SERIOUS APOLOGY
William Penn : A Topical Biography. By William I. Hull. (Oxford University Press. 21s.) WILLIAM PENN is a difficult subject for the biographer. He is a man exuberant in words and in gesture, perpetually stressing what appears to be an almost superfluous degree of rectitude. There are times when we feel that his profession of goodness has become rather strident ; it is a goodness of an aggressively bourgeois pattern, commendable for utility. He is not readily disentangled from a troublesome and elaborate apparatus of earthly concerns, an apparatus which, to Penn himself, is obviously of tremendous importance. The noble impetuosity and the fiery defiances of his youth seem occasionally to fall into mere bravado ; and there is often in his earlier disputes the harsh clamour of unmannerly truculence. His faulty estimates of character have been accepted as proof of his charming simplicity of heart, but they may have been the results of ordinary ignorance. When, towards the end of his life, he rides in a coach and is ready to brag of royal favour, there is a palpable dislocation of ideals, a loosening of the whole armour of righteousness. He is chiefly remembered as the founder of Pennsylvania and as the author of a book of maxims. The founding of Pennsylvania was a magnificent enterprise, and it was always Penn's intention to make it a profitable enter- prise. But the social administration of his colony was too much for hitn, and he abandoned. the Holy Experiment, over- come by difficulties. and intimidated by rebuke. .His moral didactics, to a modern eye, seem forbiddingly formal, . with a definite accent upon domestic values. Goodness is recom-, mended as 'a spiritual backing to an irreproachable prosperity.
It is not easy to strike the central core of such a man, to exhibit the foundation of his merely human character. We hesitate before denouncing as platitude what may be, after all, the. genuine effect of inspiration. But Penn never had the single vision of his contemporary, George Fox, or the placid heavenly grace of John Wesley.
In scholarship, if not in suavity of style and in plausibility of interpretation, Professor Hull has no difficulty in superseding the less important biographies of Penn which have appeared in recent years. I am sure he will be the first to agree with me if I say that such a result, alone, does not imply a perform- ance of supreme magnitude. There was no need for Professor Hull to feel himself deterred, or stimulated, by odious com- parisons. But his book is far more than a scholar's thesis. It is unquestionably the most careful and the most interesting portrait of Penn which anyone, so far, has produced. It is the printed source to which any future biographer of Penn will make the most frequent references. Though he stresses what is admittedly admirable in Penn's character, Professor Hull is generous towards less charitable or less discerning critics, who are frequently quoted in the text. Indeed, the fairness of balance in this excellent book is particularly noteworthy. The sectional or " topical ". treatment is greatly to be com- mended, especially in the case of a man like Penn, a man whose action and aspect were so often varied. I have learnt far more about Penn in this one volume than I have in the dogged and exhausting perusal of other biographies and of numerous articles, eulogies and estimates. I think I have come nearer to understanding Penn after reading this very accomplished work, though Professor Hull does not convince me that Penn was never an exhibitionist. Ostentation could not have been wholly uncongenial to the man who ordered the richly decor- ated book-plate of " William Penn, Esqr., Proprietor of Pennsylvania," and who stuck it in his own Bible. It is not without significance, I fancy, that so much of Professor Hull's book is taken up with defence, with gentle extenuation and with a kindly insistence upon the most favourable view. I am glad to note that Professor Hull allows the tendency of
Penn to dogmatise about the Unkuoviablelbrnaglal am not so sure that he did this " with evident reluctance?' Penn hid many of the graver failings of ordinary human nature ; but if he had not been a man lifted very _high aboveAlte ordinary, those failings would have been inconspicuous and uncOm- memorated. He was a great man, not so much on account of his colonial enterprise, but because he fought, very bravely and consistently, for liberty of conscience and for peace on
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