Books Reviewed John Addington
Symonds.
Conversations Miss Ponsonby.
This is what I wrote for the first number:
"PERSONS AND POLITICS
"In Politics the common opinion is that measures are the important thing, and that men are merely the instruments which each generation produces, equal or unequal to the accomplishment of them.
"This is a mistake. The majority of mankind desire nothing so much as to be led. They have no opinions of their own, and, half from caution, half from laziness, are willing to leave the responsibility to any stronger person. It is the personality of the man which makes the masses turn to him, gives influence to his ideas while he lives, and causes him to be remembered after both he and his work are dead. From the time of Moses downwards, history abounds in such examples. In the present century Napoleon and Gladstone have perhaps impressed themselves most dramatically on the public mind, and, in a lesser degree, Disraeli and Parnell. The greatest men in the past have been superior to their age and associated themselves with its glory only in so far as they have contributed to it. But in these days the movement of time is too rapid for us to recognise such a man: under modern conditions he must be superior, not so much to his age, as to the men of his age, and absorb what glory he can in his own personality.
"The Code Napoleon remains, but, beyond this, hardly one of Napoleon's great achievements survives as a living embodiment of his genius. Never was so vast a fabric so quickly created and so quickly dissolved. The moment the individual was caught and removed, the bewitched French world returned to itself; and the fame of the army and the prestige of France were as mere echoes of retreating thunder. Dead as are the results of Bonaparte's measures and actions, no one would question the permanent vitality of his name. It conjures up an image in the dullest brain; and among all historical celebrities he is the one whom most of us would like to have met.
"The Home Rule question, which has long distorted the public judgment and looms large at the present political moment, admirably illustrates the power of personality. Its importance has been exaggerated; the grant of Home Rule will not save Ireland; its refusal will not shame England. Its swollen proportions are wholly due to the passionate personal feelings which Mr. Gladstone alone among living statemen inspires. 'He is so powerful that his thoughts are nearly acts,' as some one has written of him; and at an age when most men would be wheeled into the chimney-corner, he is at the head of a precarious majority and still retains enough force to compel its undivided support.
"Mr. Chamberlain's power springs from the concentration of a nature which is singularly free from complexity. The range of his mind is narrow, but up to its horizon the whole is illuminated by the same strong and rather garish light. The absoluteness of his convictions is never shaded or softened by any play of imagination or sympathetic insight. It is not in virtue of any exceptionally fine or attractive quality, either of intellect or of character, that Mr. Chamberlain has become a dominant figure. Strength of will, directness of purpose, an aggressive and contagious belief in himself: these—which are the notes of a compelling individuality—made him what he is. On the other hand, culture, intellectual versatility, sound and practised judgment, which was tried and rarely found wanting in delicate and even dangerous situations, did not suffice in the case of Mr. Matthews to redeem the shortcomings of a diffuse and ineffective personality.
"In a different way, Mr. Goschen's remarkable endowments are neutralised by the same limitations. He has infinite ingenuity, but he can neither initiate nor propel; an intrepid debater in council and in action, he is prey to an invincible indecision.