BOOKS.
MR. JOHN MORLEY'S MISCELLANIES.* Monsasv has reprinted from the Fortnightly Review several essays. He has revised and enlarged. them ; he has added one or two other papers, and the result is this volume. The subjects are not quite unconnected. A review of M. Taine's Les Origines la France Contemporaine, a biographical essay on Robespierre, and another on Turgot, form almost one whole ; and no fewer than three essays devoted to Mr. Mill survey his character and work from almost every possible aspect. Furthermore, these Miscel- lanies have at least this not unimportant bond of union,—they all relate to subjects most interesting to an interesting mind ; they all deal with weighty themes, of moment to our times, in a grave spirit. Mr. Morley here, as in all his writings, seta an example to his literary brethren by disdaining to bend his talents to frivolous and intrinsically poor, even if attractive, themes. Ile stands erect ; never puts his pen at the service of any but what he conceives to be a worthy as well as true cause ; and holds himself aloof from the modern conception of the man of letters as a sort of purveyor of a subtle luxury,— a sublimer kind of Italian warehousemen. He himself has shielded Mr. Mill from criticism, on the score of his "disgust at the aim- lessness and insignificance of most of our social intercourse." He has asked us to observe with pleasure that in Mr. Mill's case "to extraordinary intellectual attainments was added the gift of a firm and steadfast self-respect, which unfortunately does not always go with them." We may apply to Mr. Morley's own work hia own phrase, and say that it shows everywhere one of the rarest of gifts among our literary men, "firm and steadfast self-respect." We must say more to Mr. Morley's honour, in order to speak fully our mind. There is an elevation about every page ; we are carried to altitudes where the breezy air is good to breathe. Though erroneous and one-sided, as we conceive, in many ways, * Critical Miscellanim By John Morley. Second Series. Chapman and Hall.
though harsh and unjust in many of their judgments, the essays, as a rule, touch the very high-water mark in English criticism. There is decision and force in them. Each question is decided by appeal to clear fundamental principles. His canons of criticism, 'alike whether philosophy, morals, or literature is in dispute, are held with knowledge of adverse views, and profess to have their pillars sunk deep in the lower strata of fact. We are not going to heap extravagant words of praise on this volume ; but where, with all its shortcomings, shall we find among the men who now- a-days try, sentence, and sign the death-warrants of books and philosophies, and who banish into the obscurity of exile, or call to higher thrones and principalities of thought than ever were theirs in life, the dead monarchs of the mind, more judicial gravity, snore scrupulous reference to durable and solid benefit, as distinguished frcim what is evanescent and superficial? If the prisoner is found guilty, as we conceive, sometimes in opposition to the evidence, there is at least the form of a trial, according to the common law of literature.
And yet true judicial impartiality is absent. Mr. Morley has anti- pathies, violent antipathies ; and when one of the objects of his dislike comes across his track, he shakes off the philosopher, flies to arms, and indulges in a bout of cudgelling with most unfeigned good-will. He inculcates literary charity, and he practises it to all, except those whom he dislikes. The paper on Macaulay comes at once to mind, as a sample of this RIM inclicputtio, which may help to make good poetry, but is anything but an assistant of the critic. The remarks were written before Mr. Trevelyan's biography of his uncle saw the light, but that is of no consequence. We do not much marvel that Mr. Morley says in a note that having read the biography, and examined his criticism in the light of it, "I mil well pleased to find that not an epithet needs to be altered, so independent is opinion as to this strong man's work, of our esteem for his loyal and upright character," because the spirit which could have penned this angry caricature of Macaulay was not likely to be influenced by any further light as to the nature of the man. But why should Macaulay come in for round abuse, and be treated as if he were no better than Mr. Hepworth Dixon ? we could not expect Mr. Morley to be closely drawn to a writer who never knelt to his idols, who was of opposite temperament to him in every respect, and who was, to be frank, lacking in the very organ of speculation. We anticipated that he would judge with coldness and asperity Macaulay's frigid, inadequate, Whig view of life, and that he would rate rather cheaply a historian who despised philosophies of history, and who aspired not much higher than to realise Thucydides' conception of his art. But Mr. Morley has a genuine liking for literary merit in itself, and how comes it that he should blind himself to everything but Macaulay's faults, and should brandish them in the public gaze with a CLT- tain exulting ferocity ? He talks about Macaulay's " hectoring sentences and rough, pistolling ways." "flow poor is the rhythm of Macaulay's prose," he says in one place ; "grievous garishness," "stamping emphasis," " overcoloured tropes," "exaggerated expressions," "unlovely staccato," " u n tempered. crudity," "vulgar gaudiness," are some of:the epithets hurled at him, in the course of a few pages. Mr. Morley will not allow Macaulay the secondary merit of being a genuinely picturesque writer,—it is " only the literary picturesqueness, a kind of infinitely glorified newspaper reporting." There is little but bard words for Macaulay's intellectual character. He is charged with a fondness for vulgar. effects, and even with worse predilections. " The wiue of truth la in his cup a brandied draught, a hundred degrees above proof, and he too often replenishes the lamp of know- ledge with naphtha instead of fine oil,"—a strident sentence, which, we venture to think, exemplifies "the untempered crudity" of which Mr. Morley has been speaking. Is not this quite one-sided, a harsh judgment, springing from in- difference to the real work, limited, but important, which Macaulay did ? Does not Mr. Morley lose patience with hitn, and despise him because he is silent about the things of which Mr. Morley's favourite authors talk most? "A man of letters, in an age of battle and transition like our own, fades into an ever- deepening distance, unless he has while he writes the presenti- ment of the eve,—a feeling of the difficulties and interests that will engage and distract mankind on the morrow." And so, be- cause Macaulay was not of a speculative, critical east of mind, and because he had nothing to say of the problems which perplex the souls of his contemporaries, he is to be swiftly forgotten ! As if those who plunged into the thickest of the battle, and bore the deepest impress of this age of transition, were likely to be most acceptable to posterity ; as if it were not often the case that seclusion from the tempests of the time
made the man of letters fare the better with those who remember not the petty sorrows that have been, and the little whims of by-gone days. We are not seeking to place Macaulay on any of the topmost pinnacles of eminence. But let us be just enough to own that with all his faults—so easy to sig,nalisc—lie must always occupy a memorable place in oar literature ; that he has shown new capabilities in the language for lucidity and conciseness ; that he chased from the common English tongue much pompous indirect and abstract phraseology ; and that a man who was the faithful minister of constitutional liberty, and who has done as much as any of his countrymen to make them proud of and interested in their worthiest heroes, is not to be scurvily treated or put down as an adventurer who has been moving in society above him.
The essay on " Turgot" is probably about as complete a biography of the illustrious Minister as we have in English. We have taken the trouble to compare it occasionally with .M. Fonda's essay on Turgot, and have found in it the essence of all that is contained in that great magazine of information respecting Turgot. If there be any notable omission, it is this, that Blr. Morley scarcely interests himself sufficiently or proportionately in the economical labours of Turgot. Mr. Morley is so absorbed in the contemplation of his hero's relation to the French Revolution, that he takes no due reckoning of Turgot's work as an economist.
" Robespierre " is an animated narrative, so animated as to inspire us with the hope that if Mr. Morley ever thinks of writing any large history, he may succeed in a remarkable way. It takes in the main the view of Robespierre's character to which opinion is slowly settling down ; that his viciousness was rather a thinness of soul, incapacity to feel or know anything really grand or generous, or let us add, to be the monster at heart he is popularly represented. But why should this grotesque and acrid bit be interpolated ?— " Condoreet, the youngest of the intimates and disciples of Vol- taire, of D'Alembert, of Targot, was the first to sound bitter warning that Robespierre was at heart a priest. The stiggestion was more than a gibe. Priest is the mystagogue in office ; his own authority is bound up with the prosperity and acceptance of his holy wares ; he holds the necessity of an intervener and in- terpreter, and that intervener is himself ; his spirit has no elasti- city, no plianoy, no spaciousness ; it stifles and is stifled. Deci- dedly Robespierre had the sacerdotal temperament, its sense of personal importance, its thin unction, its private leanings to the stake and the cord ; and he had one of those deplorable natures that seem as if they had never in their lives known the careless joys of a spring-time." The consideration of the three pieces on Mr. Mill would lead us far afield, and into the discussion of very profound differences of conviction ; but we cannot help referring to a brief lecture on " Popular Culture," which contains some of the best. things uttered about education in this generation.
Mr. Morley has said in these essays so much about style, that he will not be surprised that his readers fix their eyes intently on his own. Of the critic of style, Mr. Morley has said that he "is not the dancing-master, declaiming on the deep, ineffable things that lie in a minuet. Ile is not the virtuoso of gerundives and supines. The morality of style goes deeper than dull fools sup- pose." Precisely so ; we would put gerundives and supines aside. We would in passing bear witness to the richness and music and the subtle tones of Mr. Morley's style ; we would say next to nothing of its tendency to indulge in sluggish abstract terms, such as'' the corporate spirit,"—of some dubious words, suchas "ripost" or" equivoke,"—or occasional leaden verbal combinations, such as "to translate action into the phrases of revolutionary policy." But a word as to "the morality of style ;" in other words, the question of its perfect truthfulness. Mr. Morley writes beautifully as a practised artist ; lie can give touches of austere poetry to the most desolate ideas ; he puts into the mouths of human souls hymns of joy, while he leaves them alone on the waves of a shoreless ocean, and bids them hope nothing from the stern stars above or the awful darkness around. He talks at times a quasi-spiritual and mystic language. He speaks with a certain unction of the grace of humility, and sometimes utters the sentiments of d'Holbach in the language of Rousseau. This is not our conception of "the morality of style." If we must accept the brief; stunted destiny indicated to us in these pages, if the race of men fall and wither like the leaves, let us have the courage and truthfulness to say so, and let us not try to hide from ourselves the void into which ourselves and our highest hopes must plunge, by words to which nothing really corresponding exists. . If we must espouse a philosophy of despair, let us do so with forms of words which shall ever remind us that we take it for better or for worse.
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