"MEN OF THE TIME."*
MOST readers will remember Oliver Holmes's quaint conceit of the three Johns—the real John, John's ideal John, and Thomas's ideal John. Only one of the three Johns, he added, could be taxed ; only one could be weighed on a platform-balance ; but the other was just as important in the conversation. Now, for all practical purposes, Dr. Holmes clearly held that the three Johns could be viewed distinct and apart from each other : a careful and lengthened study of that printed Pantheon of present- day greatness, Men of the Time, has convinced us that this is an error, and that the three may be so cunningly mingled and enter- twined together as to compel a reference to Mr. Matthew Arnold's very apt phrase, and to justify an application of it on a lower, but perhaps equally appropriate level,—as there is not seldom to be found here, in very truth, "a magnified and non-natural man," with all three John's compounded and inseparable. Let us take a hasty glance at this distended volume, this squat mon- strosity of a book, and see if we can find such support for our suggestion as will satisfy impartial witnesses.
Of course there is a certain class of names which can be gathered from official lists of one kind or other—Princes, Bishops, Members of Parliament, and so forth—and for the pur- poses of such a volume must be collected in a purely mechanical manner, no choice being allowed. These must be quietly ignored for the nonce, and the mind concentrated on an order leas de- finitively marked, if we would discover where "Thomas's ideal John" most cunningly commingles and assorts itself with "John's real John "and "John's ideal John," to give us the most remark- able of all these "Men of the Time." It is fortunate that, as the book grows by a process of accretion peculiar to itself, the latest edition—the ninth—which we now have in our hands more readily yields itself to our scrutiny and criticism than any former one would have done.
Opening the book and turning over a few pages, we come, of course, very soon upon the historical name of Arnold. Putting aside Mr. Matthew Arnold, who is fairly treated, the reader's eye catches the names of Arthur and Edwin, who are about as prominent as Matthew. We learn that to Edwin Arnold—who spent some time in the East—belongs the honour of having, on behalf of the proprietors of the Daily Tele- graph, arranged the first expedition of Mr. George Smith to Assyria, as well as that of Mr. H. M. Stanley to Africa, to carry forward the great work of Livingstone ; and we further learn that for his part in " arranging " Mr. Smith's expedition he was thanked by the Trustees of the British Museum. Finding these expeditions loom so large under the head of "Arnold," we feel anxious to know something of Mr. George Smith, and turn to the proper place. Here we have Dr. Angus Smith, Christopher Webb Smith, Dr. Henry Boynton Smith, Isaac Smith, Richard Smith, and other Smiths, but no George Smith is here. Then we try Stanley, with no better luck. "Very odd," we say to our- selves ; "the gentlemen of England, who stay at home at ease, seem to loom largely in these transactions in this book, and we quote to ourselves a certain apt line from the Biglow Papers. "But, perhaps, travellers are not admitted, only 'austere toilers' at home," we say to ourselves. So we try Rohlfs and Bastian, associated with African travel, but with no better success, and then we search for Richthofen with pains that give way at last to chagrin. But here is Colonel Grant, and there is Arminius Vambei7, so that travellers must be admitted after all, and we come to the reluctant conclusion that to shine in the reflected radiance of Mr. Edwin Arnold's ." arranging " tact was held by the editor to be celebration enough for George Smith and H. M. Stanley. People's ideas of the relative importance of work do differ materially ; and Darwin has told us eloquently that one fulaction of the order of climbing-plants is to hide the trees they have reared themselves upon. After this, we need not hope that foreign names should be fully and intelligibly repre- sented. Lepsius is fairly well set forth, but where is the laborious Treitschke, the light and more graceful Schmidt, or the most- learned Haeckel and Bergh ? Men of the Time knows them not, nor does it know the Russians Tolstois and Turgenef, or the facile Frenchman Carpeaux. These things we cease to wonder at, when we find it so indifferent to what lies near at hand.
But we should be very far wrong to leave it to be inferred that the virtue of reserve is a matter on which the editor is exercised so much as he might be. He is often too communicative. "There • Mee of the 7'inse: a Dictionary of Contemporaries. Containing Biographical Notices of Eminent Characters of both Sexes. Ninth Edition. Revised and Brought Down to the Present Time, by Thompson Cooper,F.S.A. London: George Routiedge and Sons. 1875. are some things which, though [they might be] known to all," as Goethe well says, "should yet be treated as secrets, because it works on modesty and good morals." We hold that Civil List Pensions belong to this order of "open secrets." There can be no doubt, for example, that Mr. Edward Capern is a phenomenon. Not unfitly is he doubly celebrated,—under his own name, and as the "Rural Postman Poet of Bideford ; " for it is not every "rural postman" who can doubly show himself a man of letters, and in walking his "measured round," both without and within 'the sonnet's' scanty bound," can grasp such substantial prizes as he goes along. We are told that "he is the author of Poems, published in 1856, and now in the third edition, a work which attracted considerable attention, and procured for the author a pension of £40 per annum (afterwards increased to £60), from the Civil List," Truly, Mr. Edward Capern is, as we have said, a phenomenon. The £40, increased to £60, of pension, can add no "golden glow" to his lines, it is true ; and it may be that the prominence given to the pension may not make the lines of collier- poets like Wingate, and shoemaker-poets like Cameron, seem to them any softer or more pleasant, but only harder and harsher. Nay, if the calm, quaint mind of Mr. William Morris—lapt in still dream, as of an early pastoral—ever rouses itself to the calls of the day, and glances in the direction of Men of the Time, what must be his joy to find that in such a record he is all too literally received in character as "the idle singer of an empty day," and relegated to the ancient world. He is in the novel position of being both behind the time and before it, and well deserved double celebration, like Mr. Capern. "But no," says the Rhada- manthine editor, "he is an anachronism, a contradiction, a non- entity, and has no right of appearance beside "Rural Postmen," and "Lawyers," and other such "Men of the Time." Even Mr. Austin Dobson might feel somewhat aggrieved, since he-might assert that his verses may live longer, having an airy fragrancy of finish denied to those of Mr. Capern, which, however, have invariably a finish of their own ; but Mr. Dobson may well take heart. And when any admirers of those graceful sonnets of Mr. Charles Tennyson-Turner look in vain for his name in this list of worthies, let them be consoled when they find in its place the imposing cognomen of " Godfrey Wordsworth Turner," to whom more than a column is devoted. If Mr. W. M. Rossetti should ever wonder why he shares the fate of his friend, Mr. Morris, let him be satisfied with believing that, in slang phrase, he has "gone outside to oblige a lady," either in the person of Mrs. Newton Crossland, or in that of Miss Emily Faithfull, who, between them, fill nearly two pages ! Some musical people may be surprised at missing Mr. Haweis and Mr. Arthur Sullivan, when Mr. Hullah is painted almost at full length ; theologians, too, may wonder why, when so many obscure D.D.'s and distant bishops are here held up to fame, such men as Mr. Stopford Brooke and Mr. John Hunt are without any recognition ; and they may be apt, at first glance, to mistake a certain Bishop Cheetham for a well- known Church antiquarian who bears the same name. Dr. Charles Rogers and Dr. Henry Dircks might well have given up a little space in obliging such ladies as Mrs. Charles, the author of The Schonberg-Coita Family, and that refined poet, Miss Betham- Edwards—the more, that these two gentlemen have done so much for polite literature. Scotchmen of a liberal turn will doubtless be disappointed to find Mr. George Gilfillen and Dr. H. R. Story, of Roseneath, so amply limned, while there is no trace of Dr. Walter C. Smith, who has written much of merit besides Olrig Grange. Mr. John B. Marsh, the author of Harecourt, and Whittington and his Cat, on quiet representations made, would have surely given the pas to Mr. Leslie Stephen. Sir John Glover might have surrendered a line or two for the sake of his dashing companion-in-arms, Major Butler ; and Dr. W. Howard Russell curtailed his ample sweep of 3 pp.—which would declare him the greatest man of the Time, as well as of the Times (1)—in favour of some addition to Mr. Browning's scanty bestowal ; while Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen, though as much statesman as nursery story-teller, might have begged a little corner for the authors of Lilliput Levee and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Philosophical inquirers—in spite of the imperturbability with which they are credited—may be dissatisfied that Mr. Lecky, who wrote the History of Rationalism, has but sixteen lines, when Leone Levi has a column and a half. Mr. Walter Bagehot may re- joice in his eleven lines, to allow Mr. Edmond Beales,
his page and a half. Barnum has almost as much, being in this respect put on a level with John Bright and Thomas Carlyle, and only yielding to such Men of the Time as the lively Professor Blackie, of Edinburgh. But Mr. Ayrton is surely too " cabined, cribbed, confined" in his two-and-twenty lines, when Mr. Robert Applegarth enjoys a whole page ; that, however, would have been little, if it had not been said that Mr. Ayrton was appointed Judge Advocate-General, that office being revived for him. Adam White, in his simple scientific enthusiasm, would, we are sure, have made room for Canon Tristram ; the Rev. Frederick Arnold kindly shared his column with Thomas Hardy, author of Far from the Madding Crowd and Under the Greenwood Tree ; and Mr. W. H. Davenport Adams have rejoiced to embrace Mr. John Richard Green.
A further survey gives us a reason why, perhaps, Place our dames has not, after all, had the vantage one might have expected for it. We shrewdly suspect that the ladies take full advantage sometimes of their claim to a position among the "Men of the Time." Under the letter "B," for instance, we read :•—" Lady Barker went out to India to join Sir George early in 1860, but he died in the autumn of that year, and she returned to England. In 1865 Lady Barker married Mr. Frederick Napier Broome, then of Canterbury, New Zealand, and accompanied him back to the- Middle Island. Early in 1869 Mr. Napier Broome and Lady Barker returned to England." A whole column is almost filled with such personal details ; and not only so, but under the letter "B," a little further on, we find them repeated : — "Visiting England in 1864, he [Mr. Frederick Napier Broome] married Lady Barker, returned to his sheep- station ' in New Zealand the following year, but in 1869 came back to England. Almost immediately on his arrival in London he was employed by the Times, and was for five years one of the special correspondents of that journal,"—which last sentence does give a fresh point.
One penalty which you may have to pay for including ob- scurities in such a list is that you may never hear when they die. So, in the only way open to them they become immortal,—in Mr. Thompson Cooper's pages ! When Dr. Thomas McCrie, who died some time ago, still ranks among "Men of the Time," and the name of D. 0. Hill, the celebrated Scottish painter, is unremoved from this Valhalla list, our readers may well believe that others of less note encumber it. But our business is not to collect material for the editor, but to point a moral for him. Would not the chances have been in his favour, at least in one case, if he had not with fatal good-nature given a vested interest in the shape of a standing advertisement to relatives as well as to the person concerned?
Once a "man of the time," always a "man of the time," it would appear ; but surely, more than was ever wanted in any other community, it is needful now and then to "purge the roll." We venture on a suggestion. Let a committee of respectable business- people—not publishers, who, by the way, are very sparingly represented, John Murray standing, like the great Duke, "four- square to all the winds that blow," and Mr. Macmillan, and Mr. Strahan standing nowhere — be at once appointed to attach figures in brackets to each name, indicating the num- ber of years of this form of fame to which his past achieve- ments entitle the subject of notice ; at the end of which period, if he has subsided into non-enity, let him be thereto rele- gated here likewise. We are quite serious in this, because were it well carried out, it would in some degree cheek the tendency to inordinately-long paragraphs on very middling people, and the frequent introduction of references to others on the slimmest possible pretence, the editor knowing how much of his labour- would soon be wholly thrown away. Not to take a very bad instance, we find this under the heading of Dr. Alexander Keith, of St. Cyrus, born 1791 :—" His eldest son, the Rev. Alexander Keith, M.A., is the author of a Commentary on Isaiah. Another son, Dr. G. S. Keith, of Edinburgh, who accompanied him in his last journey to the East, has illustrated the last edition of his father's works by photo- graphic drawings." One cannot help wondering that some clever grandchild or great-grandchild did not come in for celebration also as a "Man of the Time." We can think at present of no better check on this species of triumphant apotheosis, which is going on year by year under our very eyes, showing, teyond cavil, how great a fallacy Dr. 0. W. Holmes was guilty of when he averred that only one of the three Johns could be taxed. All the three Johns are most liable to it, in our opinion, especially that most apparently impalpable of all the three Johns, "Thomas's ideal John," which, as beheld here, "a magnified, non-natural man," may well be taxed with pretension, arrogance, and obesity of conceit. •
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