MR. BRIGHT ON HIMSELF.
MR. BRIGHT teaches us a great lesson on the advantage which a man gains in politics by the power of brood- ing over his own thoughts. That is a power which is, on the
whole, rare among politicians, and yet it adds to their influ- ence over the mind of the people more in proportion perhaps than it adds even to the force of their political counsels. It has lent to Mr. Bright's public career a character, and a colour, and a charm that are quite unique. As a Minister, Mr. Bright has done very little ; but as a man, there is not a single member of any Government for many years back, if we except Mr. Gladstone and Lord Beaconsfield, who has exerted the same spell over the minds of the people. Partly, no doubt, this is due to the singular power of his oratory ; and though it is certain that that power is essentially connected with a brooding imagination, we are far from denying that a great politician might possess it, and yet never have had that com- mand of words which has enabled Mr. Bright to impart to the world at large some share in his visions, and some of the glow of his resentments and his admirations. Still, though without his unique command of words Mr. Bright would not have been what he is, it is not principally his command of words, but his command of what is very different,—the power of painting himself, through his use of words, on our imagina- tions, which has given him his singular position among our statesmen. In his speech at Llandudno, on Thursday, he magnifies the power of popular education, and ascribes to it an influence potent enough to banish drunkenness and to dry up the sources of crime. But he is careful to tell us that the education of which he speaks as so infinitely desirable for every one, is not necessarily the acquisition of learning. " I should be content if the Government of England, by grant or by any other mode, could give to all the families of the work- ing-class an opportunity to learn to read well, to understand well what they read, and to be able to speak and to converse on the questions that come before them. I know I shall be criticised as not being a scholar myself. I am one of those persons who, in the sense of high-cultured people, never had any education. I learnt some Latin, and very little Greek ; but all the Greek has gone long since, and traces only of the Latin still remain. What I want the people to do and know is that which furnishes them for their daily duty, which gives them self-respect and which teaches them to respect others, which makes them better children in their families, which teaches them to have regard and reverence for their parents." That is all Mr. Bright asks for from the education system for the mass of the scholars, but for the few he hopes that it will provide the means of attaining higher learning, of discriminating those who have special powers of their own in any department of learning, and giving them the oppor- tunity of cultivating those powers to the highest point. One would like, however, to ask whether this last opportunity is always one conducing to the good either of the individual or of the State. Let us suppose that Mr. Bright had had ample opportunity of making his " very little Greek " into a substantial knowledge of that language ; that he had learnt enough to read the great Athenian dramatists, to be fascinated by their themes, and to be drawn on to the life of the scholar, instead of the life of the man of business and the politician. Would he have been the gainer, or should we ? Should we have had him musing as much on the political phases of our modern life,—to which much too little musing and too little of the higher passion have been devoted,—or would his musings and his passion have been diverted into those regions of pure poetry into which so many great minds have poured out all their surplus life ? Nay, is it not even possible that in the region of pure erudition and criticism the greater part of Mr. Bright's original power might have been used up altogether, so that he might never have been known as anything but a learned critic of Greek plays, or an eloquent expounder of the secret of Demos- thenic eloquence ? Do we not see in this careful limitation of Mr. Bright's educational hopes to the point of teaching children to respect themselves, to respect others, and to understand something of public life, a certain suspicion of the effect of that powerful drain on the faculties of children which a more elaborate education causes ? And is it not, indeed, more than possible that an elaborate educational system for detecting and improving every latent spark of intellectual power, may result in diverting too much of it from the region of common life to the region of fascinating intellectual ideals ? We suspect that there is too much credulity about the abstract value of the higher education, and especially that men forget how easy it is to divert true imaginative power from the themes where it is most wanted to the themes where it is least wanted,—nay, to divert it from the themes where it will do most, to the themes where it will do least. The most zealous amongst the educators forget that common life needs the ap- plication of all the reserve power of imagination and sympathy at our command, even more than the higher themes ; and they take too often for granted that every boy "of parts," as it is called, should be encouraged to master subjects which, though they do not unfit him for common life, at least render it very much more likely that he will so far use himself up in more distant fields of knowledge, that the stock of energy, which he has at his disposal for common life will be greatly diminished. We want brooding power amongst our politicians more than we want anything else. And it is be- cause Mr. Bright has had it, that he is what he is. We do not want to have our schoolmasters persuading every boy who exhibits this sort of life in his own character, to abandon the life of labour, or trade, or business, for the life of books. We hold that education, not merely for the masses, but also for not a few distinguished from the masses by their unique power of brood- ing over their own thoughts and hopes, should limit itself to developing self-respect and respect for others, and eliciting the larger sympathies of the young, and that educational authori- ties should be quite content to leave in a great many a large reserve of passion, unexhausted by the life of books and literature, to throw itself into the practical themes of the day, and to burn itself out in vivifying the life of politics and of the higher national sympathies, as Mr. Bright's fire bids fair to do.
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