XLVIII.
Among the clergy of Bury was a curate, I think of St. Mary’s, who was named Cookesley. His mother was a school-fellow of my mother at Exeter, now about a hundred years ago! He became intimate with me, and was often my guest. He was a son of Dr. Cookesley, D.D., and a brother of a well-known man who was long an assistant-master at Eton, and was as such spoken of with great favour by Beaconsfield in his novel of “Coningsby.” Afterwards he had a church at Hammersmith, St. Peter’s, and lived in that place, where I knew him, and attached much interest to his acquaintance. He used to dine with me at Alton Lodge, Roehampton, which was within a walk of his house. Cookesley was, above all things, a good fellow, besides being a good scholar and a most amusing companion. He was a sturdy Churchman, and much mixed up with the writers of “Essays and Reviews”—Dr. Temple (now Bishop of London), Dr. Williams, and their set.
I introduce the name here on account of Cookesley having attacked Donaldson’s work, by pamphlet, on the subject of “Jashar,” the name of a Latin book of great pretensions and no authority.
Donaldson, previously mentioned by me, was in many things a good fellow too, but owing to his overweening vanity, which had no repose, he was incapable of the higher virtues. That vanity which stands in the way of friendship, even of truth itself, was his to a degree that may be pronounced abnormal. He wanted to be thought the greatest of Bentleys, the cleverest of Christian Voltaires, the choicest of wits; but a man who is now two-thirds a scholar and one-third a wit may, if very vain, conceive himself to be a Dr. Parr.
I liked Donaldson much, not very much, and as character is of no use after a man is dead, it no longer subserving his human interests, I wish to do him justice, for better as well as for worse, since he was a man to be biographized for the common good. For some years I associated with him almost daily, walked and talked with him, dined with him in many houses, in his as well as my own, knew his thoughts, his opinions, and was conversant with whatever he was about.
His disposition was candid, genial, good-natured. He was a child in his love of fun, and had laughter enough in him to respond to all the humour ever uttered by word of mouth, from Rabelais to Molière. I was going to say he had not a bad heart; I will go further, and say that I am sure he had a good one for an occasion, but not one of a serious and responsible order.
But these excellent qualities were marred in him, not unfrequently, by a vanity which was incommensurable.
I would not undertake to pronounce him blamable in anything he did, said, or wrote; I am a physiologist in judging of good deeds, a pathologist in judging of bad. When I call up Donaldson’s head and face, and see a large, wide, overhanging forehead, big enough to be hydrocephalic, a forehead such as one meets with in cases of epilepsy and in cases of genius alike, I pause before criticising its function; and such was Donaldson’s forehead, while his mouth was the mouth of Punch. Its laugh, almost always silent, seemed loud, and suppressed only to make it last the longer. There was more going on always under that forehead of his than in any half-dozen brains of the common type. Fortunate for him was it that the mental workings are inaudible, or he would have been stunned by his own thoughts; so busy were they at all times, and so noisy.