Chapter V: Part 5

But History is, as we know, for ever revising her records. None of her judgments are final. A life of Thomas Paine, in two portly and well-printed volumes, with gilt tops, wide margins, spare leaves at the end, and all the other signs and tokens of literary respectability, has lately appeared. No President, no Prime Minister--nay, no Bishop or Moderator--need hope to have his memoirs printed in better style than are these of Thomas Paine, by Mr. Moncure D. Conway. Were any additional proof required of the complete resuscitation of Paine's reputation, it might be found in the fact that his life _is_ in two volumes, though it would have been far better told in one.

Mr. Conway believes implicitly in Paine--not merely in his virtue and intelligence, but that he was a truly great man, who played a great part in human affairs. He will no more admit that Paine was a busybody, inflated with conceit and with a strong dash of insolence, than he will that Thomas was a drunkard. That Paine's speech was undoubtedly plain and his nose undeniably red is as far as Mr. Conway will go. If we are to follow the biographer the whole way, we must not only unhang the dog, but give him sepulture amongst the sceptred Sovereigns who rule us from their urns.

Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up to this date he was a rank failure. His trade was staymaking, but he had tried his hand at many things. He was twice an Excise officer, but was twice dismissed the service, the first time for falsely pretending to have made certain inspections which, in fact, he had not made, and the second time for carrying on business in an excisable article--tobacco, to wit--without the leave of the Board. Paine had married the tobacconist's business, but neither the marriage nor the business prospered; the second was sold by auction, and the first terminated by mutual consent.

Mr. Conway labours over these early days of his hero very much, but he can make nothing of them. Paine was an Excise officer at Lewes, where, so Mr. Conway reminds us, 'seven centuries before Paine opened his office in Lewes, came Harold's son, possibly to take charge of the Excise as established by Edward the Confessor, just deceased.' This device of biographers is a little stale. The Confessor was guiltless of the Excise.

Paine's going to America was due to Benjamin Franklin, who made Paine's acquaintance in London, and, having the wit to see his ability, recommended him 'as a clerk or assistant-tutor in a school or assistant-surveyor.' Thus armed, Paine made his appearance in Philadelphia, where he at once obtained employment as editor of an intended periodical called the _Pennsylvanian Magazine or American Museum_, the first number of which appeared in January, 1775. Never was anything luckier. Paine was, without knowing it, a born journalist. His capacity for writing on the spur of the moment was endless, and his delight in doing so boundless. He had no difficulty for 'copy', though in those days contributors were few. He needed no contributors. He was 'Atlanticus'; he was 'Vox Populi'; he was 'Aesop.' The unsigned articles were also mostly his. Having at last, after many adventures and false starts, found his vocation, Paine stuck to it. He spent the rest of his days with a pen in his hand, scribbling his advice and obtruding his counsel on men and nations. Both were usually of excellent quality.

Paine was also happy in the moment of his arrival in America. The War of Independence was imminent, and in April, 1775, occurred 'the massacre of Lexington.' The Colonists were angry, but puzzled. They hardly knew what they wanted. They lacked a definite opinion to entertain and a cry to asseverate. Paine had no doubts. He hated British institutions with all the hatred of a civil servant who has had 'the sack.'

In January, 1776, he published his pamphlet _Common-sense_, which must be ranked with the most famous pamphlets ever written. It is difficult to wade through now, but even _The Conduct of the Allies_ is not easy reading, and yet between Paine and Swift there is a great gulf fixed. The keynote of _Common-sense_ was separation once and for ever, and the establishment of a great Republic of the West. It hit between wind and water, had a great sale, and made its author a personage and, in his own opinion, a divinity.

Paine now became the penman of the rebels. His series of manifestoes, entitled _The Crisis_, were widely read and carried healing on their wings, and in 1777 he was elected Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs. Charles Lamb once declared that Rousseau was a good enough Jesus Christ for the French, and he was capable of declaring Tom Paine a good enough Milton for the Yankees. However that may be, Paine was an indefatigable and useful public servant. He was a bad gauger for King George, but he was an admirable scribe for a revolution conducted on constitutional principles.

To follow his history through the war would be tedious. What Washington and Jefferson really thought of him we shall never know. He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, and a sum of money. This was in 1784.

Three years afterwards Thomas visited England, where he kept good company and was very usefully employed engineering, for which excellent pursuit he would appear to have had great natural aptitude. Blackfriars Bridge had just tumbled down, and it was Paine's laudable ambition to build its successor in iron. But the Bastille fell down as well as Blackfriars Bridge, and was too much for Paine. As Mr. Conway beautifully puts it: 'But again the Cause arose before him; he must part from all--patent interests, literary leisure, fine society--and take the hand of Liberty undowered, but as yet unstained. He must beat his bridge-iron into a key that shall unlock the British Bastille, whose walls he sees steadily closing around the people.' 'Miching mallecho--this means mischief;' and so it proved.

Burke is responsible for the _Rights of Man_. This splendid sentimentalist published his _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ in November, 1790. Paine immediately sat down in the Angel, Islington, and began his reply. He was not unqualified to answer Burke; he had fought a good fight between the years 1775 and 1784. Mr. Conway has some ground for his epigram, 'where Burke had dabbled, Paine had dived.' There is nothing in the _Rights of Man_ which would now frighten, though some of its expressions might still shock, a lady-in-waiting; but to profess Republicanism in 1791 was no joke, and the book was proclaimed and Paine prosecuted. Acting upon the advice of William Blake (the truly sublime), Paine escaped to France, where he was elected by three departments to a seat in the Convention, and in that Convention he sat from September, 1792, to December, 1793, when he was found quarters in the Luxembourg Prison.

This invitation to foreigners to take part in the conduct of the French Revolution was surely one of the oddest things that ever happened, but Paine thought it natural enough so far, at least, as he was concerned. He could not speak a word of French, and all his harangues had to be translated and read to the Convention by a secretary, whilst Thomas stood smirking in the Tribune. His behaviour throughout was most creditable to him. He acted with the Girondists, and strongly opposed and voted against the murder of the King. His notion of a revolution was one by pamphlet, and he shrank from deeds of blood. His whole position was false and ridiculous. He really counted for nothing. The members of the Convention grew tired of his doctrinaire harangues, which, in fact, bored them not a little; but they respected his enthusiasm and the part he had played in America, whither they would gladly he had returned. Who put him in prison is a mystery. Mr. Conway thinks it was the American Minister in Paris, Gouverneur Morris. He escaped the guillotine, and was set free after ten months' confinement.

All this time Washington had not moved a finger in behalf of the author of _Common-sense_ and _The Crisis_. Amongst Paine's papers this epigram was found:

'ADVICE TO THE STATUARY WHO IS TO EXECUTE THE
STATUE OF WASHINGTON.

Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone;
It needs no fashion--it is Washington.
But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude,
And on his heart engrave--"Ingratitude."'

This is hard hitting.

So far we have only had the Republican Paine, the outlaw Paine; the atheist Paine has not appeared. He did so in the _Age of Reason_, first published in 1794-1795. The object of this book was religious. Paine was a vehement believer in God and in the Divine government of the world, but he was not, to put it mildly, a Bible Christian. Nobody now is ever likely to read the _Age of Reason_ for instruction or amusement. Who now reads even Mr. Greg's _Creed of Christendom_, which is in effect, though not in substance, the same kind of book? Paine was a coarse writer, without refinement of nature, and he used brutal expressions and hurled his vulgar words about in a manner certain to displease. Still, despite it all, the _Age of Reason_ is a religious book, though a singularly unattractive one.

Paine remained in France advocating all kinds of things, including a descent on England, the abduction of the Royal Family, and a Free Constitution. Napoleon sought him out, and assured him that he (Napoleon) slept with the _Rights of Man_ under his pillow. Paine believed him.

In 1802 Paine returned to America, after fifteen years' absence.

'Thou stricken friend of man,' exclaims Mr. Conway in a fine passage, 'who hast appealed from the God of Wrath to the God of Humanity, see in the distance that Maryland coast which early voyagers called Avalon, and sing again your song when first stepping on that shore twenty-seven years ago.'

The rest of Paine's life was spent in America without distinction or much happiness. He continued writing to the last, and died bravely on the morning of June 8, 1809.

The Americans did not appreciate Paine's theology, and in 1819 allowed Cobbett to carry the bones of the author of _Common-sense_ to England, where--'as rare things will,' so, at least, Mr. Browning sings--they vanished. Nobody knows what has become of them.

As a writer Paine has no merits of a lasting character, but he had a marvellous journalistic knack for inventing names and headings. He is believed to have concocted the two phrases 'The United States of America' and 'The Religion of Humanity.' Considering how little he had read, his discourses on the theory of government are wonderful, and his views generally were almost invariably liberal, sensible, and humane. What ruined him was an intolerable self-conceit, which led him to believe that his own productions superseded those of other men. He knew off by heart, and was fond of repeating, his own _Common-sense_ and the _Rights of Man_. He was destitute of the spirit of research, and was wholly without one shred of humility. He was an oddity, a character, but he never took the first step towards becoming a great man.

CHARLES BRADLAUGH[A]

[Footnote A: _Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work_. By his daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner. Two vols. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1894.]

Mr. Bradlaugh was a noticeable man, and his life, even though it appears in the unwelcome but familiar shape of two octavo volumes, is a noticeable book. It is useless to argue with biographers; they, at all events, are neither utilitarians nor opportunists, but idealists pure and simple. What is the good of reminding them, being so majestical, of Guizot's pertinent remark, 'that if a book is unreadable it will not be read,' or of the older saying, 'A great book is a great evil'? for all such observations they simply put on one side as being, perhaps, true for others, but not for them. Had _Mr. Bradlaugh's Life_ been just half the size it would have had, at least, twice as many readers.

The pity is all the greater because Mrs. Bonner has really performed a difficult task after a noble fashion and in a truly pious spirit. Her father's life was a melancholy one, and it became her duty as his biographer to break a silence on painful subjects about which he had preferred to say nothing. His reticence was a manly reticence; though a highly sensitive mortal, he preferred to put up with calumny rather than lay bare family sorrows and shame. His daughter, though compelled to break this silence, has done so in a manner full of dignity and feeling. The ruffians who in times past slandered the moral character of Bradlaugh will not probably read his life, nor, if they did, would they repent of their baseness. The willingness to believe everything evil of an adversary is incurable, springing as it does from a habit of mind. It was well said by Mr. Mill: 'I have learned from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the result.' Now that Mr. Bradlaugh is dead, no purpose is served by repeating false accusations as to his treatment of his wife, or of his pious brother, or as to his disregard of family ties; but the next atheist who crops up must not expect any more generous treatment than Bradlaugh received from that particularly odious class of persons of whom it has been wittily said that so great is their zeal for religion, they have never time to say their prayers.

Mr. Bradlaugh will, I suppose, be hereafter described in the dictionaries of biography as 'Freethinker and Politician.' Of the politician there is here no need to speak. He was a Radical of the old-fashioned type. When he first stood for Northampton in 1868, his election address was made up of tempting dishes, which afterwards composed Mr. Chamberlain's famous but unauthorized programme of 1885, with minority representation thrown in. Unpopular thinkers who have been pelted with stones by Christians, slightly the worse for liquor, are apt to think well of minorities. Mr. Bradlaugh's Radicalism had an individualistic flavour. He thought well of thrift, thereby incurring censure. Mr. Bradlaugh's politics are familiar enough. What about his freethinking? English freethinkers may be divided into two classes--those who have been educated and those who have had to educate themselves. The former class might apply to their own case the language once employed by Dr. Newman to describe himself and his brethren of the Oratory:

'We have been nourished for the greater part of our lives in the
bosom of the great schools and universities of Protestant England;
we have been the foster foster-sons of the Edwards and Henries, the
Wykehams and Wolseys, of whom Englishmen are wont to make so much;
we have grown up amid hundreds of contemporaries, scattered at
present all over the country in those special ranks of society
which are the very walk of a member of the legislature.'

These first-class free-thinkers have an excellent time of it, and, to use a fashionable phrase, 'do themselves very well indeed.' They move freely in society; their books lie on every table; they hob-a-nob with Bishops; and when they come to die, their orthodox relations gather round them, and lay them in the earth 'in the sure and certain hope'--so, at least, priestly lips are found willing to assert--'of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' And yet there was not a dogma of the Christian faith in which they were in a position to profess their belief.

The free-thinkers of the second class, poor fellows! have hitherto led very different lives. Their foster-parents have been poverty and hardship; their school education has usually terminated at eleven; all their lives they have been desperately poor; alone, unaided, they have been left to fight the battle of a Free Press.

Richard Carlile, as honourable a man as most, and between whose religious opinions and (let us say) Lord Palmerston's there was probably no difference worth mentioning, spent nine out of the fifty-two years of his life in prison. Attorney-Generals, and, indeed, every degree of prosecuting counsel have abused this kind of free-thinker, not merely with professional impunity, but amidst popular applause. Judges, speaking with emotion, have exhibited the utmost horror of atheistical opinions, and have railed in good set terms at the wretch who has been dragged before them, and have then, at the rising of the court, proceeded to their club and played cards till dinner-time with a first-class free-thinker for partner.

This is natural and easily accounted for, but we need not be surprised if, in the biographies of second-class freethinkers, bitterness is occasionally exhibited towards the well-to-do brethren who decline what Dr. Bentley, in his Boyle Lectures, called 'the public odium and resentment of the magistrate.'

Mr. Bradlaugh was a freethinker of the second class. His father was a solicitor's clerk on a salary which never exceeded £2 2s. a week; his mother had been a nursery-maid; and he himself was born in 1833 in Bacchus Walk, Hoxton. At seven he went to a national school, but at eleven his school education ended, and he became an office-boy. At fourteen he was a wharf-clerk and cashier to a coal-merchant. His parents were not much addicted to church-going, but Charles was from the first a serious boy, and became at a somewhat early age a Sunday-school teacher at St. Peter's, Hackney Road. The incumbent, in order to prepare him for Confirmation, set him to work to extract the Thirty-nine Articles out of the four Gospels. Unhappy task, worthy to be described by the pen of the biographer of John Sterling. The youthful wharfinger could not find the Articles in the Gospels, and informed the Rev. J.G. Packer of the fact. His letter conveying this intelligence is not forthcoming, and probably enough contained offensive matter, for Mr. Packer seems at once to have denounced young Bradlaugh as one engaged in atheistical inquiries, to have suspended him from the Sunday-school, to have made it very disagreeable for him at home and with his employer, and to have wound up by giving him three days to change his views or to lose his place.

Mr. Packer has been well abused, but it has never been the fashion to treat youthful atheists with much respect. When Coleridge confided to the Rev. James Boyer that he (S.T. Coleridge) was inclined to atheism, the reverend gentleman had him stripped and flogged. Mr. Packer, however, does seem to have been too hasty, for Bradlaugh did not formally abandon his beliefs until some months after his suspension. He retired for a short season, and studied Hebrew under Mr. James Savage, of Circus Street, Marylebone. He emerged an unbeliever, aged sixteen. Expelled from his wharf, he sold coal on commission, but his principal, if not his only customer, the wife of a baker, discovering that he was an infidel, gave him no more orders, being afraid, so she said, that her bread would smell of brimstone.

In 1850 Bradlaugh published his first pamphlet, _A Few Words on the Christian Creed_, and dedicated it to the unhappy Mr. Packer. But starvation stared him in the face, and in the same year he enlisted in the 7th Dragoon Guards, and spent the next three years in Ireland, where he earned a good character, and on more occasions than one showed that adroitness for which he was afterwards remarkable.

In October, 1853, his mother and sister with great difficulty raised the £30 necessary to buy his discharge, and Bradlaugh returned to London, not only full grown, but well fed. Had he not taken the Queen's shilling he never would have lived to fight the battle he did.

He became a solicitor's clerk on a miserably small pay, and took to lecturing as 'Iconoclast.' In 1855 he was married at St. Philip's Church, Stepney. His lectures and discussions began to assume great proportions, and covered more than twenty years of his life. Terribly hard work they were. Profits there were none, or next to none. Few men have endured greater hardships.

In 1860 the _National Reformer_ was started, and his warfare in the courts began. In 1868 he first stood for Northampton, which he unsuccessfully contested three times. In April, 1880, he was returned to Parliament, and then began the famous struggle with which the constitutional historian will have to deal. After this date the facts are well known. Bradlaugh died on January 30, 1891.

His life was a hard one from beginning to end. He had no advantages. Nobody really helped him or influenced him or mollified him. He had never either money or repose; he had no time to travel, except as a propagandist, no time to acquire knowledge for its own sake; he was often abused but seldom criticised. In a single sentence, he was never taught the extent of his own ignorance.

His attitude towards the Christian religion and the Bible was a perfectly fair one, and ought not to have brought down upon him any abuse whatever. There are more ways than one of dealing with religion. It may be approached as a mystery or as a series of events supported by testimony. If the evidence is trustworthy, if the witnesses are irreproachable, if they submit successfully to examination and cross-examination, then, however remarkable or out of the way may be the facts to which they depose, they are entitled to be believed. This is a mode of treatment with which we are all familiar, whether as applied to the Bible or to the authority of the Church. Nobody is expected to believe in the authority of the Church until satisfied by the exercise of his reason that the Church in question possesses 'the notes' of a true Church. This was the aspect of the question which engaged Bradlaugh's attention. He was critical, legal. He took objections, insisted on discrepancies, cross-examined as to credibility, and came to the conclusion that the case for the supernatural was not made out. And this he did not after the first-class fashion in the study or in octavo volumes, but in the street. His audiences were not Mr. Mudie's subscribers, but men and women earning weekly wages. The coarseness of his language, the offensiveness of his imagery, have been greatly exaggerated. It is now a good many years since I heard him lecture in a northern town on the Bible to an audience almost wholly composed of artisans. He was bitter and aggressive, but the treatment he was then experiencing accounted for this. As an avowed atheist he received no quarter, and he might fairly say with Wilfred Osbaldistone, 'It's hard I should get raps over the costard, and only pay you back in make-believes.'

It was not what Bradlaugh said, but the people he said it to, that drew down upon him the censure of the magistrate, and (unkindest cut of all) the condemnation of the House of Commons.

Of all the evils from which the lovers of religion do well to pray that their faith may be delivered, the worst is that it should ever come to be discussed across the floor of the House of Commons. The self-elected champions of the Christian faith who then ride into the lists are of a kind well calculated to make Piety hide her head for very shame. Rowdy noblemen, intemperate country gentlemen, sterile lawyers, cynical but wealthy sceptics who maintain religion as another fence round their property, hereditary Nonconformists whose God is respectability and whose goal a baronetcy, contrive, with a score or two of bigots thrown in, to make a carnival of folly, a veritable devil's dance of blasphemy. The debates on Bradlaugh's oath-taking extended over four years, and will make melancholy reading for posterity. Two figures, and two figures only, stand out in solitary grandeur, those of a Quaker and an Anglican--Bright and Gladstone.

The conclusion which an attentive reading of Mr. Bradlaugh's biography forces upon me is that in all probability he was the last freethinker who will be exposed, for many a long day (it would be more than usually rash to write 'ever'), to pains and penalties for uttering his unbelief. It is true the Blasphemy Laws are not yet repealed; it may be true for all I know that Christianity is still part and parcel of the common law; it is possibly an indictable offence to lend _Literature and Dogma_ and _God and the Bible_ to a friend; but, however these things may be, Mr. Bradlaugh's stock-in-trade is now free of the market-place, where just at present, at all events, its price is low. It has become pretty plain that neither the Fortress of Holy Scripture nor the Rock of Church Authority is likely to be taken by storm. The Mystery of Creation, the unsolvable problem of matter, continue to press upon us more heavily than ever. Neither by Paleys nor by Bradlaughs will religion be either bolstered up or pulled down. Sceptics and Sacramentarians must be content to put up with one another's vagaries for some time to come. Indeed, the new socialists, though at present but poor theologians (one hasty reading of _Lux Mundi_ does not make a theologian), are casting favourable eyes upon Sacramentarianism, deeming it to have a distinct flavour of Collectivism. Calvinism, on the other hand, is considered repulsively individualistic, being based upon the notion that it is the duty of each man to secure his own salvation.

But whether Bradlaugh was the last of his race or not, he was a brave man whose life well deserves an honourable place amongst the biographies of those Radicals who have suffered in the cause of Free-thought, and into the fruits of whose labours others have entered.

DISRAELI _EX RELATIONE_ SIR WILLIAM FRASER

The late Sir William Fraser was not, I have been told, a popular person in that society about which he thought so much, and his book, _Disraeli and His Day_, did not succeed in attracting much of the notice of the general reader, and failed, so I, at least, have been made to understand, to win a verdict of approval from the really well informed.

I consider the book a very good one, in the sense of being valuable. Whatever your mood may be, that of the moralist, cynic, satirist, humourist, whether you love, pity, or despise your fellow-man, here is grist for your mill. It feeds the mind.

Although in form the book is but a stringing together of stories, incidents, and aphorisms, still the whole produces a distinct effect. To state what that effect is would be, I suppose, the higher criticism. It is not altogether disagreeable; it is decidedly amusing; it is clever and somewhat contemptible. Sir William Fraser was a baronet who thought well of his order. He desiderated a tribunal to determine the right to the title, and he opined that the courtesy prefix of 'Honourable,' which once, it appears, belonged to baronets, should be restored to them. Apart from these opinions, ridiculous and peculiar, Sir William Fraser stands revealed in this volume as cast in a familiar mould. The words 'gentleman,' 'White's,' 'Society,' often flow from his pen, and we may be sure were engraven on his heart. He had seen a world wrecked. When he was young, so he tells his readers, the world consisted of at least three, and certainly not more than five, hundred persons who were accustomed night after night during the season to make their appearance at a certain number of houses, which are affectionately enumerated. A new face at any one of these gatherings immediately attracted attention, as, indeed, it is easy to believe it would. 'Anything for a change,' as somebody observes in _Pickwick_.

This is the atmosphere of the book, and Sir William breathes in it very pleasantly. Endowed by Nature with a retentive memory and a literary taste, active if singular, he may be discovered in his own pages moving up and down, in and out of society, supplying and correcting quotations, and gratifying the vanity of distinguished authors by remembering their own writings better than they did themselves. The book makes one clearly comprehend what a monstrous clever fellow the rank and file of the Tory party must have felt Sir William Fraser to be. This, however, is only background. In the front of the picture we have the mysterious outlines, the strange personality, struggling between the bizarre and the romantic, of 'the Jew,' as big George Bentinck was ever accustomed to denominate his leader. Sir William Fraser's Disraeli is a very different figure from Sir Stafford Northcote's. The myth about the pocket Sophocles is rudely exploded. Sir William is certain that Disraeli could not have construed a chapter of the Greek Testament. He found such mythology as he required where many an honest fellow has found it before him--in Lemprière's Dictionary. His French accent, as Sir William records it, was most satisfactory, and a conclusive proof of his _bonâ-fides_. Disraeli, it is clear, cared as little for literature as he did for art. He admired Gray, as every man with a sense for epithet must; he studied Junius, whose style, so Sir William Fraser believes, he surpassed in his 'Runnymede' letters. Sir William Fraser kindly explains the etymology of this strange word 'Runnymede,' as he also does that of 'Parliament,' which he says is '_Parliamo mente_' (Let us speak our minds). Sir William clearly possessed the learning denied to his chief.

Beyond apparently imposing upon Sir Stafford Northcote, Disraeli himself never made any vain pretensions to be devoted to pursuits for which he did not care a rap. He once dreamt of an epic poem, and his early ambition urged him a step or two in that direction, but his critical faculty, which, despite all his monstrosities of taste, was vital, restrained him from making a fool of himself, and he forswore the muse, puffed the prostitute away, and carried his very saleable wares to another market, where his efforts were crowned with prodigious success. Sir William Fraser introduces his great man to us as observing, in reply to a question, that revenge was the passion which gives pleasure the latest. A man, he continued, will enjoy that when even avarice has ceased to please. As a matter of fact, Disraeli himself was neither avaricious nor revengeful, and, as far as one can judge, was never tempted to be either. This is the fatal defect of almost all Disraeli's aphorisms: they are dead words, whilst the words of a true aphorism have veins filled with the life of their utterer. Nothing of this sort ever escaped the lips of our modern Sphinx. If he had any faiths, any deep convictions, any rooted principles, he held his tongue about them. He was, Sir William tells us, an indolent man. It is doubtful whether he ever did, apart from the preparation and delivery of his speeches, what would be called by a professional man a hard day's work in his life. He had courage, wit, insight, instinct, prevision, and a thorough persuasion that he perfectly understood the materials he had to work upon and the tools within his reach. Perhaps no man ever gauged more accurately or more profoundly despised that 'world' Sir William Fraser so pathetically laments. For folly, egotism, vanity, conceit, and stupidity, he had an amazing eye. He could not, owing to his short sight, read men's faces across the floor of the House, but he did not require the aid of any optic nerve to see the petty secrets of their souls. His best sayings have men's weaknesses for their text. Sir William's book gives many excellent examples. One laughs throughout.

Sir William would have us believe that in later life Disraeli clung affectionately to dulness--to gentle dulness. He did not want to be surrounded by wits. He had been one himself in his youth, and he questioned their sincerity. It would almost appear from passages in the book that Disraeli found even Sir William Fraser too pungent for him. Once, we are told, the impenetrable Prime Minister quailed before Sir William's reproachful oratory. The story is not of a cock and a bull, but of a question put in the House of Commons by Sir William, who was snubbed by the Home Secretary, who was cheered by Disraeli. This was intolerable, and accordingly next day, being, as good luck would have it, a Friday, when, as all men and members know, 'it is in the power of any member to bring forward any topic he may choose,' Sir William naturally chose the topic nearest to his heart, and 'said a few words on my wrongs.'

'During my performance I watched Disraeli narrowly. I could not see
his face, but I noticed that whenever I became in any way
disagreeable--in short, whenever my words really bit--they were
invariably followed by one movement. Sitting as he always did with
his right knee over his left, whenever the words touched him he
moved the pendant leg twice or three times, then curved his foot
upwards. I could observe no other sign of emotion, but this was
distinct. Some years afterwards, on a somewhat more important
occasion at the Conference at Berlin, a great German philosopher,
Herr ----, went to Berlin on purpose to study Disraeli's character.
He said afterwards that he was most struck by the more than Indian
stoicism which Disraeli showed. To this there was one exception.
"Like all men of his race, he has one sign of emotion which never
fails to show itself--the movement of the leg that is crossed over
the other, and of the foot!" The person who told me this had never
heard me hint, nor had anyone, that I had observed this peculiar
symptom on the earlier occasion to which I have referred.'

Statesmen of Jewish descent, with a reputation for stoicism to preserve, would do well to learn from this story not to swing their crossed leg when tired. The great want about Mr. Disraeli is something to hang the countless anecdotes about him upon. Most remarkable men have some predominant feature of character round which you can build your general conception of them, or, at all events, there has been some great incident in their lives for ever connected with their names, and your imagination mixes the man and the event together. Who can think of Peel without remembering the Corn Laws and the reverberating sentence: 'I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who, for less honourable motives, clamours for Protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good-will in the abode of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn their daily bread with the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice.' But round what are our memories of Disraeli to cluster? Sir William Fraser speaks rapturously of his wondrous mind and of his intellect, but where is posterity to look for evidences of either? Certainly not in Sir William's book, which shows us a wearied wit and nothing more. Carlyle once asked, 'How long will John Bull permit this absurd monkey'--meaning Mr. Disraeli--'to dance upon his stomach?' The question was coarsely put, but there is nothing in Sir William's book to make one wonder it should have been asked. Mr. Disraeli lived to offer Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and that, in Sir William's opinion, is enough to dispose of Carlyle's vituperation; but, after all, the Grand Cross is no answer to anything except an application for it.

A great many other people are made to cross Sir William Fraser's stage. His comments upon them are lively, independent, and original. He liked Cobden and hated Bright. The reason for this he makes quite plain. He thinks he detected in Cobden a deprecatory manner--a recognition of the sublime truth that he, Richard Cobden, had not been half so well educated as the mob of Tories he was addressing. Bright, on the other band, was fat and rude, and thought that most country gentlemen and town-bred wits were either fools or fribbles. This was intolerable. Here was a man who not only could not have belonged to the 'world,' but honestly did not wish to, and was persuaded--the gross fellow--that he and his world were better in every respect than the exclusive circles which listened to Sir William Fraser's _bon mots_ and tags from the poets. Certainly there was nothing deprecatory about John Bright. He could be quite as insolent in his way as any aristocrat in his. He had a habit, we are told, of slowly getting up and walking out of the House in the middle of Mr. Disraeli's speeches, and just when that ingenious orator was leading up to a carefully prepared point, and then immediately returning behind the Speaker's chair. If this is true, it was perhaps rude, but nobody can deny that it is a Tory dodge of indicating disdain. What was really irritating about Mr. Bright was that his disdain was genuine. He did think very little of the Tory party, and he did not care one straw for the opinion of society. He positively would not have cared to have been made a baronet. Sir William Fraser seems to have been really fond of Disraeli, and the very last time he met his great man in the Carlton Club he told him a story too broad to be printed. The great man pronounced it admirable, and passed on his weary way.

A CONNOISSEUR

It must always be rash to speak positively about human nature, whose various types of character are singularly tough, and endure, if not for ever, for a very long time; yet some types do seem to show signs of wearing out. The connoisseur, for example, here in England is hardly what he was. He has specialized, and behind him there is now the bottomless purse of the multi-millionaire, who buys as he is bidden, and has no sense of prices. If the multi-millionaire wants a thing, why should he not have it? The gaping mob, penniless but appreciative, looks on and cheers his pluck.

Mr. Frederick Locker, about whom I wish to write a few lines, was an old-world connoisseur, the shy recesses of whose soul Addison might have penetrated in the page of a _Spectator_--and a delicate operation it would have been.

My father-in-law was only once in the witness-box. I had the felicity to see him there. It was a dispute about the price of a picture, and in the course of his very short evidence he hazarded the opinion that the grouping of the figures (they were portraits) was in bad taste. The Judge, the late Mr. Justice Cave, an excellent lawyer of the old school, snarled out, 'Do you think you could explain to _me_ what is taste?' Mr. Locker surveyed the Judge through the eye-glass which seemed almost part of his being, with a glance modest, deferential, deprecatory, as if suggesting 'Who am _I_ to explain anything to _you_?' but at the same time critical, ironical, and humorous. It was but for one brief moment; the eyeglass dropped, and there came the mournful answer, as from a man baffled at all points: 'No, my lord; I should find it impossible!' The Judge grunted a ready, almost a cheerful, assent.

Properly to describe Mr. Locker, you ought to be able to explain both to judge and jury what you mean by taste. He sometimes seemed to me to be _all_ taste. Whatever subject he approached--was it the mystery of religion, or the moralities of life, a poem or a print, a bit of old china or a human being--whatever it might be, it was along the avenue of taste that he gently made his way up to it. His favourite word of commendation was _pleasing_, and if he ever brought himself to say (and he was not a man who scattered his judgments, rather was he extremely reticent of them) of a man, and still more of a woman, that he or she was _unpleasing_, you almost shuddered at the fierceness of the condemnation, knowing, as all Locker's intimate friends could not help doing, what the word meant to him. 'Attractive' was another of his critical instruments. He meets Lord Palmerston, and does not find him 'attractive' (_My Confidences_, p. 155).

This is a temperament which when cultivated, as it was in Mr. Locker's case, by a life-long familiarity with beautiful things in all the arts and crafts, is apt to make its owner very susceptible to what some stirring folk may not unjustly consider the trifles of life. Sometimes Locker might seem to overlook the dominant features, the main object of the existence, either of a man or of some piece of man's work, in his sensitively keen perception of the beauty, or the lapse from beauty, of some trait of character or bit of workmanship. This may have been so. Mr. Locker was more at home, more entirely his own delightful self, when he was calling your attention to some humorous touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man expatiated less. He never expounded anything in his born days; he very soon wearied of those he called 'strong' talkers. His critical method was in a conversational manner to direct your attention to something in a poem or a picture, to make a brief suggestion or two, perhaps to apply an epithet, and it was all over, but your eyes were opened. Rapture he never professed, his tones were never loud enough to express enthusiasm, but his enjoyment of what he considered good, wherever he found it--and he was regardless of the set judgments of the critics--was most intense and intimate. His feeling for anything he liked was fibrous: he clung to it. For all his rare books and prints, if he liked a thing he was very tolerant of its _format_. He would cut a drawing out of a newspaper, frame it, hang it up, and be just as tender towards it as if it were an impression with the unique _remarque_.

Mr. Locker had probably inherited his virtuoso's whim from his ancestors. His great-grandfather was certified by Johnson in his life of Addison to be a gentleman 'eminent for curiosity and literature,' and though his grandfather, the Commodore, who lives for ever in our history as the man who taught Nelson the lesson that saved an Empire--'Lay a Frenchman close, and you will beat him'--was no collector, his father, Edward Hawke Locker, though also a naval man, was not only the friend of Sir Walter Scott, but a most judicious buyer of pictures, prints, and old furniture.

Frederick Locker was born in 1821, in Greenwich Hospital, where Edward Hawke Locker was Civil Commissioner. His mother was the daughter of one of the greatest book-buyers of his time, a man whose library it took nine days to disperse--the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, the friend and opponent of George Washington, an ecclesiastic who might have been first Bishop of Edinburgh, but who died a better thing, the Vicar of Epsom.

Frederick Locker grew up among pretty things in the famous hospital. Water-colours by Lawrence, Prout, Girtin, Turner, Chinnery, Paul Sandby, Cipriani, and other masters; casts after Canova; mezzotints after Sir Joshua; Hogarth's famous picture of David Garrick and his wife, now well hung in Windsor Castle, were about him, and early attracted his observant eye. Yet the same things were about his elder brother Arthur, an exceedingly clever fellow, who remained quite curiously impervious to the impressiveness of pretty things all his days.

Locker began collecting on his own account after his marriage, in 1850, to a daughter of Lord Byron's enemy, the Lord Elgin, who brought the marbles from Athens to Bloomsbury. His first object, at least so he thought, was to make his rooms pretty. From the beginning of his life as a connoisseur he spared himself no pains, often trudging miles, when not wanted at the Admiralty Office, in search of his prey. If any mercantile-minded friend ever inquired what anything had cost, he would be answered with a rueful smile, 'Much shoe leather.' He began with old furniture, china, and bric-à-brac, which ere long somewhat inconveniently filled his small rooms. Prices rose, and means in those days were as small as the rooms. No more purchases of Louis Seize and blue majolica and Palissy ware could be made. Drawings by the old masters and small pictures were the next objects of the chase. Here again the long purses were soon on his track, and the pursuit had to be abandoned, but not till many treasures had been garnered. Last of all he became a book-hunter, beginning with little volumes of poetry and the drama from 1590 to 1610; and as time went on the boundaries expanded, but never so as to include black letter.

I dare not say Mr. Locker had all the characteristics of a great collector, or that he was entirely free from the whimsicalities of the tribe of connoisseurs, but he was certainly endowed with the chief qualifications for the pursuit of rarities, and remained clear of the unpleasant vices that so often mar men's most innocent avocations. Mr. Locker always knew what he wanted and what he did not want, and never could be persuaded to take the one for the other; he did not grow excited in the presence of the quarry; he had patience to wait, and to go on waiting, and he seldom lacked courage to buy.

He rode his own hobby-horse, never employing experts as buyers. For quantity he had no stomach. He shrank from numbers. He was not a Bodleian man; he had not the sinews to grapple with libraries. He was the connoisseur throughout. Of the huge acquisitiveness of a Heber or a Huth he had not a trace. He hated a crowd, of whatsoever it was composed. He was apt to apologize for his possessions, and to depreciate his tastes. As for boasting of a treasure, he could as easily have eaten beef at breakfast.

So delicate a spirit, armed as it was for purposes of defence with a rare gift of irony and a very shrewd insight into the weaknesses and noisy falsettos of life, was sure to be misunderstood. The dull and coarse witted found Locker hard to make out. He struck them as artificial and elaborate, perhaps as frivolous, and yet they felt uneasy in his company lest there should be a lurking ridicule behind his quiet, humble demeanour. There was, indeed, always an element of mockery in Locker's humility.

An exceedingly spiteful account of him, in which it is asserted that 'most of his rarest books are miserable copies' (how book-collectors can hate one another!), ends with the reluctant admission: 'He was eminently a gentleman, however, and his manners were even courtly, yet virile.' Such extorted praise is valuable.

I can see him now before me, with a nicely graduated foot-rule in his delicate hand, measuring with grave precision the height to a hair of his copy of _Robinson Crusoe_ (1719), for the purpose of ascertaining whether it was taller or shorter than one being vaunted for sale in a bookseller's catalogue just to hand. His face, one of much refinement, was a study, exhibiting alike a fixed determination to discover the exact truth about the copy and a humorous realization of the inherent triviality of the whole business. Locker was a philosopher as well as a connoisseur.

The Rowfant Library has disappeared. Great possessions are great cares. 'But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats, water-thieves, and land-thieves--I mean pirates; and then there is the peril of waters, winds and rocks.' To this list the nervous owner of rare books must add fire, that dread enemy of all the arts. It is often difficult to provide stabling for dead men's hobby-horses. It were perhaps absurd in a world like this to grow sentimental over a parcel of old books. Death, the great unbinder, must always make a difference.

Mr. Locker's poetry now forms a volume of the _Golden Treasury Series_. The _London Lyrics_ are what they are. They have been well praised by good critics, and have themselves been made the subject of good verse.

'Apollo made one April day
A new thing in the rhyming way;
Its turn was neat, its wit was clear,
It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear.
Then Momus gave a touch satiric,
And it became a _London Lyric_.'
AUSTIN DOBSON.

In another copy of verses Mr. Dobson adds:

'Or where discern a verse so neat,
So well-bred and so witty--
So finished in its least conceit,
So mixed of mirth and pity?'

'Pope taught him rhythm, Prior ease,
Praed buoyancy and banter;
What modern bard would learn from these?
Ah, _tempora mutantur_!'

Nothing can usefully be added to criticism so just, so searching, and so happily expressed.

Some of the _London Lyrics_ have, I think, achieved what we poor mortals call immortality--a strange word to apply to the piping of so slender a reed, to so slight a strain--yet

'In small proportions we just beauties see.'

It is the simplest strain that lodges longest in the heart. Mr. Locker's strains are never precisely _simple_. The gay enchantment of the world and the sense of its bitter disappointments murmur through all of them, and are fatal to their being simple, but the unpretentiousness of a _London Lyric_ is akin to simplicity.

His relation to his own poetry was somewhat peculiar. A critic in every fibre, he judged his own verses with a severity he would have shrunk from applying to those of any other rhyming man. He was deeply dissatisfied, almost on bad terms, with himself, yet for all that he was convinced that he had written some very good verses indeed. His poetry meant a great deal to him, and he stood in need of sympathy and of allies against his own despondency. He did not get much sympathy, being a man hard to praise, for unless he agreed with your praise it gave him more pain than pleasure.

I am not sure that Mr. Dobson agrees with me, but I am very fond of Locker's paraphrase of one of Clément Marot's _Epigrammes_; and as the lines are redolent of his delicate connoisseurship, I will quote both the original (dated 1544) and the paraphrase:

'DU RYS DE MADAME D'ALLEBRET

'Elle a très bien ceste gorge d'albastre,
Ce doulx parler, ce cler tainct, ces beaux yeulx:
Mais en effect, ce petit rys follastre,
C'est à mon gré ce qui lui sied le mieulx;
Elle en pourroit les chemins et les lieux
Où elle passé à plaisir inciter;
Et si ennuy me venoit contrister
Tant que par mort fust ma vie abbatue,
Il me fauldroit pour me resusciter
Que ce rys la duguel elle me tue.'

'How fair those locks which now the light wind stirs!
What eyes she has, and what a perfect arm!
And yet methinks that little laugh of hers--
That little laugh--is still her crowning charm.
Where'er she passes, countryside or town,
The streets make festa and the fields rejoice.
Should sorrow come, as 'twill, to cast me down,
Or Death, as come he must, to hush my voice,
Her laugh would wake me just as now it thrills me--
That little, giddy laugh wherewith she kills me.'

'Tis the very laugh of Millamant in _The Way of the World_! 'I would rather,' cried Hazlitt, 'have seen Mrs. Abington's Millamant than any Rosalind that ever appeared on the stage.' Such wishes are idle. Hazlitt never saw Mrs. Abington's Millamant. I have seen Miss Ethel Irving's Millamant, _dulce ridentem_, and it was that little giddy laugh of hers that reminded me of Marot's Epigram and of Frederick Locker's paraphrase. So do womanly charms endure from generation to generation, and it is one of the duties of poets to record them.