LORD TEIGNMOUTIPS " REMINISCENCES."*

"LE style," says one of the greatest of modern critics, "le style, c'est un sceptre d'or, h qui reste, en definitive, le royaume de ce monde." And if this be true, as we firmly believe it to be, of every class of composition, more especially does it hold good of that most difficult of all literary efforts which Lord Teign- mouth has essayed. Style, we take it, in literature, as in art, is the one unmistakable stamp of the composer's mind. Similar education and similar conditions of life, will in most men, produce great apparent similarity of thought and feeling, but once they come to express themselves, whether in marble or on canvas, in prose or in verse, the wonderful variety of character which exists among even the most ordinary men shows itself. On a first view of their books, as of themselves, we are struck only by resemblances, just as when we look at a flock of sheep ; but when we examine a little more closely, we find in the men, as in the sheep, that no two are exactly alike, that each has his own distinct and sharply marked individuality. In higher natures this individuality is intensified, intensified often to such a degree as to destroy the one other quality which makes the great artist, —the sense of harmony and proportion. Every true work of art must convey these two ideas of power and restraint, and in none do they appear to us more clearly than in the style of a great writer. But though these ideas are both of necessity pre- sented to us when we look on what is beautiful, they do not necessarily strike us in the same degree. The preponderance of the one or of the other depends upon the character of the work. In a page of Gulliver the sense of restraint prevails, in Burke the feeling of power. In the kind of writing we are about to con- sider, we do not look for much restraint. The charm of memoirs consists in its apparent absence. Considered as works of art, they inay be divided into two classes,—those in which the author talks mainly of others, and those in which he talks chiefly of himself. Those of a third order, such as we have from D'Argenson and Barbier, consisting of a mere record of facts, cannot be called in any sense artistic. But in all good memoirs, however easy and natural they may seem, a little care will enable us to detect the ever present art of the writer. His business is to paint word-portraits. It is not the highest branch of composition, but it is a distinct and very rare gift. It is by his skill in omis- sion that the true artist in this kind is known. He must have an eye for historical perspective, a power of grouping, a sound judgment as to who and what will be important in the opinion of posterity. In a word, he must be able to curb his own natu- ral desire to talk about what is interesting to himself, and look only to what will interest others,—others, too, if he is to be famous, who will have little in common with him and his con- temporaries, save their common humanity. Montaigne and Pepys are perhaps the most delightful of all this delightful race. They will be ever fresh and young, because they owe their charm to that human nature which is alone unchangeable, in this world of change. "Art still has truth ; take refuge there," truly sings the weary thinker. Nausikaa and her maidens playing by the river- bank, or Horace sauntering down the Sacred Way, are as true to us as though we had ourselves seen and loved them. Pepys is of great historical value, no doubt, but we wonder how many readers he would have, were it not for those little indiscretions about Mrs. Pepys, and that pretty Mrs. Knipp, of whom the wife was so reasonably jealous ; about those fascinating maids of honour, in the "Matted Gallery," in their saucy beavers and riding-coats (" just like me ! " says Pepys) ; about naughty Nell Gwynn, and about Mr. Pepys's new clothes ?—to say nothing of the "black patch" which, on May 5th, 1668, as he has duly noted, Samuel Pepys, Esq., saw Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine, put on at the Duke of York's playhouse, while the Impertinents was acting,—a piece of which Mr. Pepys thought but poorly, till be found it generally admired ! For his surmise as to why the black patch was put on just then, we really must refer our readers to the Diary itself.

Of memoirs of which the interest is not purely personal, the best are those written by men who were either themselves actors in

• Reminisowes of Many liars. By Lord Teignmouth. Edinburgh: David Douglas. 1878.

great historical scenes, or spectators with exceptionally favour- able opportunities of observation. In these a very high degree of art is often attained ; we would instance Berwick and St. Simon. For terse and vigorous prose we know few books to compare with the sketch of his own life and campaigns left by the greatest of the Stuarts. Every line speaks the soldier and the man of action. Clearness, simplicity, and a quiet consciousness of power are as characteristic of Berwick as of Cassar.

In St. Simon, we have a far different style, a far mightier genius. Few indeed have impressed on their work such wonderful truth and boldness of outline, and shown such astonishing skill in detail, as the great historian of the Court of Louis XIV. And when we speak of truth, we mean artistic truth, that rare faculty of presenting a complex character as a consistent whole. St. Simon has an extra- ordinary power of rising up above the thousand indifferent actions of every-day life, and fastening with unerring instinct on every trifle which makes for his view of the character he is painting. It sounds absurd to say that in this most voluminous writer we see a wonder- ful power of compression, yet we believe this to be true. Let the reader who doubts us turn to any of the finished pictures in the great gallery. For hundreds of pages in the narrative part he has seen this or that prince or bishop, magistrate, or lady of quality, Jansenist or Jesuit, appear for a few minutes, and disappear. The reader scarcely notices it, but he finds that he has gradually formed a definite idea of the character in question. Each time his name occurs, there is a little touch from the master-hand,- quiet and skilful, but firm. We are unconsciously prejudiced before we reach the real description. Then the great author rises in his might, pours forth a torrent of fierce invective, and blasts the character of his enemy for ever, by some half-dozen of those sentences which burn in and stick like molten lead. Here, indeed, is art, and wonderful art ; yet even this extraordinary genius, writing the history of his own, most fascinating times, has failed to produce a great work of art, a great, consistent whole. And the proof of this is that he is now little read. Time is the true test of art. For art, as we have already said, depends on principles which survive the tastes of a day. Some few passages of St. Simon are extracted, translated, watered down, reproduced in every way and at every turn,—the rest of his book is well-nigh forgotten. The vitality of the one, the oblivion of the other, are due mainly to the differences of style. Where St. Simon has taken the pains to be artistic, he has lived ; where he has written " en grand seigneur," he is forgotten.

Lord Teignmouth has heard Sheridan and Grey, has known Castlereagh and Canning, was "tipped" by Mr. Wilberforce, when at school with Lord Macaulay, has chatted and dined with Sir Walter Scott, and entered Paris with the army of Waterloo. Yet we fear he will not meet with many readers. Those who desire to learn the manners of the first quarter of this century will find fuller details in a pleasanter form in newspapers, novels, and plays. Students of history and literature will not wade through two octavo volumes to learn that at the Oxford Cora- memoration of 1834 the Duke of Wellington read " Carolus" and " Jacaus " for the Latin of Charles and James, or that Lord Lytton dyed his whiskers in 1846. Nor do we recommend Lord Teignmouth to the lovers of chatty books. With a suit- able "environment," we think he might have developed into a tolerable gossip on paper. But Lord Teignmouth unhappily has the public always before him. He has evidently a sense of humour, but he ruins his best stories (and be tells some good ones) by his clumsy, inelegant, and often unintelligible diction. And this, we suppose, he means for "style," for he is constantly criticising that of others. He tells us that his private tutor's "forte lay in English composition, written and oral." We wonder what the reverend gentleman would have said to the production now before us. Like all unpractised writers, Lord Teignmouth does not fear to rush into long sentences. We counted twenty- five lines in one, and there are very many in the book which we defy any one to parse. The pronouns and particles, as usual, have avenged themselves. " Whos," "whets," " whiches," "huts," and "ands" are strung together till the writer, as well as the reader, becomes fairly puzzled. When he realises the situation, he makes a full stop and begins afresh. To come to details, we do not think " catapulto " is English, nor do we see why Lord Macaulay should be called the " coryphaems of our youngest trio," when Lord Teignmouth merely wishes to say that he was the head of a class of what, we fear, boys would idiomatically call "brats." This would, perhaps, be vulgar, but it is not worse than the description of an M.P. as "cock of his own dunghill," and of his attempts to "rule the roost [sic] in his new sphere." Then we hear of "a trinity of contributors," to the

Edinburgh Review, and of an Irish hunting-field " reticulated " by a "labyrinth of broad and deep ditches," a flower of speech worthy of the author of Hibernia Venatiea. "Two ancient friends find themselves in juxtaposition at a public dinner," and Sir Robert Inglis was, we are informed, "a clubbable man." Probably our readers will be satisfied with these specimens of Lord Teignmouth's style. Of his literary judgment it will suffice to say that he has dared to compare a passage from his friend Lord Glenelg's "celebrated prize poem" with the beautiful lines of Sir Walter :—

" Life's like the light dance which the wild wind weaves

Amid the fading race of fallen leaves."

But Lord Teignmouth desires that the two passages should be read "in juxtaposition." It would be a pity to thwart him. Thus the prize poem :—

"For what is life ? a groan, a breath, a sigh,

A bitter tear, a drop of misery,"

—et czetera, after the manner of prize poems.

Let us turn to the matter of these volumes. Those who are too idle to read old books, but like to be able to discuss the new ones (rather a numerous class, by the way), may learn here the condition of society in the "good old times" of fifty or sixty years ago. They will be reminded that hard drinking was every- where fashionable. They will learn that the Vice-Master of Trinity, Cambridge, was "frequently boozy," and came drunk to chapel, and that so late as 1829 "the memory of the deceased" was solemnly given at funerals in Stornoway. They will find as proofs of the "idleness and abounding vice" prevalent at the greatest of Cambridge colleges, that a nobleman or fellow-com- moner might take his pleasure unreproved, driving a night-coach, or making love to an actress in the green-room of Covent Garden. They will discover proof of the vast social advance of Ire- land from Lord Teignmouth's account of that country in his youth, and they will draw, we trust, an augury of further progress in the future, from the changes which one generation has wrought in Scotland and Yorkshire. Free-fights and perjury were as common in those countries half a century ago as in Ireland now, and we doubt whether the wildest parts of Connaught can produce such extraordinary specimens of the hunting par- son as Lord Teignmouth has described in his last chapters. In 1838, when Primate Beresford was a young man, Lord Teign- mouth saw him come into his father's breakfast-room on a Sunday morning with "three pair of pistols." Archdeacon Trench, at Ballinasloe Sessions, was in the habit of refusing to hear a large proportion of the witnesses, on the ground that from his personal knowledge of their character he knew they were not credible. No wonder the law was little respected. There are horrible accounts of mob-riots in Limerick in 1821, and of the peculiarly atrocious murder of young Hoskins in the same year. This gentle- man was the son of an unpopular agent on the Devon estates, now perhaps the best managed in all Ireland. In leaving this part of our subject, we fully endorse Lord Teignmouth's opinion of the great services done to her country by Maria Edgeworth.

We have said that Lord Teignmouth has a sense of humour. We have seldom heard a more amusing argument against the existence of ghosts than that of the gardener at the "Hermitage." "If," reasons that worthy, "Master Zouch is in heaven, he would not wish to come back ; and if in hell, the Devil would not let him." At a State dinner in Sweden, one of the Ministers observed to Lord Teignmouth, "Look at Mr. D—" (a well-known English sportsman) ! "What energy, what eloquence ! What is he talking about? Is it a dog, or a fish?"

The phrase "a nice young gentleman for a tea-party" is traced to the great Liberator ; he employed it, successfully no doubt, to crush a young English clergyman at a public meeting in Cork. We find Sir D. Mackworth, the Peninsular veteran who quelled the Bristol riots of 1831, seriously entertaining the belief that every man who falls in action is assured of heaven. He is sup- ported in his doctrine by no less an authority than Corporal Trim. "They'll go to heaven for it !" said Trim, of the "regiments on the right," which covered the retreating Lifeguards at Steinkirk. We wonder is this still an article of faith with the British soldier? Lord Teignmouth is a staunch Conservative. We do not think the "Jingos " will thank him for calling attention just now to Lord Hill's horror of war, nor yet for reminding us that while Cambridge undergraduates are Tories, the senior members of the University are Liberal. We heartily thank his lordship for this convincing proof of the excellence of a Cambridge education in developing the reasoning powers. We purposely omit all refer- ence to Lord Teignmouth's tour in the North of Europe. His journal was, we believe, published at the time when it may possibly have had some interest ; we do not imagine that it would have any for our readers.

We have been compelled to say a great many unpleasing things about Lord Teignmouth. In conclusion, we must own to a warm admiration for his singular fairness and courtesy to opponents. The records of his own life, as given in these pages, show how much useful work may be done in this world by a plain man, of good position and honest intentions, even though his politics be unsound, and his literary powers small.