Читать книгу The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Vol. 1-3) - John Morley - Страница 18

In March 1830 Gladstone made the first of two attempts to win the scholarship newly founded by Dean Ireland, and from the beginning one of the most coveted of university prizes. In 1830 (March 16) he wrote:—'There is it appears smaller chance than ever of its falling out of the hands of the Shrewsbury people. There is a very formidable one indeed, by name Scott, come up from Christ Church. If it is to go among them I hope he may get it.' This was Robert Scott, afterwards master of Balliol, and then dean of Rochester, and the coadjutor with Dean Liddell in the famous Greek Lexicon brought out in 1843. A year later he tried again, but little better success came either to himself or to Scott. He tells his father the story (March 16th, 1831) and collegians who have fought such battles may care to hear it:—

I must first tell you that I am not the successful candidate, and after this I shall have nothing to communicate but what will, I think, give you pleasure. The scholarship has been won by (I believe) a native of Liverpool.47 His name is Brancker, and he is now actually at Shrewsbury, but had matriculated here though he had not come up to reside. This result has excited immense surprise. For my own part, I went into the examination solely depending for any hope of pre-eminence above the Shrewsbury men on three points, Greek history, one particular kind of Greek verses, and Greek philosophy.... It so fell out, however, that not one of these three points was brought to bear on the examination, though, indeed, it is but a lame one without them. Accordingly from the turn it seemed to take as it proceeded, my own expectations regularly declined, and I thought I might consider myself very well off if I came in pretty high. As it is, I am even with the great competitor, Scott, whom everybody almost thought the favourite candidate, and above the others. Allies, an Eton man, Scott and I are placed together; and Short, one of the examiners, told us this morning that it was an extremely near thing, and he had great difficulty in making up his mind, which he never had felt in any former examination in which he had been engaged; and indeed he laid the preference given to Brancker chiefly on his having written short and concise answers, while ours were longwinded. And in consideration of its having been so closely contested, the vice-chancellor is to present each of us with a set of books.... Something however may fairly enough be attributed to the fact that at Eton we were not educated for such objects as these.... The result will affect the scholarship itself more than any individual character; for previous events have created, and this has contributed amazingly to strengthen, a prevalent impression that the Shrewsbury system is radically a false one, and that its object is not to educate the mind but merely to cram and stuff it for these purposes. However, we who are beaten are not fair judges.... I only trust that you will not be more annoyed than I am by this event.

Brancker was said to have won because he answered all the questions not only shortly, but most of them right, and Mr. Gladstone's essay was marked 'desultory beyond belief.' Below Allies came Sidney Herbert, then at Oriel, and Grove, afterwards a judge and an important name in the history of scientific speculation.

He was equally unsuccessful in another field of competition. He sent in a poem on Richard Cœur de Lion for the Newdigate prize in 1829. In 1893 somebody asked his leave to reprint it, and at Mr. Gladstone's request sent him a copy:—

On perusing it I was very much struck by the contrast it exhibited between the faculty of versification which (I thought) was good, and the faculty of poetry, which was very defective. This faculty of verse had been trained I suppose by verse-making at Eton, and was based upon the possession of a good or tolerable ear with which nature had endowed me. I think that a poetical faculty did develop itself in me a little later, that is to say between twenty and thirty, due perhaps to having read Dante with a real devotion and absorption. It was, however, in my view, true but weak, and has never got beyond that stage. It was evidently absent from the verses, I will not say the poem, on Cœur de Lion; and without hesitation I declined to allow any reprint.48

DEBATES AT THE UNION

He was active in the debates at the Union, where he made his first start in the speaking line (Feb. 1830) in a strong oration much admired by his friends, in favour,—of all the questionable things in the world,—of the Treason and Sedition Acts of 1795. He writes home that he did not find the ordeal so formidable as it used to be before the smaller audiences at Eton, for at Oxford they sometimes mustered as many as a hundred or a hundred and fifty. He spoke for a strongly-worded motion on a happier theme, in favour of the policy and memory of Canning. In the summer of 1831, he mentions a debate in which a motion was proposed in favour of speedy emancipation of the West Indian slaves. 'I moved an amendment that education of a religious kind was the fit object of legislation, which was carried by thirty-three to twelve.' Of the most notable of all his successes at the Union we shall soon hear.

DAILY LIFE

His little diary, written for no eye but his own, and in the use of which I must beware of the sin of violating the sanctuary, contains in the most concise of daily records all his various activities, and, at least after the summer at Cuddesdon, it presents an attractive picture of duty, industry, and attention, 'constant as the motion of the day.' The entries are much alike, and a few of them will suffice to bring his life and him before us. The days for 1830 may almost be taken at random.

May 10, 1830.—Prospectively, I have the following work to do in the course of this term. (I mention it now, that this may at least make me blush if I fail.) Butler's Analogy, analysis and synopsis. Herodotus, questions. St. Matthew and St. John. Mathematical lecture. Aeneid. Juvenal and Persius. Ethics, five books. Prideaux (a part of, for Herodotus). Themistocles Greciae valedicturus [I suppose a verse composition]. Something in divinity. Mathematical lecture. Breakfast with Gaskell, who had the Merton men. Papers. Edinburgh Review on Southey's Colloquies [Macaulay's]. Ethics. A wretched day. God forgive idleness. Note to Bible.

May 13.—Wrote to my mother. At debate (Union). Elected secretary. Papers. British Critic on History of the Jews [by Newman on Milman]. Herodotus, Ethics. Butler and analysis. Papers, Virgil, Herodotus. Juvenal. Mathematics and lecture. Walk with Anstice. Ethics, finished book 4.

May 25.—Finished Porteus's Evidences. Got up a few hard passages. Analysis of Porteus. Sundry matters in divinity. Themistocles. Sat with Biscoe talking. Walk with Canning and Gaskell. Wine and tea. Wrote to Mr. G. [his father]. Papers.

June 13. Sunday.—Chapel morning and evening. Thomas à Kempis. Erskine's Evidence. Tea with Mayow and Cole. Walked with Maurice to hear Mr. Porter, a wild but splendid preacher.

June 14.—Gave a large wine party. Divinity lecture. Mathematics. Wrote three long letters. Herodotus, began book 4. Prideaux. Newspapers, etc. Thomas à Kempis.

June 15.—Another wine party. Ethics, Herodotus. A little Juvenal. Papers. Hallam's poetry. Lecture on Herodotus. Phillimore got the verse prize.

June 16.—Divinity lecture. Herodotus. Papers. Out at wine. A little Plato.

June 17.—Ethics and lecture. Herodotus. T. à Kempis. Wine with Gaskell.

June 18.—Breakfast with Gaskell. T. à Kempis. Divinity lecture. Herodotus. Wrote on Philosophy versus Poetry. A little Persius. Wine with Buller and Tupper.

June 25.—Ethics. Collections 9-3. Among other things wrote a long paper on religions of Egypt, Persia, Babylon; and on the Satirists. Finished packing books and clothes. Left Oxford between 5-6, and walked fifteen miles towards Leamington. Then obliged to put in, being caught by a thunderstorm. Comfortably off in a country inn at Steeple Aston. Read and spouted some Prometheus Vinctus there.

June 26.—Started before 7. Walked eight miles to Banbury. Breakfast there, and walked on twenty-two to Leamington. Arrived at three and changed. Gaskell came in the evening. Life of Massinger.

July 6. Cuddesdon.—Up soon after 6. Began my Harmony of Greek Testament. Differential calculus, etc. Mathematics good while, but in a rambling way. Began Odyssey. Papers. Walk with Anstice and Hamilton. Turned a little bit of Livy into Greek. Conversation on ethics and metaphysics at night.

July 8.—Greek Testament. Bible with Anstice. Mathematics, long but did little. Translated some Phædo. Butler. Construed some Thucydides at night. Making hay, etc., with S., H., and A. Great fun. Shelley.

July 10.—Greek Testament. Lightfoot. Butler, and writing a marginal analysis. Old Testament with Anstice and a discussion on early history. Mathematics. Cricket with H. and A. A conversation of two hours at night with A. on religion till past 12. Thucydides, etc. I cannot get anything done, though I seem to be employed a good while. Short's sermon.

July 11.—Church and Sunday-school teaching, morning and evening. The children miserably deluded. Barrow. Short. Walked with S.

September 4.—Same as yesterday. Paradise Lost. Dined with the bishop. Cards at night. I like them not, for they excite and keep me awake. Construing Sophocles.

September 18.—Went down early to Wheatley for letters. It is indeed true [the death of Huskisson], and he, poor man, was in his last agonies when I was playing cards on Wednesday night. When shall we learn wisdom? Not that I see folly in the fact of playing cards, but it is too often accompanied by a dissipated spirit.

He did not escape the usual sensations of the desultory when fate forces them to wear the collar. 'In fact, at times I find it very irksome, and my having the inclination to view it in that light is to me the surest demonstration that my mind was in great want of some discipline, and some regular exertion, for hitherto I have read by fits and starts and just as it pleased me. I hope that this vacation [summer of 1830] will confer on me one benefit more important than any having reference merely to my class—I mean the habit of steady application and strict economy of time.'

CORRESPONDENCE WITH HALLAM

Among the recorded fragmentary items of 1830, by the way, he read Mill's celebrated essay on Coleridge, which, when it was republished a generation later along with the companion essay on Bentham, made so strong an impression on the Oxford of my day. He kept up a correspondence with Hallam, now at Cambridge, and an extract from one of Hallam's letters may show something of the writer, as of the friend for whose sympathising mind it was intended:—

Academical honours would be less than nothing to me were it not for my father's wishes, and even these are moderate on the subject. If it please God that I make the name I bear honoured in a second generation, it will be by inward power which is its own reward; if it please Him not, I hope to go down to the grave unrepining, for I have lived and loved and been loved; and what will be the momentary pangs of an atomic existence when the scheme of that providential love which pervades, sustains, quickens this boundless universe shall at the last day be unfolded and adored? The great truth which, when we are rightly impressed with it, will liberate mankind is that no man has a right to isolate himself, because every man is a particle of a marvellous whole; that when he suffers, since it is for the good of that whole, he, the particle, has no right to complain; and in the long run, that which is the good of all will abundantly manifest itself to be the good of each. Other belief consists not with theism. This is its centre. Let me quote to their purpose the words of my favourite poet; it will do us good to hear his voice, though but for a moment:—

'One adequate support

For the calamities of mortal life

Exists—one only: an assured belief

That the procession of our fate, howe'er

Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being

Of infinite benevolence and power,

Whose everlasting purposes embrace

All accidents, converting them to good.'49

Hallam's father, in that memoir so just and tender which, he prefixes to his son's literary remains, remarks that all his son's talk about this old desperate riddle of the origin and significance of evil, like the talk of Leibnitz about it, resolved itself into an unproved assumption of the necessity of evil. In truth there is little sign that either Arthur Hallam or Gladstone had in him the making of the patient and methodical thinker in the high abstract sphere. They were both of them cast in another mould. But the efficacy of human relationships springs from a thousand subtler and more mysterious sources than either patience or method in our thinking. Such marked efficacy was there in the friendship of these two, both of them living under pure skies, but one of the pair endowed besides with 'the thews that throw the world.'

Whether in Gladstone's diary or in his letters, in the midst of Herodotus and Butler and Aristotle and the rest of the time-worn sages, we are curiously conscious of the presence of a spirit of action, affairs, excitement. It is not the born scholar eager in search of knowledge for its own sake; there is little of Milton's 'quiet air of delightful studies;' and none of Pascal's 'labouring for truth with many a heavy sigh.' The end of it all is, as Aristotle said it should be, not knowing but doing:—honourable desire of success, satisfaction of the hopes of friends, a general literary appetite, conscious preparation for private and public duty in the world, a steady progression out of the shallows into the depths, a gaze beyond garden and cloister, in agmen, in pulverem, in clamorem, to the dust and burning sun and shouting of the days of conflict.