A LITERARY ONLOOKER.
IN the short biography of Mr. Pearson—Charles Henry Pearson—which we published immediately after his death in May, 1894, we omitted to call attention to one quality of his mind which is very pleasantly revealed this week in a volume of charming essays published by Messrs. Methuen. He was essentially, we believe, a man of strong convictions, though he changed them at least once, he could defend them with a certain vehemence, and he acted on them repeatedly when they involved injury both to his position and his fortune; but he had a side to his mind besides that. He liked very much, when the subject was not too grave or too closely connected with his official work, to assume the posi- tion of the onlooker pure and simple, to employ his very keen intelligence in pouring out white light, and to give his reader every opportunity for forming a judgment without per- forming that duty for him. When in this attitude of mind, which, it must be observed, was not a pose, bat one of his natural moods, he was exquisitely impartial, as he shows himself in all but one of these essays. It is quite delicious to read his little biography of Sheridan, a review of Mrs. Oliphant's small book in the series called the "English Men of Letters." Mrs. Oliphant, who is a woman of genius, and who took much pains with her subject, shows from first to last that she has not the faintest conception of what manner of man her hero was, and, indeed, if we remember right, con- fesses in a long note that on one side of him Sheridan was a man whom she could not comprehend. Mr. Pearson was a man rather of ability than of genius, he apparently took no pains at all, and there probably never lived a man more anti- pathetic in temperament to him than Sheridan. Yet so keen is his intelligence, so perfect his impartiality, that bis little biography, which would not make three pages of this journal, is probably the best short account of Sheridan in existence, and will, to the majority of readers, be a sort of revelation explaining why grave men loved and honoured the roistering, drinking, devil-me-care Irishman, who could not bear to live except in the favour of the great, who made a friend of the Prince who became George IV., and who, in truth, was capable of anything,—except deserting the Empire or subordinating anything whatever that he held to be a principle for the sake of personal gain. It was not in Sheridan to dishonour himself, and therein lay the secret of the hold which to the last he retained over his intimates' respect. It is the same with the sketch of Bismarck. Mr. Pearson evidently thought Bismarck a very great man indeed, but is obliged all the same to paint him as a great barbarian. He hates Napoleon, and sees clearly that he was, as Talleyrand said, no gentleman, but he brings out the honourable side of his character—as in the episode of Saliceti, who was his deadliest enemy, and whom he spared—and makes for many of his verbal brutalities the excuse, perfectly just we believe, that whenever he had to initiate conversation he became the most awkward of mankind. His Life of Mazzini, only fifteen pages, is better as an account of the real character of that strange man—apostle and carbonaro in one skin—than any of the many books upon him ; while his sketch of Hayti is a perfect marvel in its absence of prejudice or forgetfulness of truth. He believes, as he thinks on good evidence, the worst stories of Haytian Vandooism, but he brings forward the facts which prove that a desire for improvement exists in Hayti, and that the people have succeeded in keeping up a regular, though oppressive and corrupt, government, and sums up in the following sentence, which is far more favourable to the Haytians than English opinion usually is :—" It is no small fact in itself that a community of slaves and coloured freed- men should have been able to preserve a centralised Govern- ment and national unity, instead of splitting up into tribes like those of Africa. A people of little more than three-quarters of a million, if so many, which is able to raise more than a pound a bead for purposes of Government, which has kept itself free, and which exports to the value of two millions a year, is very much above Ashantee or Abyssinia, though it may be below the worst governed state in Europe." Mr. Pearson was, in fact, when not excited, a true onlooker, a man with a keen interest in all that he saw, and with a bright intelligence to understand the scene, but so aware that it was a scene still passing on before him, and likely to pass on before his successors, that he avoided all the conclusions upon which other men rush. We certainly thought him, after many conversations, something of a pessimist, but we defy any one who reads the two papers on " Optimism" and " Pessimism " to say anything more decisive than that the author sees all the facts, and describes those which militate on each side very fairly indeed.
We wonder that this kind of writing is not more common in literature, and especially in journalism. Mr. Pearson's mood in these papers must be a common mood with many clever men, who see everything accurately, but never forget that they are looking at a panorama, and who avoid conclu- sions instinctively because they must be premature, while the public is always hungering upon every topic for a little more white light. It is never quite confident in its know- ledge, and would, we believe, welcome accounts at once as full of intelligence and as impartial as Mr. Pearson's with a kind of enthusiasm which would make the fortune of any journal that fulfilled the demand. One would think, too, that in an age like ours, when convictions are so deeply shaken, when "the other side" is so fully recognised in theory always to exist, and when the general complexity of human affairs is so constantly acknowledged, that it would be easy for the well-informed to be impartial, to pour out white light, and to avoid premature or over-definite conclusions. Journalists are by no means a prejudiced class, and one would fancy that a large number of them would greatly enjoy what might be called encyclopedic writing, a full statement of all the sides of a question with a careful avoidance of the arrogant certainties at which, as a rule, they have not arrived. It is not so, however, and it is a matter of some interest to speculate why. One reason, no doubt, is that the well-informed have, in gathering that information, usually arrived at definite conclusions, and thinking them more important than the data, grow impatient of the idea that their audience can arrive at any others. Your expert, be it in shipbuilding or be it in Egyptology, almost invariably becomes a little arrogant, not, indeed, as to facts, as to which he is open to any quantity of new knowledge, but as to the only conclusions to which the facts in his judgment mast, if fairly considered, legiti- mately lead, and when he is quite sure—as we all are of the truths of arithmetic — becomes positively angry at difference of opinion. The journalist who is able to instruct, therefore, becomes anxious to convince, and in order to make conviction easier often leaves out—quite honestly, but still leaves out—all the facts which, as be instinctively perceives, might in less well-informed minds tell against his own conclusion. Another reason is that he distrusts the public, and believes that if it sees him thinking it will dis- believe either in his knowledge or his honesty,—a suspicion which is partly true, the public never really trusting a doctor who says, " Well, we will try this drug, it suits some cases and by possibility may be exactly suited to yours." It pre- fers an order, not so much because it believes in the order, which it does not, but because it expects the doctor who gives it to believe in it himself. But the real reason is, we suspect, one not very generally known, that it is, as a mere matter of art, exceedingly difficult to write white-light articles; they are apt, when the writer has not, like Mr. Pearson, that special gift, to be so vapid or so tedious. The thread of con- viction running through an article gives it backbone. It seems very easy to the inexperienced man to write a paper, like Mr. Pearson's, on Sheridan ; he has only, he thinks, to know his facts well, and to be very fair ; but just let him try it, and see the impression of feebleness which even in his own eyes he will have produced. It is twice as easy to describe only one side of a composite man like Sheridan, and the portrait will be, in all but likeness to its subject•, twice as effective. The position of a true onlooker without prejudice, or desire for victory, or care to bring out one fact more than another, is almost impossible to a journalist, not so much because he has taken a side as because he finds that without taking a side it is artistically so difficult to be effective. Mr. Pearson had the capacity in a very rare degree, as any one will detect who reads these essays—we except the one on caricature, which, from want of sympathy with broad farce is somewhat unfair—but we question whether, if his destiny bad led him in the journalist direc- tion, as at one time seemed probable, he would have been able to retain it. He would have found it so much easier to try to convince, and those who seek to convince, and to convince in short papers, become almost of necessity oblivious of argu- ments and facts which, if stated, would have to be explained away. Mr. Pearson, when not deeply interested, did not want to convince so much as to give his readers, in brief, materials for conviction; but that is an attitude of mind which it is difficult to maintain. Even in ewers on science we notice the authors dwell lovingly on the facts which point to the conclusion at which they themselves have arrived, and glide very gently over the remainder.
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