Viscount James Bryce Bryce

“ He never becomes a demagogue; he never stoops to beguile the multitude by appealing to sordid instincts. He retains through life a certain amplitude of view, a due sense of the dignity of his position, a due regard for the traditions of the ancient assembly which he leads, and when at last the destinies of England fall into his hands, he feels the grandeur of the charge, and seeks to secure what he believes to be her imperial place in the world. Whatever judgment history may ultimately pass upon him, she will find in the long annals of the English Parliament no more striking figure. ”

“ The great poet or the great artist lives as long as his books or his pictures; the statesman, like the singer or the actor, begins to be forgotten so soon as his voice is still, unless he has so dominated the men of his own time, and made himself a part of his country’s history, that his personal character is indissolubly linked to the events the course of which he helped to determine. Tried by this test, Mr. Gladstone’s fame seems destined to endure. His eloquence will soon become merely a tradition, for his printed speeches do not preserve its charm. ”

“ There were perhaps not twenty men in the House of Commons who could follow the sense of the lines so as to appreciate their bearing on his argument. But these sonorous hexameters—hexameters that seemed to have lived on through nineteen centuries to find their application from the lips of an orator to-day—the sense of remoteness in the strange language and the far-off heathen origin, the deep and moving note in the speaker’s voice, thrilled the imagination of the audience and held it spellbound, lifting for a moment the whole subject of debate into a region far above party conflicts. ”

“ It was natural for a young man with Disraeli’s gifts to mock at what he saw. But he would not sit still in mere contempt. The thirst for power and fame gave him no rest. He must gain what he saw every one around him struggling for. He must triumph over these people whose follies amused him; and the sense that he perceived and could use their follies would add zest to his triumph. He might have been a great satirist; he resolved to become a great statesman. For such a career, his Hebrew detachment gave him some eminent advantages. ”

“ Nothing struck one so much in daily intercourse with him as his passionate interest in human life. The same quickness of sympathy which had served him well in his work among the East End poor, enabled him to pour feeling into the figures of a bygone age, and become the most human, and in so far the most real and touching, of all who have dealt with English history. Whether or not his portraits are true, they always seem to breathe. ”

“ He was, I think, the first man of Scottish birth who ever rose to be Primate of England, and he had the cautious self-restraint which is deemed characteristic of his nation. He knew how to be dignified without assumption, firm without vehemence, prudent without timidity, judicious without coldness. He was, above all things, a singularly just man, who recognised every one’s rights, and did not seek to overbear them by an exercise of authority. He was as ready to listen to his opponents as to his friends. ”

“ He had not Pitt’s turn for the lucid exposition of complicated facts, nor for the conduct of a close argument. The sustained and fiery declamation of Fox was equally beyond his range. And least of all had he that truest index of eloquence, the power of touching the emotions. He could not make his hearers weep. But he could make them laugh; he could put them in good-humour with themselves; he could dazzle them with rhetoric; he could pour upon an opponent streams of ridicule more effective than the hottest indignation. ”

“ It seems a truism to say that one who writes history ought to care for all that bears upon man in the present in order that he may comprehend what bore upon him in the past. This roaring loom of Time, these complex physical and moral forces playing round us, and driving us hither and thither by such a strange and intricate interlacement of movements that we seem to perceive no more than what is next us, and are unable to say whither we are tending, ought to be always before the historian’s mind. ”

“ With this close hold upon practical life and this constant interest in the politics of the world, especially of England and the United States, no one could be less like that cloistered student who is commonly taken as the typical man of learning. But Lord Acton was a miracle of learning. Of the sciences of nature and their practical applications in the arts he had indeed no more knowledge than any cultivated man of the world is expected to possess. But of all the so-called “human subjects” his mastery was unequalled. Learning was the business of his life. ”

“ As he grew older his purity lost its coldness, his keenness of discernment mellowed into a sweet and 341 persuasive wisdom. A life excellently conducted, a life which is the expression of fine qualities, and in which the acts done are in harmony with the thoughts and words of the man, is itself a beautiful product, whether of untutored nature or of thought and experience turning every faculty to the best account. In the modern world the two types of excellence which we are chiefly bidden to admire are that of the active philanthropist and that of the saint. ”

“ Our imaginative historian may or may not be able to reconstruct for us the private and personal as well as the public or political life of the past. If he can, he will. If the data are too scanty, he may cautiously forbear. Yet he will still feel that those whose movements on the public stage he chronicles were steeped in an environment of natural and human influences which must have affected them at every turn; and he will so describe them as to make us feel them human, and give life to the pallid figures of far-off warriors and lawgivers. ”

“ Nor, though he had won a high reputation at his University, was Manning a leading spirit in the famous “Oxford Movement.” It was by his winning manners, his graceful rhetoric, and his zealous discharge of clerical duties, rather than by any commanding talents that he rose to eminence in the Church of England. Neither had his character the same power either to attract or to awe as that of Newman. Nobody in those days called him great, as men called Newman. Nobody felt compelled to follow where he led. ”

“ Parliamentary fame is fleeting: the memory of parliamentary conflicts soon grows dim and dull. Posterity fixes a man’s place in history by asking not how many tongues buzzed about him in his lifetime, but how great a factor he was in the changes of the world, that is, how far different things would have been twenty or fifty years after his death if he had never lived. Tried by this standard, the results upon the course of events of Disraeli’s personal action are not numerous, though some of them may be deemed momentous. ”

“ To any one with less power of self-control such intensity of emotion as he frequently showed would have been dangerous; nor did this excitability fail, even with him, to prompt words and acts which a cooler judgment would have disapproved. But it gave that spontaneity which was one of the charms of his nature; it produced that impression of profound earnestness and of resistless force which raised him out of the rank of ordinary statesmen. The rush of emotion swelling fast and full seemed to turn the whole stream of intellectual effort into whatever channel lay at the moment nearest. ”

“ But he had all through his career an imperfect comprehension of the English people. Individuals, or even an assembly, may be understood by dint of close and long-continued observation; but to understand a whole nation, one must also have sympathy, and this his circumstances, not less than his character, had denied him.
It was partly the same defect that prevented him from mastering the general politics of Europe. There is a sense in which no single man can pretend to understand Europe. ”

“ Vehemence in controversy, domineering audacity of purpose, the power of moving crowds by incisive harangues, were the qualities which the younger generation seemed disposed to cultivate. They are qualities apt to be valued in times of strife and change, times when men are less concerned to study and apply principles than to rouse the passions and consolidate the organisation of their party, while dazzling the nation by large promises or bold strokes of policy. For such courses Northcote was not the man. ”

“ Every one knows that a school depends for its wellbeing and success more largely on the assistants taken together than it does on the headmaster. Most people also know that individual assistant masters are not unfrequently better scholars, better teachers, and more influential with the boys than is their official superior. Yet the assistant masters have remained unhonoured and unsung in the general chorus of praise of the great schools which has been resounding over England for nearly two generations. ”

“ The permanent reputation of an orator depends upon two things, the witness of contemporaries to the impression produced upon them, and the written or printed record of his speeches. Few are the famous speakers who would be famous if they were tried by this latter test alone, and Mr. Gladstone was not one of them. It is only by a rare combination of gifts that one who speaks with so much force and brilliance as to charm his listeners is also able to deliver thoughts so valuable in words so choice that posterity will read them as literature. ”

“ He was so much the most interesting human being in the House of Commons that, when he withdrew, many members said that the place had lost half its attraction for 439 them, and that the chamber looked empty because he was not in it. Plenty of able men remained. But even the ablest seemed ordinary when compared with the figure that had vanished, a figure in whom were combined, as in no other man of his time, an unrivalled experience, an extraordinary activity and versatility of intellect, a fervid imagination, and an indomitable will. ”

“ It becomes daily more than ever true that the secret of historical composition is to know what to neglect, since in our time it has become impossible to exhaust the literature of most subjects, and, as respects the last two centuries, to exhaust even the original authorities. Yet how shall one know what to neglect without at least a glance of inspection? Acton was unwilling to neglect anything; and his ardour for completeness drew him into a policy fit only for one who could expect to live three lives of mortal men. ”

“ Whoever follows the annals of England during the memorable years from 1843 to 1894 will meet his name on almost every page, will feel how great must have been the force of an intellect that could so interpenetrate the story of its time, and will seek to know something of the dauntless figure that rose always conspicuous above the struggling throng. ”

“ Indeed, the geniality, elevation, and simplicity of his character gave him a quite unusual hold on those who had come to know him well. Few men, leading an equally quiet and studious life, have inspired so much regard and affection in so large a number of persons; few teachers have had an equal power of stimulating and attracting their pupils. He loved teaching hardly less than he loved the investigation of truth, and he was the most faithful and sympathetic of friends, one who was felt to be unique while he lived and irreplaceable when he had departed. ”

“ More truly may it be said that the merits of a great historian are far from lying wholly in his intellectual powers. Among the highest of such merits, merits which the professional student has even more reason to appreciate than the general reader, because he more frequently discerns the disturbing causes, are two moral qualities. One is the zeal for truth, with the willingness to undertake, in a search for it, a toil by which no credit will ever be gained. The other is a clear view of, and loyal adherence to, the permanent moral standards. In both these points Freeman stood in the front rank. ”

“ So far from glittering with the florid rhetoric supposed to 242 characterise Irish eloquence, his speeches were singularly plain, bare, and dry. Neither had they any humour. If they ever raised a smile, which seldom happened, it was by some touch of sarcasm or adroit thrust at a point left unguarded by an adversary. Their merit lay in their lucidity, in their aptness to the matter in hand, in the strong practical sense which ran through them, coupled with the feeling that they came from one who led a nation, and whose forecasts had often fulfilled themselves. ”

“ The affront to his pride disturbed the balance of his mind, and made him feel as if even a temporary humiliation would destroy the prestige that had been won by his haughty self-confidence. It was soon evident that he had overestimated his power in Ireland, but when the schism began there were many besides Lord Salisbury—many in Ireland as well as in England—who predicted triumph for him. ”

“ As Godkin expected—or at least demanded—righteousness from every one, he was more a terror to evildoers than a praise to them that do well, and the fact that, having no private ends to serve, he thought only of truth and the public interest, made him all the more stringent. Because he was, and found it easy to be, fearless and independent, he scarcely allowed enough for the timidity of others, and sometimes chastised the weak as sternly as the wicked. An editor who smites all the self-seekers and all the time-servers whom he thinks worth smiting, is sure to become a target for many arrows. ”

“ His books are not only a valuable revelation of his mind, but have more literary merit than critics have commonly allowed to them, perhaps because we are apt, when a man excels in one walk, to deem him to have failed in any other wherein he does not reach the same level. The novels foam over with cleverness; indeed, Vivian Grey, with all its youthful faults, gives as great an impression of intellectual brilliance as does anything Disraeli ever wrote or spoke. Their easy fertility makes them seem to be only, so to speak, a few sketches out of a large portfolio. ”

“ Experience has shown that 222 parties do not greatly suffer from the way they fight their Parliamentary battles. Few people follow the proceedings closely enough to know when an Opposition deserves blame for prolonging debate, or a Ministry for abuse of the closure. So, too, in the United States it would seem that neither the tyrannical action of a majority nor filibustering by a minority shocks the nation.
Not only was Northcote’s own temper pacific, but he was too sweetly reasonable and too dispassionate to be a successful leader in Opposition. He felt that he was never quite a party man. ”

“ He felt himself no Englishman, and watched English life and politics as a student of natural history might watch the habits of bees or ants. English society was then, and perhaps is still, more complex, more full of inconsistencies, of contrasts between theory and practice, between appearances and realities, than that of any other country. Nowhere so much limitation of view among the fashionable, so much pharisaism among the respectable, so much vulgarity among the rich, mixed with so much real earnestness, benevolence, and good sense ”

“ He avoided publicity and popularity with the tranquil dignity of one for whom the world of knowledge and speculation was more than sufficient. But he was a loyal friend, affectionate to his intimates, gracious in his manners, blameless in all the relations of life. Comparatively few of his countrymen knew his name, and those who did thought of him chiefly as the confidant of Mr. Gladstone, and as the most remarkable instance of a sincere and steadfast Roman Catholic who was a Liberal alike in politics and in theology. ”