Alexander Balfour

“ BALFOUR, GEORGE WILLIAM (1823–1903) , physician, born at the Manse of Sorn, Ayrshire, on 2 June 1823, was sixth son and eighth of the thirteen children of Lewis Balfour, D.D., by his wife Henrietta Scott, third daughter of George Smith, D.D., minister of Galston, who is satirised by Burns in 'The Holy Fair.' The father was grandson, on his father's side, of James Balfour (1705-1795) [q. v.] of Pilrig, professor of moral philosophy and of public law at Edinburgh, and on his mother's side of Robert Whytt [q. v.] , professor of medicine at Edinburgh. ”

“ But there was one brother, William, to whom the little Caroline always firmly attached herself with all the strength of a loving heart, sadly repressed in its demonstrations. William had always a kind look and word for his little sister, which fell on her heart like dew upon a drooping flower.
There was a younger child than Caroline, who completed the family group, Alexander, a fine boy, the care of whom fell to the lot of the sister five years his elder.
Never was there a harder worked child than Caroline Herschel. ”

“ BALFOUR, ROBERT (d. 1757) , fifth Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Jacobite, when a youth fell in love with a 'pretty face,' far inferior in rank, much to the annoyance of the family. He was sent to travel abroad in the hope that he would forget his attachment. Before he set out he declared to his lady-love that if in his absence she married he should kill her husband. Notwithstanding the threat, she did marry a Henry Stenhouse, schoolmaster at Inverkeithing, acquainting him beforehand of the hazard. ”

“ Arthur J. Balfour, then Prime Minister, in consideration of his great services to Celtic, and specially Gaelic, philology, history, and literature, recommended him to the King for a Civil List Pension of £90, to date from 1st April of 1905.
As Headmaster of Raining’s School, Dr. Macbain exerted an influence over his students very similar to that of his own old teacher, Dr. Dey of Aberdeen. He taught them to think for themselves, to insist on having not only the facts but also, wherever possible, the reasons why these things are so. ”

“ Few men could have borne without hurt such a stream of honorable distinctions, but in young Balfour genius and independence of thought were happily blended with industry and personal modesty; these won for him the friendship, esteem, and admiration of all who knew him. ”

“ One thinks that he began his descent unconsciously, and that carelessness rather than any inherent badness led gradually to an egoism which has proved fatal to his powers and to his character.
To the self-absorbed, vision is impossible. Mr. Balfour, unable to penetrate the future, has lived from day to day, enjoying the game of politics for the fun of confounding critics and managing colleagues, enjoying too the privilege and dignity of power, but never once feeling the call of the future, or experiencing one genuine desire to leave the world better than he found it. ”

“ As an imperishable memorial of one loved and mourned by our gracious Queen and deplored by every Englishman, I called this great lake "the Albert Nyanza." The Victoria and the Albert lakes are the two sources of the Nile.
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR (1848-)
lthough the prominence of Arthur James Balfour in English contemporary life is in the main that of a statesman, he has a high place as a critic of philosophy, especially in its relation to religion. ”

“ That little speech gave one a clearer sense of what through all these years Arthur Balfour has been doing than anything that ever has before come to me. There is something supremely brave about a man of such 136fine understanding, such humorous and distinguished cynicism, standing by through all of the disillusions, disgust, deceptions, forced evil choices of public life, never quitting whatever the temptation. ”

“ Lord Robert had, however, his own quarrel with the Government, who, according to his account, had done nothing to set Central Europe on its legs again, except to send it a certain amount of food—not, one would would have thought, an altogether bad preliminary.
It was a pity that Mr. Balfour had not a stronger indictment to answer, for he was dialectically at his best. After complimenting the Opposition leader on his "charming tones and anodyne temper" he proceeded to take up his challenge—"if I may call it a challenge." ”

“ One thing, however, should not be lost sight of. The continual harping upon one point by caricaturists as well as chroniclers is apt to mislead. Mr. Balfour, for instance, is often supposed to be devoted to nothing but politics and golf, whereas he is best known as the greatest metaphysician of the age. ”

“ For forty years now Arthur Balfour has stood by. He is, I believe, 73 years old. He has never had so much reason in all his long political career to believe that the good will of men can be mobilized for the world’s service. ”

“ BALFOUR, ROBERT (known also as Balforeus) (1550?–1625?) , Scottish philosopher, was educated at St Andrews and the university of Paris. He was for many years principal of the Guienne College at Bordeaux. His great work is his Commentarii in Organum Logicum Aristotelis (Bordeaux, 1618) ; the copy in the British Museum contains a number of highly-eulogistic poems in honour of Balfour, who is described as Graium aemulus acer. Balfour was one of the scholars who contributed to spread over Europe the fame of the praefervidum ingenium Scotorum. ”

“ Balfour himself has published a book, a copy of which we are awaiting with more or less impatience. Mr. Balfour is not considered a success as a statesman, because he has always looked upon politics merely as a game ”

“ Balfour is in Europe, I believe. How comes it that he is not produced here to tell your Lordships who was his informer, and what he knows of the transaction? They have not produced him, but have thought fit to rely upon this miserable, beggarly semblance of evidence, the very production of which was a crime, when brought forward for the purpose of giving color to acts of injustice and oppression. If you ask, Who is this Mr. Balfour? He is a person who was a military collector of revenue in the province of Rohilcund: a country now ruined and desolated, but once the garden of the world. ”

“ When men said, which they have done now for over thirty years, that Arthur Balfour was too much of a philosopher to be really interested in politics, I always contradicted them. With his intellectual taste, perfect literary style and keen interest in philosophy and religion, nothing but a great love of politics could account for his not having given up more of his time to writing. ”

“ With a fearful shriek—the more startling from his habitual composure—Balfour sprung to his feet, like Richard in the tent-scene; with hair erect, blanched face, and large drops of perspiration gathering on his brow, he staggered back, shouting:
“Oh, God! the man’s alive!”
I dashed at him, horror-struck myself, not at what had occurred—for I saw how it had happened—but at the abject terror of my companion, appalling to the last degree. Clasped together we hustled each other into a corner of the room, giving, in our passing struggles, a sharp gyration to the suspended skeletons. ”

“ While she looked at the ivy I opened for the first time for many weeks an English newspaper, and I read a speech of Mr. Balfour in which he said that the House of Lords ought to be preserved because it represented something in the nature of permanent public opinion of England, above the ebb and flow of the parties. Now Mr. Balfour is a perfectly sincere patriot, a man who, from his own point of view, thinks long and seriously about the public needs, and he is, moreover, a man of entirely exceptionable intellectual power. ”

“ Far more able and far more interesting in every way is his accomplished kinsman, Mr. Balfour, who, a few days later, was appointed Prime Minister. He is a tall, ruddy, handsome Scotchman, with a rare grace and charm of manner, and an exceptional air of high breeding, who speaks in a manly, straightforward way, with no trace of the bitterness, or even the heat so common in political discussions. When one notes the clearness of his mind, and the attractiveness of his address, it gives a keener edge to the regret that such a man should be on the wrong side of a great question like this. ”

“ John Balfour of Kinloch, commonly called Burly, was one of the fiercest of the proscribed sect. A gentleman by birth, he was, says his biographer, "zealous and honest-hearted, courageous in every enterprise, and a brave soldier, seldom any escaping that came in his hands." Life of John Balfour. Creichton says, that he was once chamberlain to Archbishop Sharpe, and, by negligence, or dishonesty, had incurred a large arrear, which occasioned his being active in his master's assassination. ”

“ Balfour stated that this coffer contained precious papers, which in the present circumstances might be of great use to Mary's enemies. The Confederate lords opened it, and found inside the three genuine or spurious letters that we have quoted, the marriage contract of Mary and Bothwell, and twelve poems in the queen's handwriting. As Balfour had said, therein lay, for her enemies, a rich and precious find, which was worth more than a victory; for a victory would yield them only the queen's life, while Balfour's treachery yielded them her honour. ”

“ Balfour made a great mistake. He had listened to the speech of Mr. Chamberlain, and had been one of those who had joined in the cheers at the exposure of Mr. Dillon's accidental mistake. There he should have left it, but, carried away by the hope of driving the point home against a political enemy, he needs must add something to what Mr. Chamberlain had said. Now Mr. Balfour is in many points very superior to Joe. He should leave personal vituperation to him: he is more active, defter, and more willing to do such dirty work. ”

“ In some ways he seems to me to have been too good a Stoic to be entirely a good Christian; or rather (to put it more correctly) to feel, like the rest of us, that he was a bad Christian. . . . There was much more in him of the Scotch Puritan than of the English Cavalier.
It is supremely characteristic of the present Parliamentary atmosphere that everybody accused Lord Balfour of incomprehensible compromise and vagueness, because he was completely logical and absolutely clear. Clarity does look like a cloud of confusion to people whose minds live in confusion twice confounded. ”

“ Balfour's life had been a model of chasteness and regularity,—though this was owing more to constitutional coldness, and a frugal spirit, than to virtuous forbearance; but, in his schemes for the future, he did not exclude the circumstance of marriage. Having attained a situation secure as the nature of human affairs will admit from the chances of poverty, the way was sufficiently prepared for matrimony. His thoughts had been for some time employed in the selection of a suitable companion, when this rencounter happened with Miss Dudley. ”

“ One has no objection to being abused for what one DOES hold, as I said of Erasmus; at least, one is prepared to put up with it. An attack on us by some one who understood our position would do all of us good—myself included. But Mr. Balfour has acted like the French in 1870: he has gone to war without any ordnance maps, and without having surveyed the scene of the campaign. No human being holds the opinions he speaks of as 'Naturalism.' He is a good debater. He knows the value of a word. The word 'Naturalism' has a bad sound and unpleasant associations. ”

“ The second day in London, Tom took me to an exhibition important in the art world, or at least in the official life of London. Everybody who was somebody was there. I saw the Princess of Wales and the Marquis of Salisbury, who was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. I saw Mr. Balfour, so handsome and gracious that I refused to believe there had ever been cause to call him “Bloody Balfour.” There was something kingly about him—yet he was simply Mr. Balfour. Years afterward I realized that to know Mr. Balfour is either to worship him or hate him. No one takes the middle course. ”

“ Balfour has committed himself is to show that the particular system which he would recommend is free from the imperfections and, so to speak, organic weaknesses of all other systems, and that it stands forth as an unimpeachable authority in all those matters upon which science is incapable of instructing us. ”

“ He knew well enough, of course, that of the operation he would feel nothing. But the sight of the hard, white, narrow pallet on which he had to lie, the cold glint of the remorseless instruments, the neatly folded packages of lint and cotton-wool, and the faint, horrible smell of chloroform turned him rather sick for a minute. Then he glanced downwards, with a sense of almost affectionate yearning, at the limb he was about to lose. "Good-bye, dear old leg!" he murmured, with a little laugh which smothered a rising sob. "We've had some lovely ramps together, but the best of friends must part." ”

“ Balfour keeps steadily away from the House. He never was a good attendant, even in his best of days, and now that he is relieved of responsibility, he naturally seeks to take advantage of it. But he doesn't take so much advantage as one would expect. ”

“ So we like this late Prime Minister not because of his political rank, but because he loves his game and does his best by it, and is at all times an example to the acolytes who come forward in nervous ignorance of the great meaning of golf.
Then it is less interesting to consider what style of player Mr. Balfour is, than what kind of man he shows himself to be amid the trials and the triumphs of the links, where, it is indisputably held, a man’s entire human nature, despite all efforts at repression, is forced up to the surface for all to see. ”