Letters of Lord Acton Part 6

It is not easy to add to the panegyric p.r.o.nounced on St. Hilaire by a too zealous friend in Friday's _Pall Mall_. That gratifying description is not quite satisfactory. The writer affirms that St.

Hilaire is an Orientalist of the first rank, and a Greek scholar unsurpa.s.sed in France. He knows Greek thoroughly for working purposes, but not exquisitely as a scholar; and he has done little, on the whole, for his idol Aristotle in the way of consulting the ma.n.u.scripts and improving the unsettled text. And although he has studied Eastern religions deeply, I do not believe that he is a master of Eastern languages. Nor does he live on a third floor in that good street the Rue d'Astorg. He does not live there at all, but three miles away, in a charming little bachelor's house at Pa.s.sy. His rooms, formerly in the Rue d'Astorg, were "au fond de la cour au premier," and his maid-servant is not (and was not) elderly, but young, though ill-favoured. And it is not fair to say, with obvious purpose, that he never deserts the Thiers dinner-table except for the Germans. I made his acquaintance at a dinner at Lord Lyons's.

From all which I conclude that the letter is a vehement endeavour to recommend the new Minister abroad. Last summer St. Hilaire gave me the three big volumes of his Aristotelian Metaphysics, and, when I remonstrated, said, "Vous me le rendrez un jour, d'une autre facon."

That is what I am doing at this moment, when I tell you how very highly I rate the man.

St. Hilaire is quite at the top of scholars and philosophers of the second cla.s.s. Not a discoverer, not an originator, not even clever in the sense common with Frenchmen, not eloquent at all, not vivid or pointed in phrase, sufficient in knowledge, but not abounding, sound, but not supple, accustomed to heavy work in {38} the darkness, unused to effect, to influence, or to applause, unsympathetic and a little isolated, but high-minded, devoted to principle, willing, even enthusiastic, to sacrifice himself, his comfort, his life, his reputation, to public duty or scientific truth. He is not vain, so much as didactic; there is a method about him that is a little severe, a solidity that wants relief. His character has been shaped by long devotion to a cause that was hopeless, by which there was nothing to gain except the joy of being a pioneer of ideas a.s.sured of distant triumph. So that he is disinterested, consistent, patient, tolerant, convinced, and brave. Indeed, courage, contempt of death, is the one thing I have heard him speak of with something like display. The Republican party, to which he belonged even under Charles X., and of which he is the patriarch, had a good deal of dirty work to wash off; and I have observed that he was not communicative when, in an interest which it were superfluous to mention, I have tried to learn the secret history of Republicanism under the monarchy. There are few of them who never touched pitch. But he and Littre are distinct from most others by their hard work and their voluntary poverty.

This makes him peculiarly hateful to opponents. A legitimate Marquis said to me: "C'est un honnete homme, qui nous coupera la tete de la maniere la plus honnete du monde." People who admit that he is unstained by the gross vices of his party, speak of him as an enthusiast, and a dupe, and no doubt expect him to acquiesce, like Pilate, in all manner of wrong that he will not initiate.

I do not feel that there is no truth at all in these imputations. I have found that he thinks accurately, that he is even penetrating, but not impressive. He {39} told me the speech he had prepared against the Jesuits, which, I believe, he never delivered. The argument was: The conscience of man is his most divine possession. Jesuits give up conscience to authority, therefore they forfeit the rights of men, which are the rights of conscience, and have no claim to toleration. I won't undertake to refute this argument; but it is pre-eminently unparliamentary, and smells of the oil he burns all day. St. Hilaire does not believe in the Christian religion, but he has Descartes's philosophic belief in G.o.d, and the elevated morality of the Stoics.

Not the least of his merits is that having spent his life on Aristotle, he told me that he thought more highly of Plato; and in his Introduction to the Ethics he shows the weakness of his hero's attack on Platonism. In saying this he overcame a strong temptation.

Scientifically his great achievement is the transposition of the several books of the Politics--which were in hopeless confusion before him. All Germany accepts the arrangement he proposed, and as the work is the ablest production of antiquity, this is no small matter. As a moderate, unambitious, totally dispa.s.sionate Republican, he belongs to the Thiers Centre. He thinks Jules Simon the most eminent public man in France, so that he is scarcely to the Left of Freycinet. He despises and detests Laboulaye, the oracle of the Centre Gauche. I often heard, but am not sure, that St. Hilaire turned the scale, and made Thiers adopt, and enforce, Republicanism.

Forgive me for writing so soon and so confusedly.

[Sidenote: _Tegernsee October 3, 1880_]

Don't think me as prolific as ----, but I must begin again, as I had to send off my letter with nothing but an answer to your question in it.

Lord Granville's {40} visit must have been more busy than pleasant; and their dinner topic is provoking because one always hears that the best men were those one could not have known. Remembering Macaulay, Circourt, and Remusat, I do not care to believe that Cousin or Radowitz was far superior to them in talk. But then I, again, look back to the people I knew with regret, and think my contemporaries less amusing.

If ever I see Hawarden again, I hope it will not be for a night and half a day, but I do not know when that will be. Let us fix our thoughts on Tegernsee, and pave the way to rest and distraction here next summer.

Without claiming the discernment of Tennyson, I hold fast to what I said. There may be people you dislike for one or two reasons. You have no tenderness for Dizzy; and I am not sure you cared much for either of our gondola companions. There are one or two unpardonable crimes in your code, and one or two chasms that even Dante's mercy cannot bridge. But you never show it, and ill-nature must show itself in speech. I have no doubt at all that the relish with which you held up the mirror of my vices the other day had more of sorrow than of anger, and only a sc.r.a.p of malice. It must have been Cheney, especially if it was a reminiscence of Holmbury. Freddy Leveson has a touching fidelity to monotonous friendships. This one was laid down, I think, on Holland House foundations.

If I wrapped my poet in too thick a hide of mystery (observe the joke--own cousin to the Bite of Ecuador), it was because I fancied you knew that you have no business to be the P.M.'s daughter, and would never have been, but that Lady Waldegrave, lured by the sweep of the Thames at Nuneham, neglected, or failed, to hook that brilliant Young Englander, Monckton {41} Milnes, poet and statesman. But I know several men, some you never heard of, who, looking back along the road where they took the wrong turning, say to themselves, or at least to their friends: "Well, well; but for this or that I should be P.M. now!"

I have been prevented from finishing by interruptions, one of which was the brief appearance of the Freddy Cavendishes, spoiled by their uncomfortable haste to get away. I suppose what makes her so nice is, partly her affection for her relations. There certainly was no _arriere pensee_ in her way of speaking of your father.

You cannot too much cultivate his taste for d.i.c.kens. Beware of "Little Dorrit," "Oliver Twist," and "Dombey." In "Chuzzlewit" the English scenes are often amusing, but there is a story about Pecksniff that may repel him.

Please do not destroy the ease and serenity and confidence of my letters, which are chatted and whispered, more than written, by wanting to show them--even to Morley, in whom I have great reliance. I should write quite differently, as you rightly say, if I was not writing to the most chosen of correspondents. To Mr. Gladstone I already wrote what was due to my friendship with St. Hilaire, especially as I fancied that Downing Street would be strongly prejudiced against him. Do not turn yourself from an end into a means--one does not justify the other....

[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 14, 1880_]

I have been afraid to write. The delicious and most spiritual gift[46]

was sent to me here, whither we came early, only to find ourselves in sore trouble, for {42} a child had died of diphtheria in our villa just before we arrived. We had to settle in half-furnished apartments, where Mrs. Flower[47] found us, bringing a flavour of Hawarden. What has stood in my way is this: Some time ago, recalling a foolish speech of mine, a year old, and spoken under the spell of a great charm, you asked me to repeat it on paper. I hesitated long, and whilst I hesitated, the little volume came, and made it churlish to decline any wish of yours. I resolved that the best sign of the sincerity of my grat.i.tude would be to do what you had asked, and to be much more foolish than ever by putting on impertinent record the evanescent conversation of Tegernsee. But I have been so fearful of giving you more annoyance than pleasure, whether by the seeming of flattery or of censure, that I have allowed myself to slip into a much more grievous fault. Will you understand me and try to forgive me? I can never thank you enough for all the friendship of which that beautiful volume is the treasured symbol. There is so much of your thought in the beauty of it, and so much in the choice of it--more than you could guess. A dear friend of mine, now dead,[48] devoted himself to the study of the Sonnets, as the real key to Shakespeare, being the form of his own ideas, not what he gave to his characters. We discussed them much together in long evenings at Aldenham, and he wrote a book about them, which he followed up with a volume called "The School of Shakespeare"; and the two together are the best introduction to him that I know.... Swinburne himself has recognised their merit; so that a lost part {43} of my life came back to me with your gift. All which is to say that, whereas all that comes from you is very precious to me, if anything could add to its price it was the happy chance that guided your hand.

Beyond that I must thank you very heartily for the confidence you showed me in sending me that early letter.[49] It fills a large blank in my conception and understanding of his life, for it shows--for the first time to me--how large a part of what we know and contemplate with wonder is an original gift, and was born with him, and how little, on the other hand, has been added by the training of life. There are things which experience has restrained, and checked in their exuberance; but there are almost all the germs of the power that rules the movements of half a world. When I read that skit of the revered philosopher,[50] it almost seemed to me as if I had sometimes doubted his greatness, and I think you were very good-natured. He is one of the few Englishmen of genius; one of the most perfect masters of our language that ever wrote; and when one has said that, and said it as forcibly as can be, one comes to a deplorable catalogue of evil qualities with which I shall not darken my pages. It was very good of you to send me that introduction.

I went to the Ghetto, and was amazed at the knowledge and conversation of a lady who turned out to be Mrs. Mark Pattison.... She seemed to be much in the secrets of the Chamberlain-Morley-Dilke faction, and despondent about the _Pall Mall_. But I like Mrs. Flower exceedingly, though I had only a glimpse of her. I thought her intelligent, sensible, and good--things not to be lightly spoken of anybody--and especially {44} not to you. As to Lady Blennerha.s.sett, she is kind-hearted, knows how to think straight, and is the cleverest woman I ever met out of St. John's Wood.[51] If I ever said less than this in her favour, it would be injustice to do so now. Sir Rowland Blennerha.s.sett fell at one time into bad hands--hands of Midhat and of Newman.... I fancied he was half a jingo, half an Ultramontane; and his wife seemed to back him, and held much aloof from us. They have richly made up for it since, and there is no Irishman whom I should more wish to see in conference with your father just now. He told me so much that was curious and important and concrete, that I begged him to put our conversation on paper, that I might use it in the proper quarter. He has not chosen to do it, I fear from a motive of delicacy.

For we suppose that a set is being made against Forster; and he would not like, by private letters, to contribute to it, as his statements certainly would have done. But all these are words of wisdom: it is time for foolishness. I remember the occasion. You wished that you could disengage your mind from its surroundings, and learn the judgment of posterity; and I said that, if you chose, you might hear it at once.

How I retrieved my audacity I cannot tell; and it is an awkward matter to recall, unless, like the ghosts that looked so foolish in the vestibule of the "Inferno," I avoid both good and evil.

The generation you consult will be more democratic and better instructed than our own; for the progress of democracy, though not constant, is certain, and the progress of knowledge is both constant and certain. It will be more severe in literary judgments, and more {45} generous in political. With this prospect before me I ought to have answered that hereafter, when our descendants shall stand before the slab that is not yet laid among the monuments of famous Englishmen, they will say that Chatham knew how to inspire a nation with his energy, but was poorly furnished with knowledge and ideas; that the capacity of Fox was never proved in office, though he was the first of debaters; that Pitt, the strongest of ministers, was among the weakest of legislators; that no Foreign Secretary has equalled Canning, but that he showed no other administrative ability; that Peel, who excelled as an administrator, a debater, and a tactician, fell everywhere short of genius; and that the highest merits of the five without their drawbacks were united in Mr. Gladstone. Possibly they may remember that his only rival in depth, and wealth, and force of mind was neither admitted to the Cabinet nor buried in the Abbey. They will not say of him, as of Burke, that his writing equalled his speaking, or surpa.s.sed it like Macaulay's. For though his books manifest the range of his powers, if they do not establish a distinct and substantive reputation, they will breed regret that he suffered anything to divert him from that career in which his supremacy was undisputed among the men of his time. People who suspect that he sometimes disparaged himself by not recognising the secret of his own superiority will incline to believe that he fell into another error of wise and good men, who are not ashamed to fail in the rigid estimate of characters and talents. This will serve them to explain his lofty unfitness to deal with sordid motives, and to control that undignified but necessary work, his inability to sway certain kinds of men, and that strange property {46} of his influence, which is greatest with mult.i.tudes, less in society--and least at home. And it will help them to understand a mystery that is becoming very prominent, that he formed no school, and left no disciples who were to him what Windham, Grenville, Wellesley, Canning, Castlereagh were to Pitt; that his colleagues followed him because he had the nation at his back, by force more than by persuasion, and chafed as he did by the side of Palmerston.

Some keys, I imagine, will be lost, and some finer lines will yield to the effacing fingers: the impress left by early friendship with men who died young, like Hallam, or from whom he was parted, like Hope Scott; the ceremonious deference to authorities that reigned in college days under a system heavily weighted with tradition; the microscopic subtlety and care in the choice of words, in guarding against misinterpretation and in correcting it, which belonged to the Oxford training, which is a growth of no other school, which even in such eminent men as Newman and Liddon is nearly a vice, and is a perpetual stumbling-block and a snare for lesser men--these are points appreciable by those who know him that must be obscure to those who come after us. They will wonder how it was that an intellect remarkable for originality and independence, matchless in vigour, fertility, and clearness, continued so long shrouded in convictions imbibed so early as to be akin to prejudices, and was outstripped in the process of emanc.i.p.ation by inferior minds. The pride of democratic consistency will aim its shafts at those lingering footsteps, as a scientific age will resent the familiarity and sympathy with Italian thought to the detriment of more perfect instruments of knowledge and of power, and that inadequate estimate of the {47} French and German genius which has been unfortunately reciprocal.

But all the things about which no New Zealander will feel as we do, do not disturb your appeal to the serene and impartial judgment of history. When our problems are solved and our struggles ended, when distance has restored the proportions of things, and the sun has set for all but the highest summits, his fame will increase even in things where it seems impossible to add to it. Ask all the clever men you know, who were the greatest British orators, and there are ten or twelve names that will appear on every list. There is no such acknowledged primacy among them as Mirabeau enjoys in France or Webster in America. Macaulay told me that Brougham was the best speaker he had heard; Lord Russell preferred Plunket; and Gaskell, Canning. I have heard people who judged by efficacy a.s.sign the first place to Peel, O'Connell, Palmerston, and to an evangelical lecturer, whom I dare say n.o.body but Lord Harrowby remembers, of the name of Burnett. But that ill.u.s.trious chain of English eloquence that begins in the Walpolean battles, ends with Mr. Gladstone. His rivals divide his gifts like the generals of Alexander. One may equal him in beauty of composition, another in the art of statement, and a third, perhaps, comes near him in fluency and fire. But he alone possesses all the qualities of an orator; and when men come to remember what his speeches accomplished, how it was the same whether he prepared an oration or hurled a reply, whether he addressed a British mob or the cream of Italian politicians, and would still be the same if he spoke in Latin to Convocation, they will admit no rival. "C'est la grandeur de Berryer avec la souplesse de Thiers," was {48} the judgment of the ablest of the Ultramontanes on his speech on Charities.

There are especially two qualities that will not be found in other men.

First, the vigorous and perpetual progress of his mind. Later ages will know what in this critical autumn of a famous year is only guessed, that even now, at 70, in his second ministry, after half a century of public life, his thoughts are clearing, moving, changing, on the two highest of all political questions.[52]

His other pre-eminent characteristic is the union of theory and policy.

Bonaparte must have possessed the same mastery of infinite detail; and the best democrats, Jefferson, Sieyes, and Mill, were firm and faithful in their grasp of speculative principle. But in democracy that doctrinal fidelity is neither difficult nor very desirable of attainment. Its disciples embrace a ready-made system that has been thought out like the higher mathematics, beyond the need or the chance of application. The sums have been worked, the answers are known.

There is no secret about their art. Their prescriptions are in the books, tabulated and ready for use. We always know what is coming. We know that the doctrine of equality leads by steps not only logical, but almost mechanical, to sacrifice the principle of liberty to the principle of quant.i.ty; that, being unable to abdicate responsibility and power, it attacks genuine representation, and, as there is no limit where there is no control, invades, sooner or later, both property and religion. In a doctrine so simple, consistency is no merit. But in Mr. Gladstone there is all the resource and policy of the heroes of Carlyle's worship, and yet he moves scrupulously along the {49} lines of the science of statesmanship. Those who deem that Burke was the first political genius until now, must at this point admit his inferiority. He loved to evade the arbitration of principle. He was prolific of arguments that were admirable but not decisive. He dreaded two-edged weapons and maxims that faced both ways. Through his inconsistencies we can perceive that his mind stood in a brighter light than his language; but he refused to employ in America reasons which might be fitted to Ireland, lest he should become odious to the great families and impossible with the King.[53] Half of his genius was spent in masking the secret that hampered it. Goldsmith's cruel line is literally true.[54]

Looking abroad, beyond the walls of Westminster, for objects worthy of comparison, they will say that other men, such as Hamilton and Cavour, accomplished work as great; that Turgot and Roon were unsurpa.s.sed in administrative craft; that Clay and Thiers were as dexterous in parliamentary management; that Berryer and Webster resembled him in gifts of speech, Guizot and Radowitz in fulness of thought; but that in the three elements of greatness combined, the man, the power, and the result--character, genius, and success--none reached his level.

The decisive test of his greatness will be the gap he will leave.

Among those who come after him there will be none who understand that the men who pay wages ought not to be the political masters of those who earn them, (because laws should be adapted to those who have the heaviest stake in the country, for {50} whom misgovernment means not mortified pride or stinted luxury, but want and pain, and degradation and risk to their own lives and to their children's souls,) and who yet can understand and feel sympathy for inst.i.tutions that incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the dead. Fill the blanks, deepen the contrasts, shut your eyes to my handwriting, and, if you make believe very much, you shall hear the roll of the ages.

[Sidenote: _Dec. 14, 1880_]

Don't let me be unjust to Lecky. Dr. Smith asked me to review his "Eighteenth Century," but added that if I found myself inclining to severity he would wish to recall the proposal, inasmuch as the _Quarterly_ had just attacked Tyndall. For it happens that Smith[55]

and I sometimes dine at a self-satisfied place that calls itself The Club. Good men belong to it, but stay away: Lowe, that he may not meet ----, whom he dislikes sober, and detests drunk; the P.M., because he too much appreciates the sweetness of home; others, for other futile reasons. The group that continues faithful and carries on the tradition of Johnson and Garrick is consequently small, and it is a delicate matter to meet in such close lists men one is editorially holding up to ridicule and obloquy. Indeed, the presence of both _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_ on that narrow stage imparts a taste of muttered thunder to most of our meetings. Tyndall and Lecky are members, and Smith did not like to be on with a new quarrel before he was off with the old. He had spoken unfavourably of an early and unripe book of Lecky's, who was gratified when he heard of the message I had received, and still more when Hayward reviewed him instead of me.

I {51} declined, because I was already in the clutches of a longer task, and because I find that people quarrel with me for reviewing them--not from dislike of the book. Hayward could find nothing in it he did not know before. But I was more fortunate; I learned a great deal, and should have said that it was solid, original, and just.

Perhaps not deep or strong or lively, or even suggestive, for that is a refined quality, inconsistent with the habit of telling all one knows and thinks, and dotting all the _i_'s. The book is lop-sided, having grown out of a desire to demolish Froude's Irish volumes. And it was a mistake to treat the central, political history as a thing generally known, that could be taken for granted. No part of modern history has been so searched and sifted as to be without urgent need of new and deeper inquiry, and the touch of a fresh mind. Here is a new volume of 600 pages on Mary Stuart, by a man I never heard of, in which every other page tells us something unknown before, and the times of Walpole, Pelham, Pitt, being stirred by no surviving strife, have been much less studied than the great dispute whether Protestant or Catholic should reign in England. Neglecting the inexhaustible discoveries before him in the Archives, Lecky has to give sentence when he gives too little evidence, to describe characters more fully than careers, and to obtrude his own very good sense where a true scholar and artist would take care not to be seen.

There is another defect, due to the secular tone of Lecky's mind, but common to most historians. The age he writes of was the last in which permanent political doctrines were formed by ecclesiastical principles.

Men very easily shape their notions of what government ought to be by their conception of divine right, {52} of that domain in which the actual legislator is G.o.d. As to one cla.s.s of minds Church interests are the supreme law in politics, to others, Church forms are the supreme example. n.o.body is so fanatical as Nigel Penruddocke; but through subtle channels the influence works, and it was not merely a propelling, but a constructive force in politics from the end of the Middle Ages until the middle of the eighteenth century, when it became fixed in the theories of men like Atterbury, Toland, Hoadley, Wilson, Warburton--whose innermost instincts might be better exposed.

As to the novel of the season,[56] it is so dull and so absurd that I cannot get beyond the first volume. Except querulousness, it has nearly all the bad qualities of old age; and if St. Barbe is meant for Thackeray, it is contemptible even in caricature. My neighbour Salisbury must feel that his time is soon coming.

There is a little disappointment for Hayward even in the "Life of Fox."

There is less pioneer's work in it than in Fitzmaurice. But the fulness of knowledge, the force and finish of the style (you see by my three F's that I have been studying the Irish question) have revealed a new man. I see him compared to his uncle,[57] and I think it is not an exaggeration, though Taine says there have been only two men in the world who had Macaulay's perspicuity. G.O.[58] is as transparent as graceful, and more easy. The only thing that has shocked me yet is his presumptuous a.s.surance about the authorship of Junius. It is a Whig dogma that Francis was Junius; but that is mere Macaulayolatry. I have seen half the arguments that convinced me {53} thirty years ago fall to pieces; and I am provoked that Trevelyan gives me old conclusions instead of new proofs. If his speaking has made as much progress as his writing, the Government has acquired a future Secretary of State.

But I am still unhappy at their meeting Parliament with Courtney out in the cold.

As I quote Taine, I ought to say that I do not agree with him. The problems Macaulay made so clear were not the most difficult. Fenwick's attainder, and the theory of standing armies--purple patches in the way of exposition--are trifles compared with questions which jurists, divines, economists have to discuss. The phases of the Pelagian controversy, or the principles of government about which the Lutheran, Zwinglian, Calvinist, and Anglican Churches contended, would better have tested his power of making darkness clear.

I am glad that I wrote to f.a.gan before reading his book.[59] For I wrote about the Italian correspondence, which is curious. But the biography does not deserve the praise it gets from partial people in Downing Street. Houghton, I hear, has written ill-naturedly about Panizzi; but the book is as full as an egg of mistakes, and of things worse than mistakes, so that even remonstrance would be thrown away.

You will read with interest two volumes of Merimee's letters to Panizzi, just coming out. He was a bad man, and generally wrong; but few men ever wrote so well.

I will get the _Church Quarterly_ at Nice, where I go to see my friend Arnim, who is dying there, and shall {54} be very curious to read the article.[60] There is not a more interesting or unexhausted topic in all history than Julian, but I would have waited for the promised edition of his work against the Christians, which had not appeared when I left Germany.

Here is Parker,[61] fresh from Hawarden; and when I think of your long and obstinate cold, I cannot help regretting that you did not make the Cardwells bring you to Montfleury, where they are our nearest neighbours. He is much better than half a year ago, but very weak.

For three weeks the sun has shone all day. Greatcoats and umbrellas are obsolete; and we have the most beautiful walks.

T. B. Potter, also at Montfleury, and a great favourite with my children, keeps me supplied with Cobdenian literature, and I have read Brodrick[62] with much pleasure.

Of course we are always thinking of Ireland, wishing for heroic treatment, such as would have saved Louis XVI. and the old French Monarchy, despairing of the needful overwhelming majority in the Commons, of any majority in the Lords, of union and strength in the Ministry; cheered by several intelligent letters and articles in the newspapers, sure only of the chief, and more sure of his strong mind than of his strong hand. If he has time for anything else, I hope he has read _La Belgique et le Vatican_, the volume published by Frere-Orban, the Belgian Minister, a weighty study of Vaticanism.