Part 14 (1/2)
On the 6th of Septe of the Home Rule Bill He was then an old man, and in broken health; the speech atteument, and was desultory beyond belief But suddenly there cae which lifted the whole debate into a nobler air The orator described hiazing across towards the hills of Antrim: ”We can see the colour of their fields, and in the sunset we can see the glancing of the light upon the s of the cabins of the people This is the country, I thought the other day when I looked on the scene--this is the country which the greatest English statesovern the Antipodes” And he eht hand, which in a coreat master of oratory was a master-stroke of dramatic art
Before I close this chapter, I should like to recall a word of Gladstone's which at the tiust, 1895, I was staying at Hawarden Gladstone's Parliamentary life was done, and he talked about political people and events with a freedom which I had never before known in hi the ues in the late Liberal Ministry We reviewed in turn Lord Spencer, Sir Williae Trevelyan, and Mr Asquith It is perhaps a little curious, in viehat happened later on, that Sir Henry Caard to the foregoing nah there is no need to repeat, the terse and trenchant judgment passed on each When we had come to the end of my list, the ex-Prelances which we kneell, and said with emphasis, ”But you haven't mentioned the most important man of all” ”Who is that?” ”Edward Grey--there is the ift”
I an Secretary a present of this handsome compliment
FOOTNOTES:
[42] Mucius Scaevola per multos annos ”Princeps Senatus”
[43] Bulwer-Lytton, _St Stephen's_
[44] Mr A J Willaht, and Mr J J Tylor were soht's roo club done in a bold, wholesale, shi+ny, s, steel engravings, busts, and full-length statues of the late Mr
Gladstone”--H G Wells, _The New Machiavelli_
[46] ”Speaking generally, I should say there could not be a less interesting occasion than the laying of the foundation-stone of a Club in London For, after all, what are the Clubs of London? I am afraid little else than temples of luxury and ease This, however, is a club of a very different character”
[47] The others were the late Duke of Argyll and the eighth Lord Elgin
[48] ”I had to speak in the House of Lords last night It is a really terrible place for the unaccustooodwill, coh conviction of the infallibility of layious) on all sacred subjects, are the tone, _ My whole self-possession departs, and ejection fro which could happen to one”--Archbishop Benson to the Rev B F
Westcott, March 22, 1884
XIII
LITERATURE
There was Captain Sumph, an ex-beau, still about town, and related in soe He was said to have written a book once, to have been a friend of Lord Byron, to be related to Lord Sureat attention by Mrs Bungay; his anecdotes of the Aristocracy, of which he was a hted the publisher's lady
W M THACKERAY, _Pendennis_
When I a Reminiscences, I always feel dreadfully like Captain Sumph; but, in order to make the resemblance quite exact, I must devote a chapter to Literature
I seem, from my earliest conscious years, to have lived in a world of books; and yet my home was by no means ”bookish” I was trained by people who had not read ood literature with unfeigned adh they would never have drea, yet were pleased when they saw a boy inclined to read, and did their best to guide his reading aright As I survey my early life and coes which ieneral decay of intellectual cultivation This e which habitually talks so much about Education and Culture; but I am persuaded that it is true Dilettantis of erudition, infinitely norance, has usurped the place which was for A vast deal of specialised up,” as boys say, at the British Museunorance of all that is really worth knowing It sounds very intellectual to chatter about the authorshi+p of the Fourth Gospel, or to scoff at St John's ”senile iterations and contorted y on Charity, instead of an address, at the end of a fashi+onable wedding, one of his hearers said, ”How very appropriate that was! Where did you get it from?” Everyone can patter nonsense about the traces of Bacon's influence in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, and can ransack their fainal of ”Mr W H” But, when _Cye, Society was startled to find that the principal part was not a woman's
When soravian drawing-roo the perforue between Mr
and Mrs John Dashwood, and whether he had written anything else I have known a Lord Chief Justice who had never seen the view from Richmond Hill; a publicist who had never heard of Lord Althorp; and an authoress who did not know the nanorances,” as the Prayer Book calls the, and brought up in a Whiggish society; for the Whigs were rather specially the allies of learning; and h never to parade, the best that has been thought and written Very likely they had no monopoly of culture: the Tories s to his belongings”; one can only describe what one has seen; and here the contrast between Past and Present is palpable enough I a of professed scholars and students, such as Lord Stanhope the Historian, and Sir Edward Bunbury the Senior Classic; or of professed blue-stockings, such as Barbarina, Lady Dacre, and Georgiana, Lady Chatterton; but of ordinary ood position, who had received the usual education of their class, and had profited by it
Mr Gladstone used to say that, in his schooldays at Eton, a boy ; but he could not learn superficially A similar remark would have applied to the attainht know ; but they did not know superficially What they professed to know, that you could be sure they knew The affectation of culture was despised; and ignorance, where it existed, was avowed For example, everyone knew Italian, but no one pretended to know German I remember men who had never been at a University, but had passed straight froiment or the House of Commons, and who yet could quote Horace as easily as the present generation quotes Kipling These people inherited the traditions of Mrs Montagu, who ”vindicated the genius of Shakespeare against the calureatest poet of all time with an absolute ease and familiarity They did not trouble thes, and corrupt texts, and difficult passages They had nothing in common with that true father of all Shakespearean criticism, Mr Curdle, in _Nicholas Nickleby_, who had written a treatise on the question whether Juliet's nurse's husband was really ”a merry man,” or whether it was only his 's affectionate partiality that induced her so to report him But they knew the whole mass of the Plays with a natural and unforced intimacy; their speech was saturated with the immortal diction, and Hamlet's speculations were their nearest approach to ested him, and Johnson was estee, all educated people knew the English poets down to the end of the eighteenth century Byron and Moore were enjoyed with a sort of furtive and fearful pleasure; Wordsworth was tolerated, and Tennyson was ”co in” Everyone knew Scott's novels by heart, and had his or her favourite heroine and hero
I said in a former chapter that I had from my earliest days free access to an excellent library; and, even before I could read comfortably byto ic of words and cadence--the purely sensuous pleasure of melodious sound--stirred me from the time when I was quite a child Poetry, of course, caood memory, and it retained, by no effort on my part, my favourite bits of Macaulay and Scott _The Battle of Lake Regillus_ and _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, the iinald Front-de-Boeuf, are samples of the literature hich my mind was stored Every boy, I suppose, attempts to i When I was eleven, I began a novel, of which the heroine was a modern Die Vernon At twelve, I took to versification, for which the swinging couplets of _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ supplied the ments of prose and verse came thick and fast When I was thirteen, I made my first appearance in print; with a set of verses on a Volunteer Encampment, which really were not at all bad; and at fourteen I published (anonyelical circles
The effect of Harroas both to stiood fortune to be taught il, by scholars who had the literary sense, and could enrich school-lessons with all the resources of a generous culture My sixteenth and seventeenth years brought s of the ratefully associate the names of Frederic Farrar, Edward Bowen, and Arthur Watson[49]