Part 9 (1/2)

Nothing annoyed Carlyle more than to be told that he confounded might with right. He declared that, on the contrary, he had never said, and would never say, a word for power which was not founded on justice. Cromwell was as good as he was great, and he had never glorified Frederick, unless to write a book about a man is necessarily to glorify him. This prevalent misconception of Carlyle's gospel, so prevalent that it deceived no less keen a critic than Lecky, was completely dissipated by Froude. No one can read his Life intelligently without perceiving that Carlyle's real foe was materialism. The French Revolution was to him the central fact of modern history, and at the same time a supreme judgment of Heaven upon a society given up to unrestrained licentiousness. Whether he was right or wrong is not the point. He was as far as possible from being, in the modern sense, a scientific historian. Yet in some respects he was utilitarian enough. The condition of England was to him more important than any const.i.tutional change, any triumph in diplomacy, or any victory in war, and this fact explains apparently inconsistent admiration of Peel, who though a Parliamentary statesman, had accomplished a solid achievement for the benefit of the people. Carlyle in his own writings is an almost insoluble enigma. To have given the true solution is the supreme merit of Froude.*

- * John Nichol, a name still dear in Scotland, formerly Professor of Literature at the University of Glasgow, who wrote on Carlyle for Mr. Morley's English Men of Letters in 1892, says in his preface: ”Every critic of Carlyle must admit as constant obligation to Mr. Froude as every critic of Byron to Moore, or of Scott to Lockhart .... I must here be allowed to express a feeling akin to indignation at the persistent, often virulent, attach directed against a loyal friend, betrayed, it may be, by excess of faith, and the defective reticence that often belongs to genius, to publish too much about his hero. But Mr. Froude's quotation, in defence, from the essay on Sir Walter Scott, requires no supplement: it should be remembered that he acted with the most ample authority; that the restrictions under which he was first entrusted with the MSS. of the Reminiscences and the Letters and Memorials (annotated by Carlyle himself as if for publication) were withdrawn; and that the initial permission to select finally approached a practical injunction to communicate the whole.” -

CHAPTER IX

BOOKS AND TRAVEL

The two pa.s.sions of Froude's life were Devons.h.i.+re and the sea. ”Summer has come at last,” he wrote to Mrs. Kingsley from Salcombe in the middle of September, ”after two months of rain and storm. The fields from which the wrecks of the harvest were sc.r.a.ped up mined and sprouting now lie basking in stillest suns.h.i.+ne, as if wind and rain had never been heard of. The coast is extremely beautiful, and I, in addition to the charms of the place, hear my native tongue spoken and sung in the churches in undiminished purity.” Carlyle often kept him in London when he would much rather have been elsewhere. But, wherever he was, he had a ready pen, and his thoughts naturally clothed themselves in a literary garb. His enjoyment of books, especially old books, was intense. Reading, however, is idle work, and idleness was impossible to Froude. On his return from South Africa, where everything was being done which he thought least wise, he took up a cla.s.sical subject, and began to write a book about Caesar. He read Cicero, Plutarch, Suetonius, Caesar himself, and produced early in 1879 a volume which was always a particular favourite of his own. ”I believe,” he said to Skelton, ”it is the best book I have ever written.” The public did not altogether agree with him, and it never became so popular as Short Studies.

Yet it is undoubtedly a brilliant performance, with just the qualities which might have been expected to make it popular, and a second edition was soon required. It is interesting from the first page to the last, and its whole object is to show that the Roman world in the last days of the Republic was very like the English world under Queen Victoria. In Rome itself it has a steady sale. The general reader, however, was not wrong in thinking that these eloquent pages are below the level of Froude at his best. There is a hard metallic glitter in the style, and a forced comparison of ancient with modern things not really parallel, which make the whole narrative artificial and unreal. Lord Dufferin said, with his natural acuteness, ”It is interesting, and forcibly written, but one feels he is not a safe guide. As they say of the mansions of Ireland, 'they are always within a hundred yards of the best situation,' so one feels that Froude is never quite in the bull's- eye in the view he gives.”*

- * Lyall's Life of Dufferin, vol. ii. p. 244. -

Those who criticised the book as if it were a formal and historical narrative showed a lack of humour, which is a sense of proportion. Macaulay might almost as well be judged by his Fragment of a Roman Tale. Froude himself calls his Caesar a sketch, and it is scarcely more authoritative than the pamphlet of Louis Napoleon on the same subject. On the other hand, it is quite untrue that Froude had not read Cicero's letters. He had read those which bore upon his subject, and he quotes them freely enough. The fault of his Caesar is that he makes a wrong start. Points of resemblance between the first century before the Christian era and the nineteenth century after it may of course be found. But the differences are essential and fundamental. A society which rests upon servitude cannot be like a society which rests upon freedom. Christianity has modified the whole lives of those who do not profess it, and has created a totally new atmosphere, even if it be not in all respects a better one. Representative government, whether it be a good thing or a bad thing, is at least a thing which counts. Caesar could hardly have understood the idea of an indissoluble marriage, of a limited monarchy, of equality before the law.

One strange similitude Froude did, in deference to outraged susceptibilities, omit, and only the first edition contains a formal comparison of Julius Caesar with Jesus Christ. No irreverence was intended. It was Froude's enthusiasm for Caesar that carried him away. Still, the instance is only an extreme form of what comes from pus.h.i.+ng parallels below the surface. It is only a shade less misleading, though many shades less startling, to represent Caesar as a virtuous philanthropist abstemious habits who perished in a magnanimous effort to rescue the people from the tyranny of n.o.bles. The people in the modern sense were slaves, and the Republic at least ensured that there should be some protection against military despotism, to which in due course its abolition led. That Caesar was intellectually among the greatest men of all time is beyond question. Both strategist and as historian he is supreme. His ”thrasonical boast” was sober truth, and he stands above military or literary criticism, a lesson and a model. But he was steeped in all the vices of his age, and his motive was personal ambition. The Republic did not give him sufficient scope, and therefore he would have destroyed it, if he had not been himself destroyed.

Froude adopted the position of a great German professor and historian, Theodor Mommsen, whose prejudices were as strong as his learning was profound. He went with Mommsen in adoration of Caesar, and in depreciation of Cicero. That Cicero used one sort of language in public speeches, and another sort in private correspondence, is true, and is notorious because some of his most intimate letters have been preserved. But it is not peculiar to him. The man who talked in public as he talked in private would have small sense of fitness. The man who talked in private as he talked in public would have small sense of humour. Although Cicero's humour was not brilliant, he had sufficient taste to preserve him from pedantry and from solecisms. His devotion to the Republic was perfectly sincere; and if he changed in his behaviour to Caesar, it was because Caesar changed in his behaviour to the Republic. Froude's specific charge of rapid tergiversation is disproved by dates. The speech for Marcellus, with its over-strained flattery of the conqueror, was delivered, not ”within a few weeks of his murder,” but eighteen months before that event, at a time when Cicero still hoped that Caesar would be moderate. If Cicero's Republic was a narrow oligarchy, it was also the only form of const.i.tutional and civilian government which he knew or could imagine. He failed to preserve it. He was murdered like Caesar himself. Neither of them believed that political a.s.sa.s.sination was a crime. Cicero's only regret was that Antony had not been killed with Caesar. Antony's chief desire, which he accomplished, was to kill Cicero. The idea that Cicero was a mere declaimer, who did not count, never occurred either to Caesar or to Antony. It was left for Professor Mommsen to discover. Froude, always on the look-out for examples of his theory, or his father's theory, that orators must be useless and mistaken, seized it with an eager gasp. An agreeable looseness of treatment pervades the book, and ”patricians” appear as wealthy leaders of fas.h.i.+onable society, being in fact a small number of old Roman families, who might be poor, or in trade, and could not legally under the Republic be increased in number, resembling rather a Hindu caste than any inst.i.tution of Western Christendom. In Caesar's time they had almost died out, and the aristocracy of the day was an aristocracy of office. The book, however, though far from faultless, though in some respects misleading, has a singular fascination, the charm of a picture drawn by the hand of a master with consummate skill. As an historical study, what the French call une etude, it deserves a very high place, and it contains one sentence which all democrats would do well to learn:

”Popular forms are possible only when individual men can govern their own lives on moral principles, and when duty is of more importance than pleasure, and justice than material expediency.”

That represents the best side of Carlyle's teaching; the subordination of material objects, the supremacy of the moral law. Carlyle, however, did not care for the book, as appears in the following letter from Froude to Lady Derby:

”April 26th, 1879.-You are a most kind critic. If I have succeeded in creating interest in so old a subject my utmost wishes are accomplished. I am very curious indeed to hear what Lord D. says. I can guess that he thinks I ought to have said more in defence of the Const.i.tutionalists, and that I have hardly used Cicero. Carlyle reduced me to the condition of a 'drenched hen'-to use one of his own images. He told me that the book was not clear, that 'he got no good of it'-in fact, that it was 'a failure.' It may be a failure, but 'want of clearness' is certainly not the cause. I fancy he wanted something else which he did not find, and he would not give himself the trouble to examine what he did find.”

Froude contributed in 1880 to Mr. Morley's English Men of Letters a critical and biographical sketch of Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress, as the work of a Dissenter, had been excluded from the Rectory at Dartington. But Froude was not long in supplying the deficiency for himself, and his literary appreciation of Bunyan's style was accompanied by a sincere sympathy with the Puritan part of his faith. All religious people, he thought, might find common ground in Bunyan, a man who lived for religion, and for nothing else. Yet even here Froude's Erastianism, and respect for authority, come into play. He gravely defends Bunyan's imprisonment in Bedford gaol, which lasted, with some intermissions, from 1660 to 1672, as necessary to enforce respect for the law. That such a man as Charles Stuart should have had power to punish such a man as John Bunyan for preaching the word of G.o.d is a strange comment on the nature of a Christian country. But it cannot be denied that Charles and his judges, Sir Matthew Hale among them, provided the leisure to which we owe the best religious allegories in the language. Nor can it be said that Froude's apology for the confinement Bunyan is so repugnant to reason and justice as Gibbon's apology for the martyrdom of Cyprian.

The General Election of 1880 was regarded by Froude with mixed feelings.

”I am glad,” he wrote to Lady Derby on the 9th of April, 1880, ”that there is to be an end of 'glory and gunpowder,' but my feelings about Gladstone remain where they were. When you came into power in 1874, I dreamed of a revival of real Conservatism which under wiser guiding might and would have lasted to the end of the century. This is gone-gone for ever. The old England of order and rational government is past and will not return. Now I should like to see a moderate triumvirate-Lord Hartington, Lord Granville, and your husband, with a Cabinet which they could control. This too may easily be among the impossibilities, but I am sure that at the bottom of its heart the country wants quiet, and a Liberal revolutionary sensationalism will be just as distasteful to reasonable people as 'Asian Mysteries,' tall talk, and ambitious buffooneries.”

Lord Derby became more and more Liberal, until in December, 1882, he joined Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet. Before that decisive step, however, it became evident in which direction he was tending, and Froude wrote to Lady Derby on the 5th of March:

”I will call on Tuesday about 5. I have not been out of town, but my afternoons have been taken up with a mult.i.tude of small engagements, and indeed I have been sulky too, and imagined Lord D. had delivered himself over to the enemy. But what right have I to say anything when I am going this evening to dine with Chamberlain? I like Chamberlain. He knows his mind. There is no dust in his eyes, and he throws no dust in the eyes of others.”

Of the great struggle between Lords and Commons over the franchise in 1884, Froude wrote to the same correspondent on the 31st of July:

”As to what has happened since I went away, I for my own humble part am heartily pleased, for it will clear the air. If we are to have democracy, as I suppose we are, let us go into it with our eyes open. I don't like drifting among cataracts, hiding the reality from ourselves by forms which are not allowed either sense or power. That I suppose to be Lord Salisbury's feeling. I greatly admired his speech in Cannon Street, which reminded me of a talk I had with him long ago at Hatfield. If the result is a change in the Const.i.tution of the House of Lords which will make it a real power, no one will be more sorry than Chamberlain, whose own wish is to keep it in the condition of ornamental helplessness. Lord Derby himself can hardly wish to see the country entirely in the hands of a single irresponsible Chamber elected by universal suffrage-and of such a Chamber, which each extension of the suffrage brings to a lower intellectual level.”

The following letter was written from Salcombe just after the General Election of 1886 and the defeat of Home Rule: ”A Devons.h.i.+re farmer fell ill of typhus fever once. He had quarrelled with a neighbour, and the clergyman told him that he must not die out of charity, and must see the man and shake hands with him. He agreed. The man came. They were reconciled, and he was going away again when the sick farmer called him back to the bed-side. 'Mind you,' he said, 'if so be as I get over this here, 'tis to be as 'twas.'

”I am sorry to see we are taking for granted that we have got over the scare, and that ”tis to be as 'twas' in Parliament. If no way can be found of giving effect to the feeling of which has been just expressed, the old enemy will be back again stronger than ever. I, for my small part, shall finally despair of Parliamentary Government, and shall pray for a Chamberlain Dictators.h.i.+p. I do not think politicians know how slight the respect which is now generally felt for Parliament, or how weary sensible people have grown of it and its factions.

”We are very happy down here. We have lost the Molt, but have a very tolerable subst.i.tute for it. The Halifaxes are at the Molt themselves, and considering what I am, and that he is the President of the Church Union, I think he and I are both astonished to find how well we get on together. The Colonists come next week to Plymouth. I have promised to meet them. Their dinner will be the exact anniversary of the arrival of the Armada off the harbour. That was the beginning of the English naval greatness and of the English Colonial Empire. Think of poor Oceana-75,000 copies of it sold. It stands for something that the English nation is interested in.... But I must not try your eyes any further.”

It was in 1881 that Froude, whose connection with Fraser had ceased, wrote for Good Words the series of papers on The Oxford Counter- Reformation which are the best record hitherto published of his college life.* I have already referred to the vivid picture of John Henry Newman contained in one of them. On the 2nd of March, 1881, the aged Cardinal, writing from the Birmingham Oratory, sent a gracious message of acknowledgment. ”My dear Anthony Froude,” he began, ”I have seen some portions of what you have been writing about me, and I cannot help sending you a line to thank you... I thank you, not as being able to accept all you have said in praise of me. Of course I can't. Nor again as if there may not be other aspects of me which you cannot praise, and which you may in a coming chapter of your publication find it a duty, whether I allow them or not, to remark upon. But I write to thank you for such an evidence of your affectionate feelings towards me, for which I was not prepared, and which has touched me very much. May G.o.d's fullest blessings be upon you, and give you all good. Yours affectionately, John H. Cardinal Newman.”

- * Short Studies, fourth series, pp. 192-206. -

Froude carefully kept this letter, and, remote as their opinions were, he never varied in his loyal admiration of the ill.u.s.trious Oratorian. That admiration, however, was purely personal, and did not affect in any degree the staunchness of Froude's principles. In 1883 Protestant Germany celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of Luther's birth, and Froude wrote for the occasion a short biography of the rebellious monk who changed the history of the world. He founded on the larger Life by Julius Koestlin, which had then just appeared, this little book makes no pretence to original learning or research. It is a polemical pamphlet by a master of English, and a fervent admirer of the ill.u.s.trious Martin. ”When the German states revolted against the Roman hierarchy,” says Froude in his Preface, ”we in England revolted also,” and Luther's name was as familiar as Bunyan's to the Protestant Churches of England. The Catholic revival of which Froude had seen so much at Oxford was still in full swing.

”Nevertheless, we are still a Protestant nation, and the majority of us intend to remain Protestant. If we are indifferent to our Smithfield and Oxford martyrs, we are not indifferent to the Reformation, and we can join with Germany in paying respect to the memory of a man to whom we also, in part, owe our deliverance. Without Luther there would have been either no change in England in the sixteenth century, or a change purely political. Luther's was one of those great individualities which have modelled the history of mankind, and modelled it entirely for good. He revived and maintained the spirit of piety and reverence in which, and by which alone, real progress is possible.”