Chapter XV: Part 15

"We had only 300 names. But that was quite enough, considering all
things, especially the respectability of the people, and the
imperfection of the agitation, to make the address well worth
presenting. Having gone so far, to hold back altogether would have
been to confess that the attempt was a mere failure, which nobody can
say it was. To hold it back past the time specified in the circulars
and originally designed, for the chance of obtaining more signatures,
would have been useless: people would have only said that though we
boasted of the shortness of the time in which the signatures were
collected, yet in fact we waited as long as there was any chance of
gathering any more. And in point of fact they had begun to come in
very slowly by Monday morning. At best, it could not have been
improved into an effectual canvass, and as it is, it shows very well.
Let any one put the two lists side by side, and then say, if the
weight of opinion in Cambridge inclines one way, which way is it? I
was doubtful of the expediency of stirring it at first, but I am now
very glad that it has been done. I wish the _Herald_ had printed the
names. But it was an unlucky day, there being a great debate in both
Houses.

"Hare declined presenting; upon which H. Lushington, Venables,
Micklethwaite, and myself (who had, in fact, been the chief actors),
distributed ourselves into two cabs: and drove slap up to the
Chancellor of Exchequer's. Harry Lushington was the chief speaker, and
did it very well and gracefully. Goulburn was, of course, gracious,
but I should hardly have inferred that he was glad. However, he said
he was; glad that this had been done, and glad that no more had been
done; and (upon the whole) easy about the matter. The fever (he said)
appeared to be gradually subsiding, and indeed the opposition was less
formidable than might be supposed. 'From what the gentleman said who
presented the address on the other side, he gathered that it was for
the most part a _conscientious_ opposition, not arising from any
political animosity.' Certainly _Punch_ cannot be said to beat
Nature."

Nothing, however, diverted him from his great object. FitzGerald writes to Frederick Tennyson:

Spedding, you know, does not change: he is now the same that he was
fourteen years old when I first knew him at school, more than twenty
years ago; wise, calm, bald, combining the best qualities of Youth and
Age.

But his calmness was not proof against the enthusiasm created by the advent of Jenny Lind in 1847. Again FitzGerald writes:

All the world has been, as I suppose you have read, crazy about Jenny
Lind.... Spedding's cool blood was moved to hire stalls several times
at an advanced rate.... I have never yet heard the famous Jenny Lind,
whom all the world raves about. Spedding is especially mad about her,
I understand: and, after that, is it not best for weaker vessels to
keep out of her way? Night after night is that bald head seen in one
particular position in the Opera house, in a stall; the miserable man
has forgot Bacon and philosophy, and goes after strange women.

His health, however, had been giving some cause for anxiety at this time to his old friend, who writes to Carlyle:

Thank you for your account of Spedding: I had written however to
himself, and from himself ascertained that he was out of the worst.
But Spedding's life is a very ticklish one.

Hitherto Spedding had been working in his own way at Bacon's life and letters without any idea of contributing to a complete edition of his works, but rather with the object of defending him against what he believed to be the injustice done him by Macaulay in his famous _Essay_. But in 1847 Mr. Leslie Ellis had been preparing an edition of Bacon's philosophical works which was offered for publication to Messrs. Longman, and Spedding acted as intermediary.

"Better, I think," he writes to Thompson, "to be with the publishers
than against them so long as one keeps the reins. Therefore I have
written to Longman, reporting Ellis's proposition, and recommending
them to treat immediately with him upon those terms; for that if they
get the philosophical works alone so edited, their edition will
command the market, even if they do nothing but reprint the rest as
they are. Whereas, if any other publisher should engage Ellis's
services for that portion, their trade edition would be worthless for
ever. All which I believe to be true, and I hope will be conclusive.
When that point is fixed there will be time enough to consider what
else may be done. If they refuse the opportunity, I think I shall
decline further connexion with the enterprise. My own project, as I
never counted upon anything but expense from it, will not be much
affected either way."

The result, as is well known, was a complete edition of Bacon's works, in which Mr. Leslie Ellis undertook the philosophical, Mr. Douglas Heath the legal and professional, and Spedding the literary and miscellaneous, to which he afterwards added the life and letters. In the meantime he wrote, but never published, for his own satisfaction and that he might gather the opinions of his friends, _Evenings with a Reviewer_, the reviewer being Macaulay and the review his Essay on Bacon. In sending a copy to Dr. Whewell he says:

It may seem absurd in a man to print a book, and yet to wish not only
to keep it private, but also to prevent it from _circulating_
privately. But after considering the matter carefully, with reference
to what I may call the interest of the subject--I mean to the chance
of making a successful and durable impression upon the popular
opinion--I am satisfied that it would not be judicious to present the
question to the public _first_ in this form. It would probably provoke
controversy. The result of the controversy would depend upon
reviewers. Reviewers, until they have heard the evidence as well as
the argument, are not in a condition to judge; yet unless the evidence
be made easily accessible and bound up with the argument, they cannot
be expected either to seek it out or to suspend their opinions, but
will simply proceed to judgment _without_ hearing it. In such a case,
considering the strength of popular prepossessions and the tendency of
the first blow at them to raise a dust of popular objections, the
verdict would in the first instance go against me; and though I might
appeal with a better chance to the second thoughts and the next
generation, yet the appeal would be conducted at great disadvantage,
because I should then stand in the position of an advocate with a
personal interest in the cause. As it is, I hope in my division of
Bacon's works to set forth _all_ the evidence clearly and impartially,
so that everybody who has the book will have the means of judging for
himself, and if I can get that credit for justice and impartiality
which I mean to deserve, I do not much doubt the issue. But the first
reception of the work, upon which in these times so much depends, will
itself depend very much upon my coming before the public with a clear
and unsuspected character: and this, if I should previously acquire
the reputation (justly or not) of an advocate engaged to make good his
own cause, I could not expect.

FitzGerald, writing to Donne at the end of 1848, says of _Evenings with a Reviewer_:

I saw many of my friends in London, Carlyle and Tennyson among them;
but most and best of all, Spedding. I have stolen his noble book away
from him; noble, in spite (I believe, but am not sure) of some
_adikology_ in the second volume: some special pleadings for his idol:
amica Veritas, sed magis, etc.

And Donne in reply:

I, too, have Spedding's "glorious book," which I prefer to any modern
reading. Reading one of his "Evenings" is next to spending an evening
with the author.

Thompson, whose health had completely broken down in 1849, was undergoing the water-cure at Great Malvern, and early in 1850 Spedding writes to him:

They tell me that a letter will find you at Great Malvern. Indeed, I
had reason to think so before, for I had heard of you twice since you
went thither; once from Spring Rice and once from Blakesley.... I
have been stationary here since August, seeing nobody and hearing
nothing, so you must not expect any news.... You want to know,
perhaps, what I am about myself. I am at this moment sitting in an
easy-chair with the ink on a table beside me, and the papers on a
blotting-board on my knee. On the little table beside me is first a
leaden jar, bought long since to keep tobacco in, now holding
snipe-shot. Next to it a pocket Virgil lying on its belly. On my left
a ledge made for a lamp, on which are three different translations of
Bacon's _Sapientia Veterum_, and some loose pieces of paper destined
in due time to be enriched with a fourth translation, of which I need
say no more. Next to my little table stands a large round table, now
quite uninhabitable by reason of the litter of books that has taken
possession of it, as, for instance, another Virgil with English
translation and notes, open, upon its back; a Dryden's translation
shut, and standing upright on its edge. A letter-clip holding a packet
in brown-paper cover, inscribed "De sapientia veterum: translation." A
volume of Bacon standing shut on its edge. A Cruden's _Concordance_;
and near it, lying on its side and shut, Alford's Greek Testament (an
excellent book of immense industry, and very neat execution; good in
all ways so far as I have looked, and so far as I can judge of what I
see in such a matter; it seems as if one might find in it everything
one can want to know about the four gospels, that an editor can tell
one). Another volume of Bacon open, on its back; beneath it a folio
Aristotle (!) also open, and beneath that again a huge old folio
Demosthenes and Æschines (but this was brought down from the garret
two days ago, and has not yet been put away). Many other things of the
same kind; which, however, I cannot describe particularly without
getting up, which I do not feel disposed to do. But I must not forget
a striped box which belongs to my portmanteau, but serves here as a
receptacle for loose papers, and stands on the table. Another table in
the corner sustaining two vols. of Facciolati evidently out for use,
reposing on a huge Hogarth which lies there because no bookcase is big
enough to hold it, and itself reposes upon all the Naval Victories,
flanked by a ball of string, an unopened packet of Bernard Barton's
remains, a Speed's _History of England_, a ream of scribbling paper,
and an Ainsworth. Under my chair lies my own dog Tip, who once went
with you and me to the top of Ullock. Opposite stands a long narrow
box containing bows, and hung about with quivers, belts, and other
archery equipments. The chimney-piece is littered with disabled
arrows. It is now half-past 3 P.M., I have a slight headache, due (I
really believe) to a sour orange. The lake was yesterday frozen over
with ice as smooth and transparent as glass. I had no skates, and
to-day it is going either to thaw or to snow. I intended to buy a pair
of skates last midsummer, but forgot. I have a great mind to go and
buy a pair now. I leave you to gather the condition of my mind from
the condition of my room. I am in truth doing very little. These
family establishments are not favourable for work. I do not know how
it is; the day seems as long, and one seems to have it all to oneself,
but there are no _hours_ in it. What becomes of half of them I cannot
guess. Time leaks in a gentleman's house.

My father has had a bad cold this winter, which hung about him longer
than usual, and made him both look and feel ill. But he has thrown it
quite off and seems now to be as well [as] usual, which is very well.
His sight grows worse as of course it must do; but as fast as it
leaves him he learns to make less do, so that he does not appear to be
much distressed by the gradual privation. His old bitch is dead, and
his old mare retires upon a pension, a paddock, a horse-pond, and a
house, all to herself, with a daily feed of corn. He is now very well
mounted on a fast walking pony, borrowed from a neighbour, and has a
boy to walk with him and two puppies. He looks after his farming
affairs as usual, and does not at all believe that land can be ruined
by plenty. In truth we hear little in these latitudes of the
agricultural distress of which we see so much in the newspapers.

I have not heard from Ellis since he left England, and I do not know
exactly where he is. He talked of staying some time at Avignon. But I
am so doubtful whether a letter would find him there that I do not
care to write upon the chance. Our publishers seem to be quite easy in
mind, and made no enquiries as to the rate of progress. If Ellis can
be ready within two years, I shall have to stir myself in order to be
ready with my contribution. But I expect a good year's respite. I have
finished the _Henry VII._, however, which is my principal labour; and
I like very well what I have done.

But all his plans were disarranged by Mr. Ellis's illness. In the latter part of 1849, while travelling on the Riviera, Ellis had a severe attack of rheumatic fever, from which he never recovered, and which entirely disabled him for the work he had undertaken and in which he had made some progress. Spedding, therefore, had to take his place and edit as best he could Bacon's Philosophical Works. He has explained very fully in the Preface to them the method he adopted, and the careful manner in which he kept Mr. Ellis's work distinct. "Early in 1853," he says, "I took the work in hand." In the meanwhile he was to be found at his rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and there FitzGerald visited him in April 1850.

"Spedding is my sheet-anchor," he says, "the truly wise and fine
fellow: I am going to his rooms this very evening, and there I believe
Thackeray, Venables, etc. are to be. I hope not a large assembly, for
I get shyer and shyer even of those I know."

"I was in London only for ten days this spring," FitzGerald writes to
Frederick Tennyson, "and those ten days not in the thick of the
season.... The most pleasurable remembrance I had of my stay in town
was the last day I spent there; having a long ramble in the streets
with Spedding, looking at books and pictures; then a walk with him and
Carlyle across the Park to Chelsea, where we dropped that Latter-Day
Prophet at his house; then, getting upon a steamer, smoked down to
Westminster; dined at a chop-house by the Bridge, and then went to
Astley's; old Spedding being quite as wise about the horsemanship as
about Bacon and Shakespeare. We parted at midnight in Covent Garden,
and this whole pleasant day has left a taste on my palate like one of
Plato's lighter, easier, and more picturesque dialogues."

In August he went into Suffolk to stay with FitzGerald and the Cowells at their home in Bramford, near Ipswich. FitzGerald again writes to Frederick Tennyson:

I have not seen any one you know since I last wrote; nor heard from
any one: except dear old Spedding, who really came down and spent two
days with us, me and that Scholar and his Wife in their Village, in
their delightful little house, in their pleasant fields by the River
side. Old Spedding was delicious there; always leaving a mark, I say,
in all places one has been at with him, a sort of Platonic perfume.
For has he not all the beauty of the Platonic Socrates, with some
personal beauty to boot? He explained to us one day about the laws of
reflection in water; and I said then one never could look at the
willow whose branches furnished the text without thinking of him. How
beastly this reads! As if he gave us a lecture! But you know the man,
how quietly it all came out; only because I petulantly denied his
plain assertion. For I really often cross him only to draw him out;
and vain as I may be, he is one of those that I am well content to
make shine at my own expense.

In August 1851 he writes again to Frederick Tennyson:

Almost the only man I hear from is dear old Spedding, who has lost his
Father, and is now, I suppose, a rich man. This makes no apparent
change in his way of life; he has only hired an additional Attic in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, so as to be able to bed a friend upon occasion.
I may have to fill it ere long.

And a few months later:

Spedding is immutably wise, good, and delightful; not as immutably
well in Body, I think, though he does not complain.

The great work went slowly on, but nothing as yet was published. Spedding had just taken over Ellis's portion and was devoting himself to this. We get a glimpse of him again in FitzGerald's letters:

I saw old Spedding in London; only doubly calm after the death of a
Niece he dearly loved, and whose death-bed at Hastings he had just
been waiting upon.

It was 1857 before the first three volumes appeared, followed by three others in 1858, and by the final volume in 1859. Ellis did not live to see the completion of the work, for he died in May of that year.

FitzGerald, writing in 1857 to Cowell, who was now in Calcutta, from Portland Terrace, where he lived during his early married life, says:

Spedding has been once here in near three months. His _Bacon_ keeps
coming out: his part, the Letters, etc., of Bacon, is not come yet; so
it remains to be seen what he will do then, but I can't help thinking
he has let the Pot boil too long.

It was 1861, however, before the first volume of the _Life and Letters_ appeared, and Spedding found that he had already been forestalled by Hepworth Dixon in _The Story of Lord Bacon's Life_. In a note to the earliest letter printed, probably the earliest specimen remaining of Bacon's handwriting, he says, with quiet contempt:

The copies of some of these letters lately published by Mr. Hepworth
Dixon ... differ, I observe, very much from mine; most of them in the
words and sense, more or less, and some in the name of the person
writing, or the person written to, or both. But as mine are more
intelligible, and were made with care and at leisure, and when my eyes
were better than they are now, I do not suspect any material error in
them, and have not thought it worth while to apply for leave to
compare them again with the originals.

"I am very glad," FitzGerald writes to Thompson, "to hear old Spedding
is really getting _his_ share of Bacon into Print: I doubt if it will
be half as good as the "Evenings," where Spedding was in the _Passion_
which is wanted to fill his Sail for any longer Voyage."

Some three years later, he says:

Spedding's _Bacon_ seems to hang fire; they say he is disheartened at
the little Interest, and less Conviction, that his two first volumes
carried; Thompson told me they had convinced _him_ the other way; and
that _Ellis_ had long given up Bacon's Defence before he died.

And so it continued to the end. When the sixth volume appeared in 1872 FitzGerald wrote:

And here is Spedding's vol. vi. which leaves me much where it found me
about Bacon: but though I scarce care for him, I can read old
Spedding's pleading for him for ever; that is old Spedding's simple
statement of the case, as he sees it. The Ralegh business is quite
delightful, better than Old Kensington.

Carlyle alone of all the critics was unstinted, though rather patronizing, in his praise. Writing to FitzGerald, he says:

Like yourself I have gone through _Spedding_, seven long long volumes,
not skipping except when I had got the sense with me, and generally
reading all of Bacon's own that was there: I confess to you I found it
a most creditable and even surprising Book, offering the most perfect
and complete image both of Bacon and of Spedding, and distinguished as
the hugest and faithfullest bit of literary navvy-work I have ever met
with in this generation. Bacon is washed down to the natural skin; and
truly he is not, nor ever was, unlovely to me; a man of no culpability
to speak of; of an opulent and even magnificent intellect, but all in
the magnificent prose vein. Nothing or almost nothing of the "melodies
eternal" to be traced in him. There is a grim strength in Spedding,
quietly, very quietly invincible, which I did not quite know of till
this Book; and in all ways I could congratulate this indefatigably
patient, placidly invincible and victorious Spedding.

But for the last eight years he had given up his rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields and gone to live with his nieces at 80 Westbourne Terrace, where he remained till his death. Thompson, in succession to Dr. Whewell, had been appointed Master of Trinity, and in writing to congratulate him Spedding says:

I was not unprepared for your news, having just returned from
Kitlands, where the Pollocks were, and the rumour was under discussion
and generally thought to be well-founded, and the thing if true very
much rejoiced over. I have great pleasure in adding my own
congratulations, as well to yourself as to Trinity. It was all that
was wanted to make one of the last acts of Lord Russell a complete
success. I should be very glad to think that I had as much to do with
it as you suppose: but I was only one of many, and not by any means
the most influential, and as the thing is done, no matter how it was
brought about.

I am myself preparing for a shift of position, though the adventure is
of a milder kind. My nephew (J. J. S.) is going to be married within a
month or so: and it has been settled that he is to live at Greta Bank,
and that the rest of the party now living there are to take a house in
London: where I am invited to join them, with due securities for
liberties and privileges. Though the exertion incident to dislodgment
from quarters overgrown with so many superfetations of confusion and
disorder, is formidable to contemplate, the proposed arrangement is so
obviously convenient and desirable, that I am going to encounter it.
And though the place is not yet settled, it seems probable that before
the end of the year I shall be transferred or transferring myself and
my goods to the western part of London, and preparing to remodel my
manners and customs (in some respects) according to the usages of
civilized society. Though I shall live among women, they will be women
of my own house, and therefore not worshippers, which is a great
advantage, and though there may be some danger for an obedient uncle
in being where he can always be caught, I hope to be able to preserve
as much independence as is good for a man.

I have four proof sheets to settle, and have just been interrupted by
an engraver with a proof [of] the D. of Buccleugh's miniature of
Bacon, which will be the best portrait that has yet been done of him
in black and white.

This was the miniature which was reproduced at the beginning of the third volume of the _Life and Letters_, and which Spedding regarded as the original of Van Somer's portrait.

The following letter to Tennyson, written in 1870, is necessary to the full understanding of Tennyson's reply (see _Memoir by his Son_)[107]:

MY DEAR ALFRED--I do not know where you are, and I want to know for
three reasons: 1st, that I may thank you for your book; 2nd, that I
may send you mine; 3rd, that I may let you know, if you do not know it
already, that there has been a box here these many weeks, which is
meant for you and comes from FitzGerald.

A copy of your new volume[108] came early from the publisher, yet not
so early but that it found me already half way through. I was happy to
observe that neither years nor domestic happiness have had any
demoralizing effect upon you as yet. Your touch is as delicate and
vigorous and your invention as rich as ever: and I am still in hope
that your greatest poem of all has not yet been written. Some years
ago, when you were in want of a subject, I recommended Job. The
argument of Job, to be treated as you treat the legends of Arthur, as
freely and with as much light of modern thought as you find fit. As we
know it now, it is only half intelligible, and must be full of
blunders and passages misunderstood. Probably also the peculiar
character of the oriental style would at any rate stand in the way and
prevent it from producing its proper effect upon the modern and
western mind. Yet we can see through all the confusion what a great
argument it is, and I think it was never more wanted than now. If you
would take it in hand, and tell it in verse in your own way, without
any scruples about improving on Scripture, I believe it would be the
greatest poem in the language. The controversy is as much alive to-day
in London as it could ever have been in the place where and the time
when it was composed, of which, as the author, I am altogether
ignorant. And the voice out of the whirlwind may speak without fear of
anachronisms.

My own book,[109] though there is only one volume this time, is much
bigger than yours. It is wrapped up ready to go by the book-post, and
only wants to know to which of your many mansions it is to be
directed.

Fitz's box, which is about as large as a tailor's box for a single
suit, contains a drawing of Thackeray's, an illustration of the "Lord
of Burghley," a pretty sketch of the landskip-painter and the village
maiden. He sent it here under the vain delusion that whenever you
happened to come to London I should be sure to know. And I presume he
sent word to you of what he had done, for he did not ask me to
communicate the fact. I was only to write to _him_ in case the box did
_not_ arrive, and as the box did arrive I did not write. If you will
let me know what you wish to be done with it, I will do with it
accordingly.

There is a line in your last volume which I can't read: the last line
but one of the "flower in the crannied wall."

In the course of the same year he edited the _Conference of Pleasure_, written by Bacon for some masque or festive occasion, and printed from a MS. belonging to the Duke of Northumberland which had been slightly injured by fire. FitzGerald, in a letter to me, says of it:

Spedding's Introduction to his grilled Bacon, I call it really a
beautiful little _Idyll_, the mechanical Job done so perfectly and so
elegantly.

But while he was engaged in the great labour of his life he found time to write beautiful pieces of criticism on Shakespeare to which FitzGerald would willingly have had him devote his whole attention. "I never heard him read a page," he writes to Sir Frederick Pollock, "but he threw some new light upon it." In the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for August 1850 he contributed a paper on "Who wrote Shakespeare's _Henry VIII._?" which he discussed with characteristic thoroughness. His conclusion was that it was the work of two authors, one of whom was Fletcher, and this was confirmed by the investigations of another enquirer, who independently arrived at substantially the same result. The division of the Acts in _Much Ado_, _Twelfth Night_, _Richard II._, and _King Lear_ formed the subject of other discussions, and these he considered his most valuable contribution to the restoration of Shakespeare. A criticism of Miss Kate Terry's acting in Viola gave him the opportunity of pointing out the corruptions by which the fine comedy, _Twelfth Night_, has been degraded into farce.

"Spedding says," FitzGerald writes in 1875 to Fanny Kemble, "that
Irving's Hamlet is simply--_hideous_--a strong expression for Spedding
to use. But--(lest I should think his condemnation was only the Old
Man's fault of depreciating all that is new) he extols Miss Ellen
Terry's Portia as simply _a perfect Performance_: remembering (he
says) all the while how fine was Fanny Kemble's."

Again to the same correspondent early in 1880 he says:

By far the chief incident in my life for the last month has been the
reading of dear old Spedding's Paper on the _Merchant of Venice_,
there, at any rate, is one Question settled, and in such a beautiful
way as only he commands. I could not help writing a few lines to tell
him what I thought, but even very sincere praise is not the way to
conciliate him. About Christmas I wrote him, relying on it that I
should be most likely to secure an answer if I expressed dissent from
some other work of his, and my expectation was justified by one of the
fullest answers he had written to me for many a day and year.

The paper referred to was "The Story of the _Merchant of Venice_" in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for March 1880. In sending a copy to Frederick Tennyson he says:

I now post you a paper by old Spedding--a very beautiful one, I think;
_settling_ one point, however unimportant, and in a graceful, as well
as logical, way such as he is Master of.

A case has been got up--whether by Irving, the Stage Representative of
Shylock, or by his Admirers--to prove the Jew to be a very amiable and
ill-used man: insomuch that one is to come away from the theatre
loving him and hating all the rest. He dresses himself up to look like
the Saviour, Mrs. Kemble says. So old Jem disposes of _that_, besides
unravelling Shakespeare's mechanism of the Novel he draws from, in a
manner (as Jem says) more distinct to us than in his treatment of any
other of his Plays "not professedly historical." And this latter point
is, of course, far more interesting than the question of Irving and
Co.,--which is a simple attempt, both of Actor and Writer, to strike
out an original idea in the teeth of common-sense and Tradition.

And now came the end, unexpected and the result of an accident, which he maintained was entirely his own fault. In writing to tell me of the fatal result, one of his dearest friends said:

I grieve to tell you that all is over with our dear old friend.... He
intended to cross before two carriages--crossed before one--found
there was not time to pass before the other, and instead of pausing
stepped back under the hansom which he had not seen, and which had not
time to alter its course. He spent more strength in exculpating the
poor driver than on any personal matter during his illness as soon as
he regained memory of the circumstances.

"Mowbray Donne," says FitzGerald, when all was over, "wrote me that
Laurence had been there four or five days ago, when Spedding said,
that had the Cab done but a little more, it would have been a good
Quietus. Socrates to the last."

And in another letter:

Tennyson called at the Hospital, but was not allowed to see him,
though Hallam did, I think. Some one calling afterwards, Spedding took
the doctor's arm, and asked, "Was it Mr. Tennyson?" Doctors and nurses
all devoted to the patient man.

To Fanny Kemble he writes:

It was very, very good and kind of you to write to me about Spedding.
Yes: Aldis Wright had apprised me of the matter just after it
happened--he happening to be in London at the time; and but two days
after the accident heard that Spedding was quite calm, and even
cheerful; only anxious that Wright himself should not be kept waiting
for some communication which S. had promised him! Whether to live, or
to die, he will be Socrates still.

Directly that I heard from Wright I wrote to Mowbray Donne to send me
just a Post Card--daily, if he or his wife could, with but one or two
words on it--"Better," "Less well," or whatever it might be. This
morning I hear that all is going on even better than could be
expected, according to Miss Spedding. But I suppose the Crisis, which
you tell me of, is not yet come; and I have always a terror of that
French Adage--"_Monsieur se porte mal--Monsieur se porte
mieux--Monsieur est--_" Ah, you know, or you guess, the rest.

My dear old Spedding, though I have not seen him these twenty years
and more--and probably should never see him again--but he lives--his
old Self--in my heart of hearts; and all I hear of him does but
embellish the recollection of him--if it could be embellished--for he
is but the same that he was from a Boy--all that is best in Heart and
Head--a man that would be incredible had one not known him.

Again he writes of him to Professor Norton:

He was the wisest man I have known; a great sense of Humour, a
Socrates in Life and in Death, which he faced with all Serenity so
long as Consciousness lasted. I suppose something of him will reach
America, I mean, of his Death; run over by a Cab and dying in St.
George's Hospital to which he was taken, and from which he could not
be removed home alive.

"I did not know," he says in another letter, "that I should feel
Spedding's Loss as I do, after an interval of more than twenty years
[since] meeting him. But I knew that I could always get the Word I
wanted of him by Letter, and also that from time to time I should
meet with some of his wise and delightful Papers in some Quarter or
other. He talked of Shakespeare, I am told, when his Mind wandered. I
wake almost every morning feeling as if I had lost something, as one
does in a Dream; and truly enough, I have lost _him_. 'Matthew is in
his Grave, etc.'"

In apologizing to Fanny Kemble for not writing to her as usual, he says:

I have let the Full Moon pass because you had written to me so lately,
and so kindly, about our lost Spedding, that I could not call on you
too soon again. Of him I will say nothing except that his Death has
made me recall very many passages in his Life in which I was partly
concerned. In particular, staying at his Cumberland Home along with
Tennyson in the May of 1835.... His Father and Mother were both
alive--he a wise man, who mounted his Cob after Breakfast, and was at
his Farm till Dinner at two--then away again till Tea: after which he
sat reading by a shaded lamp: saying very little, but always courteous
and quite content with any company his Son might bring to the house,
so long as they let him go his way: which indeed he would have gone
whether they let him or no. But he had seen enough of Poets not to
like them or their Trade: Shelley for a time living among the Lakes:
Coleridge at Southey's (whom perhaps he had a respect for--Southey, I
mean); and Wordsworth, whom I do not think he valued. He was rather
jealous of "Jem," who might have done available service in the world,
he thought, giving himself up to such Dreamers; and sitting up with
Tennyson conning over the "Morte d'Arthur," "Lord of Burleigh," and
other things which helped to make up the two Volumes of 1842. So I
always associate that Arthur Idyll with Basanthwaite Lake, under
Skiddaw. Mrs. Spedding was a sensible, motherly Lady, with whom I used
to play Chess of a Night. And there was an old Friend of hers, Miss
Bristowe, who always reminded me of Miss La Creevy, if you know of
such a Person in _Nickleby_.

We will conclude with what his old friend, Sir Henry Taylor, wrote of him after his death:

As he will not read what I write I may allow myself to say something
more. He was always master of himself and of his emotions; but
underlying a somewhat melancholy composure and aspect there were
depths of tenderness known only to those who knew his whole nature and
his inward life, and it is well for those by whom he is mourned if
they can find what he has described in a letter to be his great
consolation in all his experiences of the death of those he loved
(experiences which had begun early and had not been few), "that the
past is sacred and sanctified; nothing can happen hereafter to disturb
or obliterate it; nor need the recollection have any bitterness if a
man does not, out of a false and morbid sentiment, make it so for
himself."

And he adds:

To me there are no companions more welcome, cordial, consolatory or
cheerful than my dead friends.

ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM

After Tennyson's and Hallam's memorable journey to the Pyrenees in aid of the revolutionary movement against King Ferdinand of Spain, vividly described by Carlyle in his _Life of John Sterling_.

Alfred Tennyson (in profile), John Harden and Mrs. Harden (on the left), and the Miss Hardens.]

ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM

By DR. JOHN BROWN

[The following article, containing the Memoir of Arthur Hallam by his
father, Henry Hallam, is reprinted from _Horae Subsecivae_.--ED.]

PRAESENS imperfectum,--perfectum, plusquam perfectum
FUTURUM.--GROTIUS.

The idea of thy life shall sweetly creep
Into my study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of thy life
Shall come apparelled in more precious habit--
More moving delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of my soul,
Than when thou livedst indeed.
_Much Ado about Nothing._

In the chancel of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, rest the mortal remains of Arthur Henry Hallam, eldest son of our great philosophic historian and critic,--and the friend to whom "In Memoriam" is sacred. This place was selected by his father, not only from the connection of kindred, being the burial-place of his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton, but likewise "on account of its still and sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel." That lone hill, with its humble old church, its outlook over the waste of waters, where "the stately ships go on," was, we doubt not, in Tennyson's mind when the poem, "Break, break, break," which contains the burden of that volume in which are enshrined so much of the deepest affection, poetry, philosophy, and godliness, rose into his "study of imagination"--"into the eye and prospect of his soul."[110]

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

Out of these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the sea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all "In Memoriam," as a stream flows out of its spring-all is here. "I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,"--"the touch of the vanished hand--the sound of the voice that is still,"--the body and soul of his friend. Rising as it were out of the midst of the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death:

The mountain infant to the sun comes forth
Like human life from darkness;

and how its waters flow on! carrying life, beauty, magnificence,--shadows and happy lights, depths of blackness, depths clear as the very body of heaven. How it deepens as it goes, involving larger interests, wider views, "thoughts that wander through eternity," greater affections, but still retaining its pure living waters, its unforgotten burden of love and sorrow. How it visits every region! "The long unlovely street," pleasant villages and farms, "the placid ocean-plains," waste howling wildernesses, grim woods, _nemorumque noctem_, informed with spiritual fears, where may be seen, if shapes they may be called:

Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,
And Time the Shadow;

now within hearing of the Minster clock, now of the College bells, and the vague hum of the mighty city. And overhead through all its course the heaven with its clouds, its sun, moon, and stars; but always, and in all places, declaring its source; and even when laying its burden of manifold and faithful affection at the feet of the Almighty Father, still remembering whence it came:

That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.

It is to that chancel, and to the day, 3rd January 1834, that he refers in Poem XVIII. of "In Memoriam":

'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid,
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.

'Tis little; but it looks in truth
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest
And in the places of his youth.

And again in XIX.:

The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken'd heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills;
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.

Here, too, it is, LXVII.:

When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest
By that broad water of the west,
There comes a glory on the walls:

Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,
And o'er the number of thy years.

This young man, whose memory his friend has consecrated in the hearts of all who can be touched by such love and beauty, was in nowise unworthy of all this. It is not for us to say, for it was not given to us the sad privilege to know, all that a father's heart buried with his son in that grave, all "the hopes of unaccomplished years"; nor can we feel in its fulness all that is meant by

such
A friendship as had master'd Time;
Which masters Time indeed, and is
Eternal, separate from fears:
The all-assuming months and years
Can take no part away from this.

But this we may say, we know nothing of in all literature to compare with the volume from which these lines are taken, since David lamented with this lamentation: "The beauty of Israel is slain. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither rain upon you. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me, thy love for me was wonderful." We cannot, as some have done, compare it with Shakespeare's sonnets, or with "Lycidas." In spite of the amazing genius and tenderness, the never-wearying, all-involving reiteration of passionate attachment, the idolatry of admiring love, the rapturous devotedness, displayed in these sonnets, we cannot but agree with Mr. Hallam in thinking "that there is a tendency now, especially among young men of poetical tempers, to exaggerate the beauties of these remarkable productions"; and though we would hardly say with him, "that it is impossible not to wish that Shakespeare had never written them," giving us, as they do, and as perhaps nothing else could do, such proof of a power of loving, of an amount of _attendrissement_, which is not less wonderful than the bodying forth of that myriad-mind which gave us Hamlet, and Lear, Cordelia, and Puck, and all the rest, and indeed explaining to us how he could give us all these;--while we hardly go so far, we agree with his other wise words:--"There is a weakness and folly in all misplaced and excessive affection"; which in Shakespeare's case is the more distressing, when we consider that "Mr. W. H., the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets," was, in all likelihood, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a man of noble and gallant character, but always of licentious life.

As for "Lycidas," we must confess that the poetry--and we all know how consummate it is--and not the affection, seems uppermost in Milton's mind, as it is in ours. The other element, though quick and true, has no glory through reason of the excellency of that which invests it. But there is no such drawback in "In Memoriam." The purity, the temperate but fervent goodness, the firmness and depth of nature, the impassioned logic, the large, sensitive, and liberal heart, the reverence and godly fear, of

That friend of mine who lives in God,

which from these Remains we know to have dwelt in that young soul, give to "In Memoriam" the character of exactest portraiture. There is no excessive or misplaced affection here; it is all founded in fact: while everywhere and throughout it all, affection--a love that is wonderful--meets us first and leaves us last, giving form and substance and grace, and the breath of life and love, to everything that the poet's thick-coming fancies so exquisitely frame. We can recall few poems approaching to it in this quality of sustained affection. The only English poems we can think of as of the same order, are Cowper's lines on seeing his mother's portrait:

O that these lips had language!

Burns' "To Mary in Heaven"; and two pieces of Vaughan--one beginning

O thou who know'st for whom I mourn;

and the other:

They are all gone into the world of light.

But our object now is, not so much to illustrate Mr. Tennyson's verses, as to introduce to our readers, what we ourselves have got so much delight, and, we trust, profit from--_The Remains in Verse and Prose, of Arthur Henry Hallam_, 1834; privately printed. We had for many years been searching for this volume, but in vain; a sentence quoted by Henry Taylor struck us, and our desire was quickened by reading "In Memoriam." We do not remember when we have been more impressed than by these Remains of this young man, especially when taken along with his friend's Memorial; and instead of trying to tell our readers what this impression is, we have preferred giving them as copious extracts as our space allows, that they may judge and enjoy for themselves. The italics are our own. We can promise them few finer, deeper, and better pleasures than reading, and detaining their minds over these two books together, filling their hearts with the fulness of their truth and tenderness. They will see how accurate as well as how affectionate and "of imagination all compact" Tennyson is, and how worthy of all that he has said of him, that friend was. The likeness is drawn _ad vivum_:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
He summons up remembrance of things past.

"The idea of his Life" has been sown a natural body, and has been raised a spiritual body, but the identity is unhurt; the countenance shines and the raiment is white and glistering, but it is the same face and form.

The Memoir is by Mr. Hallam. We give it entire, not knowing anywhere a nobler or more touching record of a father's love and sorrow.

Arthur Henry Hallam was born in Bedford Place,[111] London, on the 1st
of February 1811. Very few years had elapsed before his parents
observed strong indications of his future character, in a peculiar
clearness of perception, a facility of acquiring knowledge, and, above
all, in an undeviating sweetness of disposition, and adherence to his
sense of what was right and becoming. As he advanced to another stage
of childhood, it was rendered still more manifest that he would be
distinguished from ordinary persons, by an increasing thoughtfulness,
and a fondness for a class of books, which in general are so little
intelligible to boys of his age, that they excite in them no kind of
interest.

In the summer of 1818 he spent some months with his parents in Germany
and Switzerland, and became familiar with the French language, which
he had already learned to read with facility. He had gone through the
elements of Latin before this time; but that language having been laid
aside during his tour, it was found upon his return that, a variety of
new scenes having effaced it from his memory, it was necessary to
begin again with the first rudiments. He was nearly eight years old at
this time; and in little more than twelve months he could read Latin
with tolerable facility. In this period his mind was developing itself
more rapidly than before; he now felt a keen relish for dramatic
poetry, and wrote several tragedies, if we may so call them, either in
prose or verse, with a more precocious display of talents than the
Editor remembers to have met with in any other individual. The natural
pride, however, of his parents, did not blind them to the uncertainty
that belongs to all premature efforts of the mind; and they so
carefully avoided everything like a boastful display of blossoms
which, in many cases, have withered away in barren luxuriance, that
the circumstances of these compositions was hardly ever mentioned out
of their own family.

In the spring of 1820, Arthur was placed under the Rev. W. Carmalt, at
Putney, where he remained nearly two years. After leaving this school,
he went abroad again for some months; and, in October 1822, became the
pupil of the Rev. E. C. Hawtrey, an Assistant Master of Eton College.
At Eton he continued till the summer of 1827. He was now become a good
though not perhaps a first-rate scholar in the Latin and Greek
languages. The loss of time, relatively to this object, in travelling,
but far more his increasing avidity for a different kind of knowledge,
and the strong bent of his mind to subjects which exercise other
faculties than such as the acquirement of languages calls into play,
will sufficiently account for what might seem a comparative deficiency
in classical learning. It can only, however, be reckoned one,
comparatively to his other attainments, and to his remarkable facility
in mastering the modern languages. The Editor has thought it not
improper to print in the following pages an Eton exercise, which, as
written before the age of fourteen, though not free from metrical and
other errors, appears, perhaps to a partial judgment, far above the
level of such compositions. It is remarkable that he should have
selected the story of Ugolino, from a poet with whom, and with whose
language, he was then but very slightly acquainted, but who was
afterwards to become, more perhaps than any other, the master-mover of
his spirit. It may be added, that great judgment and taste are
perceptible in this translation, which is by no means a literal one;
and in which the phraseology of Sophocles is not ill substituted, in
some passages, for that of Dante.