"The society in which Arthur lived most intimately, at Eton and at the University, was formed of young men, eminent for natural ability, and for delight in what he sought above all things, the knowledge of truth, and the perception of beauty. They who loved and admired him living, and who now revere his sacred memory, as of one to whom, in the fondness of regret, they admit of no rival, know best what he was in the daily commerce of life; and his eulogy should, on every account, better come from hearts, which, if partial, have been rendered so by the experience of friendship, not by the affection of nature.
"Arthur left Cambridge on taking his degree in January 1832. He resided from that time with the Editor in London, having been entered on the boards of the Inner Temple. It was greatly the desire of the Editor that he should engage himself in the study of the law; not merely with professional views, but as a useful discipline for a mind too much occupied with habits of thought, which, ennobling and important as they were, could not but separate him from the everyday business of life, and might, by their excess, in his susceptible temperament, be productive of considerable mischief. He had, during the previous long vacation, read with the Editor the Institutes of Justinian, and the two works of Heineccius which illustrate them; and he now went through Blackstone's Commentaries, with as much of other law-books as, in the Editor's judgment, was required for a similar purpose. It was satisfactory at that time to perceive that, far from showing any of that distaste to legal studies which might have been anticipated from some parts of his intellectual character, he entered upon them not only with great acuteness, but considerable interest. In the month of October 1832, he began to see the practical application of legal knowledge in the office of an eminent conveyancer, Mr. Walters of Lincoln's Inn Fields, with whom he continued till his departure from England in the following summer.
"It was not, however, to be expected, or even desired by any one who knew how to value him, that he should at once abandon those habits of study which had fertilized and invigorated his mind. But he now, from some change or other in his course of thinking, ceased in a great measure to write poetry, and expressed to more than one friend an intention to give it up. The instances after his leaving Cambridge were few. The dramatic scene between Raffaelle and Fiammetta was written in 1832; and about the same time he had a design to translate the Vita Nuova of his favourite Dante; a work which he justly prized, as the development of that immense genius, in a kind of autobiography, which best prepares us for a real insight into the Divine Comedy. He rendered accordingly into verse most of the sonnets which the Vita Nuova contains; but the Editor does not believe that he made any progress in the prose translation. These sonnets appearing rather too literal, and consequently harsh, it has not been thought worth while to print.
"In the summer of 1832, the appearance of Professor Rosetti's Disquisizioni sullo spirito Antipapale, in which the writings of Arthur's beloved masters Dante and Petrarch, as well as most of the mediæval literature of Italy, were treated as a series of enigmas, to be understood only by a key that discloses a latent Carbonarism, a secret conspiracy against the religion of their age, excited him to publish his own Remarks in reply. It seemed to him the worst of poetical heresies to desert the Absolute, the Universal, the Eternal, the Beautiful and True, which the Platonic spirit of his literary creed taught him to seek in all the higher works of genius, in quest of some temporary historical allusion, which could be of no interest with posterity. Nothing however could be more alien from his courteous disposition than to abuse the license of controversy, or to treat with intentional disrespect a very ingenious person, who had been led on too far in pursuing a course of interpretation, which, within certain much narrower limits, it is impossible for any one conversant with history not to admit.
"A very few other anonymous writings occupied his leisure about this time. Among these were slight memoirs of Petrarch, Voltaire, and Burke, for the Gallery of Portraits, published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. *
* We had read these lives, and had remarked them, before we
knew whose they were, as being of rare merit. No one could
suppose they were written by one so young. We give his
estimate of the character of Burke. "The mind of this great
man may perhaps be taken as a representation of the general
characteristics of the English intellect. Its groundwork,
was solid, practical, and conversant with the details of
business; but upon this, arose a superstructure of
imagination and moral sentiment. He saw little, because it
was painful to him to see anything, beyond the limits of the
national character. In all things, while he deeply
reverenced principles, he chose to deal with the concrete
rather than with abstractions. He studied men rather than
man." The words in italics imply an insight into the deepest
springs of human action, the conjunct causes of what we call
character, such as few men of large experience can attain.
His time was however devoted, when not engaged at his office, to metaphysical researches, and to the history of philosophical opinions.
"From the latter part of his residence at Cambridge, a gradual but very perceptible improvement in the cheerfulness of his spirits gladdened his family and his friends; intervals there doubtless were, when the continual seriousness of his habits of thought, or the force of circumstances, threw something more of gravity into his demeanour; but in general he was animated and even gay, renewing or preserving his intercourse with some of those he had most valued at Eton and Cambridge. The symptoms of deranged circulation which had manifested themselves before, ceased to appear, or at least so as to excite his own attention; and though it struck those who were most anxious in watching him, that his power of enduring fatigue was not quite so great as from his frame of body and apparent robustness might have been anticipated, nothing gave the least indication of danger either to their eyes, or to those of the medical practitioners who were in the habit of observing him. An attack of intermittent fever, during the prevalent influenza of the spring of 1833, may perhaps have disposed his constitution to the last fatal blow."
To anyone who has watched the history of the disease by which "so quick this bright thing came to confusion," and who knows how near its subject must often, perhaps all his life, have been to that eternity which occupied so much of his thoughts and desires, and the secrets of which were so soon to open on his young eyes, there is something very touching in this account. Such a state of health would enhance, and tend to produce, by the sensations proper to such a condition, that habitual seriousness of thought, that sober judgment, and that tendency to look at the true life of things—that deep but gentle and calm sadness, and that occasional sinking of the heart, which make his noble and strong inner nature, his resolved mind so much more impressive and endearing.
This feeling of personal insecurity—of life being ready to slip away—the sensation that this world and its ongoings, its mighty interests, and delicate joys, is ready to be shut up in a moment—this instinctive apprehension of the peril of vehement bodily enjoyment—all this would tend to make him "walk softly," and to keep him from much of the evil that is in the world, and would help him to live soberly, righteously, and godly, even in the bright and rich years of his youth. His power of giving himself up to the search after absolute truth, and the contemplation of Supreme goodness, must have been increased by this same organization. But all this delicate feeling, this fineness of sense, did rather quicken the energy and fervour of the indwelling soul—the [Greek] that burned within. In the quaint words of Vaughan, it was "manhood with a female eye." These two conditions must, as we have said, have made him dear indeed. And by a beautiful law of life, having that organ out of which are the issues of life, under a sort of perpetual nearness to suffering, and so liable to pain, he would be more easily moved for others—more alive to their pain—more filled with fellow-feeling.