Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 | Page 5

foremost
instructor of his time in wisdom and goodness quickly breaks off, in
this hour when his loss is fresh upon us; it changes into affectionate
reminiscences for which silence is more fitting. In such an hour thought
turns rather to the person than the work of the master whom we mourn.
We recall his simplicity, gentleness, heroic self-abnegation; his
generosity in encouraging, his eager readiness in helping; the warm
kindliness of his accost, the friendly brightening of the eye. The last
time I saw him was a few days before he left England.[1] He came to
spend a day with me in the country, of which the following brief notes
happened to be written at the time in a letter to a friend:--
'He came down by the morning train to Guildford station, where I was
waiting for him. He was in his most even and mellow humour. We
walked in a leisurely way and through roundabout tracks for some four
hours along the ancient green road which you know, over the high
grassy downs, into old chalk pits picturesque with juniper and yew,
across heaths and commons, and so up to our windy promontory, where
the majestic prospect stirred him with lively delight. You know he is a
fervent botanist, and every ten minutes he stooped to look at this or that
on the path. Unluckily I am ignorant of the very rudiments of the matter,
so his parenthetic enthusiasms were lost upon me.
[Footnote 1: April 5, 1873.]
'Of course he talked, and talked well. He admitted that Goethe had
added new points of view to life, but has a deep dislike of his moral
character; wondered how a man who could draw the sorrows of a
deserted woman like Aurelia, in Wilhelm Meister, should yet have
behaved so systematically ill to women. Goethe tried as hard as he
could to be a Greek, yet his failure to produce anything perfect in form,
except a few lyrics, proves the irresistible expansion of the modern

spirit, and the inadequateness of the Greek type to modern needs of
activity and expression. Greatly prefers Schiller in all respects; turning
to him from Goethe is like going into the fresh air from a hothouse.
'Spoke of style: thinks Goldsmith unsurpassed; then Addison comes.
Greatly dislikes the style of Junius and of Gibbon; indeed, thinks
meanly of the latter in all respects, except for his research, which alone
of the work of that century stands the test of nineteenth-century
criticism. Did not agree with me that George Sand's is the high-water
mark of prose, but yet could not name anybody higher, and admitted
that her prose stirs you like music.
'Seemed disposed to think that the most feasible solution of the Irish
University question is a Catholic University, the restrictive and
obscurantist tendencies of which you may expect to have cheeked by
the active competition of life with men trained in more enlightened
systems. Spoke of Home Rule.
'Made remarks on the difference in the feeling of modern refusers of
Christianity as compared with that of men like his father, impassioned
deniers, who believed that if only you broke up the power of the priests
and checked superstition, all would go well--a dream from which they
were partially awakened by seeing that the French revolution, which
overthrew the Church, still did not bring the millennium. His radical
friends used to be very angry with him for loving Wordsworth.
"Wordsworth," I used to say, "is against you, no doubt, in the battle
which you are now waging, but after you have won, the world will need
more than ever those qualities which Wordsworth is keeping alive and
nourishing." In his youth mere negation of religion was a firm bond of
union, social and otherwise, between men who agreed in nothing else.
'Spoke of the modern tendency to pure theism, and met the objection
that it retards improvement by turning the minds of some of the best
men from social affairs, by the counter-proposition that it is useful to
society, apart from the question of its truth,--useful as a provisional
belief, because people will identify serviceable ministry to men with
service of God. Thinks we cannot with any sort of precision define the
coming modification of religion, but anticipates that it will undoubtedly

rest upon the solidarity of mankind, as Comte said, and as you and I
believe. Perceives two things, at any rate, which are likely to lead men
to invest this with the moral authority of a religion; first, they will
become more and more impressed by the awful fact that a piece of
conduct to-day may prove a curse to men and women scores and even
hundreds of years after the author of it is dead; and second, they will
more and more