BOOKS•

HENRY CRABB ROBINSON.*

THESE delightful volumes, brimming over with salient anecdote and sagacious reflection, more than fulfil the expectations with which we looked forward to their publication, when, some months ago, we ventured to speak, in this journal, of "the forthcoming memoirs of a veteran English notability." Henry Crabb Robin- son is here again among us. In the work so ably and so wisely edited by Dr. Sadler, the younger generation of readers have the means of becoming personally acquainted with one of the most genial, truth-loving, and generous men of this century, while the successive pages will cause the friends of Mr. Robinson to say that he, being dead, yet speaketh. Indeed, we might, with all reverence, use the expression that these reminiscences and diaries are not so much remains as a resurrection ; and when we look at the admira- ble engraving prefixed to the first volume, taken from a photograph which has happily caught the sitter's finest expression, we feel that nothing is lacking in order that the world may know what manner of man, outwardly and inwardly, Henry Crabb Robinson was.

Mr. Robinson was born at Bury St. Edmund's in 1775, and died in Russell Square, in London, in 1867, having all but completed his ninety-second year. In noticing, first of all, the range of years —so much beyond the average duration of human life—allotted to Crabb Robinson, two observations very naturally arise. And the first is, that the united ages of twenty men just as old as he was would carry us right up to the time when St. Paul was introduc- ing Christianity into Europe. The second is, that in the period

• Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at- Dam, F.S.4. Selected and Edited by Thomas Sadler, Ph.D. London : Macmillan. 1869. 3 Tole.

which elapsed between his birth and his death Christianity did more to break up the great fountains of the deeps of human thought, and to bring the various arrangements of social life into accordance with the principles of the New-Testament teaching, than it had done or attempted since the days of the Apostles. We said that these observations arose naturally in thinking of the age of Crabb Robinson, because varied as were the subjects in which he was interested, and diverse as were the men who shared his friendship, the one great dominating element in his life was the religious one.

We do not mean to raise a smile on the countenances of any of Crabb Robinson's friends by adding to the preceding statement that it was not precisely in the character of a saint that he was known to the world, or regarded by his familiars. All the same, there are not a few of our readers who will remember, what these volumes abundantly testify, that ou whatever subject a tote-it-tote with him might begin, a theological question was inevitable ere it closed. And perhaps the reason was that, though possessed by a profound religious sense, which only deepened with his advanc- ing years, his Christianity was of a fluent, rather than of a fixed, character. He was a seeker after truth all his life, and thus he was always ready fora fresh quest, and forward, too, to listen to any one who had any authentic or first-hand experience to impart from the great surrounding sphere of the apprehensible but mysteri- ous. In this respect Crabb Robinson's autobiography is a singularly valuable contribution to the literature of our time and of our coun- try. He marched step by step with the developing thought of his age. He had no special contribution of his own to bestow ; but he was a disciple to the last ; and if Godwin was the first to enable him to break through the hard and limited horizon of Calvinism, if at Jena, where he studied for five years, he made the Kantian philo- sophy his own, and was an intelligent student of Schelling himself, in his later days he was the enthusiastic friend and admirer of Robertson. It is quite worth while, however, to note the directions in which he was respectively liberal or uncompromising. To mystery, as such, in the region of religious speculation he did not demur. He was quite willing to admit that there was, or might be, in Christ a transcendent union of the human and divine such as rendered His personality unique in the history of mankind. To quote his own words, " I am no more repelled from belief in Christ's double nature as God and man by its inconceivableness, than having a belief in my own double nature as body and soul." But when the plea of mystery was alleged in behalf of dogmas which shocked the moral sense, such as the eternal damnation of infants, or eternal punishment itself, in the popular sense of the phrase, he owned that he would rather reject the Scriptures than

believe they contained a doctrine which blasphemed God 206).

On this last subject it is interesting to note an identity of sentiment with Crabb Robinson on the part of many of his most intimate English friends, and especially Thomas Clarkson, Southey, and Wordsworth. In a letter to J. J. Gurney, the Keswick Laureate thus wrote,—and the words will perhaps startle not a few readers,—" I cannot believe in an eternity of Hell. I hope God will forgive me if I err, but in this matter I cannot say, Lord, help thou mine unbelief'" (ii. 215).

But we must turn to other matters. Of the class of minds which are appreciative, rather than original or productive, Henry Crabb Robinson is perhaps one of the most remarkable modern examples. He was a man of generous and manifold admirations, rather than of personal inspiration, He brought nothing specially his own into the world, and yet he has bequeathed to it a very rich legacy. Of science, on his own confession, he knew nothing. He was not a poet, nor a metaphysician, nor a politician, nor a theologian, and yet in his journals we have a wonderfully vivid representation of the main literary, philosophic, and political tendencies and phenomena of the last eighty years. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there is scarcely a noteworthy personage, poet, politician, philosopher, philanthro- pist, or preacher, belonging to the century, of whom there is not some just or characteristic mention made in these memorabilia. But while they supply us with a valuable estimate of many celebrities, or with some delicious story about them, they possess an additional and not altogether secondary interest in the notices they contain of less famous individuals. Of these last, the first to be mentioned is Crabb Robinson's mother, to whom, he tells us, he was indebted for every habit or fixed thought at all respectable that he possessed. She died when he was only in his eighteenth year, but in 1867 " her memory was as fresh as ever," and the last letter that he wrote, just a month before his own death, is a letter about her. He could always think of her as young and beautiful— indeed, his father and mother were said to have been the hand-

somest pair ever married in Bury—and though she was uneducated, and a Calvinistic Dissenter, the influence of her religious affec- tions left its impress on her son throughout his long life. Nay, more, there was something akin to his own recoil from the damnatory clauses of the popular creed, at least, in his mother's feelings, of which we have, in this last letter, written to the Rev. Harry Jones, on the death of this clergyman's mother, the follow- ing illustration :—" When I was about twelve I teased her to let me go to the Bury Fair play, and see Don Juan,' which contained a view of hell. She steadfastly refused. No, my dear,' she said, ' you shall not go to see the " Infidel Destroyed." If it had been to see the " Infidel Reclaimed" it would have given me pleasure to let you go.' "

A second name must here be introduced among those who are less known to the world, but who will live in Crabb Robinson's pages, that of Ben Strutt. Mr. Strutt was a resident in Colchester, to which town Crabb Robinson was removed in his fourteenth year, to do duty as an articled clerk in an attorney's office there. Strutt was self-educated, a great reader, a painter, skilled in mechanics, and, though not a professional lawyer, a man who served the county gentry largely as adviser and agent. He was cynical and sceptical, but withal a man of prudence. He made a great impression on young Crabb, and two of his sayings should be well pondered by those who devote themselves to " making the most of both worlds." One day, our diarist relates, Strutt made an observation which implied that he was a Church- man. " What !" I exclaimed, " you a Churchman?" He laughed, and said, "Let me give you a piece of advice, young man. What- ever you be through life, always be of the Act of Parliament faith !" On a later occasion Robinson met him in London. Strutt was going to the opera, and on Crabb's mentioning to him that he had no ear for music, and least of all for Italian music, he said, " Get it as soon as you can. You must one day love Italian music, either in this life or another. It is your business to get as much as you can here ; for as you leave off here, you must begin there."

But of far greater influence over young Crabb Robinson was a young lady, by name Catherine Buck. As far as appears, there were never any tender episodes in their relation, and, indeed, it seems certain that Crabb Robinson never was in love, a reason somebody assigned absurdly enough for his admiration of Words- worth's poetry. Catherine was three years Crabb's senior, and as being the most promising of her brother's playfellows, she took him in hand to bring him forward. And " bring him forward " she did. She scolded him well for slovenliness in dress and rude- ness in behaviour. She opened to him the realm of books, and in due time made him acquainted with the new opinions which were everywhere becoming insurgent. She lent him Godwin's Political Justice, the atheism of which he never accepted, though Godwin's idea of justice he then adopted, and retained through life. It was she who introduced him to Lamb, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and she was, as he tells us, his oracle, until she became the wife of no less distinguished a man than Thomas Clarkson, the original founder of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

Perhaps a better reason for Crabb Robinson's appreciation of Wordsworth might be found in the fact that the words which have become household ones, "the boy is father of the man," were so specially true of himself, while in his case, too, the days were bound each to each by natural piety.

Of the public characters and events introduced and chronicled in those journals, it would be quite impossible to speak in a single article, except in the most indefinite way. It must suffice to say that Crabb Robinson remembered the appearance of John Gilpin, and got sixpence for learning it ; and that before leav- ing Colchester he heard John Wesley preach and Erskine plead. Then he lived through three French revolutions and two Irish rebellions. He saw with satisfaction the Catholic and the Jew admitted to equal civil privileges in England ; but he could only hope, and hope he earnestly did, for the abolition of the great scan- dal and parody of national ecclesiastical establishments, the Irish Church. He was present at the birth of modern English litera- ture. He could remember when Rogers began to write in the style of Goldsmith's Deserted Village, and he lived on until the days of Tennyson and Browning. He criticizes Waverley on its first appearance. Far on in his last days he was reading with delight the novels of George Macdonald.

From 1800 to 1805 Crabb Robinson was a student at Jena. His life here might, iu Niebuhr's phrase, be termed the golden period of growth. He became thoroughly master of the German language. He initiated himself into the philosophy of Kant, and has given us in a letter to his brother Thomas a singularly lucid and popular analysis of its main elements. He could joke with Schelling, and on one occasion he was played off as Fichte himself, he acting the part so well as to awe a simple German landlord, and gain a hearty, frank confession of Roman Catholic free- thinking from a young priest, who believed that he had the privi- lege of speaking to no less a person than the author of the Blessed Life. It was during this time that he also became acquainted with Herder, Voss, Paulus, Schlosser, Schiller, and Goethe, of all of whom he has given us exquisite sketches. Of course, Goethe is the special object of his enthusiasm. His beauty of countenance, ou his first being introduced to him, was, he tells us, quite "overpowering," and the influence of his intellect was, to use Goethe's own adjective, something dunionisch. All the same, we cannot perceive that the genius of the Weimar Solomon per- manently affected the freshness and simplicity of Mr. Robinson's feelings, and nothing is a clearer proof to us of the native robust- ness of Crabb Robinsou's intellect and character, than the fact that with all his boundless reverence for Goethe, he still remained true to himself.

Crabb Robinson, before returning to England, journeyed on foot to not a few famous German and Bohemian localities, of all of which he has given graphic notices. We can only afford space, however, for the following extract from this portion of his journals :—

" My first evening in Bohemia is worth recording In a large

kitchen was a bedridden old woman. She began questioning me, ' Are you a Christian ?'—' Yes.'—' A Catholic Christian ?' The landlord came up. ' Don't trouble the gentleman. He is an Englishman, and, mother, you know the priest says it is the duty of everybody to remain of the religion they are born in.' . . . . I asked him about the Hussites. ' Oh, they are the most loyal and peaceable of all our people.'—' It did

not use to be Oh no, they wore always breeding disturbances, but the Emperor Joseph put an end to that. Their priests were very poor, and lived on the peasants ; one man gave them a breakfast, another a dinner, a third a bed, and so they went from house to house beggars and paupers. When the Emperor came to Prague to be crowned, among the decrees which he issued the first day was one that the Hussite priests should be allowed the same pay as the lowest order of the Catholic clergy. And since then wo have never had a disturbance in the country.' "

The Archbishop of Canterbury has already quoted this passage in the House of Lords, and indeed strained its fair and reasonable lesson a little beyond what it will bear. But the lesson is instruc- tive enough as to the tendency of Voluntary Churches.

In his thirty-eighth year Crabb Robinson was called to the Bar, and he worked hard and successfully as a barrister for fifteen years. But before finally selecting the Bar as a temporary vocation, he was variously engaged in literature, and in the old days, when the Times began to be a power in the State, he was connected with that journal, first as foreign correspondent, and then as foreign editor. In both capacities he showed remarkable aptitude and vigour, and among other Peninsular experiences which befell him as correspondent, he records the disastrous affair of Corunna. Strangely enough, however, he heard nothing of the death of Sir John Moore until some considerable time after the event.

During the fifteen years of Crabb Robinson's legal life his fees steadily increased, and he had acquired a very decided reputation for forensic ability, though, with his characteristic humility, he always maintained he knew nothing of law. It might accordingly be asked why he abandoned his profession in the vigour of his days, and when the tide of fortune and fame was at the flood. He himself tells us that next to going to the Bar, the wisest thing he ever did was leaving it. And, perhaps, he was right. In such matters we are not competent to pronounce judgment on each other's decisions, and there is a wise saying of his own about indolence, which may be pleaded in bar of a harsh verdict on his giving up his profession. He says in a letter to his brother 355), " What is often called indolence is, in fact, the uncon- scious consciousness of incapacity, and the importunity to over- come it is often as injudicious as to force an unwilling player to the whist-table, to the great annoyance of his partners."

We do not mean that Crabb Robinson did not possess sufficient capacity for sustaining for many years longer a distinguished position in the law. But we do believe that he had done his best, and that in retiring when he did, he was not robbing the nation of a future Attorney-General or Lord Chancellor. If Crabb Robinson had had others dependent for their daily bread and advancement in life on his professional exertions, of course he would have continued to work for their sakes. But as he was a bachelor, and with the help of a small income with which he started in life had already realized a fortune which enabled him to devote £500 in one year to charitable purposes, one great stimulus to labour was necessarily absent in his case. Besides, he had no enthusiasm for law, and why should he not do good in his own way, when many might be benefited and none could be injured by his humour?

Henry Crabb Robinson was born to be a reporter of the beat things of other men, and he has reported splendidly. Having no domestic claims on his affections, he gave himself up to the business of friendship,—and what a goodly list of friends, old and young, men and women, he had ! Charles and Mary Lamb, Mrs. Bar- bauld, concerning whom he tells us that when some one asked him whether he would like to be introduced to her, he exclaimed," You might as well inquire whether I would like to be introduced to the angel Gabriel ;" Southey, Wordsworth, Flaxman, Edward Irving, Coleridge, Arnold, poor William Blake, who said to him one day, " I was Socrates ;" his Ladies of the Lake, including Mrs. Fletcher, her daughter, Lady Richardson, and Miss Martineau ; and, finally, Lady Byron, whose remarkable letters in the third volume will be a revelation to many at once of the character and intellect of the writer, and also of the fatal Calvinism of her unhappy husband's creed. Crabb Robinson was the prince of story-tellers. The stories in these volumes have long been familiar to the narrator's friends. Dr. Sadler has done well in publishing them all ; and we must express our regret that we cannot spare room for any more of them, especially those relating to Charles Lamb and the Rev. Robert Robinson, of Cambridge.

Saving occasional outbursts of indignation with those who did not sympathize with him in his hero-worship of Goethe and Words- worth, Crabb Robinson was intolerant only of intolerance. He remained young and fresh in his sympathies to the last, and the Flaxman Gallery and University Hall, London, will long bear witness to his enthusiastic and substantial liberality.

This work will be a delightful surprise to the great outer world, while it will augment very considerably the esteem, and, in not a few cases, the unfeigned and grateful affection with which H. C. Robinson was regarded by his acquaintances and friends. He comes out here better and greater than even his most intimate friends held him to be ; and we shall take leave of him with the words which Dr. Sadler has appropriately prefixed to the third volume :— " His life,

Sweet to himself, was cam deed in good, That shall survive his name and memory."