Under dispute

by Agnes Repplier

We cannot easily love Swift. The great “professional hater” frightens us out of the timid regard which we should like—in honour of English literature—to cherish for his memory. But there is a noble sentence of Thackeray’s which, if it does not soften our hearts, cannot fail to clarify our minds, to free us from the stupid, clogging misapprehension which we confuse with moral distaste. “Through the storms and tempests of his [Swift’s] furious mind the stars of religion and love break out in the blue, shining serenely, though hidden by the driving clouds and maddening hurricane of his life.” One clear and penetrating note (“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came”) is worth much careful auditing of accounts.

The picture of John Wilkes drawn by Sir George Otto Trevelyan in his “Early History of Charles James Fox,” and the picture of Aaron Burr drawn by Mr. Albert J. Beveridge in his “Life of John Marshall,” are happy illustrations of unpopular subjects treated with illuminating kindness. Wilkes was a demagogue and Burr a trouble-maker (the terms are not necessarily synonymous), and neither of them is a man whose history is widely or accurately known. Both historians are swayed by their political passions. An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting. To Trevelyan all Conservatives were in fault, and all Liberals in the right. Opposition to George the Third is the acid test he applies to separate gold from dross. Mr. Beveridge regards the Federalists as the strength, and the Republicans as the weakness, of the young nation. Thomas Jefferson is his test, and a man hated and hounded by Jefferson necessarily wins his support.

Nevertheless, Wilkes and Burr are presented to us by their sympathizers in a cold north light which softens and conceals nothing. Men of positive quality, they look best when clearly seen. “Research and fact are ever in collision with fancy and legend,” observes Mr. Beveridge soberly; and it is to research and fact that he trusts to rescue his accomplished filibuster from those unproved charges which live by virtue of their vagueness. Writers of American school histories, remembering the duty of moral indignation, have played havoc with the reputation of Aaron Burr; and American school-children, if they know him at all, know him as a duellist and a traitor. They are sure about the duel (it was one of the few facts firmly established in my own mind after a severe struggle with American history); but concerning the treason, they are at least as ill-informed as their elders.

British children do better, perhaps, with John Wilkes. Little Londoners can gaze at the obelisk which commemorates his mayoralty, and think of him as a catless Whittington. The slogan “Wilkes and Liberty” has an attractive ring to all who are not of Madame Roland’s way of thinking. No man ever gave his partisans more to defend, or his opponents better chances to attack; and friends and foes rose repeatedly and fervently to their opportunities. A century later, Sir George Trevelyan, a friend well worth the having, reviews the case with wise sincerity, undaunted confidence, a careful art in the arrangement of his high lights, and a niceness of touch which wins halfway all readers who love the English language. Wilkes was as naturally and inevitably in debt as was William Godwin, and Wilkes’s debts were as naturally and inevitably paid by some one else as were Godwin’s; but when Trevelyan alludes softly to his “unambitious standard of solvency,” this sordid detail becomes unexpectedly pleasurable. So easily are transgressions pardoned, if they provoke the shadow of a smile.

Lord Rosebery’s “Napoleon: the Last Phase” is a work nobly conceived and admirably executed; but its impelling motive is an austere resolve to make what amends a single Englishman can make for an ungenerous episode in English history. Its sympathy for a fallen foe bears no likeness to the sympathy which impelled Théodore de Banville, broken in health and hope by the siege of Paris, to write a lyric in memory of a young Prussian officer, a mere boy, who was found dead on the field, with a blood-stained volume of Pindar in his tunic. Lord Rosebery’s book is written with a proud sadness, a stern indignation, eminently fitted to its subject; but he is not so much kind as just. Napoleon is too vast a figure to be approached with benevolence. It is true, as Mr. Wells asserts, that, had he been unselfish and conscientious, he would never have conquered Europe; but only Mr. Wells is prepared to say that a lack of these qualities won him renown. He shares the lack with Wilhelm the Second, who has had neither an Austerlitz nor a Waterloo.

There is a wide assortment of unpopular characters whose company it would be very instructive to keep. They belong to all ages, countries and creeds. Spain alone offers us three splendid examples—the Duke of Alva, Cardinal Ximenez, and Philip the Second. Alva, like the Corsair, possessed one virtue, which was a more valuable virtue than the Corsair’s, but brings him in less credit, because the object of his unswerving loyalty and devotion was not a guileless lady, but a sovereign, less popular, if possible, than himself. Cardinal Ximenez, soldier, statesman, scholar, priest, ascetic, author and educator, was also Grand Inquisitor, and this fact alone seems to linger in the minds of men. That, for his day, he was a moderate, avails him little. That he made a point of protecting scholars and professors from the pernicious interference of the Inquisition ought to avail him a great deal. It might were it better known. There is a play of Sardou’s in which he is represented as concentrating all the deadly powers of his office against the knowledge which he most esteemed. This is the way the drama educates.

And Philip? It would be a big piece of work to win for Philip even a partial recognition of his moderate merits. The hand of history has dealt heavily with him, and romance has preyed upon his vitals. In fact, history and romance are undistinguishable when they give free play to the moral indignation he inspires. It is not enough to accuse him of the murder of the son whom he hated (though not more heartily than George the Second hated the Prince of Wales): they would have us understand that he probably poisoned the brother whom he loved. “Don John’s ambitions had become troublesome, and he ceased to live at an opportune moment for Philip’s peace of mind,” is the fashion in which Gayarré insinuates his suspicions; and Gayarré’s narrative—very popular in my youth—was recommended to the American public by Bancroft, who, I am convinced, never read it. Had he penetrated to the eleventh page, where Philip is alluded to as the Christian Tiberius, or to the twentieth, where he is compared to an Indian idol, he would have known that, whatever the book might be, it was not history, and that, as an historian, it ill became him to tell innocent Americans to read it.

But how were they to be better informed? Motley will not even allow that Philip’s fanatical devotion to his Church was a sincere devotion. He accuses him of hypocrisy, which is like accusing Cromwell of levity, or Burke of Jacobinism. Prescott has a fashion of turning the King’s few amiabilities, as, for example, his tenderness for his third wife, Isabella of France, into a suggestion of reproach. “Well would it be for the memory of Philip, could the historian find no heavier sin to lay to his charge than his treatment of Isabella.” Well would it be for all of us, could the recording angel lay no heavier charge to our account than our legitimate affections. The Prince of Orange, it is true, charged Philip with murdering both wife and son; but that was merely a political argument. He would as soon have charged him with the murder of his father, had the Emperor not been safely isolated at Yuste; and Philip, in return, banned the Prince of Orange—a brave and wise ruler—as “an enemy of the human race.”

Twenty-five years ago, an Englishman who was by nature distrustful of popular verdicts, and who had made careful studies of certain epochs of Spanish history, ventured to paint Philip in fresh colours. Mr. Martin Hume’s monograph shows us a cultivated gentleman, with a correct taste in architecture and art, sober, abstemious, kind to petitioners, loyal and affectionate to his friends, generous to his soldiers and sailors; a man beloved by his own household, and reverenced by his subjects, to whom he brought nothing but misfortune. The book makes melancholy reading, because Philip’s political sins were also political blunders; his mad intolerance was a distortion, rather than a rejection, of conscience; and his inconceivable rigidity left him helpless to face the essential readjustments of life. “I could not do otherwise than I have done,” he said with piercing sincerity, “though the world should fall in ruins around me.”

Now what befell Mr. Hume who wrote history in this fashion, with no more liking for Philip than for Elizabeth or the Prince of Orange, but with a natural desire to get within the purlieus of truth? Certain empty honours were conferred upon him: a degree from Cambridge, membership in a few societies, the privilege of having some letters printed after his name. But the University of Glasgow and the University of Liverpool stoutly refused to give him the chairs of history and Spanish. He might know more than most men on these subjects; but they did not want their students exposed to new impressions. The good old way for them. Mr. Hume, being a reader, may have recalled in bitterness of spirit the words of the acute and unemotional Sully, who had scant regard for Catholicism (though the Huguenots tried him sorely), and none at all for Spain; but who said, in his balanced, impersonal way, that Philip’s finer qualities, his patience, piety, fortitude and single-mindedness, were all alike “lost on the vulgar.”