THE LATE BISHOP OF DVHILA,1/ AT HARROW. MO TEE EDIT9B
CAE THE "SPEcTAT0E.1 Sin,—The lamented death of the Bishop of Durham remind4 me of all his goodness to me during my school-time at Harrow. With yeuthful naiveté I once asked him how he liked the "Novum Organum." "It's a great book," he answered eagerly, "a noble book. Read it carefully by all means, and see that you understand its theories, but don't believe them.
In his inquiry into the nature of heat Bacon carries out his own principles thoroughly; he makes every turn at exactly the sight point: and yet his conclusions are wrong !"
Westcott doubtless wished to warn me against Bacon's notion that he was constructing a straight and easy path which was to lead to scientific truth, and which, if duly followed, was to place wise men and fools pretty much on a par.
When my father was hesitating whether to send me to Oxford or to Cambridge, I talked the matter over with Westcott. He said decidedly that the best thing for any man was to go to Trinity, catubridge ; if he did not go there, he could hardly do better than ge to Balliol. In this conversation he seemed to do scant justice to poor Oxford; but, according to a friend, he had a sort of University scale, which ranked her still lower. He used to say that there are three Universities, (1) Trinity, (2) the rest of Cambridge, and (3) Oxford. His admiration for his own College extended to its Master, Dr. Whewell. I asked him about Whewas famous book, which (somewhat en the principle of //tees a non lueericlo) was oddly named, while seeking to disprove, the "Plurality of Worlds." Westcott answered that this was one of the great books of the century. On the other hand, bespoke slightingly of Sir David Brewster's reply to it. That reply, he said, was destitute of scientific reasoning; it had only one plausible argument, an argument feunded on the polarisation of light; and even this was not substantiated by facts. Can he have been unconsciously adapting what Johnson said ef a dull, tiresome man: "That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one"? On another occasion Westcott referred with yet greater scorn to a prize essay which was bom- bastic in tone: "Its style is six times as bad as that of Sir Archi- bad Alison." After these samples of what may be called West- cott's vigorous blaming, it is time to give a sample er two of his vigorous praising. When I was at Harrow, a Captain of the School, the late Mr. Hope-Edwards, had a genius for Latin versification; did not Westcott think him unrivalled in this line ? "Not quite," he answered. "He has one superior, but only one. Calverley's Prize Poem on the Parthenon seems to me the finest piece of Latin verse that has been written in our time." It is fair to add that Professor Conington, to whom I repeated this remark, thought the praise of the poem too high. Westcott spoke to me with admiration of a speech delivered by Canning at Plymouth in 1823. The orator, combating the notion that England during peace was losing her capacity for war, compares the country to one of the great ships lying tranquilly in the harbour. He reflects with exultation how soon such a ship- 4' Upon any call of patriotism or of necessity, would assume the likeness of an animated thine". instinct with life and motion— how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage—how quickly it would put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength and awaken its dormant thunder."
He quoted part of this passage, and called attention to the effectiveness of its (more or less) trochaic ending. He had ne great liking for Macaulay, whose antithetical style seemed to him to be, at best, a sort of counsel of imperfection. Such a style, be said, bears much the same relation to prose that rhyme bears to verse : it is a help towards the attaixunent success of the second order ; but to supreme excellence it is a hindrance.
Some readers will remember the outcry raised in mite- dox circles by that rudimentary Darwin, the author of the "Vestiges of Creation." Another Darwinian before Darwin was Professor Baden Powell, whose works struck such horror into my father that I was rebuked for bring- ing them into his house. Being still in my pupilage, I asked Westcott what he thought of Baden Powell- He strongly advised use to read the Professor's chapters in defence of the "Transmutation of Species,,, and evidently looked with favour on what, as Darwin's great work bad not yet been published, may be called their forecast of evolution. Ria sympathy with this tentative evolution was all the more re- markable as the new theory was then believed to be subversive of inspiration, and as his own views on inspiration were the strictest possible. Of those views two examples may be given. I heard him ask a boy at Harrow how he accounted for St. Paul's employment a some unusual word. The boy had the hardihood to answer: "He thought it sounded well." "You have high authority on your side," said Westeott, naming an eminent divine. "But I cannot believe that St. Paul ever used a word which was not the fittest for his argument." In my Oxford days I cross-questioned Jowett about Westcott. His answer was thoroughly Jowettian. "Mr. Westcott," he chirped, "is very able and very learned, but not, I should my, very sensible or very philosophical." This may be thought damning with the faintest of faint praise. But it must be remembered that the two theologians differed (inter alia) on one fundamental point,—Jowett is said to have called (and certainly thought) Butler's " Analogy " a tissue of false analogies." On the other hand, Westcott told me that he him- self owed the greatest possible debt to that work; he even thought in his youth that, had it not been for Butler's influence, he "might have gone into one of the sister Churches." Dr. Hort told me that, when Dr. Lightfoot was appointed to the See of Durham, Westcott exclaimed tin effect) : "We now have a Bishop who will never be afraid to say what he thinks, and who will do his duty without flinch- ing." Might not the same praise be bestowed on Bishop Lightfoot's successor? Hazlitt says that we judge of men, not by what they do, but by what they are. In like manner, some of Westcott's friends and admirers will think that he himself was greater and better than his writings. And there are those who, while differing from him widely on speculative matters, can yet regard him as the fairest flower of scholarly orthodoxy, and perhaps, too, of Christian charity, that England has seen, at any rate since the death of Dean Church. Sint animm nostrm cum illo.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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