when he made Carlyle speak of his friend Sir Henry Taylor's 'morbid vanity,' when the words he actually wrote were 'marked veracity.' Inaccuracy had from the first been Froude's besetting sin, but the general public now first realised the full measure of the sins of which he was capable under this head. With regard to the portrait of Carlyle which he has drawn in the biography (1882-84), there will probably be always a difference of opinion; but it is to be noted that to the great majority of those who knew Carlyle as well as Froude himself (the only fitting judges) it seemed an essentially distorted image, the creation of the idiosyncrasies of the man who drew it. Nevertheless, of all Froude's books it is doubtless the one which will preserve his name longest; the eminence and distinctiveness of its subject and the skill of the biographer combine to make it a representative book of an epoch, and as such it has its only companion in Boswell's Life of Johnson. A few pleasant incidents had diversified Froude's somewhat stormy career as a man of letters. In 1869 he was chosen Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews-an honour which he described as the first public recognition which he had received; in 1876 he was appointed a member of the Scottish University Commission; and in 1875 he was sent out as a commissioner to South Africa, for whose troubles he prescribed his borrowed panacea of a benevolent dictatorship. Two unofficial journeys, one to the Australian colonies and the other to the West Indies, resulted in his Oceana (1886) and the West Indies, or the Bow of Ulysses (1888)—in both of which, though he expressed the hope it might be otherwise, he as usual 'trod on many corns.' But the distinction of his life which he valued most came to him near its close. In 1892 he was made Regius Professsor of History in Oxford, and thus, by an irony which he keenly appreciated, he came to sit in the chair of his adversary Freeman, who in season and out of season had denounced him as a sciolist and a charlatan. He held his appointment only for two years, but in that space he crowned his long and industrious life by the most charming books that came from his hand-The Life and Letters of Erasmus (1894), Elizabethan Seamen of the Sixteenth Century (1895), and Lectures on the Council of Trent (1896). He died on the 20th of October 1894 at Salcombe, his home in his native Devon. In many passages of his writings Froude has told us how he thought history should be conceived and written. 'The address of history,' he says, 'is less to the understanding than to the higher emotions.' History,' he says again, is 'nature's drama,' should be written like a drama, and should teach like a drama. A science of history he scouted as a vain imagination, and maintained that, if our knowledge of the past taught us anything, it was 'that we should draw no horoscopes.' But, if history cannot be reduced to a science for the guidance of states, it performs a service of no less importance: 'It is a voice for ever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong.' In his own treatment of history Froude gave the freest play to these conceptions. The essential character of his chief historical writings is that they are conceived and written as dramas. Ever in his foreground there is a great central figure-hero or villain-round whom all events cluster, and with reference to whom they are selected and appraised. This personage develops in his hands, not as the rigid scrutiny of facts should determine, but in the fashion in which a character grows in the mind of the creative artist. Such are his delineations of Henry VIII., of Thomas Cromwell, of Mary Stewart, of Charles V., of Julius Cæsar, and, it may be added, of Carlyle-all of whom, before he has done with them, become gigantesque figures with their natural traits distorted beyond recognition. Equally characteristic of Froude as a historian is his insistence on the ethical import of persons and events. In this respect he, of course, resembles his master, Carlyle; but, though he owes to Carlyle his fundamental ethical principles, it was by his own natural instincts that he was primarily concerned with the problems of human destiny. In the case of Froude, as in the case of Carlyle, it was but the accident of circumstances that made him a historian and not an official preacher; and to his ethical fervour is doubtless due the polemical tone which is present in most of what he wrote. Having nobody to abuse,' he writes to his friend [Sir] John Skelton, with reference to his Oceana, 'I am like trying to fly a kite without wind.' 6 History thus conceived makes a wide popular appeal; and Froude possessed precisely the requisite gifts for the successful exemplification of his theories. He was master of a style which by its rapidity, clearness, and idiomatic grace is unsurpassed for the purposes of pure narrative. As much a man of the world as a student, he knew the range of common interest, selected his facts accordingly, and in his presentation of them had an unerring instinct as to the limits of the average intelligence. Moreover, though the only dull book he ever wrote was his romance, The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, he had in a high degree that 'picturesque sensibility' which instinctively apprehends the poetic aspects of persons and events, and can make them visible to others. From these eminent merits, however, large abatements have to be made; his inaccuracy was such that in matters of fact he cannot be quoted with confidence, and there are few writers of equal intellectual force whose judgments carry less authority than Froude's. Yet, after every reserve, he remains one of the most interesting and important literary figures of his time. For the general public he has done the invaluable service of making history an attractive study; and English literature owes him a debt of another kind and of not less account: no writer has done more than Froude to maintain the best traditions of English prose in that middle style which is the work-a-day instrument of every literature. History. What, then, is the use of History? and what are its lessons? If it can tell us little of the past and nothing of the future, why waste our time over so barren a study? First, it is a voice for ever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last: not always by the chief offenders, but paid by some one. Justice and truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at last to them, in French revolutions and other terrible ways. That is one lesson of History. Another is, that we should draw no horoscopes; that we should expect little, for what we expect will not come to pass. Revolutions, reformations-those vast movements into which heroes and saints have flung themselves, in the belief that they were the dawn of the millennium-have not borne the fruit which they looked for. Millenniums are still far away. These great convulsions leave the world changed -perhaps improved-but not improved as the actors in them hoped it would be. Luther would have gone to work with less heart could he have foreseen the Thirty Years' War, and in the distance the theology of Tübingen. Washington might have hesitated to draw the sword against England could he have seen the country which he made as we see it now [February 1864]. The most reasonable anticipations fail us-antecedents the most apposite mislead us; because the conditions of human problems never repeat themselves. Some new feature alters everything-some element which we detect only in its after-operation. But this, it may be said, is but a meagre outcome. Can the long records of humanity, with all its joys and sorrows, its sufferings and its conquests, teach us no more than this? Let us approach the subject from another side. If you were asked to point out the special features in which Shakespeare's plays are so transcendently excellent, you would mention, perhaps among others, this, that his stories are not put together, and his characters are not conceived, to illustrate any particular law or principle. They teach many lessons, but not any one prominent above another; and when we have drawn from them all the direct instruction which they contain, there remains still something unresolved-something which the artist gives, and which the philosopher cannot give. It is in this characteristic that we are accustomed to say Shakespeare's supreme truth lies. He represents real life. His dramas teach as life teaches-neither less nor more. He builds his fabrics as nature does, on right and wrong; but he does not struggle to make nature more systematic than she is. In the subtle interflow of good and evil-in the unmerited sufferings of innocence -in the disproportion of penalties to desert-in the seeming blindness with which justice, in attempting to assert itself, overwhelms innocent and guilty in a common ruin -Shakespeare is true to real experience. The mystery of life he leaves as he finds it; and, in his most tremendous positions, he is addressing rather the intellectual emotions than the understanding-knowing well that the understanding in such things is at fault, and the sage as ignorant as the child. (From The Science of History' in Short Studies on Great Subjects, vol. i.) Flight of Mary Stuart from Holyrood to Dunbar after the Murder of Rizzio. The important point gained, Darnley would not awake suspicion by returning to the Queen; he sent her word privately that all was well;' and at eight in the evening Stewart of Traquair, Captain of the Royal Guard; Arthur Erskine, whom she would trust with a thousand lives;' and Standen, a young and gallant gentleman, assembled in the Queen's room to arrange a plan for the escape from Holyrood. The first question was where she was to go. Though the gates were no longer occupied, the Palace would doubtless be watched ; and to attempt flight and to fail would be certain ruin. In the Castle of Edinburgh she would be safe with Lord Erskine, but she could reach the Castle only through the streets, which would be beset with enemies; and unfit as she was for the exertion, she determined to make for Dunbar. She stirred the blood of the three youths with the most touching appeal which could be made to the generosity of man. Pointing to the child that was in her womb, she adjured them by their loyalty to save the unborn hope of Scotland. So addressed, they would have flung themselves naked on the pikes of Morton's troopers. They swore they would do her bidding be it what it would; and then, after her sweet manner and wise directions, she dismissed them till midnight to put all in order as she herself excellently directed.' 'The rendezvous appointed with the horses was near the broken tombs and demolished sepultures in the ruined Abbey of Holyrood.' A secret passage led underground from the palace to the vaults of the abbey; and at midnight Mary Stuart, accompanied by one servant and her husband-who had left the lords under pretence of going to bed-'crawled through the charnelhouse, among the bones and skulls of the antient kings,' and came out of the earth' where the horses were shivering in the March midnight air. The moon was clear and full. 'The Queen with incredible animosity was mounted en croup behind Sir Arthur Erskine upon a beautiful English double gelding,' the King on a courser of Naples;' and then away-away-past Restalrig, past Arthur's Seat, across the bridge and across the field of Musselburgh, past Seton, past Prestonpans, fast as their horses could speed ; 'six in all their Majesties, Erskine, Traquair, and a chamberer of the Queen.' In two hours the heavy gates of Dunbar had closed behind them, and Mary Stuart was safe. (From the History of England, Chap. XLIV.) Froude's account of the escape is based on a letter of Standen's. The King is Darnley, and animosity means 'spirit.' Prestonpans is nearer Edinburgh than Seton, and should accordingly come first. to all things and persons. His writings were passing through edition on edition. He was always adding and correcting; while new tracts, new editions of the Fathers, show an acuteness of attention and an extent of reading which to a modern student seems beyond the reach of any single intellect. Yet he was no stationary scholar confined to desk or closet. He was out in the world, travelling from city to city, gathering materials among all places and all persons, from palace to village alehouse, and missing nothing which had meaning or amusement in it. In all literary history there is no more extraordinary figure. Harassed by orthodox theologians, uncertain of his duties in the revolutionary tempest, doubtful in what country to find rest or shelter, anxious for his future, anxious for his life (for he knew how Orthodoxy hated him, and he had no wish to be a martyr in an ambiguous cause), he was putting together another work which, like Moria, was to make his name immortal. Of his learned productions, brilliant as they were, Erasmus thought but little. He considered them hastily and inaccurately done; he even wondered how any one could read them. But his letters, his Moria, and now the Colloquies, which he was composing in his intervals of leisure, are pictures of his own mind, pictures of men and things which show the hand of an artist in the highest sense, never spiteful, never malicious, always delightful and amusing, and finished photographs of the world in which he lived and moved. The subject might be mean or high, a carver of genius will make a work of art out of the end of a broomstick. The journey to Brindisi was a common adventure in a fly-boat; Horace has made it live for ever. Erasmus had the true artist's gift of so handling everything that he touched, vulgar or sublime, that human interest is immediately awakened, and in these Colloquies, which are the record of what he himself saw and heard, we have the human inhabitants of Europe before us as they then were in all countries except Spain, and of all degrees and sorts; bishops and abbots, monks and parish priests, lords and commoners, French grisettes, soldiers of fortune, treasure-seekers, quacks, conjurers, tavern-keepers, there they all stand, the very image and mirror of the time. Miserable as he often considered himself, Erasmus shows nothing of it in the Colloquies. No bitterness, no complainings, no sour austerity or would-be virtuous earnestness, but everywhere a genial human sympathy which will not be too hard upon the wretchedest of rogues, with the healthy apprehension of all that is innocent and good. (From Life and Letters of Erasmus, Lecture 11.) Froude left injunctions that no authorised biography of him should be written. For the early part of his life our chief sources of information are his Essay, entitled 'The Oxford Counter-Refor. mation' (Short Studies, vol. iv.), and Canon Mozley's Reminiscences (vol. ii.). Regarding his later life there are interesting details in The Table-Talk of Shirley ([Sir] John Skelton). See also Mr Pollard's article in the Appendix to the Dictionary of National Biography, and Mr David Wilson's Mr Froude and Carlyle (1898). Estimates of Froude are given by Sir Leslie Stephen (National Review, January 1901) and by Mr Goldwin Smith (North American Review, clix. 677). In 1903, in reply to criticism by Mr Alexander Carlyle and Sir James Crichton-Browne, there appeared a posthumous volume, entitled My Relations with Carlyle, in which Froude defended his estimates of Carlyle and his wife, and maintained his own fairness as executor; printing a letter from his co-executor, Sir James Stephen, completely approving Froude's discharge of his trust. The Nemesis of Froude was a rejoinder by Sir James Crichton-Browne. P. HUME BROWN. Ernest Jones (1819-69)—in full, ERNEST CHARLES JONES-Chartist poet, was the son of Major Charles Jones, equerry to the Duke of Cumberland who became King of Hanover. The major lived long on his German estate, and the son, born at Berlin, was carefully educated at Lüneburg, and early became a poet and a politician. He came to England with his father in 1838, was popular in society, published a highly romantic novel, The Wood Spirit (1841), and in 1841 was called to the Bar. In 1846 he threw himself strongly into the Chartist movement, supported Feargus O'Connor energetically on the platform and in the press, and was believed to have resigned brilliant prospects to become a political agitator. In 1848 he was active as far north as Aberdeen, but, arrested at Manchester, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for seditious speeches. On his release he was for a while the leader of the lost cause, and in his Notes to the People wrote a history of the democratic movement and edited a People's Paper. When the Chartists disappeared as a party he, to the disgust of the faithful remnant, was content to energise as a mere Radical and advocate land nationalisation. About the same time he resumed practice at the Bar, and began to write industriously at first sensational novels and tales, such as The Lass and the Lady, The Maid of Warsaw, Woman's Wrongs, Beldagan Church, The Painter of Florence. Landor praised enthusiastically the poem that gave name to The Battle Day and other Poems (1855). In 1857 Jones published The Revolt of Hindostan (privately printed in 1850), a poem said to have been written with his own blood in an old Prayer-book while he was in prison; Corayda and other Poems appeared in 1859. He continued to issue pamphlets and lecture in the democratic cause, had stood unsuccessfully for Parliament repeatedly from 1847 on, and was expected to get in for Manchester as Radical member when he suddenly died. His best-known lyrics were 'The Song of the Poor,' 'The Song of the Day-labourers,' 'The Song of the Factory Slave,' and 'The Song of the Poorer Classes.' Angus Bethune Reach (1821-56), born at Inverness, came to London in 1842, and wrote much for Punch, for many of the magazines, and for the newspapers. His two novels were Clement Lorimer (1848; illustrated by Cruikshank) and Leonard Lindsay (1850); but, spite of failing health, he produced innumerable satirical and social sketches and dramatic trifles. Thomas Mayne Reid (1818-83), known as a story-teller to a world-wide circle of readers as 'Captain Mayne Reid' (he dropped the 'Thomas'), was born at Ballyroney, County Down, a ScotoIrish Presbyterian minister's son, his mother being of Scottish Borderer blood, and was himself educated for the ministry in Ulster. But with quite other ambitions he in 1840 emigrated to New Orleans, and either by stress of circumstances or a happy instinct entered on the oddly diversified career that in his novels he turned to such good account. Successively storekeeper and negrooverseer, schoolmaster and play-actor, hunter and sharpshooter in the Indian wars, he from time to time plunged into journalism; but in 1847 he took service in the United States army, and as lieutenant distinguished himself in the Mexican warespecially at the storming of Chapultepec, where he was so severely wounded that his life was despaired of, and he never completely recovered from his injuries. When convalescent he began his first novel, The Rifle Rangers (published 1850). But in 1849, a United States captain, he came to Ebenezer Jones (1820-60) was born at Isling. ton, of a Welsh family, and was bred a Calvinist. In 1837 he was forced by his father's long illness to turn clerk in a City warehouse; his hours were from eight to eight six days a week. But long ere this he had been writing verses, and now he was powerfully stimulated by influences so various as those of Shelley, Carlyle, and Robert Owen. In 1843 he published his Studies of Sensation and Event, poems amazingly unequal, crude, eccentric, THOMAS MAYNE REID. From a Photograph by Maull & Fox. His His last years he spent at Ross in Herefordshire. In a long succession of novels-well over thirty in number-he utilised to the full the strangely varied adventures of his own early career. vigorous style and the profusion of daring feats, perils, hairbreadth escapes, and romantic episodes riveted the attention of two or three generations of young readers. His romances are lacking in artistic form, but at times he attained to high excellence in narrative style and in description of scenery and character. Among the best known of his stories (in which he sometimes at least took Fenimore Cooper as model) are The Scalp Hunters (1851), The Boy Hunters (1852), The Young Voyageurs (1853), The War Trail (1857), The Maroon (1862), The Headless Horseman (1866), The Castaways (1870), and The Free Lances (1881). Many of these tales were translated into French and German. Mayne Reid found time to write also books on natural history for boys and on croquet. The Memoir published by his widow in 1890 was in 1900 expanded into a full record of his life and adventures. and faulty, or even at times 'excruciatingly bad,' yet full of the very essence of poetry,' as was ultimately recognised by Browning and Rossetti. But at the time-spite of kindly encouragement from Bryan Waller and Hengist HorneJones saw his work was rejected by the world, and he published no more, save a pamphlet on the Land Monopoly (1849), which anticipated Henry George by thirty years in proposing to nationalise the land; and three powerful poems, 'To the Snow,' 'To Death,' and' When the world is burning,' not long before his death. He lived by professional work as an accountant. In 1844 he had married a niece of Edwin Atherstone (see page 146), but the marriage brought only misery and a separation. See three articles by Mr Watts-Dunton in the Athenæum (1878), and two notices by Sumner Jones (Ebenezer's elder brother, himself a poet) and W. J. Linton prefixed to a reprint of the Studies (1879). John Tulloch (1823-86), born at Bridge of Earn, studied at St Andrews and Edinburgh, and after holding charges in Dundee and elsewhere, was in 1854 appointed Principal and Professor of Divinity in St Mary's College, St Andrews. He In 1879-80 he was the editor of Fraser. wrote on theism, on the Reformation and its leaders (1859 and 1861), on Pascal, on sin, and But modern religious thought (1884-85). his principal work was Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (1872; new ed. 1886), a standard authority. Mrs Oliphant wrote his Life (1888). on Philip James Bailey.* Philip James Bailey (1816-1902), poet, was born at Nottingham on 22nd April 1816. His father, Thomas Bailey, owned and edited the Nottingham Mercury from 1845 to 1852. Educated at various schools in his native town, in 1831 he matriculated at Glasgow University, which in 1901 conferred on him the degree of LL.D. In 1836 he settled at Basford, just out of Nottingham, and devoted himself to the production of his masterpiece, Festus, which was published anonymously by William Pickering in 1839. In 1840 he was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn, but he never practised. In 1856 he received a Civil List pension of £100. From 1864 to 1876 he lived in Jersey, travelling from time to time in Switzerland, France, and Italy. Returning to England, he resided near Ilfracombe till 1885, when he moved to Blackheath. In his later years he lived in retirement with his wife, whose death in 1896, after a union of thirty-three years, tried him sorely. On 6th September 1902, at the age of eighty-six, he died at his house in the Ropewalk, Nottingham. He was never in close touch with literary circles, though about 1870 he was sometimes present at Westland Marston's symposia, where Rossetti, Swinburne, 'Orion' Horne, and other celebrities were wont to meet. He was sweet, gentle, and rather timid in nature. Superbly handsome in physique and countenance, he rivalled Tennyson in the art of looking like a poet. No poem like Festus has ever been written by a boy of twenty. It is a miracle of mature immaturity. Its vogue was almost Byronic. Twelve editions have been issued in England, and over thirty in America. The poem was praised by Tennyson, Thackeray, Bulwer Lytton, and other eminent men. 'I can scarcely trust myself,' wrote Tennyson, 'to say how much I admire it, for fear of falling into extravagance.' The success of Festus stereotyped Bailey's poetic impulse, which was wasted in vain attempts to imitate himself. The Angel World (1850), The Mystic (1855), The Age (1858; a weak satire), and The Universal Hymn (1867) failed. The poet rashly tried to propitiate oblivion by incorporating 'The Angel World' and portions of the other poems in later editions of Festus. The result was disastrous. A new generation recoiled in dismay from a philosophical poem of over forty thousand lines, and Festus joined the limbo of books that are revered unread. If the poem is to recapture its first fame, its earlier and better form must be restored. Festus is a variant of that Faust legend which has haunted literature since its birth in the Book of Job. It owes little to Goethe or to Marlowe ; their Fausts are incarnations of pessimism, Festus is an incarnation of optimism. It has been called an epic drama, but although it is divided into fifty-two scenes, the action is epic rather than dramatic. The sublimity of its action equals, and its moral altitude surpasses, other epics. Modern thought sees far beyond the spiritual horizon of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton. Their poetry is imperishable; much of their morality is outworn. Festus presents a loftier view of God and Man than any other world-poem. In it deity is more humane and humanity more divine. It adumbrates a prophetic ideal of a divine humanity which will ultimately transmute all evil into all good. Doomsman of time, Festus impersonates the destiny of humanity, moving thought cycles of sin and suffering towards that harmony with itself which is harmony with the Infinite. Lucifer, PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. From a Photograph by A. W. Cox, Nottingham. who guides him through the universe of sensation, is not the more conventional fiend of Marlowe or of Goethe, but a subtle symbol of the evil that is half good and the good that is half evil. The action sweeps through celestial, terrestrial, and infernal space towards its stupendous culmination, the apotheosis of Festus, the last man, whose attainment of spiritual sovereignty is the signal for the end of all things. Magnificent is the passage in which Festus describes the withering of the world: The earth is breaking up, all things are thawing, A little time and atoms will be all. The sea boils, and the mountains rise and sink O thou Hereafter, on whose shore I stand, *Copyright 1903 by J. B. Lippincott Company. |