THE TABLE-TALK OF "SHIRLEY."*

"SHIRLEY," the accomplished writer in Fraser and Black- wood, Mr. John Skelton, the brilliant and learned counsel for • The Table-Talk of Shirley : Rentiniicentes of and Leiters from Broads, Thaskeray, Disraeli, Browning, Rossetti, Kingsley, Baynes, Huxley, Tyndall, and others. By John Skelton, 0.B., LL.D. London: Blackwood and Sons.

the defence of Mary Queen of Scots, has had a circle of literary friendships not less choice than extensive, and into that circle the readers of his Table-Talk, now published, are very pleasantly welcomed. This book had its origin, as its preface explains, in a spell of ill-health, during which the author, finding himself "unfit for any exacting exercise of the brain during the evening (his only leisure for literature other than Blue-books)," went through and reduced to order a number of bulky bundles of old letters. "Many of the letters (though yellow with age) are yet so fresh and animated, and so characteristic of the men who wrote them, in one or other of their many moods (moods pensive or whimsical it might be, but never unbecoming or unworthy), that it seemed a pity to put them back on their shelves." And so, "with such comment as is needful and such omissions as are fitting," a selection of these old letters is now published, together with some extracts from an old diary of Mr. Skelton's, and some general reflections of his on certain more or or less cognate subjects. The tone of the whole book is singularly attractive. Hardly anybody is mentioned in it, and nobody has a chapter to himself, without the presenta- tion of some sound reason for strengthening any favourable, or mitigating any unfavourable, judgment which the reader may previously have formed of his character or work. Dip where you will, you will find that this polished man of letters has something good to say about the leading writers of our century. He found in Thackeray no cynical, heartless worldling, but "constitutionally a shy man," whose shyness "accounts for a good many traits (foibles, if you like) which have been gravely rebuked by superior moralists," and who was in truth "one of the gentlest of satirists," "essentially a humble-minded man who was rather astonished at the fuss the world was beginning to make about him." On the beauty of the character of Thomas Spencer Baynes, Mr. Skelton writes with enthusiastic eloquence :—" To have known him "—and Mr. Skelton knew him intimately for nearly forty years—" was not a liberal education only,—it was that, and much more. After being with him a little, one came to comprehend what self-sacrifice and renunciation meant. Not that he was an ascetic, far from it ; he had a keen enjoyment of life, and a hearty welcome for whatever tended to sweeten and beautify it; but his greatest happiness, at what. ever apparent temporary cost to himself, was to serve a friend. In his pare idealism, in his eager quest after the true and the good, in the absence of all self-seeking, he was the Galahad of our society." The extracts from Baynes's letters which Mr. Skelton gives show that a truly brotherly affection reigned between them, and are in their tone entirely in harmony with the estimate just quoted of his temper and aims. It seems natural that such a man should have recognised the beauty of much of Longfellow's work, as to which Mr. Skelton himself speaks very earnestly, though with the ironic confession that at the present day he only indulges in the pleasure which that poet's writings afford him when he is very certain of not being observed. "I am glad," wrote Baynes in 1856, "that you quote Hiawatha.' It is perfect. Most marvellous, what music he brings out of that dell, straitened, unused, monotonous metre. Fall of fire too, simple, fresh, and vast as the woods, the rivers, and the mountains it reflects." Praise a little too highly pitched, perhaps, bat with a great deal of justice in it. Mr. Spencer Baynes had a very wide editorial experience. While assistant to Sir William Hamilton at Edinburgh University, he became editor of the Edinburgh Guardian, a literary, artistic, and political paper which was conducted with much vigour for a few years in the early fifties. Later, for several years, he was assistant editor of the Daily News, and during the closing portion of his life he combined with the work of Professor of Logic at St. Andrews that of editor of the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In the last-named post he was, of coarse, brought into relations with all our best writers, and we may be well assured, in the light of Mr. Skelton's tribute to him, that those relations were of a very agreeable description. It is, indeed, matter for no small congratulation that that vast endeavour at an orderly condensation of all the knowledge and culture of the two penultimate decades of the nineteenth century should have been carried out under the direction and inspiration of one who possessed the combina- tion of intellectual and moral gifts which distinguished Thomas Spencer Baynes. Mr. Skelton is specially interesting in what he has to say about Dante Rossetti and Fronde, and in the letters he selects from their correspondence with him. As to the poet. painter, he is concerned to vindicate him both from the sug- gestion that he was indifferent to or even jealous of the literary success of his friends, and from the charge that he em- ployed illegitimate methods to promote the circulation of his own poems. Under the first head he achieves a complete triumph. Nothing could be more obviously sincere or un- qualified than the earnestness with which Rossetti writes to Mr. Skelton, as a critic possessing great influence in the world of letters, on the great merits of Mr. Swinburne and also of Mr. William Morris. He sent Mr. Skelton a copy of Mr. Swinburne's first volume—The Queen Mother and Rosamond—with a view to a review, and wrote two letters at intervals of some months, urging their author's high claims to appreciation. "Do write something," he says in the second of these letters, in March, 1865, "con- cerning Swinburne. You will find his 'Atalanta' a most noble thing,—never surpassed, to my thinking. I hope you will be in town during Madox Brown's admirable exhibition, and should like to visit it in your company." Mr. Skelton did appreciate Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Morris, and wrote warmly of them in Fraser. When "Shirley's" friendly paper on Mr. Morris appeared, Rossetti wrote in terms of great satis- faction, and said that, in his opinion, Mr. Morris was "the greatest literary identity of our time," and its greatest decorative artist. Here Mr. Skelton appears to prove his case up to the hilt. On the question whether Rossetti was a rather bad early example of the log-roller on his own account, Mr. Skelton does not deny that he asked to have vindicatory articles written as soon as possible after the appearance of his poems, but contends, and we think with effect, that in this he merely showed that he had been brought to a state of abnormal susceptibility by the ferocious and persistent attacks made upon the Preraphaelites and their works. "He had grown morbidly sensitive to praise or blame.

He was convinced that if he ventured to publish he would be pitilessly and wantonly assailed." He was uneasy for days if he even heard that one of his pictures was being

exhibited, audit was only after the long-disregarded entreaties of his friends had been followed up by a public appeal from

" Shirley " in Fraser that he reluctantly consented—after ten years from the appearance of "Dante in Verona "—to hazard the publication of another book of poems on the condition that his friends would" stand by him." "He would consent to publish," that is to say, "because his friends had assured him that his poems ought not to be hidden away ; would we say to the world what we had said to him in the confidence of friend.

ship ? " To such a question, as Mr. Skelton says, there could be only one answer, "and," he adds, "I cannot see that there

was anything undignified, anything that reflects injuriously on Rossetti or his friends, in the assurance that we would be early in the field." It may be difficult, even in the light of this ex- planation, to banish altogether the dislike, which is natural and wholesome, to an artificially arranged welcome for a literary work, but we think it will be acknowledged by all fair-minded people that Mr. Skelton clears Rossetti's memory of any imputation of having descended to really unworthy devices for promoting his own success in the world of letters.

Mr. Skelton's longest series of reminiscences and letters is connected with the late Mr. Fronde, to whom he was bound

by the ties of a very long-standing friendship. Their first association was professional, Mr. Fronde having in 1860

succeeded John Parker in the editorial chair of Fraser ; but their intimacy became very close, and they frequently ex- changed visits at one another's houses. Their chief difference through life seems to have been with regard to the character of Mary Stuart, and even that difference, profound as it was, did not in the least divide them in heart. There could not be a happier example of the right mutual attitude of historians who disagree than is conveyed in the following passage from Mr. Froude's letter dated August, 1893, about his friend's very important book on Mary Stuart :—

"I am old, obstinate, and unconvinced ; but you undoubtedly make a strong case out of Crawford's Deposition. If it could be proved that Crawford's Deposition was made before the letter was discovered in the Casket, I should agree with you that the letter must have been made up out of what Crawford had said. But as

well as I know, the Deposition was made afterwards However that be, the book is charming in itself, and ex- cellently illustrated. Goupil" (or rather, I should imagine, says

Mr. Skelton, the English representative of the French house) "brought it to me himself, and urged me, to write a companion- volume on Elizabeth, taking the opposite side. I absolutely re- fused, however, to get into any kind of controversy with so old and dear a friend as yourself; and besides, you were generous enough to print such objections as I had made to your view in writing to you, ao that really I had no more to say, except that, according to all the evidence that I met with, Eldon did accompany the Queen to his castle, and so did BothwelL" It is very interesting and satisfactory to know that Mr. Skelton has seen "no reason to change the opinion" he ex- pressed in the preface to his Maitland of Lethinglon, that "only the man or woman who has had to work upon the mass

of Scottish material in the Record Office can properly appre- ciate Mr. Fronde's inexhaustible industry and substantial

accuracy." Equally interesting is it to see in this book

Fronde's acknowledgment of his conversion to the favourable view of Lord Beaconsfield always held by Mr. Skelton, as appearing in his request to "Shirley" to review Loihair, which Fronde admired greatly, and his permission to him to "praise Dizzy as much as you please."

We will conclude our notice of this very attractive volume

by a quotation from a very characteristic letter of Froade's as to the end of his Carlyle work. "In two months," he writes in March, 1884, "if I continue able to work, I shall have written the last line of a business which has been a

perplexity and worry to me for the last fourteen years. All, however, is well now. Arcturus is not the less brilliant or beautiful because he flashes red and green instead of shining pale and calm as angelic stars ought to do." That, we gather, is not far from Mr. Skelton's own judgment, though he allows that one or two omissions might have been made if he had had the entire revision of the Carlyle Reminiscences, as he had that of the Scotch section of the book. Probably it is a judgment which would be confirmed by " Arcturus " himself, and which will be accepted by the best literary opinion of the future.