BOOKS.

MISCELLANIES LITERARY AND HISTORICAL.* ALL lovers of literature and history should be extremely grateful to Mr. John Buchan for having induced Lord Rosebery to collect his addresses on non-political subjects, and to Lord Rosebery for not allowing the mock modesty which sometimes overcomes statesmen in retirement to veto such a proposal as Mr. Buchan's on the ground that " nobody will care to read such ephemeral productions," &c., &c. The British public always expects Prime Ministers to add to their other tremendous duties that of public orator to the nation. Is a statue to some great man of letters, or artist, or statesman to be set up, or a historical piece of ground or house to be dedi- cated to public uses, or some important society to be inaugurated, the Prime Minister is sure to be implored, we had almost said coerced, into making the necessary speech. Lord Rosebery, both in office and opposition, was hunted down by what public men's families call " the spoilers of holidays," and no wonder ! Lord Rosebery was not merely a Prime Minister ; he happened to have a power of speech and a knowledge of history and literature which made him the ideal man for the work we have just described.

No man was ever more felicitous in a short speech, no man can be more learned without showing a touch of pedantry, no man has a keener and more intimate conception of the eighteenth century, and, lastly, no man ever had a greater sense of the irony of history than Lord Rosebery. A touch of cynicism, never carried to bitterness, never used in excess, gives the essential zest and animates the whole.

Lord Rosebery understands men, and, what is more, he makes his reader understand them. Take, for example, what he says of Lord George Bentinck in his admirable essay on Lord Randolph Churchill. Lord George Bentinck is for most of us a sombre, enigmatical figure, illuminated in a lightning flash of Disraeli's genius. So wonderful is that flash, and so clear does the figure appear in it for a moment, that we are apt to imagine that Lord George Bentinck was a really great personality. Lord Rosebery in half a page makes us realize the fallacy, and in this conception shows how it arose. He tells us how difficult a task Disraeli had in filling a book about Lord George Bentinck, and how he evaded that difficulty by making the book a party pamphlet • miscellanies Literary and Historical. By Lord Rosebery. 2 vols. London : fodder and Stoughton, [30s. net.)

rather than a biography. Then Lord Rosebery gives us in thirty or forty lines a perfect picture of Lord George :-

"Bentinck, indeed, when living, was a notable and almost dramatic figure, for he was a man of splendidpresence, mar- vellous industry, and a tragic vindictiveness. Vindictiveness was his sombre motive power ; he could neither forgive nor forget. For the man who once injured him or any whom he loved, there was no possibility of pardon or oven of mitigation. The fierce impression upon him of a wrong remained as vivid to the last moment as it was at the first ; and he could not rest until he had wreaked a remorseless revenge on the offender. His bitter attacks on Sir Robert Peel were inspired not by any personal injury, but by the conviction that Peel had deserted Canning, his relative, near a score of years before. As to the rest, he was the dreariest of speakers—a fact which troubled him little, if at all, for he only sought to lay before his audience the bare and bony appeal of statistics. But had he had tact, and some power of blandishment, or at least of reticence in rancour, lie would have been more valuable to his party than many orators. His stately person, his lineage, his application, his ability, his unstinted devotion to the cause in hand, even though that cause seemed to be personal animosity, would have made him a leader of the highest value to any party, more especially to the Tories. But, strangely enough for one who had spent his best years on the Turf, he seems to have had no know- ledge of men, no consideration for their feelings, no power of give and take. And so, after a few months of leadership, ho disappeared in a hull."

Clarendon, Halifax, Greville, Saint-Simon himself could not have surpassed this amazing miniature.

Lord Randolph Churchill, who was an intimate friend of Lord Rosebery, is most skilfully portrayed in the essay which bears his name. We may quote a passage from it which shows that Lord Rosebery can write an appreciative analysis quite as well as he does a depreciative :— " He had also the vital mainspring of zest. To whatever he applied himself lie gave for the time his whole eager heart. Ho was strenuous at politics, but he was also at times devoted to hunting, racing and chess, and he took gastronomy as seriously as Macaulay. But whatever it might be, politics or pleasure, it possessed him entirely ; he did it with gusto, with every nerve and every fibre. Ho had, moreover, the fascination of manner—an invaluable endowment for a politician. Thus, when he chose, which was perhaps too rarely, he could deal success- fully with men. He had also at his disposal the charm of conversation, and this was as various as his moods. When he felt himself completely at ease in congenial society, it was wholly delightful. He would then display his mastery of pleasant irony and banter, for with those playthings ho was at his best. Nor would he hesitate to air his most intimate views of persons and characters ; ho did not shrink from admissions which were candid to the verge of cynicism ; he revelled in paradox. A stranger or a prig happening upon him in such moods would bo puzzled, and perhaps scandalized ; for his lighter and more intimate conversation was not to be taken literally. He would hate this and that, embrace tho most preposterous propositions, and defend any extravagance that might happen to enter his head ; if ho were opposed, he would carry it much farther. I remember once saying that a certain statesman had not shone at the Foreign Office ; ho at once declared that he deliberately regarded him as the greatest Foreign Secretary that had ever lived. This was not conviction, nor even opinion ; it was only returning the ball over the net. When in this vein he produced table-talk which would have strained a Boswell to bursting ; it was all gaiety, the delightful whim of the moment. He was, moreover, absolutely unaffected himself, and ruthlessly pricked the bubbles of affectation or cant in others. In graver discussion he had, when ho chose, a subtle and engaging deference • his ideas were luminous and original. This deference must, however, not be taken to imply veneration, for from that bump his skull was singularly free. The only person who inspired !dm with anything like awe or respect was the great statesman, when he came to know him, against whom his bitterest philippics had been directed. Without veneration, if that be a charm, as to most of us it is when not excessive or misplaced, Randolph's conversation, whether light or serious, was all admirable of its kind. His son says truly that he had a wonderful manner, courtly, frank and merry. which ho did not by any means always display.' The saving clause is not leas true than the description."

The description of the man whose talk must be regarded as " returning the ball over the net " rather than as based on serious conviction is a delightful and illuminating metaphor. We all know such men and women, and, if we are not pedants, we value their power to give us a good game. Dr. Johnson said truly that " in lapidary inscription is man not on oath." Still less is he on oath at the dinner-table or in his armchair with a cigar in his mouth. At the same time, talk would become tedious if it were never sincere; and though there is a place for the tennis talker, to stabilize Lord Rosebery's analogy, there is also a place for the talker in whom there is no guile, no pose, no attempt to astonish or amuse, but who shows, rather than hides, his real opinion, who talks like a child, or perhaps we should say as we think a child ought to talk, for, as a matter of fact, children of from three to six are by no means

conversationalists in whom there is no guile. Except when pain or sorrow or terror strikes them, children are very seldom willing or able to speak wholly from the heart. They are instinctive actors.

We must not confine our review of these two big volumes to excerpts from the essay on Lord Randolph Churchill, but it is simply impossible to refrain from the delightfully subtle passage in regard to Randolph's humour. Admirable is the quotation, admirable is the comment :—

" Randolph's humour may be fairly defined as burlesque conception, set off by an artificial pomp of style ; a sort of bombastic irony, such as we occasionally taste with relish in an after-dinner speech. Sometimes it is what one could imagine that Gibbon might have uttered had he gone on the stump. Sometimes its exuberance overreaches itself, and it can scarcely have seemed other than a cynical experiment on the political digestion of his audience. Take, for example, this passage on the Whig Party : I can see the viscous slimy trail of that political reptile which calls itself the Whig Party. gleaming and glistening on every line of it. I see that most malignant monster endeavouring, as it did in 1832, to coil itself round the constitu- encies of England, and to suppress the free action and to smother the natural voice of the English people.' Poor old Whig Party ! Already moribund, if not dead ; never, at its best or worst, malignant or monstrous, though no doubt a little hungry, a little selfish and a trifle narrow. It might possibly have been compared by a flatterer to a slow-worm ; but an analogy to a

crushing, insidious; overpowering serpent was beyond the bounds of a jest. Not long afterwards he was to get to closer quarters, and compare the statesman who was then considered the representative Whig to a boa constrictor—with this differ- ence : that the boa constrictor enjoyed his food, while the Whig

loathed and sickened upon it. Later again, in a mood of grace,

he was to expunge this passage from his collected speeches ; and, indeed, the care is notable with which he omitted from those volumes many passages which might cause personal annoyance, or which did not seem to stand the test of time and reflection."

Lord Rosebery, if he had happened to have it in mind, might well have stuck another light in his brilliant illumination by quoting the way in which Disraeli defended his mixture of pomposity, rhetoric, and humour, when these qualities were

slighted by the reviewers of Endymion : " I write in irony, and they call it bombast."

Lord Rosebery's comment on the poor old Whig Party has an accuracy and a sympathy of comprehension which makes it

of real historical value, besides being quite delightful for the interjection : " Though no doubt a little hungry." It is one of the most patent vulgarities of our latter-day political historians to attack the Whig Party. The original Whig principles

were the best set of political principles ever adopted by any party in any State. They involved a true conception of

human liberty guarded so as not to break down from excess, and they also contained the germs which could develop into true democracy. Yet they were so elastic that they were able to adapt themselves to almost any form of government.

People in adopting them need not be asked to give up the idealisms that cling to monarchy and the picturesque aide of government. Above all, they were not inconsistent with the spirit of patriotism. Of course, the Whigs did not always live up to their principles, but instead exploited them for selfish ends, or petrified them by their sloth. All the same, we owe our political salvation to the Whigs, and, historically, whatever has been good in Toryism has been largely due to the adoption of Whig principles by the Tories. The essential Whig is the great Lord Halifax. Though a Whig of the Whigs and the trimmer of eternity, he never let his Whiggism tarnish his patriotism or his sense of justice. Take another typical Whig—Sydney Smith. Though he was sometimes factious, and though his hatred of war led him into a strange tolerance of Napoleon, the greatest anti-Whig who ever lived, Sydney Smith was one of the wisest of the clan. There are no more Whigs left, it is true, for the last of them was the late Duke of Devonshire ; but that is only because they were conquerors whose work was done. They have left their stamp upon our history and our national character, and those who speak ill of them as a whole are either ignorant or fantastic.

Among the literary addresses, that of " Statesmen and Book- men " must be judged as the most entertaining. Nothing could be better in it than the account of Chesterfield. Lord Rosebery's reflections on this strangely mingled man whom George II. so dexterously and pungently, though so unfairly, hit off as " a little tea-table scoundrel," turn upon a curious point--i.e., on the comparative value of the best books and the best men. Here is the passage :— " Moreover, in spite of Chesterfield's undoubted love of

reading, he places on record an injunction which strikes him altogether out of the category of thorough bookishness. Lay aside,' he solemnly says, ' the best book whenever you can go into the best company ; and, depend upon it, you change for the better.' Perhaps, when we remember that the best society, in the highest sense, is rarely attainable, he is right. But then we might not all agree as to what constitutes the best society. I am not going to discuss the point to-night, but I strongly recommend it to the debating societies of our University, which, after a protracted existence, must be gaping like stranded oysters for fresh subjects of polemic. It is in any case a hard saying, and must be held to exclude Chesterfield from the straitest sect of the worshipful company of bookmen. Mr. Gladstone would certainly not have subscribed to it in this bare and absolute form. But, in any case, were Chesterfield ten times as bookish as he was, he would not have equalled Mr. Gladstone any more in that quality than in the length and splendour of his public career. There is no parallel between them ; I only take Chesterfield because I can think of nobody else."

Though the present writer values books as much and owes as much to them as any man, he is, all the same, inclined to take the Chesterfield side in this controversy, provided, of course, that the best company really means the best company, and not gentlemen and ladies in the best clothes, with the best cooks, and waited upon by the beat butlers. It is better to talk to a Macaulay, or a Carlyle, a Lamartine or a Tocqueville, a Balzac or a Renan, than to read their books. Who would not rather have spent time in Napoleon's company than in reading his dispatches, his letters, and his bulletins, admirable as they are ? When all is said and done, there is nothing in the world like the impact of mind on mind, granted that the conditions are -favourable and that the best man in the best company is not cross or bilious or too full of self-importance to unbend at his interlocutors' desire.

With so much we must leave Lord Rosebery's enchanting studies, and yet we have not said a word about what is perhaps the best essay in the book—i.e., that on Dr. Chalmers. It is a magnificent piece of work, as felicitous in spirit as in language.

That the same man could have written that essay, the essay on Lord Randolph Churchill, and the essay " The Coming of

Bonaparte " is a literary miracle.

And yet when all is said and done, the wise man would not hesitate for a moment in closing Lord Rosebery's books in order to enjoy the company of Lord Rosebery.