‘I certainly was not made to sit at home in contented ignorance of the wonders of art and nature, nor can I believe that the restlessness of curiosity I feel was implanted in my disposition to be a source of uneasiness rather than of enjoyment. Under this conviction I peruse the authors of France and Italy, with the idea that the language I am now reading I may one day be compelled to speak, and that what is now a source of elegant and refined entertainment may be one day the medium through which I shall disclose my wants and obtain a supply of the necessaries of daily life. This is the most enchanting of my day dreams; it has been for some years past my inseparable companion. And, apt as are my inclinations to fluctuate, I cannot recollect this to have ever undergone the slightest abatement[[34]].’
The letter from which we have selected the above passage was written to his uncle in 1816; in another, written a few months later to his friend Mr Candler, he enters more fully into his difficulties and prospects. The earlier portion of the letter is well worth perusal for the insight it affords into the extent of his reading and the originality of his criticisms; but it is the concluding paragraph which is specially interesting to a biographer. We do not know to what influences the change was due, but it is evident that his mind was passing through a period of unrest; his old determinations had been, at least for the moment, uprooted, and he looked forward with uncertain eyes to an unknown future. ‘My disinclination to the Church,’ he says, ‘has grown from a motive into a reason.’ The Bar had evidently been suggested to him as the only alternative, and on that dismal prospect he dilates with unwonted bitterness. It would take him away from all the pursuits he loved most dearly, and put in their place ‘the routine of a barren and uninteresting occupation,’ in which not only would the best years of his life be wasted, but—and this is what he seems to have dreaded most—his loftier aspirations would be degraded, and, when he had become rich enough to return to literature, he would feel no inclination to do so.
The Fellowship examination of 1818 having ended in Thirlwall’s election, he was free to go abroad, and at once started alone for Rome. At that time Niebuhr was Prussian Envoy there, and Bunsen his Secretary of Legation. Thirlwall was so fortunate as to bring with him a letter of introduction to Madame Bunsen, who had been a Miss Waddington, cousin to Professor Monk, and had married Bunsen about a year before Thirlwall’s visit. The following amusing letter from Madame Bunsen to her mother gives an interesting picture of Thirlwall in Rome:
‘March 16, 1819.—Mr Hinds and Mr Thirlwall are here.... My mother has, I know, sometimes suspected that a man’s abilities are to be judged of in an inverse ratio to his Cambridge honours; but I believe that rule is really not without exception, for Mr Thirlwall is certainly no dunce, although, as I have been informed, he attained high honours at Cambridge at an earlier age than anybody except, I believe, Porson. In the course of their first interview Charles heard enough from him to induce him to believe that Mr Thirlwall had studied Greek and Hebrew in good earnest, not merely for prizes; also, that he had read Mr Niebuhr’s Roman History proved him to possess no trifling knowledge of German; and, as he expressed a wish to improve himself in the language, Charles ventured to invite him to come to us on a Tuesday evening, whenever he was not otherwise engaged, seeing that many Germans were in the habit of calling on that day. Mr Thirlwall has never missed any Tuesday evening since, except the moccoli night and one other when it rained dogs and cats. He comes at eight o’clock, and never stirs to go away till everybody else has wished good night, often at almost twelve o’clock. It is impossible for any one to behave more like a man of sense and a gentleman than he has always done—ready and eager to converse with anybody that is at leisure to speak to him, but never looking fidgety when by necessity left to himself; always seeming animated and attentive, whether listening to music, or trying to make out what people say in German, or looking at one of Goethe’s songs in the book, while it is sung. And so there are a great many reasons for our being very much pleased with Mr Thirlwall; yet I rather suspect him of being very cold, and very dry; and although he seeks, and seeks with general success, to understand everything, and in every possible way increase his stock of ideas, I doubt the possibility of his understanding anything that is to be felt rather than explained, and that cannot be reduced to a system. I was led to this result by some most extraordinary questions that he asked Charles about Faust (which he had borrowed of us, and which he greatly admired nevertheless, attempting a translation of one of my favourite passages, which, however, I had not pointed out to him as being such), and also by his great fondness for the poems of Wordsworth, two volumes of which he insisted on lending to Charles. These books he accompanied with a note, in which he laid great stress upon the necessity of reading the author’s prose essays on his own poems, in order to be enabled to relish the latter. Yet Mr Thirlwall speaks of Dante in a manner that would seem to prove a thorough taste for his poetry, as well as that he has really and truly studied it; for he said to me that he thought no person who had taken the trouble to understand the whole of the Divina Commedia would doubt about preferring the “Paradiso” to the two preceding parts, an opinion in which I thoroughly agree[[35]].
‘As Mr Thirlwall can speak French sufficiently well to make himself understood, and as he has something to say, Charles found it very practicable to make him and Professor Bekker acquainted, though Professor Bekker has usually the great defect of never speaking but when he is prompted by his own inclination, and of never being inclined to speak except to persons whom he has long known—that is, to whose faces and manners he has become accustomed, and whose understanding or character he respects or likes.... In conclusion, I must say about Mr Thirlwall, that I was prepossessed in his favour by his having made up in a marked manner to Charles, rather than to myself. I had no difficulty in getting on with him, but I had all the advances to make; and I can never think the worse of a young man, just fresh from college and unused to the society of women, for not being at his ease with them at first[[36]].’
It is vexatious that Thirlwall’s biographers should have failed to discover—if indeed they tried to discover—any information about his Roman visit, to which he always looked back with delight, occasioned as much by the friends he had made there as by ‘the memorable scenes and objects’ he had visited[[37]]. So far as we know, the above letter is the only authority extant. We should like to have heard whether Thirlwall had, or had not, any personal intercourse with Niebuhr, whom we have reason to believe he never met; and to what extent Bunsen influenced his future studies. We find it stated in Bunsen’s life that he determined Thirlwall’s wavering resolutions in favour of the clerical profession[[38]]. This, as we shall presently shew, is clearly a mistake; but, when we consider the strong theological bias of Bunsen’s own mind, it does seem probable that he would direct his attention to the modern school of German divinity. We suspect that Thirlwall had been already influenced in this direction by the example, if not by the direct precepts, of Herbert Marsh, then Lady Margaret’s Professor of Theology at Cambridge[[39]], who had stirred up a great controversy by translating Michaelis’ Introduction to the New Testament, and by promoting a more free criticism of the Gospels than had hitherto been thought permissible. However this may be, it is certain that the friendship which began in Rome was one of the strongest and most abiding influences which shaped Thirlwall’s character, and just half a century afterwards we find him referring to Bunsen as a sort of oracle in much the same language that Dr Arnold was fond of employing.
We must pass lightly and rapidly over the next seven years of Thirlwall’s life. He entered as a law student at Lincoln’s Inn in February 1820, and in 1827 returned to Cambridge. In the intervening period he had given the law a fair trial; but the more he saw of it the less he liked it. It is painful to think of the weary hours spent over work of which he could say, four years after he had entered upon it, ‘It can never be anything but loathsome to me[[40]]’; ‘my aversion to the law has not increased, as it scarcely could, from the first day of my initiation into its mysteries’; or to read his pathetic utterances to Bunsen, describing his wretchedness, and the delight he took in his brief excursions out of law into literature, consoling himself with the reflection that perhaps he gained in intensity of enjoyment what he lost in duration. With these feelings it would have been useless for him to persevere; but we doubt if the time spent in legal work was so entirely thrown away as he imagined. It might be argued that much of his future eminence as a bishop was due to his legal training. As a friend has remarked, ‘he carried the temper, and perhaps the habit, of Equity into all his subsequent work’; and to the end of his life he found a special delight in tracking the course of the more prominent causes célèbres of the day, and expressing his judgment upon them[[41]]. Even in these years, however, law was not allowed to engross his whole time. From the beginning he had laid this down as a fixed principle. He spent his vacations in foreign travel, and every moment he could snatch from his enforced studies was devoted to a varied course of reading, of which the main outcome was a translation of Schleiermacher’s Critical Essay on the Gospel of S. Luke[[42]], to which his friend Hare had introduced him. Why should Thirlwall have selected, as a specimen of the new school of German theology, a work which, at this distance of time, does not appear to be specially distinguished for merit or originality[[43]]? It is evident, from what he says in his Introduction, that he had a sincere admiration for the talents of Dr Schleiermacher, whom he describes as ‘this extraordinary writer,’ whose fate it has been ‘to open a new path in every field of literature he has entered, and to tread all alone.’ But the real motive for the selection is to be found, we think, in the opportunity it afforded him for studying the whole question of the origin and authorship of the synoptic Gospels, and, as the title page informs us, for dealing with the contributions to the literature of the subject which had appeared since Bishop Marsh’s Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of our three first Canonical Gospels, published in 1801. In this direct reference to Marsh’s work we find a confirmation of our theory that Thirlwall owed to him his position as a critical theologian, though we can hardly imagine a greater difference than that which must have existed in all other matters between the passionate Toryism of the one and the serene Liberalism of the other.
Thirlwall’s gallant attempt to follow an uncongenial profession could have but one termination; and we can imagine his friends watching with some curiosity for the moment and the cause of the final rupture. The moment was probably determined by the prosaic consideration that his fellowship at Trinity College would terminate in October 1828, unless he were in Priest’s Orders. We do not mean that he became a clergyman in order to secure a comfortable yearly income; but, that having decided in favour of the clerical profession, joined to those literary pursuits which his position as a fellow of Trinity College would allow, he took the necessary steps in good time. He returned to Cambridge in 1827, and, having been ordained deacon in the same year, and priest in the year following, at once undertook his full share of college and University work[[44]]. His friend Hare had set the example in 1822 by accepting a classical lectureship at Trinity College at the urgent request of Mr Whewell, then lately appointed to one of the tutorships[[45]], and Thirlwall had paid visits to him in the Long Vacations of 1824 and 1825. It is probable that at one of these visits the friends had planned their translation of Niebuhr’s History of Rome, for the first volume was far advanced in 1827, and was published early in 1828. The second did not appear until 1832. The publication of what Thirlwall rightly terms ‘a wonderful masterpiece of genius’ in an English dress marked an epoch in historical and classical literature in this country. Yet, notwithstanding its pre-eminent excellence, the work of the translators was bitterly attacked in various places, and particularly in a note appended to an article in the Quarterly Review, a criticism which would long ago have been forgotten if it had not called forth a reply which we have heard described as ‘Hare’s bark and Thirlwall’s bite[[46]].’ The pamphlet consists of sixty-three pages, of which sixty belong to the former, and a ‘Postscript,’ of little more than two, to the latter. It is probable that Hare’s elaborate vindication of his author, his brother translator, and himself, had but little effect on any one; Thirlwall’s indignant sarcasms—worthy of the best days of that controversial style in which he subsequently became a master—are still remembered and admired. We will quote a few sentences, of an application far wider than the criticism to which they originally referred. The reviewer had expressed pity that the translators should have wasted ‘such talents on the drudgery of translation.’ Thirlwall took exception to the phrase, and pointed out that their intellectual labour did not deserve to be so spoken of.
‘On the other hand, intellectual labour prompted and directed by no higher consideration than that of personal emolument appears to me to deserve an ignominious name; nor do I think such an employment the less illiberal, however great may be the abilities exerted, or the advantages purchased. But I conceive such labour to become still more degrading, when it is let out to serve the views and advocate the opinions of others. It sinks another step lower in my estimation, when, instead of being applied to communicate what is excellent and useful, it ministers to the purpose of excluding from circulation all such intellectual productions as have not been stampt with the seal of the party to which it is itself subservient. But when I see it made the instrument of a religious, political, or literary proscription, forging or pointing calumny and slander to gratify the malice of hotter and weaker heads against all whom they hate and fear, I have now before me an instance of what I consider as the lowest and basest intellectual drudgery. I leave the application of these distinctions to the Quarterly Reviewer.’
In 1831 the two friends started the publication of the Philological Museum. It had a brief but glorious career. Only six numbers were published, but they contained ‘more solid additions to English literature and scholarship’ than had up to that time appeared in any journal. We are glad to see that seven of Thirlwall’s contributions have been republished, and that among them is the well-known essay On the Irony of Sophocles. Those who read these articles, and still more those who turn to the volumes from which they have been extracted, and look through the whole series of Thirlwall’s contributions, will be as much impressed by the writer’s erudition as by his critical insight; and, if a translation from the German should fall under their notice, they will not fail to remark the extraordinary skill with which he has turned that difficult language into sound English. Thirlwall would have smiled with polite incredulity had any one told him that he was setting an example in those writings of his which would bear fruit in years to come; but we maintain that this is what really happened. More than one of his successors in the field of classics at Cambridge was directly stimulated by what he had done to undertake an equally wide course of reading; and it may be argued with much probability that the thoroughness and breadth of illustration with which classical subjects are treated by the lecturers in Trinity College is derived from his initiative.