It is confirming to those of us who remain sceptics in relation to the Shakespeare-Bacon theory, and who believe 'The Great Cryptogram' to exist only in some kink of the brain of its first exponent, and not in any of Shakespeare's plays or poems, that so painstaking and minute an investigator—one so utterly conversant with all that Bacon ever did or wrote, one so familiar with his contemporaries and his age, even to the analysis of the respective shares of Shakespeare and Fletcher in the composition of 'Henry VIII.'—never seems to have for a moment suspected any sort of literary co-partnership between the philosopher and the actor.
Apart, however, from any questions of literature, and his high place among its leading lights, James Spedding's personal character and his association on terms of equality with the most eminent men of his day, and the regard in which he was held by them, makes him an interesting and important man of mark in the district—one whose memory should not be allowed to die.
He was the son of a Cumberland squire living at Mirehouse, on Bassenthwaite Water. The estate, lying on the eastern shore, is a little north of where the River Derwent discharges itself into the lake, and at the foot of mighty Skiddaw. Mirehouse Woods clothe the slopes of Skiddaw Dodd. He was born in 1808, sent to school at Bury St. Edmunds, and afterwards went to Cambridge University. At college he took no high degree. He was, nevertheless, an eminent 'Apostle'—eloquent in debate, though calm and unimpassioned. Does anyone ask who and what Cambridge 'Apostles' were? They were a band of ardent spirits among the undergraduates, holding regular meetings, and often foregathering in each others' rooms to discuss tobacco and coffee, and where, says Carlyle in his 'Life of Sterling' (who was a member), 'was much logic and other spiritual fencing, and ingenuous collision, probably of a really superior quality in that kind, for not a few of the then disputants have since proved themselves men of parts, and attained distinction in the intellectual walks of life.' Besides Spedding and Sterling, this genial circle of comrades included the Tennysons, Trench (afterwards Archbishop), Arthur Hallam, Frederick Denison Maurice (the founder of the club, and toasted as such at one of its annual dinners), and many another of equal or little less fame—a band of youthful friends who, as the future Laureate wrote, held debate
'On mind and art,
And labour and the changing mart,
And all the framework of the land.'
Of Spedding himself Lord Tennyson wrote in later days: 'He was the Pope among us young men—the wisest man I ever knew.' With this opinion agrees the report of Caroline Fox as to a remark of Samuel Laurence, the portrait painter: 'Spedding has the most beautiful combination of noble qualities I ever met with.'
Leaving the University, James Spedding went, in 1835, into the Colonial Office, under Sir Henry Taylor, author of 'Philip van Artevelde,' a chief with tastes wholly congenial to those of his youthful subordinate. During the time he remained in the Civil Service he went with Lord Ashburton as travelling secretary to the Commission appointed to settle the United States dispute with this nation as to the proper line of their North-West boundary. He acquitted himself so ably in his Government work that he was offered the post of an Under-Secretary of State at a salary of £2,000 a year. This he refused in order to give himself entirely to literature. Mr. Gladstone entertained the highest opinion of his abilities and integrity, and greatly lamented his decision not to serve his country in the post for which he was so obviously fitted. Still later in life Mr. Gladstone tried to persuade him to take the Professorship of History at Cambridge—a prospect which had no more attractions for Spedding than Government officialism.
Spedding never married. He was wedded to his self-chosen life-work of building up the standard biography of Bacon. He was, however, by no means a man of one idea. He was an ardent Liberal in politics, and during the awful upheaval of the European nations, about the middle of last century, he became even a vehement partisan of the Hungarian Revolution, and of Louis Kossuth and its other leaders. He was a votary of Keats, and of Tennyson, the latter staying with him twice at Mirehouse. He was an ardent admirer of the celebrated Jenny Lind, the 'Swedish Nightingale.' He was also an advocate of phonetic 'reform,' as it was called, not merely, it is to be feared, for the sake of promoting the study and commercial use of shorthand reporting, but with the view of actually changing the orthography of our ancient language. With all its difficulties and peculiarities, one would have felt lasting regret had he and his coadjutors succeeded in their raid on our historical and ethnological inheritance in the English spellingbook. He was, furthermore, a careful student of handwriting. The last-named study was necessitated by his continuous poring over the MSS. relating to his sixteenth- and seventeenth-century investigations.
Some people who had observed Spedding's patient and leisurely methods of study, and his calmness and deliberation of thought and verbal expression, considered him of a lazy disposition, and as strangely lacking in energy. This was an erroneous judgment. He was certainly cautious, because acute in noticing details, and refused to commit himself without due, and perhaps sometimes undue, premeditation, but he frequently assumed purposely an air of ignorance when he was merely endeavouring to draw others out, and he was fond of adopting the Socratic method with those whom he conversed, in order to get at the bottom of them, or of the subject under discussion. His memory was an exceedingly retentive one. To a friend he writes: 'I have no copy of "The Palace of Art," but when you come I shall be happy to repeat it to you.' Readers of Tennyson know that this poem contains seventy-four stanzas, besides the prelude to it. He was, like so many others in this series, a contributor to Blackwood, and to the Edinburgh and the Gentleman's Magazine as well. In the Edinburgh he reviewed Tennyson's first book with discrimination and with appreciation.
The chief fascination about Spedding, I say again, was undoubtedly his commanding personality and his abiding comradeship with the greatest men of genius among his contemporaries. Such diverse characters as James Anthony Froude and Edward Fitzgerald were among his intimates. He was with Froude on that historian's first visit to Thomas Carlyle, and Fitzgerald called to see him in the hospital where he died. It was in 1881 that he was knocked down by a cab in London, and carried to St. George's. On his death-bed, says Fitzgerald, he was 'all patience,' refusing to hear the cabman blamed, and, indeed, fully exonerating him.
When Spedding's brother died, the friend of them both, Alfred Tennyson, wrote to James in touching sympathy with his loss, a noble poem which, in the volume, is inscribed simply 'To J. S.' The last two verses may fitly conclude this sketch, for they apply as much to one brother as to the other: