Victorian Worthies | Page 5

drew their eccentric
types. But between eccentricity and vigorous originality who shall draw
the dividing line?
Men like these it is hard to label and to classify. Their individuality is
so patent that any general statement is at once open to attack. The most
that we can do is to indicate one or two points in which the true
Victorians had a certain resemblance to one another, and were unlike
their successors of our own day. They were more evidently in earnest,
less conscious of themselves, more indifferent to ridicule, more
absorbed in their work. To many of them full work and the cares of
office seemed a necessity of life. It was a typical Victorian who, after
sixteen years of public service, writing a family letter, says, 'I feel that
the interest of business and the excitement of responsibility are

indispensable to me, and I believe that I am never happier than when I
have more to think of and to do than I can manage in a given period'.
Idleness and insouciance had few temptations for them, cynicism was
abhorrent to them. Even Thackeray was perpetually 'caught out' when
he assumed the cynic's pose. Charlotte Brontë, most loyal of his
admirers and critics, speaks of the 'deep feelings for his kind' which he
cherished in his large heart, and again of the 'sentiment, jealously
hidden but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable
Thackeray'. Large-hearted and generous to one another, they were
ready to face adventure, eager to fight for an ideal, however
impracticable it seemed. This was as true of Tennyson, Browning,
Matthew Arnold, and all the genus irritabile vatum, as of the politicians
and the men of action. They made many mistakes; they were combative,
often difficult to deal with. Some of them were deficient in judgement,
others in the saving gift of humour; but they were rarely petty or
ungenerous, or failed from faint-heartedness or indecision. Vehemence
and impatience can do harm to the best causes, and the lives of men
like the Napiers and the Lawrences, like Thomas Arnold and Charles
Kingsley, like John Bright and Robert Lowe, are marred by conflicts
which might have been avoided by more studied gentleness or more
philosophic calm. But the time seemed short in which they could
redress the evils which offended them. They saw around them a world
which seemed to be lapped in comfort or swathed in the dead
wrappings of the past, and would not listen to reasoned appeals; and it
would be futile to deny that, by lifting their voices to a pitch which
offends fastidious critics, Carlyle and Ruskin did sometimes obtain a
hearing and kindle a passion which Matthew Arnold could never stir by
his scholarly exhortations to 'sweetness and light'.
But it would be a mistake to infer from such clamour and contention
that the Victorians did not enjoy their fair share of happiness in this
world. The opposite would be nearer the truth: happiness was given to
them in good, even in overflowing measure. Any one familiar with
Trevelyan's biography of Macaulay will remember with what fullness
and intensity he enjoyed his life; and the same fact is noted by Dr.
Mozley in his Essay on that most representative Victorian, Thomas
Arnold. The lives of Delane, the famous editor of The Times, of the

statesman Palmerston, of the painter Millais, and of many other men in
many professions, might be quoted to support this view. In some cases
this was due to their strong family affections, in others to their genius
for friendship. A good conscience, a good temper, a good digestion, are
all factors of importance. But perhaps the best insurance against
moodiness and melancholy was that strenuous activity which made
them forget themselves, that energetic will-power which was the
driving force in so many movements of the day.
How many of the changes of last century were due to general
tendencies, how far the single will of this man or that has seriously
affected its history, it is impossible to estimate. To many it seems that
the rôle of the individual is played out. The spirit of the coming era is
that of organized fellowship and associated effort. The State is to
prescribe for all, and the units are, somehow, to be marshalled into their
places by a higher collective will. Under the shadow of socialism the
more ambitious may be tempted to quit the field of public service at
home and to look to enterprises abroad--to resign poor England to a
mechanical bureaucracy, a soulless uniformity where one man is as
good as another. But it is difficult to believe that society can dispense
with leaders, or afford to forget the lessons which may be learnt from
the study of such noble lives. The Victorians had a