The popularity of “Eminent Victorians” inspired a host of followers. Critics began to look about them for other vulnerable reputations. Mr. J. A. Strahan, stepping back from Victoria to Anne, made the happy discovery that Addison had been systematically overpraised, and that every side of his character was open to assault. The result of this perspicuity is a damning denunciation of a man whom his contemporaries liked and esteemed, and concerning whom we have been content to take the word of those who knew him. He may have been, as Mr. Strahan asserts, a sot, a time-server, a toad-eater, a bad official and a worse friend; but he managed to give a different impression. Addison’s friends and neighbours found him a modest, honourable, sweet-tempered gentleman; and Steele, whom he had affronted, wrote these generous words: “You can seldom get him to the tavern; but when once he is arrived to his pint, and begins to look about him, you admire a thousand things in him which before lay buried.”
This seems to me a singularly pleasant thing to say about anybody. Were I coveting praise, this is the form I’d like the praise to take.
The pressure of disparagement, which is one result of the cooling of our blood after the fever-heat of war, is lowering our enthusiasms, thinning our sympathies, and giving us nothing very dazzling in the way of enlightenment. Americans are less critical than Englishmen, who so value their birthright of free speech that censure of public men has become a habit, a game of hazard (pulling planks out of the ship of state), at which long practice has made them perfect. “The editor of the ‘Morning Post,’” observed Mr. Maurice Hewlett wearily, “begins his day by wondering whom he shall denounce”; and opposing editors, as nimble at the fray, match outcry against outcry, and malice against malignity.
I doubt if any other than an Englishman could have written “The Mirrors of Downing Street,” and I am sure that, were an American able to write such a book (which is problematic), it would never occur to him to think of it, or to brag of it, as a duty. The public actions of public men are open to discussion; but Mr. Balfour’s personal selfishness, his parsimony, his indifference to his domestics, are not matters of general moment. To gossip about these things is to gossip with tradesmen and servants. To deny to Lord Kitchener “greatness of mind, greatness of character, and greatness of heart,” is harsh speaking of the dead; but to tell a gaping world that the woman “whom he loved hungrily and doggedly, and to whom he proposed several times, could never bring herself to marry him,” is a personality which “Town Topics” would scorn. “The Mirrors of Downing Street” aspired to a moral purpose; but taste is the guardian of morality. Its delicate and severe dictates define the terms upon which we may improve the world at the expense of our neighbour’s character.
The sneaking kindness recommended by Mr. Stevenson is much harder to come by than the “raptures of moral indignation,” of which he heard more than he wanted, and which are reverberating through the world to-day. The pages of history are heavy with moral indignation. We teach it in our schools, and there are historians like Macaulay who thunder it rapturously, with never a moment of misgiving. But here and there, as we step apprehensively into historic bypaths, we are cheered by patches of sunshine, straight glimpses into truths which put a more credible, because a more merciful, construction upon men’s actions, and lighten our burden of dispraise.
I have often wondered why, with Philippe de Commines as an avenue of approach, all writers except Scott should deal with Louis the Eleventh as with a moral monstrosity. Commines is no apologist. He has a natural desire to speak well of his master; but he reviews every side of Louis’s character with dispassionate sincerity.
First, as a Catholic: “The king was very liberal to the Church, and, in some respects, more so than was necessary, for he robbed the poor to give to the rich. But in this world no one can arrive at perfection.”
Next, as a husband: “As for ladies, he never meddled with them in my time; for when I came to his court he lost a son, at whose death he was greatly afflicted; and he made a vow to God in my presence never to have intercourse with any other woman than the queen. And though this was no more than he was bound to do by the canons of the Church, yet it was much that he should have such self-command as to persevere firmly in his resolution, considering that the queen (though an excellent lady in other respects) was not a princess in whom a man could take any great delight.”
Finally, as a ruler: “The king was naturally kind and indulgent to persons of mean estate, and hostile to all great men who had no need of him.... But this I say boldly in his commendation, that in my whole life I never knew any man so wise in his misfortunes.”
To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate. We cannot easily or advantageously regard Louis with affection; but when Commines epitomizes history in an ejaculation, “Our good master, Louis, whom God pardon!” it rests our souls to say, “Amen!”