot that he was a clergyman, as well as a man of letters, and he took care always to have some active clerical work to do. He was an eloquent preacher, and his sermons in the College Chapel used to be listened to with an interest that we did not always feel in what was said to us from that pulpit. They were plain, practical, persuasive; the compositions of one who was not above his congregation; who had nothing donnish about him, but who spoke to the undergraduates as one who had passed through the same temptations as themselves, 340 and who was, therefore, in a position to show them the right road. On the same principles, for the twenty-seven years during which he was Vicar of Great S. Mary’s, he laboured in the parish in a spirit of true sympathy. There was no fussiness about him; he did not take part in movements; he did not ‘work’ a parish as a modern clergyman does, on the principle of perpetual worry, leaving neither man, nor woman, nor child at peace for a moment; he led his people to better things by gentle measures; he sympathized with their troubles; he relieved their necessities; in a word, he exercised an unbounded influence over them, while refraining from interference in matters of moral indifference. His memory will long be venerated there for active benevolence, and punctual discharge of all that it became him to do. I have heard that the full extent of his charities will never be known. He hated display, and avoided reference to what he was about unless it was necessary to stimulate others by mentioning it; but those who know best tell me that his labours among the poor were unremitting, and that his generosity knew no limits.

Nor should it be forgotten, in even the most summary record of Luard’s life at Cambridge, 341 that it was he who got Great S. Mary’s restored in the true sense of the word, by removing the excrescences which the taste, or, rather, want of taste, of the last century had piled up in it. He pulled down the carved work thereof—the hideous ‘Golgotha’—with axes and hammers, and exhibited to an astonished and by no means complacent University the noble church in the unadorned simplicity of its architecture. The restoration of the University Church to something like its ancient arrangement will be an enduring monument of his parochial life.

He was a High Churchman, but a High Churchman with a difference. He belonged to the school of Pusey and Liddon rather than to that of the modern Ritualist, whose doings were as alien to his convictions and feelings as those of the party whom he scornfully styled ‘those Protestants.’ I have heard him called narrow and intolerant. I beg leave to refer such detractors to the sermon preached by him on the Sunday after the death of Frederick Denison Maurice. And this brings me to what was, perhaps, the leading principle of his whole life—his absolute honesty and fearlessness. He held certain beliefs and 342 certain opinions himself, which he cherished, and which were of vital importance to himself; but he did not shut his eyes to the possibility that others who held diametrically opposite views might be in the right also. And if he found a man sincere, no considerations of party, of respectability, of imaginary dangers concealed behind opinions held to be heretical, would prevent him from speaking out and proclaiming his admiration.

In manners Luard had much of the stately courtesy which we commonly ascribe to the last century, joined to a vivacious impulsiveness due, no doubt, to his French extraction. This impulsiveness led him into a rapidity of thought and utterance which often caused him to be misunderstood. He said what came first into his thoughts, and corrected it afterwards; but, unfortunately for him, people remembered the first words used, and forgot the explanation. Hence he was often misunderstood, and credited with opinions he did not really hold. He delighted in society, and few men knew better how to deal with it, or how to make his house an agreeable centre of Cambridge life. In this he was ably seconded by his admirable wife, qui savait tenir un salon , as the French say, 343 more successfully than is usual in this country. Without her help he would hardly have been able to find the time required for his continual hospitalities. The house was different from any other house that I have ever known, and reflected, more directly, the peculiar gifts and tastes of its owner. The pictures, the china, the books that lined the walls, bespoke the cultivated scholar; but the modern volumes that lay on the tables showed that he was no dry archaeologist, but full of enthusiasm for all that was best in modern literature. He had a keen sense of humour, and an admirable memory; and when the conversation turned that way, would tell endless stories of Cambridge life, or repeat page after page of his favourite Thackeray. At the same time he did not engross the conversation, but drew his guests out, and led each insensibly to what was interesting to him or to her. It is sad to think that all this has passed away; that exactly one month after Luard’s death his friends stood again beside his grave to see his only child laid in it; that his house will pass into alien hands; and that his library will share the fate of similar collections. ‘ Eheu! quanto minus est cum aliis versari quam tui meminisse. ’

A scientific naturalist who lived in England in the second quarter of this present century may be accounted a fortunate man. On the one hand was the vast field of the universe, undivided, unallotted; on the other, a public eager for instruction. At the present day, when men go to and fro, and knowledge is increased, we find it hard to realize the isolation of England until after the close of the great war, or the fear of invasion that absorbed men’s thoughts until after Trafalgar. That fear removed, the modern development of the nation began. The number of those who resorted 345 to the Universities increased by leaps and bounds. Public school life, as we understand it, was developed. As a natural consequence, the flower of the English youth were no longer content with the knowledge that had satisfied their fathers and grandfathers. The old paths were too narrow for them. The convulsions which had shaken the continent had not been without their effect even here; and when Europe was again open, account had to be taken of the work of continental thinkers. Their achievements must be mastered, continued, developed. It was allowed on all hands, except by that small class who can neither learn nor forget, that the time for a new departure in scientific education had arrived. It was the good fortune of Richard Owen to be ready just when he was wanted, to take occasion by the hand, and to become the leader in biological research.

How did he effect this? How did a young man, launched on the great world of London with no powerful connexions,

346 To take a metaphor from our representative system, Owen was the member for biological science in the parliament of letters for nearly half a century. And yet he was not a great thinker; his name is not associated with any far-reaching generalization, or any theory fruitful of wide results. As a comparative anatomist, and as a paleontologist, he did plenty of good and solid work. But these pursuits are most commonly those of a recluse. The man who engages in them must be content, as a general rule, with the four walls of his laboratory, and the applause of a small circle of experts. Not so Professor Owen, as he was most commonly designated, even after he had received knighthood. He contrived to lead an essentially public life; to be seen everywhere; to have his last paper talked about in fashionable drawing-rooms quite as much as in learned societies. How did he effect this? We think that the answer to our question is to be found—first, in the general eagerness for scientific instruction which was one of the characteristics of the age in which he lived; and, secondly, in his own many-sidedness. He was by no means one of those authors ‘who are all author,’ against whom Byron launched some of his 347 most brilliant sarcasms. He was a man of science; but he was also a polished gentleman of varied accomplishments.

It is to be regretted that such a man has not found a biographer more competent than his grandson and namesake; but the reader who reaches the end of the second volume will be rewarded by a masterly essay by Mr Huxley on Owen’s place in science. This is a remarkable composition; not merely for what it says, but for what it does not say; and we recommend those who would understand it thoroughly, not merely to read it more than once, but to cultivate the useful art of reading between the lines. Of a very different nature to The Life of Owen is the article which Sir W. H. Flower has contributed to the Dictionary of National Biography . It is of necessity much compressed, but it contains all that is really essential for the proper comprehension of Owen’s scientific career, and praise and blame are meted out with calm impartiality. For ourselves, we have a sincere admiration for Owen, but an admiration which does not exclude a readiness to admit that he had defects. In what we are about to say we do not propose to draw a fancy portrait. If we nothing extenuate, we 348 shall set down naught in malice. In a word, we shall try to present him as he was, not as he might have been.

Richard Owen was born at Lancaster, 20 July, 1804. His father was a West India merchant; his mother, Catherine Parrin, was descended from a French Huguenot family. She is said to have been a woman of refinement and intelligence, with great skill in music, a talent which she transmitted to her son. In appearance she was handsome and Spanish-looking, with dark eyes and hair. Owen delighted to dwell on his mother’s charm of manner, and all that he owed to her early training and example. We can well believe this, and the Life is full of touching references to her solicitude for her darling son. The interest she felt in all that he did even led her to read through his scientific papers and his catalogue of the Hunterian collection, with what profit to herself we are not informed. Her husband died in 1809; but the family seem to have been left in fairly affluent circumstances, and continued to live, as before, at Lancaster. Owen’s education began at the grammar-school there in 1810, when he was 349 six years old, and ended in 1820, when he was apprenticed to a local surgeon. Of his schooldays but little record has been preserved. One of the masters described him as lazy and impudent; he is said to have had no fondness for study of any kind except heraldry; and his sister used to relate that as a boy he was ‘very small and slight, and exceedingly mischievous.’

Those who value the records of boyhood for the sake of traces of the tastes which made the man celebrated, will be rewarded by the perusal of the pages which record Owen’s four years as a surgeon’s apprentice at Lancaster. Not only will they find that he worked diligently at the curative side of his profession, but that, his master being surgeon to the gaol, he had the opportunity of attending post-mortem examinations, and so laid the foundation of his knowledge of the structure of the human frame. Here too we catch a glimpse of the future comparative anatomist; but the story of ‘The Negro’s Head,’ here given in the words used by Owen when he told it himself, is unfortunately too long for quotation, and is certainly far too good to be spoilt by abbreviation.

In October 1824 Owen matriculated at the University of Edinburgh. There, in addition 350 to the courses that were obligatory, he attended the ‘outside’ lectures in comparative anatomy delivered by Dr John Barclay. From these he derived the greatest benefit, and used in after-years to speak of Barclay with affectionate regard, as ‘my revered preceptor.’ It is noteworthy that, while at Edinburgh, Owen and one of his friends founded a students’ society, which at his suggestion was called, by a sort of prophetic instinct, the Hunterian Society. Barclay must have decided very quickly that he had to do with no common pupil, for at the end of April 1825, when Owen had been barely six months in Edinburgh, he advised him to move to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and study under Dr. Abernethy, then near the close of his brilliant but eccentric career. Armed with a letter of introduction from Barclay, Owen set out for London, where he had ‘literally not one single friend.’ No wonder that he felt ‘an indescribable sense of desolation’ as he walked up Holborn, and that ‘the number of strange faces that kept passing by increased that feeling.’ What happened next is very characteristic of the strange mixture of roughness and kindness which was natural to his new patron.

351 ‘Abernethy had just finished lecturing, and was evidently in anything but the best of tempers, being surrounded by a small crowd of students waiting about to ask him questions. Owen was just screwing up his courage to attack this formidable personage and state his business, when Abernethy suddenly turned upon him and said: “And what do you want?” After presenting the letter Abernethy glanced at it for a moment, stuffed it into his pocket, and vouchsafed the gracious reply of “Oh!” As this did not seem to point to anything very definite, Owen was turning to go, when Abernethy called after him: “Here; come to breakfast to-morrow morning at eight,” and presenting him with his card, added, “That’s my address.” What were the terms in which Dr Barclay had spoken of him Owen never knew, but he thought they must have been favourable, for when he presented himself next morning at Abernethy’s residence, and was anticipating anything but an agreeable tête-à-tête with the great doctor, he found him, to his surprise, considerably smoothed down and quite pleasant in his manner. The result of the meeting was that Abernethy offered him the post of prosector for his lectures’ (i. 30).

A year later (August 18, 1826) Owen obtained the membership of the College of Surgeons, and set up as a medical practitioner in Carey Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where he gradually obtained a small practice among lawyers.

We have no wish to underrate Owen’s brilliant talents, or his perseverance, or his power of sustained work with a definite end in view; but at the same time it would be absurd 352 to deny that he had good-fortune to thank for a large part of his first successes. What else made Abernethy, at their first interview, give him just the appointment best calculated to bring his peculiar gifts into the light of day? What else made the same patron procure his appointment, two years later, as assistant-conservator of the Hunterian collections, out of which all his future celebrity was developed? He might have been ‘exceedingly well informed in all that relates to his profession, an excellent anatomist, and sober and sedate very far beyond any young man I ever knew,’ as one who was in a position to know said of him in 1830, and yet have ‘bloomed unseen,’ an obscure practitioner in ‘the dusky purlieus of the law,’ had not the fickle goddess selected him as the special recipient of her favours.

Owen’s active life in London divides itself naturally into two periods, each containing nearly thirty years. The first, during which he was connected with the Royal College of Surgeons, extended from 1827 to 1856; the second, during which he was nominally superintendent of the biological side of the British Museum, from 1856 to 1883.

Those who would rightly understand his 353 work during the former period must of necessity take into account the history and extent of the vast collection which he was expected to catalogue and to develop, for it dominated and directed all his studies. It was formed by the celebrated surgeon, John Hunter, between 1763 and 1793, in which year he died. In studying it, one is at a loss what to admire most—the beauty of the specimens themselves, and the admirable clearness with which those preserved in spirit have been dissected and mounted; or the labour and self-denial which brought them together in the midst of the incessant occupations of a large practice; or the almost prophetic instinct which divined what posterity would require in the way of such aids to study. It was Hunter’s object to illustrate the phenomena of life in all organisms, whether in health or in disease. For this purpose he collected as widely as he could. There is an osteological series, and a physiological series (in spirit), which exhibits the different organs, digestive, circulatory, and the like, in order, and traces their development from the simplest to the most complicated form. To the Invertebrata he had devoted special attention. He had secured, through his friend Sir Joseph Banks, 354 many of the treasures collected during Cook’s voyages; and he had purchased rarities as occasion offered. Of insects he had a large collection. Nor were his observations limited to the animal kingdom. Whenever any physiological process could be illustrated by vegetable life, vegetables were pressed into the service. Nor did he fail to recognize the truth—which some persons still refuse to accept—that the remains of extinct animals are only in their proper place when side by side with those still living on the earth. ‘His collection of fossils,’ says Owen in one of his prefaces, ‘was the largest and most select of any in this country.’

To contain this collection Hunter had built a special museum in Castle Street, Leicester Square, which was open to public inspection on certain days. After his death his executors, in accordance with his will, offered the collection to the Government. ‘Buy preparations?’ exclaimed Mr Pitt; ‘why, I have not money enough for gunpowder!’ Ultimately, however, the House of Commons agreed to give £15,000 for it, just one-fifth of the sum that Hunter is said to have spent upon it. Next arose the further question, who should take care of it. The Royal Society, it is said, did not 355 consider it ‘an object of importance to the general study of natural history’; the British Museum was literary, not scientific; and finally, in 1799, the Corporation of Surgeons, as it was then called, accepted it, under the condition that a proper catalogue should be made, a conservator appointed, and twenty-four lectures in explanation of it delivered annually in the college. Soon afterwards the Corporation of Surgeons became the Royal College of Surgeons, and a building, to which Parliament contributed £27,500, was built for its reception. This was opened in 1813.

When Owen was appointed assistant-conservator of these collections thirty-four years had elapsed since Hunter’s death. During that time they had been preserved from damage by the devoted care of Mr William Clift, who, after being Hunter’s assistant for a short time, had been appointed conservator, first by the executors, and subsequently by the college. The general arrangement had been prescribed by Hunter, but no descriptive catalogue existed, as it had been, unfortunately, Hunter’s habit to trust to his memory for the history of his specimens. Further, though lists, more or less imperfect, drawn up either by Hunter himself or 356 under his direction, had been preserved, the bulk of his papers had been destroyed by Sir Everard Home, his brother-in-law and executor. ‘There is but one thing more to be done—to destroy the collection,’ was Clift’s remark when he heard of this act of cynical wickedness. In the scarcity, therefore, of documentary evidence, other expedients had to be resorted to for the identification of the specimens which Hunter had dissected, or had preserved entire in spirit. As Owen remarks in the preface to the first volume of his descriptive catalogue (published in 1833), ‘It was necessary to consult the book of Nature.’ At first it was no easy matter to procure the animals required; but after the establishment of the Zoological Society this difficulty was in a great measure removed, and more than two hundred dissections were made by Owen in the course of the work incident to the preparation of the first volume of the catalogue.

This sketch of the Hunterian collections, which we would gladly have worked out in greater detail had our space allowed us to do so, will perhaps be sufficient to indicate to our readers the nature of the field of research on which Owen was about to enter. It was, in 357 fact, an undiscovered country, of which he was to be the pioneer. One would like to know whether he had any idea of what the work he was about to undertake implied; and whether he had any misgivings as to his own fitness for it. He was only twenty-three years old, so perhaps, as youth is sanguine, he entered upon it with a light heart, thinking—if he paused to think—that he had strength of will sufficient to compensate for defect of years and knowledge. ‘ On vieillit vite sur les champs de bataille. ’ His previous training must have been in the main professional; he could have gained at most only a glimpse of comparative anatomy at the feet of Dr Barclay; the great writers on the subject, Buffon, Daubenton, Cuvier, and the rest, must have been mere names to him. Moreover, he was obliged, for lucre’s sake, to continue the profession of a surgeon, and, though he gradually dropped it, he must, for some time at least, have spent a good deal of time over it. Besides this, he probably assisted Clift in the brief catalogue of the Hunterian collections that appeared between 1833 and 1840. But, while thus engaged, he found time for study. For three years he attempted no original work; and when he did begin to write 358 (his first paper is dated 9 November, 1830), it is evident that the previous years had been spent in wise preparation. There is no trace of the novice in the papers that followed each other in quick succession; they evince a complete mastery of the subject from the historical, as well as from the anatomical, side. The mere number of these communications, addressed principally to the Zoological Society, is almost past belief. Before the end of 1855 more than 250 had appeared, many of which were of considerable length, and enriched with elaborate drawings made by himself. But what is more surprising still is the versatility displayed in their composition. Nowadays a biologist is compelled to specialize. By ‘the custom of the country,’ to borrow a legal phrase, he selects his own subject, and is expected not to poach on that of his neighbours. But when Owen began to work, these laws existed not, or at any rate not for him. The very nature of his work obliged him to study in quick succession the most diverse structures; and, as death does not accommodate itself to human convenience, he could not tell from day to day what animals would be sent from the Zoological Gardens to his dissecting-room. An excellent 359 bibliography of his works at the end of the second volume of the Life enables us to trace his studies in detail. For our present purpose we will only point out that between 1831 and 1835 he had written papers (among many others) on the orang-outang, beaver, Thibet bear, gannet, armadillo, seal, kangaroo, tapir, cercopithecus, crocodile, toucan, hornbill, pelican, flamingo, besides various Invertebrates.

While Owen was preparing himself for his serious attack on the catalogue an event occurred which had an important influence on his scientific development. Cuvier came to England to collect materials for his work on fishes, and naturally visited the Hunterian collection. Owen has preserved a singularly modest account of his introduction to the great French naturalist:

‘In the year 1830 I made Cuvier’s personal acquaintance at the Museum of the College of Surgeons, and was specially deputed to show and explain to him such specimens as he wished to examine. There was no special merit in my being thus deputed, the fact being that I was the only person available who could speak French, and who had at the same time some knowledge of the specimens. Cuvier kindly invited me to visit the Jardin des Plantes in the following year’ (i. 49).

Accordingly, Owen spent the month of 360 August 1831 in Paris. It has been frequently stated, says his biographer, that Cuvier and his collection ‘made a great impression on Owen, and gave a direction to his after-studies of fossil remains,’ a position which he contests on the ground that neither Owen’s diary nor his letters describing the visit warrant such a conclusion. We do not attach much importance to this argument, but we feel certain that the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, from its unfortunate subdivision into departments widely separated structurally from each other, could not have stimulated anybody in that particular direction. That Cuvier was, to a very large extent, Owen’s master in comparative anatomy is undeniable; he quotes him with respect, not to say with reverence, in almost every page of his writings, and the ‘ Prix Cuvier ’ adjudged to him in 1857 probably gave him more pleasure than all his other distinctions. Cuvier’s method, as set forth in Les Ossemens Fossiles , of illustrating and explaining extinct animals by comparison with recent was closely followed by his illustrious disciple. But this principle might easily have been learnt—and in our judgment was learnt—by a study of his works at home. On the other hand, Owen has 361 stated, in unequivocal terms, the direction in which Cuvier did exert a special influence upon him. In his Anatomy of Vertebrates (iii. 786), published in 1868, he says:

‘At the close of my studies at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, in 1831, I returned strongly moved to lines of research bearing upon the then prevailing phases of thought on some general biological questions.

‘The great Master in whose dissecting-rooms, as well as in the public galleries of comparative anatomy, I was privileged to work, held that “species were not permanent”; and taught this great and fruitful truth, not doubtfully or hypothetically, but as a fact established inductively on a wide and well-laid basis of observation.’

Further, Owen had the opportunity of listening to some of the debates between Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire on the question of how new species may originate; and ‘on returning home,’ he adds, ‘I was guided in all my work with the hope or endeavour to gain inductive ground for conclusions on these great questions.’ Here, then, was the definite educational result which Owen gained from his visit. It had, moreover, another consequence. It made him known to the French naturalists, then in the front rank of science. His scientific acquirements, coupled with his agreeable manners and facility in 362 speaking and writing French, made him a persona grata in Paris. In 1839 he was elected a corresponding member of the Institute, and read more than one paper there in French.

We have already mentioned the long line of scientific papers which, from 1830 onwards, were the result of Owen’s indomitable energy. This series was now to be interrupted for a moment by the famous Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus , a quarto volume of sixty-eight pages, illustrated by eight plates, drawn by himself. The shell of the nautilus, as most persons know, has always been fairly common; but the animal which was given to the Museum of the College of Surgeons in 1831 was, we believe, the first, or nearly the first, which had ever reached this country, and Owen was most fortunate in having the chance of describing such a rarity. His essay, elaborate and exhaustive as it is, was dashed off in less than a year. It was received with a general chorus of praise. Dr Buckland spoke of it as ‘Mr Owen’s admirable work,’ and they were soon in correspondence on the way in which the nautilus sinks and rises in the water. Milne Edwards translated it into French, and Oken into German. Nor has the contemporary 363 verdict been reversed by that of posterity. Mr Huxley says of the Memoir that it

‘placed its author, at a bound, in the first rank of monographers. There is nothing better in the Mémoires sur les Mollusques , I would even venture to say nothing so good, were it not that Owen had Cuvier’s great work for a model; certainly, in the sixty years that have elapsed since the publication of this remarkable monograph it has not been excelled’ (ii. 306).

This essay seems to have given Owen a taste for the group to which the nautilus belongs. At the conclusion of the Memoir he proposed a new arrangement of it, now generally accepted, which includes the fossil as well as the recent forms; and, as occasion presented itself, he described other species and genera. The merit of a memoir on the fossil group called ‘belemnites,’ from the Oxford Clay, was the cause assigned for the award to him of the gold medal of the Royal Society in 1846.

Between 1833 and 1840 the long-desired catalogue, in five quarto volumes, made its appearance. Sir William Flower calls it ‘monumental’; a singularly happy epithet, for it commemorates, as a monument should do, alike the founder of the Museum and the industrious anatomist who had minutely described 364 the four thousand specimens of which the ‘physiological series’—or, as we should now say, the series of organs—then consisted. Nor, though the arrangement is obsolete, can the work itself be regarded as without value, even at the present time. It has already served as a model for the catalogues of many other museums, and has taken its place in the literature of the subject. It is, in fact, an elaborate treatise on comparative anatomy from the point of view of the modifications of special organs. The thirteen years spent over it can hardly appear an excessively long time when we remember the work involved, and also the fact that the college had from the first recognized the duty of filling up gaps in the collection as occasion offered. Many of the specimens recorded in this catalogue had been prepared by Owen himself.

During the years that Owen spent upon the catalogue his position at the College of Surgeons was gradually becoming assured. He had begun as assistant-curator at £120 a year, but with no prospects, as the place of curator was expected to be given to Mr Clift’s son on his father’s retirement. But in 1832 the younger Clift died suddenly from the effects 365 of an accident, and Owen remained as sole assistant at £200. In July 1833 his salary was raised to £300, and in 1835 he was enabled to marry Caroline Clift, Mr Clift’s only daughter. From this time until 1852, when the Queen gave him the delightful cottage at Sheen which he lived in till his death, he had apartments within the building of the College of Surgeons. They were small, and inconvenient in many ways. Owen was in the habit of turning his study into a dissecting-room, and his wife’s diary contains many amusing references to the pervading odours caused by the examination of a rhinoceros or an elephant, or to such disturbances as the following: ‘Great trampling and rushing upstairs past our bedroom door. Asked Richard if the men were dancing the polka on the stairs. He said, “No; what you hear is the body being carried upstairs. They are dissecting for fellowship to-day!”’ But, on the other hand, the proximity to the library and the museum, which he could enter at any hour of the night or day, must have greatly helped one who worked so incessantly. Ultimately, in 1842, Owen became sole curator, with Mr Quekett as his assistant. This was, 366 no doubt, a dignified position, but it had its drawbacks. Owen’s golden time at the college was the period between 1827 and 1842, when the business details were taken off his hands by the painstaking and methodical Clift. After 1842 he was held responsible, as curators usually are, for much that he regarded as irksome routine. This he performed in a perfunctory fashion that did not please the Council, and difficulties arose between that body and their distinguished servant which time only rendered more acute. It may be that the Council were not sufficiently sensible of the honour reflected upon the college by possessing ‘the first anatomist of the age’; and Owen, on his side, may have been too fond of doing work which brought ‘grist to the mill,’ and applause, and troops of friends, without being directly connected with the college. However this may have been, it is beyond dispute that Owen’s removal, in 1856, to the British Museum, was a fortunate solution of a difficulty which otherwise would probably have ended in an explosion.

It has been already mentioned that when the Hunterian Museum was entrusted to the care of the College of Surgeons it had been 367 stipulated that its contents should be illustrated by an annual course of twenty-four lectures. Up to 1836 this course had been divided between the professors of anatomy and surgery; but in that year Owen was appointed first Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology. To the last days of his life he constantly referred to the pleasure which this appointment gave him when first conferred upon him; nor did this feeling wear off as time went on. He gave his lectures regularly, with the same keen interest and thoroughness of preparation, down to 1855. At first he confined himself strictly to his prescribed subject; but gradually he widened his field, and introduced whatever views or subjects happened to be interesting him. Most of the lectures were worked up into books afterwards. He was an admirable lecturer—in fact, he was better as a lecturer than as a writer; for it must be confessed that his scientific style is often pedantic and cramped, and he seems to use words rather for the sake of concealing his thoughts than of imparting them. It is interesting to learn what pains he took with his early lectures—how he rehearsed them to his wife, or to a friend, till he got used to the work, 368 and could estimate exactly how much would fill the allotted hour. We cannot refrain from quoting Mrs Owen’s account of the first lecture:

‘So busy all the morning; had hardly time to be nervous, luckily for me. R. robed in the drawing-room, and took some egg and wine before going into the theatre. He then went in and left me. At five o’clock a great noise of clapping made me jump, for I timed the lecture to last a quarter of an hour longer; but R., it seems, cut it short rather than tire Sir Astley Cooper too much. All went off as well as even I could wish. The theatre crammed, and there were many who could not get places. R. was more collected than he or I ever supposed, and gave this awful first lecture almost to his own satisfaction! We sat down a large party to dinner. Mr Langshaw and R. afterwards played two of Corelli’s sonatas’ (i. 109).

These lectures, more than anything that he wrote, made Owen famous, and procured for him a passport into society. To understand this, which appears almost a phenomenon at the present day, it must be remembered that the lecture-mania had not become one of the common diseases of humanity in 1836, and that it was still considered proper for great people to play the part of Mecenas to those who were distinguished in science or in letters. Hence, when the news spread abroad that a young and hitherto unknown lecturer was discoursing 369 eloquently on a new subject in a building which few had heard of and none had seen, curiosity carried fashion into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and certain dukes and earls, who cultivated a taste for natural history dans leur moments perdus , set the example of sitting at the feet of the new Gamaliel; more serious persons followed, and by-and-by a Hallam, a Carlyle, and a Wilberforce might be seen there side by side with the lights of medicine and surgery.

To most men the work which these lectures, together with the catalogue, entailed, would have been sufficient. But Owen loved diversity of occupations; and one of his fortunate accidents presently threw an attractive paleontological subject in his way. It happened in this wise. Readers of the Life of Charles Darwin will remember his disappointment, on his return home from the now classic voyage of the Beagle , to find that zoologists cared but little for his collections; that, in fact, Lyell and Owen were the only two who wished to possess any of his specimens. The latter, who had been introduced to him by the former, was not slow to grasp the scientific value of the extinct animals whose bones Darwin had 370 dug with his own hands out of the fluviatile deposits of South America. He began with a huge skull—‘the head of an animal equalling in size the hippopotamus’—and described it before the Geological Society, in 1837, under the name of Toxodon platensis . Further, as Mr Huxley points out:

‘It is worthy of notice, that in the title of this memoir there follow, after the name of the species, the words “referable by its dentition to the Rodentia, but with affinities to the Pachydermata and the herbivorous Cetacea,” indicating the importance in the mind of the writer of the fact that, like Cuvier’s Anoplotherium and Paleotherium , Toxodon occupied a position between groups which, in existing Nature, are now widely separated’ (ii. 308).

The same writer bids us remark that this ‘maiden essay in paleontology possesses great interest’ from another point of view, for ‘it is with reference to Owen’s report on Toxodon that Darwin remarks in his Journal : “How wonderfully are the different orders, at the present time so well separated, blended together in different points in the structure of Toxodon .”’ Soon afterwards Owen described the rest of Darwin’s fossil specimens in the geological part of The Zoology of the ‘Beagle’ Voyage .

Two years later, in 1839, a second and still more sensational trouvaille came into his 371 hands. A fragment of bone was offered for sale to the College of Surgeons, with the statement that it had been obtained in New Zealand from a native, who said that it was the bone of a great extinct eagle. Out of this fragment there ultimately grew that phalanx of huge extinct birds to which Owen gave the name of Dinornis (bird of wonder), on which he occupied himself till his death. His recognition of the true origin of this fragment was, no doubt, a wonderful instance of his osteological sagacity; but it is a misrepresentation of fact to say that he evolved the whole of an extinct bird out of a fragment of bone six inches long. What he did do, and how he did it, shall be told in his own words:

‘As soon as I was at leisure I took the bone to the skeleton of the ox, expecting to verify my first surmise [that it was a marrow-bone, like those brought to table wrapped in a napkin]; but, with some resemblance to the shaft of the thigh-bone, there were precluding differences. From the ox’s humerus, which also affords the tavern delicacy, the discrepancy of shape was more marked. Still, led by the thickness of the wall of the marrow-cavity, I proceeded to compare the bone with similar-sized portions of the skeletons of the various quadrupeds which might have been introduced and have left their remains in New Zealand; but it was clearly unconformable with any such portions.

‘In the course of these comparisons I noted certain 372 obscure superficial markings on the bone, which recalled to mind similar ones which I had observed on the surface of the long bones in some large birds. Thereupon I proceeded with it to the skeleton of the ostrich. The bone tallied in point of size with the shaft of the thigh-bone in that bird, but was markedly different in shape. There were, however, the same superficial reticulate impressions on the ostrich’s femur which had caught my attention in the exhaustive comparison previously made with the mammalian bones.

‘In short, stimulated to more minute and extended examinations, I arrived at the conviction that the specimen had come from a bird, that it was the shaft of a thigh-bone, and that it must have formed part of the skeleton of a bird as large as, if not larger than, the full-sized male ostrich, with this more striking difference, that whereas the femur of the ostrich, like that of the rhea and eagle, is pneumatic, or contains air, the present huge bird’s bone had been filled with marrow, like that of a beast ^[121] .’

The suggestion was received with sceptical astonishment, and the paper in which Owen announced it to the Zoological Society (November 12, 1839) narrowly escaped exclusion from the Transactions of that body on the ground of its improbability. But confirmation was not slow to arrive, though in a direction that was not then expected. The bone was not fossilized; it was therefore naturally concluded that there existed somewhere in New Zealand—then but partially explored—a race 373 of birds of gigantic stature and struthious affinities. We have no space to tell the story of the extinction of the moa, as the natives call it—surely the most weird and curious of all ‘the fairy-tales of science’; but to Owen certainly belongs the credit of having been the first to point the way to the great discovery. No work of his created so much excitement. Society, headed by Prince Albert, hurried to inspect the huge remains, of which a large series soon reached this country, and to be introduced to the fortunate necromancer, at whose bidding a phantom procession of strange creatures had suddenly stepped out of the past into the present.

From this time forward Owen continued to pay as much attention to extinct as to recent animals, as his numerous publications testify. The work fascinated and excited him.

‘There was no hunt,’ he declared, ‘so exciting, so full of interest, and so satisfactory when events prove one to have been on the right scent, as that of a huge beast which no eye will ever see alive, and which, perhaps, no mortal eye ever did behold. Such a chase is not ended in a day, in a week, nor in a season. One’s interest is revived and roused year by year as bit by bit of the petrified portions of the skeleton comes to hand. Thirty such years elapsed before I was able to outline a restoration of Diprotodon australis ’ [the gigantic extinct kangaroo].

374 In 1841 appeared his ‘ Description of the Skeleton of an Extinct Gigantic Sloth (Mylodon robustus) , with observations on the osteology, natural affinities, and probable habits of the megatheroid quadrupeds in general’—‘a masterpiece both of anatomical description and of reasoning and inference,’ as Sir W. Flower calls it. He demonstrated its affinities with the sloths on osteological and dental grounds, and then reasoned out its habits from its configuration; showing that a creature so vast could not have ascended trees, but must have pulled them down to browse on them at its leisure. Then came the work on British Fossil Mammals and Birds, with a long series of memoirs, growing in importance as evidences of new forms, discovered in all parts of the world, came pouring in, as though his own reputation had attracted them; on the Triassic Labyrinthodonts of Central England; on the extinct fauna of South Africa and Australia; on the Reptiles of the Wealden and other formations in England, published by the Paleontographical Society, of which he was one of the first and most ardent supporters; on the Archæopteryx from Solenhofen; on the Great Auk; and on the Dodo, one of the representations 375 of which, in an old Dutch picture, he had the good fortune to discover. It is, indeed, as Mr Huxley remarks, ‘a splendid record: enough, and more than enough, to justify the high place in the scientific world which Owen so long occupied.’

These researches did not pass unrewarded. In 1838 the Geological Society gave to Owen the Wollaston Gold Medal for his work on Darwin’s collections, and it happened, by a fortunate coincidence, that Whewell, his fellow-townsman and school-fellow, occupied the chair on the occasion. In subsequent years he was twice invited to be president of that society; but on both occasions he was compelled to decline. Next, in 1841, Sir Robert Peel offered him a pension of £200 from the Civil List, protesting in a very gracious letter that he knew nothing about his political opinions, but merely wished ‘to encourage that devotion to science for which you are so eminently distinguished.’ This offer, which was gratefully accepted, laid the foundation of an intercourse between Owen and Sir Robert which ripened by-and-by into something like friendship. Dinners in London were succeeded by visits to Drayton, at one of which Owen 376 amused the company with a microscope which he had brought with him (of course quite accidentally); and, finally, his portrait was painted for the gallery there, as a pendant to that of Cuvier. In 1845 Owen refused knighthood.

At this point in Owen’s career it will be convenient to pause for a moment and describe very briefly what manner of man it was that was rapidly becoming a leading figure in London society. We remember him from an earlier date than we care to mention, but, as we have no turn for portrait-painting, we gladly accept Sir W. Flower’s lifelike sketch:

‘Owen was tall and ungainly in figure, with massive head, lofty forehead, curiously round, prominent, and expressive eyes, high cheek-bones, large mouth, and projecting chin, long, lank, dark hair, and, during the greater part of his life, smooth-shaven face and very florid complexion.’

His manners were distinguished for ceremonious courtesy, coupled with the formal exactness of a punctilious Frenchman. His bows were not easily forgotten. His enemies said, and his friends could not deny, that they varied with the rank of the person to whom he was presented. In fact Owen might have said, with Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, ‘I naver in 377 my life could stond straight i’ th’ presence of a great mon; but awways boowed, and boowed, and boowed, as it were by instinct.’

Next to what he called ‘my dear comparative anatomy,’ Owen loved music, and was at one time no mean performer, both vocally and instrumentally. Music was his constant recreation in an evening, and he has even been known to take his violoncello out with him to parties. He was a frequent attendant at concerts and operas, and when Weber’s Oberon was first performed in London he went to hear it thirty nights in succession. The stage also had attractions for him, and he and his wife had many friends in the dramatic profession. Macready in Henry the Fifth , Charles Kean in Louis XI. and Richard III. , and many minor stars, gave him great pleasure; and it was on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre, while joining the actors in singing the National Anthem on the occasion of the Queen’s first state visit, that he met Charles Dickens, who afterwards became his intimate friend. ‘London,’ he once said, ‘is the place for interchange of thought’; and it was a relief to him to lay his habitual pursuits aside for a few hours, and exchange ideas with men whose lives lay 378 in lines wholly different from his own. He found dining-out a relaxation—the hours were earlier in those days—and gradually, as his social gifts were discovered, he was much in request. No man could tell a story better, and his general conversation was brilliant and original. He had the happy art of dilating on his own pursuits without being either a pedant or a bore. Consequently he was a member of many societies who, ‘greatly daring, dined,’ as, for instance, the Abernethy Club, the Literary Society, and The Club, founded by Dr Johnson, an exclusive society limited to forty members, in which he occupied the place once filled by Oliver Goldsmith. He also promoted the Royal Literary Fund and the Actors Benevolent Fund—where his after-dinner eloquence was much appreciated. He was a good chess-player, and was often matched, successfully, with some of the first players of the day, as Landseer, Staunton, and the Duke of Brunswick. His acquaintance with literature was wider than might have been expected from his absorbing occupations in other directions, and his retentive memory enabled him to quote pages of Milton, Shakespeare, and other standard writers. He 379 was also an ardent novel-reader. Mrs Owen kept him well supplied with the novels of the day; and he sat up half the night over Eugene Aram , the serial stories of Dickens, Vanity Fair , Shirley , and The Mill on the Floss , which we are glad to find he preferred to all the rest of George Eliot’s stories. Apart from his social proclivities, he managed to get acquainted with most of the celebrated people of the day. They either came to see him and the museum he directed, or they asked him to call on them. Among those whom he met in this way we may mention Mrs Fry, Miss Edgeworth, Turner, Samuel Warren, Emerson, Guizot, the younger Dumas, Fanny Kemble, Tennyson, Macaulay, and Carlyle, who described him as ‘the man with the glittering eyes,’ and decided that he was ‘neither a fool nor a humbug.’ In his own especial line of science he was intimate with Lord Enniskillen, Sir Philip Egerton, Prince Lucien Bonaparte, Sedgwick, Murchison, Lyell; and subsequently took a keen interest in the researches of Livingstone, whom he helped with the first record of his African work. ‘Poor Livingstone!’ he says; ‘he does not know what it is to write a book.’ When Owen could find time for a holiday, which was 380 but seldom, he enjoyed fishing and grouse-shooting; but his delight in Nature was so keen that probably sport was what he least valued in these excursions.

It was natural that, as Owen’s reputation grew, he should be involved in some of the schemes for improving the condition of the people which from time to time engaged the attention of Government. In 1843 he served on a commission of inquiry into the health of towns, and exercised himself over sewers, slaughter-houses, and such-like abominations. In 1846 he was on the Metropolitan Sewers Commission, which grew out of the former, and he did much good work in hunting up evidence about the spread of cholera and typhus from imperfect drainage. In the course of this he incurred considerable unpopularity, and was contemptuously nick-named ‘Jack of all Trades.’ The work became so heavy and absorbing that he thought of resigning; but when Lord Morpeth urged him to remain, on the ground that they could ill spare his ‘enlightened philanthropy,’ he not only withdrew his resignation, but consented to serve on a commission to consider the state of Smithfield Market and the meat supply of London (1849), a subject 381 on which he held very decided opinions. Probably his zoological qualifications, coupled with his knowledge of what had been effected on the Continent in the way of establishing extramural slaughter-houses, had much to do with abolishing the market. He was also on the Preliminary Committee of Organization for the Great Exhibition of 1851, and chairman of the jury on raw materials, alimentary substances, &c. Similar services were performed by him for the exhibition held at Paris in 1855.

He was also a mark for many of those questions, serious and absurd alike, which are presented for solution to men of science. A firm of undertakers asked him how much they ought to charge for embalming Mr Beckford; a grave Oriental from the Turkish Embassy submitted to his examination the bowl of a tobacco-pipe which he believed to have been made out of the beak of a Phœnix; his opinion was sought by the Home Office on the window-tax, and by Charles Dickens on the publicity of executions; his microscopical skill was brought to bear on the so-called contemporary annotations of Shakespeare; and he demolished one of the many sea-serpents in which a marvel-loving public from time to time believes. He 382 showed very conclusively that it was probably a large seal. His letter to the Times on the subject excited a good deal of attention, and Prince Albert dubbed him ‘the serpent-killer.’ He was also to a certain extent responsible for the models of extinct animals in the gardens of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, and was rewarded for his trouble by a dinner in the spacious carcase of the Iguanodon.

In 1856—it is said, through the influence of Lord Macaulay—Owen was appointed Superintendent of the Department of Natural History at the British Museum, with a salary of £800 a year. The new officer was to stand towards the collections of natural history in the same relation that the librarian did towards the books and antiquities, and to be directly responsible, as he was, to the trustees. Great advantages were expected to result from this new departure, and Owen was warmly congratulated. Professor Sedgwick wrote:

‘I trust that your move to the British Museum is for your happiness. If God spare your health, it will be a grand move for the benefit of British science. An Imperator was sadly wanted in that vast establishment’ (ii. 19).

With Lord Macaulay, anxiety for Owen himself had been paramount:

383 ‘I am extremely desirous that something should be done for Owen. I hardly know him to speak to. His pursuits are not mine; but his fame is spread over Europe. He is an honour to our country, and it is painful to me to think that a man of his merit should be approaching old age amidst anxieties and distresses. He told me that eight hundred a year, without a house in the Museum, would be opulence to him’ (ii. 15).

A little foresight might have saved much disappointment. The subordinate officers, whom Owen was expected to influence, owed no allegiance to him, and resented his intrusion; they had long been practically independent within their own departments, and desired to remain so. Such a situation would have been difficult even for a born leader of men; but for Owen, whose gifts did not lie in that direction, it meant either resignation or acceptance of the inevitable. He chose the latter, and, dropping the sword of a despot, assumed the peaceful mantle of a constitutional sovereign. His reputation did good service to the collections in the way of attracting specimens of all kinds from all parts of the world; and he exerted himself with exemplary diligence to obtain special desiderata ; but otherwise his duties as administrator soon became little more than nominal. There was, however, one subject 384 connected with the Museum which had long engaged his attention, and which he had the pleasure to see settled before he died, though not entirely on the lines he had at first laid down.

It had been manifest for a considerable period that the British Museum was too small for the various collections, and two years before Owen’s arrival Dr Gray, keeper of zoology, had made a definite request for additional accommodation. The trustees, after much consideration, agreed to a small, but wholly inadequate, extension of one of the galleries. Owen did not act hastily, but, having thoroughly mastered the subject, addressed a report to the trustees in 1859, in which he showed that, having regard to the congestion of the existing galleries, the quantity of specimens stored out of sight, and the probable rate of increase, a space of ten acres ought to be acquired at once. This report was accompanied by a plan, drawn by himself, in which several special features may be noticed. A central hall was to contain an epitome of natural history—specimens selected to show the type-characters of the principal groups—called in subsequent editions of the plan the Index-Museum; adjoining this 385 hall there was to be a lecture-theatre; zoology was to include physical ethnology, for which a gallery measuring 150 feet by 50 feet was to be provided; the Cetacea, stuffed specimens and skeletons, were to have a long gallery to themselves; and lastly, paleontology was no longer to be separated from zoology, but the gallery containing the one was to be readily entered from the gallery containing the other. A plan so novel, so enlightened, so truly imperial as this, was far too much in advance of the age to meet with anything except opposition and ridicule. When it was debated in the House of Commons, Mr Gregory, M.P. for Galway, got it referred to a Select Committee, regretting, in reference to its author, ‘that a man whose name stood so high should connect himself with so foolish, crazy, and extravagant a scheme.’ Owen’s first idea had been to purchase the land required at Bloomsbury; but on this point he had no very decided personal opinion, and, yielding to that of the majority of men of science, he advocated by lecture, by conversation, and in print, the removal of the collections of natural history to a new and distant site. For this scheme he fortunately secured the powerful advocacy 386 of Mr Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who moved (May 12, 1862) for leave to bring in a Bill to effect it. These excellent intentions were thwarted by Mr Disraeli, who, knowing no more about science than he did about primroses, saw only a chance of obstructing a political opponent; and once more the scheme was adjourned. The adjournment, however, was of short duration, for in 1863 Parliament voted the purchase of five acres at South Kensington, which Owen presently persuaded the Government to increase to eight; but further delays, extending over nearly twenty years, ensued, and when Owen resigned in 1883 the collections were not yet completely arranged in their new home.

The Museum as completed is widely different from that which Owen originally prescribed. The gallery of ethnology is gone; the Cetacea are relegated, as at Bloomsbury in former days, to a cellar; there is no lecture-theatre; and, in fact, the index-museum is almost the only special feature which has survived, but even this was not arranged by himself. On one vital question of arrangement, moreover, Owen allowed his own views to be overruled. So early as 1842 he had reported 387 to the Council of the College of Surgeons on the expediency of combining the fossil and recent osteological specimens, pointing out that

‘the peculiarities of the extinct mastodon, for example, cannot be understood without a comparison with the analogous parts of the elephant and tapir; nor those of the ichthyosaurus without reference to the skeletons of crocodiles and fishes. The proper position of such specimens in the Museum is, therefore, between those series of skeletons of which they present transitional or intermediate structures.’

An arrangement of the recent and fossil collections in accordance with these most reasonable and philosophical views appears in all the versions of the plan until the last; now it has entirely disappeared, and the two collections are disposed in opposite wings of the building widely severed from each other. Owen had no special turn for organization, and he was probably in a minority of one against his colleagues on this point. Besides this, his fighting days were over, and he preferred peace to an ideal arrangement of which his contemporaries could not see the advantages.

Owen turned his enforced leisure at the British Museum to good account, and proceeded, with renewed activity, to occupy himself in various directions. In 1857 he gave lectures 388 on paleontology at the Royal School of Mines, and his first course seems to have evoked the enthusiasm of his earlier days. Said Sir Roderick Murchison:

‘I never heard so thoroughly eloquent a lecture as that of yesterday.... It is the first time I have had the pleasure of seeing our British Cuvier in his true place, and not the less delighted to listen to his fervid and convincing defence of the principle laid down by his great precursor. Everyone was charmed, and he will have done more (as I felt convinced) to render our institution favourably known than by any other possible method’ (ii. 61).

Soon afterwards he was appointed (1859-61) Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution. Here again he chose ‘Fossil Mammals’ as his subject. In later years he gave frequent lectures on this and kindred subjects in the larger provincial towns. Nor must we omit the lectures to the Royal children at Buckingham Palace, which he delivered at the request of Prince Albert in 1860. These lectures, which were much appreciated by those for whom they were intended, laid the foundations of a close friendship between Owen and the Royal Family.

It must not, however, be supposed that these occupations diverted him from osteology. It was during this period that he wrote many 389 of the paleontological memoirs to which we have already alluded. He continued to publish paper after paper on Dinornis as fresh material accumulated; and he composed, among others, his monograph on the Aye-Aye (1863), which perhaps excited as much attention as that on the Nautilus thirty years before.

Between 1866 and 1868 he published his elaborate treatise On the Anatomy of Vertebrates , obviously intended to be the standard work on the subject for all time. But alas for the fallacies of hope! It is an immense store-house of information, founded in the main upon his own observations and dissections; and from no similar work will advanced students derive so much assistance. But, unfortunately, no revision of his own papers was attempted; the novel classification employed has never been accepted by any school of zoologists; and the only result of the proposed division of the Mammalia into four sub-classes, according to their cerebral characteristics, was a controversy from which Owen emerged with his reputation for scientific accuracy seriously impaired, if not irretrievably ruined. He had stated, not merely in the work of which we are speaking, but in others—as, for instance, in the Rede 390 Lecture delivered at Cambridge in 1859—that certain divisions of the human brain were absent in the apes. It was proved over and over again, in public and private, that this assertion was contrary to fact, and contrary to his own authorities; but he could never be persuaded to retract, or even to modify, his statements.

At the end of the third volume of the Anatomy are some ‘General Conclusions,’ which contain, so far as human intelligence can penetrate the meaning of Owen’s ‘dark speech,’ his final views on the origin of species. We have already shown that his mind was first turned to this momentous question during his visit to Paris in 1831, and that subsequently, during his work on the Physiological and Osteological Catalogues of the Museum of the College of Surgeons, it was continually in his thoughts. During this period he read, and was profoundly influenced by, Oken’s Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie , a translation of which was published by the Ray Society, in 1847, at his instance. In his Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton (1848) he says:

‘The subject of the following essay has occupied a portion of my attention from the period when, after having 391 made a certain progress in comparative anatomy, the evidence of a greater conformity to type, especially in the bones of the head of the vertebrate animals, than the immortal Cuvier had been willing to admit, began to enforce a reconsideration of his conclusions, to which I had previously yielded implicit assent.’

Out of the study here indicated there grew a revision of the vertebrate skeleton, in which the homologues ( i.e. the same organs in different animals, under every variety of form and function) were recognized, and a new system of osteological nomenclature was proposed. In this Owen did excellent work, which has been generally accepted. But in his anxiety to recognize and account for ‘the one in the many,’ he adopted Oken’s idea of the skeleton being resolvable into a succession of vertebræ, and evolved the idea of an archetype. It is almost inconceivable that the clear-headed and sagacious interpreter, whose sober conclusions we have indicated through a long series of zoological and paleontological memoirs, should have ever adopted these transcendental speculations. But there was evidently a metaphysical side to his mind, and he took a keen, almost a puerile, delight in this child of his fancy. He even had a seal engraved with a symbolical representation of it. To show that we are not 392 exaggerating we will quote his own account of his views when sending the seal to his sister:

‘It represents the archetype, or primal pattern—what Plato would have called the “Divine Idea”—on which the osseous frame of all vertebrate animals has been constructed. The motto is “The One in the Manifold,” expressive of the unity of plan which may be traced through all the modifications of the pattern, by which it is adapted to the varied habits and modes of life of fishes, reptiles, birds, beasts, and human kind. Many have been the attempts to discover the vertebrate archetype, and it seems now generally felt that it has been found’ (i. 388).

But, assuming Owen to have really discovered the one, he was as far off as ever from the origin of the many. And on this subject he never did reach any definite conclusion. He admits, it is true, a theory which sounds very like evolution:

‘Thus, at the acquisition of facts adequate to test the moot question of links between past and present species, as at the close of that other series of researches proving the skeleton of all Vertebrates, and even of Man, to be the harmonized sum of a series of essentially similar segments, I have been led to recognize species as exemplifying the continuous operation of natural law, or secondary cause; and that, not only successively, but progressively; from the first embodiment of the Vertebrate idea under its old Ichthyic vestment until it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the human form ^[122] .’

393 In this quotation he is in the main stating the views he held in 1849, for the latter portion of it is from his essay On the Nature of Limbs , published in that year. But the nature of the secondary cause which produced species cannot be concluded from his works. He fiercely contested Darwin’s theory of natural selection, both in conversation and in periodicals. To the last he clung to a notion of a ‘vital property,’ which is thus described in the Anatomy (iii. 807):

‘So, being unable to accept the volitional hypothesis, or that of impulse from within, or the selective force exerted by outward circumstances, I deem an innate tendency to deviate from parental type, operating through periods of adequate duration, to be the most probable nature, or way of operation, of the secondary law, whereby species have been derived one from the other.’

In 1883 Owen resigned his office at the British Museum and retired into private life. His remaining years were passed at Sheen in a tranquil and apparently happy old age. In 1884 he was gazetted a K.C.B., and, on Mr Gladstone’s initiative, his pension was augmented by £100 a year. But, though it pleased him to be always pleading poverty, he was really a comparatively wealthy man, and 394 when he died left £30,000 behind him. His wife died in 1873, and his only son in 1886; but a solitude which might have been painful was enlivened by the presence of his son’s widow and her seven children. Owen delighted in the country. He had a genuine love for outdoor natural history, and ‘the sight of the deer and other animals in the park, the birds and insects in the garden, the trees, flowers, and varying aspects of the sky, filled him with enthusiastic admiration.’ He died, literally of old age, on Sunday, 18 January, 1892.

It is much to be regretted that one who worked at his own subjects with such untiring zeal should have left behind him almost nothing to perpetuate his name with the great mass of the people. Mr Huxley remarks that, ‘whether we consider the quantity or the quality of the work done, or the wide range of his labours, I doubt if, in the long annals of anatomy, more is to be placed to the credit of any single worker’ (ii. 306); but he presently adds this caution: ‘Obvious as are the merits of Owen’s anatomical work to every expert, it is necessary to be an expert to discern them’ (ii. 332). He gave popular lectures, but they were not 395 printed ^[123] ; he wrote what he intended to be a work for all time, but it has faded out of recollection, and the whole theory of the archetype is now as dead as his own Dinornis. Nor was he at pains to surround himself with a circle of pupils who might have handed down the teaching of the Master to another generation, as Cuvier’s teaching was handed down by his pupils. It was one of Owen’s defects that he was repellent to younger men. In a word, he was secretive, impatient of interference, and preferred to be aut Cæsar aut nullus . Credit was to him worth nothing if it was to be divided. Again, brilliant as were his talents and assured as was his position, he could not recognize the truth that men may sometimes err, and that the greatest gain rather than lose by admitting it. During the whole of his long life we believe that he never owned to a mistake. Not only was what he said law, but what others ventured to say—especially if it ‘came between the wind and his nobility’—was to be brushed aside as 396 of no moment. We believe that this feeling on his part explains his refusal to accept the Darwinian theory. As we have shown, he went half way with it, and then dropped it, because it had not been hammered on his own anvil. This unfortunate antagonism to other workers, coupled with his readiness to enter into controversy, and the acrimony and dexterity with which he handled his adversaries, naturally discouraged those who would otherwise have been only too happy to sit at the feet of the Nestor of English zoology; and during the last thirty years of his life he became gradually more and more isolated. Moreover, there was, or there was thought to be, a certain want of sincerity about him which no amount of external courtesy could wholly conceal. In a word, he was compact of strange contradictions. He had many noble qualities; and yet he could not truly be called great, for they were warped and overshadowed by many moral perversities. Had he lived in the previous century his portrait might have been sketched by Pope:

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