BOOKS.
ARCHBISHOP TAIT.*
FFIRBT NOTICE.]
THE two portraits which form the frontispieces of the two volumes of this biography illustrate it with a singular felicity. One is subscribed, "A. C. Tait, Rugby," and must therefore belong to some time during the period. 1842-1850,—that is to Bay, between the future Archbishop's thirty-first and thirty- ninth years. The second bears the date of "July 29, 1878." No one would suppose, we venture to say, that they repre- sented the same person. The Rugby portrait shows a smooth, pleasing face, with traces of decided weakness about the chin ; the other displays as strong and masculine a countenance as one would wish to see. And this is an epitome of Dr. Tait's life. We have never read of a man who developed so much in mature life. Few men grow much in mental or moral strength after thirty. Some famous revivalist preacher is said to have declared that he never knew a man converted after thirty. That was, of course, a rhetorical statement, made, we imagine, to make a special impression on a youthful audience. But it represents a fact. We do not expect much change in a man after he has reached his full growth. He gathers experience, and possibly learns by it, but he does not become really bigger or stronger. Take as an instance a prelate, very admirable in his way, in some respects more near to the ideal Bishop than Dr. Tait ever was, Christopher Wordsworth of Lincoln. He was exactly the same man, one might almost say, when he gave up his See at seventy-seven, as when he left Harrow for a Canonry at Westminster forty years before. But one of the most notable things in this highly interesting biography is that its subject grew almost as much out of recognition in nature as be see= to have done in face.
Archibald Campbell Tait was the youngest son of a numerous family. His grandfather came of a yeoman stock, but migrating to Edinburgh, became a Writer to the Signet, and accumulated a handsome fortune, which the son failed to keep together. Archibald Tait, the grandson, grown to boyhood (he was born with club-feet, a deformity of which he was cured by a Lan- cashire bone-setter), was one of the first pupils of the newly founded Edinburgh Academy. He was not sixteen when he left it as duos, carrying of six of the foremost prizes. Four years at Glasgow University followed. In 1830 he was elected by the Professors to an exhibition on the Snell foundation, an endowment which provided for the support of Glasgow scholars at Balliol College, Oxford. He attributed, more than half in jest, his election to the hospitality of his uncle, Sir Archibald Campbell; but the list of his successes at the University is ample enough to account for it. The Snell ex- hibitioners were not always welcome at Balliol, then, under the rule of Dr. Jenkyns, rising to the foremost place among Oxford Colleges; but young Tait made his way from the first. " Allow me to ask," said the Master to him when he had acquitted himself well in an "unseen" passage from the Pharealice," with what view you come here ?" "First, in order to study, and also, I hope, to benefit by the society of the College," was the eminently judicious answer. Learning was a great thing in Dr. jenkyns's eyes ; but to be a member of Balliol was at least as great. He went into residence in October, 1830, and in his first term won a Balliol scholarship.
He took his degree in the usual course in November, 1833, obtaining a first-class in Liter s° Humaniores. His strong point was philosophy, in which he acquitted himself so much to the satisfaction of William Sewell (of Exeter), who examined him in that subject, that Sewell recommended him to several pupils. He was not a fine scholar, in the technical sense of that word. The most notable thing about his under- graduate career was his eminence in the Union debates. He was President of the Society in his last year. A less felicitous distinction was, that he was fined for disregarding the ruling of the President in a "private business" debate. The Presi- dent was Robert Lowe, now Lord Sherbrooke. "It is the only occasion," he writes, "on which I ever fined an Arch- bishop for disorderly behaviour." It is interesting to read that his last speech at the Union was in support of a motion re- commending the endowment of the Roman Catholic priest- hood in Ireland, a, policy to which he adhered for the rest of * Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Cant.rburp. By Randall Thomas Davidson, D.D., and William Bonham, B.D. 2 vol.. London: Mac- millan and Co. 18B1.
his life, and which would certainly have saved a world of trouble.
A year afterwards came his election to a Balliol Fellowship, a success which he shared with Mr. W. G. Ward; and, again, in another year his appointment to a Tutorship. He had taken orders, and he found time for the curacy of a neglected parish some five miles from Oxford. This charge, undertaken without salary, exhibits a side of Tait's character which is sometimes forgotten in his eminence as an administrator and statesman,
his Christian philanthropy. He was very zealous alwaya for the spiritual welfare of others. In 1830 a chance, as it seemed, of that enviable post, a Scotch Professorship, presented itself ; but it was weighted with the obligation of signing the Westminster Confession. Tait was vainly told that "three bigoted Episcopalians" had swallowed this test ; he refused to follow their example, and his candidature was withdrawn. It can hardly be doubted that success would have cut short the career which was to bring him the greatest dignity that a subject can hold.
In 1841 came the publication of Tract XC. Tait was one of the "Pour Tutors" who signed the famous remonstrance to. the editor of the Tracts. The letter was, indeed, almost wholly his composition. The history of these events has been so recently discussed, that it may well be passed over on the present occasion. Still, it is only fair to vindicate the writer from the charge which has been freely brought against him of narrowness and bigotry. It is enough, for this purpose, to quote Mr. Ward's own testimony to "the remarkably tem- perate and Christian tone of the paper which began the contest." We may quote from the letters which are given in reference to the subject, a characteristic utterance of A. P. Stanley : "Do not draw these Articles too tight, or they will strangle more parties than one." Tait did not learn the wisdom of this advice all at once, but he certainly learnt it. Stanley had already got a long way. "I myself," he writes, "sea no reason against Roman Catholics being Anglicans except the impracticability of it." The chapters dealing with the Oxford life are completed by a most interesting letter from the Dean of Durham, himself one of Tait's pupils, along with, to quote the names which he gives, "Sir John Wickens, Stanley, Goulburn, Jowett, Clough, Sir Stafford Northoote, Lord Coleridge, Bishop Temple, and Matthew Arnold." "The ablest tutor in Oxford," he calls him, and he quotes with approval the dictum of another Dean: "They may talk as they like about their new style of teaching, but my notion of a good education is what we used to get from dear old Tait and Scott." It is anticipating what is to come, but we must quote from the same letter a saying of Mr. Gladstone's at the time of the Archbishop's death. Twenty-six years before that event, Mr. Gladstone had been disappointed that Tait was preferred to Wilberforce for the See of London, and now he said to Dr. Lake: " Ah I remember your maintaining to me at that time that his oqaponlc and his judgment would make him a great Bishop."
Tait, it is clear, was not sorry to leave Oxford when, in the year after the Tract X0. affair, Dr. Arnold's death made a vacancy at Rugby. It was a great post to fill, and his com- petitors were formidable. The names of Merivale, Blakesley, and Bonamy Price are found among the candidates, while C. J. Vaughan was left in to the last, Some trustees, we learn, had put Tait's name first on their list, and all had put him second. We may frankly say that, in view of some of his. competitors, this would not be easy to understand but for his action of the year before at Oxford. With a body so con- stituted as the Rugby Trustees, it was no small recommenda- tion to have been one of the prominent protesters against Tractarian ism.
It is difficult either to affirm or to deny that the choice was justified by the result. On the one hand, it may seem enough to say that the school did not lose, under his hands, either in prestige or in numbers. A successor to Arnold could hardly have done more. Yet it is allowed by all who were most competent to judge, that he was not specially fitted for a Head-Master ; while his scholarship was certainly below the standard. That he did well, as he certainly did, was due to, qualities which could hardly have been discerned in him when he was elected. In fact, at Rugby, as elsewhere, he developed, when the occasion came. The eight years in the Head- Master's house at Rugby were followed by six years in the Deanery of Carlisle. This period, to the outside world, was chiefly distinguished by the share which he took in the University Commission of 185O-52. His work as Dean was unpretending but useful, The Cathedral was in a deplorable -condition, and he had the satisfaction of seeing it restored. The estates were let on the wasteful system of fines and quit- rents, and it was largely owing to his personal influence and exertions that the Chapter, in spite of the reluctance of some of its members, availed itself of the Act of 1851, by which facilities for introducing a better management were given. (By transferring the eapittaar estates to the Ecclesi- astical Commissioners, it was rendered possible to run out the leases without loss to individual beneficiaries.) In various schemes for benefiting the Carlisle people, he was, according
• to custom, unweariedly active.
In 1856 came the great sorrow of his life, the loss of five daughters by virulent scarlet-fever within the course of little more than a month (the third daughter, Charlotte, died on March fith, the second, Mary, on April 8th). The biographers pass over the facts with simple mention, for the story has been already told by the bereaved mother in. a narrative of match- less pathos. What they have added is to be found in scattered notices which testify to the singularly bright and engaging character of the children who were swept away by this terrible calamity. In the autumn of the same year, Lord Palmerston offered hint the Bishopric of London. He had the modified approval of Lord Shaftesbury, as being by very much the best of the dangerous Arnoldian school," He was known as a moderate Liberal, Who had done good work wherever he had been, and who had been specially dis- tinguished in the cause of University Reform. Yet there was something strange in the choice. He was not, as far as men knew, of the calibre which justified a departure from the rule, broken once only during two centuries, that the Bishop of London must have first proved his fitness in some less important See. His friends believed in him ; but the outside world knew little of him, except, indeed, as the sufferer from an almost unparalleled domestic loss. The sympathy felt for him in tbe highest quarters was freely mentioned as one of the causes of his promotion. Very likely it had something to do with it, To attribute it to a sagacious insight in Lord Palmerston would be natural, did not the character of that Minister's episcopal appointments forbid the idea. On the whole, we must agree with the Archbishop's biographers when they say that "the exact influences which led to his nomina- tion to the See of London are not now ascertainable." That Lord Shaftesbury, moved by Dr. Tait's sister, Lady Wake, named him to the Premier, we know. Perhaps that is enough. But, however decided, the choice was a happy one.
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