BOOKS.

SIR WILLIAM HUNTER.*

No Indian official has ever gained the ear of the English public so intimately as Sir William Hunter, whose death early in last year was a very real loss to Indian interests. Sir Alfred Lyall has, of course, a large and appreciative audience, but it belongs to a different and a more fastidious degree of intellect. Hunter appealed frankly to the general, and his biographer very justly traces the influence of Macaulay in his style and methods. He had something of the same brilliant lucidity in his arrangement, thought, and diction, and he had the " gif tie" of recognising his special powers. Though well-educated and a favourite pupil of Buchanan—" Logic Bob" —at Glasgow University ; an omnivorous and enthusiastic reader, moreover, who "kept up" his classics, loved his Shake- speare, and was neirei without a book in his pocket during his favourite rambles and driving-tours ; he had not the scholar's cast of mind, and whilst he delighted in research when the subject had wide bearings, he had not the patience for the minute investigations of the specialist. Whatever he did must appeal to the interest of the average man, and though he recognised the value and largely used the results of special scholars, he prized them chiefly as auxiliaries to broader work. "I am not one of those," he wrote, "who are careful only about the matter of history: such men may be

great chroniclers but they are seldom standard writers I do think that in the matter of style I

should have a fair chance of succeeding." No man knew better to whom to apply for the particular knowledge he required, and none made more systematic use of other men's labour; but he realised that his true gift lay in methodising and .giving popular expression to researches which without his clear co-ordination and his admirable style could never reach the general public and coax them against their will to take an interest in India. If Fawcett was the "Member for India," Hunter was the voice of India in the Press,—whether the fugitive newspaper or the standard book of reference. • His unrivalled power of organised work enabled him to carry through vast literary schemes and support varied and pressing duties which would have crushed a less methodical man. He had a wonderful grasp of detail, an art of marshalling facts, and a knack of getting people to find them for him and arrange them' as he wished; and when all was collected and ordered he had the gift of putting in those final vital touches which, like expression in a portrait, belongs to genius. No one could make Indian life, Indian history, Indian politics live in vivid English as Hunter did.

• Life of Sir William Wilson Hunter, K.C.S.I., C.I.B. By Francis Henry Skrine. Loudon: Longraans and Co. -Dec nog -

Such works as The Annals of Rural Bengal and The Old Missionary have permanent vitality as much by their power of sympathetic expression and of genuine pathos as by their truthful revelation of a life which to most Anglo-Indians is a sealed book. In their way they are master- pieces, and the man who could write them possessed some of the rare qualities of the poet. Throughout Hunter's writings, as we see also in his correspondence, there ran a vein of romantic enthusiasm, of Eastern glamour, which gave its own colour and richness to his style, and made his pictures of Indian life the unique things they are. In his case, assuredly, Is style c'est l'homme.

These lighter works, however, give no idea of the incredible laboriousness of the man. He could and did work against pain and sickness, and his biographer doubts if he ever had a week of perfect health in his life. Whatever his health or mood, his mornings were invariably devoted to hard writing.

No one who has not tried it can realise the amount of planning and drudgery involved in such tasks as his Imperial Gazetteer of India. The study of the annals of his district led to the great scheme which took the shape of the Statistical Account of Bengal, in twenty-two volumes, two of which, on Assam, were his own unaided work, whilst the rest were produced by a staff of assistants under his direction. The final outcome of these topographical and statistical labours was the Imperial Gazetteer of India, of which Mr. Skrine says :—

" The 'Imperial Gazetteer of India' was the sublimated 6131313IICO of a hundred volumes of Statistical Accounts relating to the various provinces, which had been in process of compilation under his guidance for twelve years. It had cost somewhat less than the £13,000 allotted by the Government of India, and was finished well within the limit of four years and seven months assigned to the task. In no other country had a survey of any- thing like the same magnitude been conducted with such exact punctuality and with so small an outlay. Seventeen years were taken up in marshalling the result of the inquiries in Egypt made at the beginning of the century by Denon and his French colleagues. The Statistical Survey of Bengal, which was ordered by the East India Company in 1807, cost £30,000, and was never brought to a conclusion. Hunter broke the long spell of disap- pointment and failure which hung over the efforts of the Indian Government towards rendering an account of its stewardship. By a rare combination of qualities he accomplished a feat which was a necessary complement to the creation of an Indian Empire. He revealed the vast fabric to his countrymen, and enabled them to perform their trust under the guidance of the fullest know- ledge."

It is probably on the Gazetteer and its allied statistical accounts that Hunter's ultimate fame will rest. It is a great work, giving an orderly conspectus of all parts of India in their physical, historical, political, and commercial aspects, and abounding in valuable information conveyed in the clearest and most systematic form. It is not faultless, and there is room for revision in the new (third) edition which is already needed; but the work as it stands is a noble memorial of the lucid and energetic mind which conceived it. Like everything Hunter wrote, it is a practical work of general use, not a mine of out-of-the-way research for specialists. His long connection with the Press, both at Calcutta and in London, strengthened that power of keeping in touch with the thoughts and requirements of the average man which was among Hunter's notable qualities. He was a born journalist; but whilst always writing practical common-sense, he pre- served his fine literary expression. One sees the same lucidity and power of keeping to the main point in his admirable biographies of Dalhousie and Mayo.

The life of such a man is necessarily uneventful, and whilst we can well believe that every page will be interesting and sug- gestive to the student of Indian subjects, it is possible that the general reader will find Mr. Skrine's appreciative biography rather long. The numerous extracts from diaries and letters to his children, though they set the writer before us in a very attractive light, interrupt the story of his work in India.

Everybody, however, has his own way of writing biography, and most Lives insist upon being written in an individual way. Probably Hunter's was no exception, and Mr. Skrine found it impossible to keep the two threads—official and domestic —separate. He has certainly succeeded in making us see Hunter in his home circle and among his friends as he really was, and as we read his last chapters we seem to find our- selves once more at Oaken Holt on a Sunday, walking through the woods with its bluff but genial host and the friends who were always coming out from Oxford.

iHunter was seen at his best in his own house, and he made himself a lovely home and drew the utmost happiness from it. His sense of humour-and love of fan never deserted him ' even in the greatest stress of work, and it had free play at home. Mr. Skrine knew Oaken Holt too, and he has made its master live in his pages. We are not sure that he is equally suceessful in describing his official and literary life, and we cannot help thinking that the account would have been clearer and better for the omission of a large number of letters.

Hunter's are often brilliant, especially in his younger and more leisured days ; but one may have too much of even a good thing. There is also a trick of exaggerated language, to which Hunter himself was prone—as when he records that he has recently examined "the whole body of modern Indian literature "—which a biographer should eschew. Hunter's tact and other estimable qualities are all " consummate " ; his Annals of Rural Bengal" astonished the world " ; the biographer

. is filled with "amazement at the exuberance and literary gift" of Hunter's leading articles; and believes that the influence of the Annals is to be seen in Green's Short History of the English People. Such "tall writing" as " Sarum's cloud- piercing spire" andPompeirs "mighty civilisation entombed" is better left out. Two ill-informed and misleading notes on Lord Elgin's Chinese diplomacy and the ' Arrow ' War are quite gratuitous, and when revising for a new edition Mr. Skrine might correct the few printer's errors or oversights, such as "G. B. Eastwick," p. 32; "area," p. 100; " blunder- iug," p. 126; "R. 0. Osborn," p. 205; "Fellow of Trinity" (for Queens), p. 241; " bicyle," p. 290; "Gerald Ritchie," p. 363; and " Mahrunmadan," passim.

Among the letters which we could by no means spare is that to Sir James Fitzjames Stephen written when Hunter was preparing to act as Indian correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette. It gives an admirable summary of the political views of a man who, while mainly engaged in statistical and historical work, took his share—a very courageous and out- spoken share—in the political work of his time in India :—

" You know my confession of faith. I disbelieve in direct taxation, except for the richer classes who dwell in cities. I believe the differential duties on salt and the vast in- ternal customs lines which we still maintain to be a serious hindrance to trade, and a baneful relic of native misrule. I believe that jails should be places of discipline, and not almshouses for the criminal classes. I believe that the Army administration is not in accord with the increased facilities of communication and transport, and that three Commanders-in-Chief, with as many separate headquarters, are a wasteful anachronism. I dis- believe in calling a thin veneer of English culture for the upper classes a system of public instruction, and I think that Sir George Campbell is doing a, great and long-needed work by educating the common people. I believe that, with the steady decline irt the purchasing power of silver, the land revenue in temporarily settled provinces should be fixed in grain. I believe that, with our great body of half-trained Judges, the law should be simplified

by codification Among men, I believe that Lord Mayo was, on the whole, the strongest and ablest Viceroy since India passed

to the Crown; to be a man selfishly religions but worldly- wise, and likely to succeed except at a great crisis; and Sir John Strachey to be the ablest Indian public servant of our times— one who only needs a crisis to issue from it as Governor-General. I think Lord Northbrook a most laborious worker, with a good, firm will of his own. For years I have fought for these prin- ciples, and even in my short career I have seen many of them triumph. If the Pall Mail will have me on these terms, I will do my best for it; but they are the principles of my life, and I cannot depart from them."

It is a fine manly statement, and even those who disagreed with Hunter's views, and especially with his early inclination

towards Congress ideas, will admire its frankness. Courage, physical and moral, was the keynote of his character. The man who never lost his head when steering a cranky yacht in a squall, or driving a pair of half-broken thoroughbreds in the dark in an unknown country, was no less plucky in fighting the cause of the Indian peoples against obsolete pre- judice in high quarters. No one can read this absorbing book without a better appreciation of the fine qualities of the sturdy Scotsman who"was not only our most sympathetic writer on Indian subjects, but was also a vivid personality and every inch a man.