BISHOP HEBER.*
TEE picture which Dr. George Smith presents of Bishop Heber, largely by means of a judicious selection of ex- tracts from his correspondence and journals, is a most attractive one, and makes his great popularity and influence both at home and in India perfectly intelligible. His, remarkable gifts, both of mind and spirit, declared them- selves early. Under the teaching of his father, who was both squire and rector of Hodnet, in Cheshire—a property which had come to the Hebers, themselves long seated at Marton in Craven, through a marriage with a descendant of one of the Haddon Vernons—and of his half-brother Richard afterwards M.P. for Oxford University and a famous bibliophile, Reginald Heber learned Latin and Greek in child- hood, produced at the age of seven (1790) a translation of the fables of Phmdrus, and acquired a passionate love of English literature. His education was continued for some years at the neighbouring grammar-school of Whitchurch, and sub- sequently at the private school of a clergyman named Bristow, at Neasdon. There "reverence and purity marked all his intercourse, and he proved a tower of strength to the weaker boys, who were encouraged by him to shun vice and profanity. His natural unselfishness and apparent absorption in intel- lectual pleasures were on one occasion presumed on by the tyrant of the school. Determined to resist him, though well aware he could not defeat his superior strength, Heber fought. him manfully, for the purpose, as he said, of teaching his opponent that tyranny should not be practised on him with impunity." This incident was known through his schoolfellow and life-long friend, John Thornton, son of the Member for Surrey. In 1800, he went up to Brasenose, of which college his brother Richard was a Fellow, and in which there were, as fellow-commoners at that time, such men as Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, afterwards President of the Board of Control ; Charles Grey and Edward West, afterwards. respectively Chief Justices of Calcutta and Bombay ; and Milman, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's ; with all of whom, and many others subsequently well-known, he was on terms of friendship. Indeed, Sir Charles Grey, at a later date, declared that he was, "beyond all question or comparison, the most distinguished student of his time. The name of Reginald Heber was in every mouth ;. his society was courted by young and old ; he lived in an atmosphere of favour, admiration, and regard, from which I have never known any one but himself who would not have derived, and for life, an unsalutary influence." But he was not spoiled. He found no difficulty, as he wrote to his friend Thornton, at Cambridge, in preserving his character for sobriety, though attending many parties. And when, after winning the University Latin Hexameter prize by his. "Carmen Snculare," he gained that for English verse by his perhaps somewhat artificial but certainly beautiful "Palestine," and recited it to a brilliant throng, he was found immediately afterwards by his mother in his room, returning thanks to Heaven for his success. After taking his degree, he gained the University Bachelor's prize for an English prose-essay on "A Sense of Honour," and was elected to a Fellowship at All Souls'. The death in 1804 of his father, to whom he was deeply attached, strengthened his religious feelings, which even at that date had led him to take a warm interest in the subject of missionary work. It was natural that be should take Orders and succeed to the living of Hodnet, but before doing so he made, in the year of Auster- litz and Jena, a prolonged tour with John Thornton through Eastern Europe. That tour not only formed the theme of several interesting letters, from which Dr. Smith gives quota- tions, but added to the equipment of Heber's mind for dealing with subjects connected with the countries he had visited, in the Quarterly Review, to which he early became a regular con- tributor, and of which he was twice asked to undertake the management, in conjunction with Gifford to begin with, but probably with a view to succeeding to the sole control. Two years after settling at Hodnet as rector, he was mar-
ried, in 1809, to Amelia, daughter of Dean Shipley, of St. Asaph. That this union was a very happy one, appears abun- dantly plain from the whole tenor of the Journals and corre- spondence quoted by Dr. Smith. The fact is of special interest because of the intimacy of the friendship which Heber main-
• Biahop Heber. Poet, and Chiefatiesionary to the East, Second Lord Bishop of Calcutta, 1783-1826. By George Smith, 0.1.B., LL.D. London: John Murray..
tamed, from his Oxford days to the end of his life, with Miss Charlotte Pod, daughter of a neighbouring squire. To this lady a considerable number of the letters, besides some very grace- ful early verses, quoted by Dr. Smith, are addressed ; and besides covering almost the whole range of the writer's thoughts on literary, religions, and even political questions, they often contain expressions of a character so affectionate as is cer- tainly unusual in correspondence, except between brother and sister or husband and wife. As a matter of fact, Heber repeatedly calls Miss Dod "sister," and it is clear that this was one of the few cases—and it is a great pity that they are so few—of a friendship at once deep and affectionate and thoroughly wholesome between a married man and a woman other than his wife. But, in truth, one of the facts which stands out most strongly from this book is that there never could be anything sentimental or unhealthy about Reginald Heber. His letters from India to the lady just mentioned, and to other friends and relatives, often breathe a wistful longing for home and the society of those so far away ; but he never fails to make it plain that his life is a truly happy and contented one, except in so far as he has doubts whether he is meeting the requirements of his great position. The keenness of his interest in the peoples of India, their ancient civilisations, and the architectural and other anti- quities of the country, manifests itself perpetually both in his journal and letters, and his enthusiasm for the spread of the Christian religion, of which he regarded himself as the "chief missionary" in the East, evidently domi- nates the -whole course of his thoughts. The only con- tinuously heavy trials of his Indian life were the long separations from his wife and children entailed by the journeys which he took throughout India to "confirm the churches," and to stimulate, wherever possible, the estab- lishment of Anglican missionary activity. For be it remem- bered that he was Bishop for all India, and during the short three years of his episcopate he travelled from Calcutta to Dacca and the Himalayas, from the Himalayas to Bombay, largely through territory not then belonging to the British Empire, from Bombay to Ceylon, from Ceylon to Calcutta, and, after a bare four months' interval, not of rest, but hard work, at Calcutta he set forth again for Madras and Southern India. Mrs. Heber met him at Bombay and accom- panied him by Ceylon back to Calcutta. But the beginning of his second visitation tour was driven too near the hot weather to allow of her or the children going with him, and they saw him no more. He died in his bath at Trichinopoly from the "rupture of a bloodvessel in the brain, caused by the shock of the cold water acting on a nervous system weakened by overwork and recent fever." Some slight idea of what the overwork was may be formed from the following cheery passage from one of his latest letters, addressed to Charles Wynn, the President of the Board of Control :—
" Indeed I do not eat the bread of idleness in this country. Since my arrival at Madras, little more than three weeks ago, I have preached eleven times (including my visitation charge), have held four public and one private confirmation, visited five schools, attended one public meeting, travelled sixty miles in a palanquin, and one hundred and forty on horseback, besides a pretty voluminous correspondence with Government, different mis- sionaries and chaplains, and my Syrian brother, Mar Athanasius ; and the thermometer this day stands at ninety-eight in the shade. However, I continue, thank God, on the whole, to enjoy as good health as I ever did in England. Busy as I am, my business is mostly of a kind which I like, and which accords with my previous studies."
The Bishop, of coarse, did not mention in his little catalogue of employments what had deeply touched his chaplain,—that when crossing the Bay of Bengal on his way to Madras, already ailing, and so much occupied with writing his visitation charge and dealing with his voluminous correspondence that he might well have taken all the rest he could obtain, in view of the arduous duties lying before him, he insisted on going down between decks every other day to read and pray with some invalid soldiers who were returning home. How helpful his ministrations were to those in trouble may be judged from the fact that Mrs. Gladstone, though she was only ten years old when Bishop Heber first visited Hawarden Castle, retains, as she has told Dr. Smith, a vivid impression of the words he said to her mother, Lady Glynne, shortly after she had lost her husband, and recalls "how comforting and precious" those words were felt to be by the sorrowing widow. It would be pleasant to make many more extracts from Dr. Smith's most interesting book ; but exigencies of
space forbid our considerably extending this notice. We must, however, direct attention to the abundant evidence which will be found in this volume, of the large-heartedness with which Bishop Heber regarded the work of non-Anglican missionaries, and the wisdom and charity with which he guided his own and his clergy's relations with them. There can be no doubt that Heber's sober but glowing enthusiasm for missionary work had produced so strong an impression on the public mind in England, that he was generally regarded as the obvious successor to Bishop Middleton- at Calcutta, on that prelate's death in 1822. As Dr. Smith says, "All who interested themselves in the East at once turned to the rector of Hodnet and preacher at Lincoln's Inn as best fitted" for the vacant post. And it was largely due to Heber, to the modest persistence of the advocacy of that sacred poet and cultivated gentleman, that many more of the educated classes in England had come to interest themselves in the spiritual condition of the heathen, and especially of those dependent on our already widely extended rule in India. It was hard that be should be sent out to take spiritual charge of the whole of an Eastern Empire, and it is plain that the utterly unreasonable size of his See was the direct cause of his death. The lesson was learnt, for he was the last Bishop for all India ; but it was learnt at the cost of the premature loss of one of the noblest, gentlest, and most generally effective of the men who have ever served the Christian Church.
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