“I rejoice,” he says, “to hear of a Collection, or Reprint, of his stray works.... I used to say he wrote ‘Virgilian Prose.’ One only of his I did not care for; but that, I doubt not, was because of the subject, not of the treatment: his own printed Report of a Speech he made in what was called the ‘Quinquaginta Club’ Debating Society (not the Union) at Cambridge about the year 1831. This speech his Father got him to recall and recompose in Print; wishing always that his Son should turn his faculties to such public Topics rather than to the Poets, of whom he had seen enough in Cumberland not to have much regard for: Shelley for one, at one time stalking about the mountains with Pistols, and other such Vagaries. I do not think he was much an admirer of Wordsworth (I don’t know about Southey), and I well remember that when I was at Merehouse (as Miss Bristowe would have us call it), with A. Tennyson in 1835, Mr. Spedding grudged his Son’s giving up much time and thought to consultations about Morte d’Arthur’s, Lords of Burleigh, etc., which were then in MS. He more than once questioned me, who was sometimes present at the meetings, ‘Well, Mr. F., and what is it? Mr. Tennyson reads, and Jem criticizes:—is that it?’ etc. This, while I might be playing Chess with dear Mrs. Spedding, in May, while the Daffodils were dancing outside the Hall door.”
“At the end of May,” he writes to Mrs. Kemble, “we went to lodge for a week at Windermere—where Wordsworth’s new volume of Yarrow Revisited reached us. W. was then at his home, but Tennyson would not go to visit him: and of course I did not: nor even saw him.”
In the summer of 1835 Thompson spent the Long Vacation at the Lakes, and Spedding was engaged in securing lodgings for him and his pupils, while Tennyson was still at Mirehouse.
“I am going,” he writes, “with Alfred, I believe, to Buttermere, and so have not time to tell you how much I am rejoiced that your destiny should have dragged you hither—nor to discuss the London Review—nor to tell you about Fitz and Alfred Tennyson, and Hartley Coleridge, and W. W., etc., only that Alfred is very gruff and unmanageable, and the weather very cold. He desires to be remembered. Fitz is gone.”
A few days later he says:
Alfred left us about a week since, homeward bound, but meaning to touch at Brookfield’s on his way. The weather has been much finer since he went; certainly, while he was here, our northern sun did not display himself to advantage. Nevertheless, I think he took in more pleasure and inspiration than any one would have supposed who did not know his almost personal dislike of the Present, whatever it may be. Hartley Coleridge is mightily taken with him; and, after the fourth bottom of gin, deliberately thanked Heaven (under me, I believe, or me under Heaven, I forget which) for having brought them acquainted. Said Hartley was busy with an article on “Macbeth,” to appear (the vegetable spirits permitting) in the next Blackwood. He confessed to a creed touching Destiny which was new to me: denying Free Will (if I understood him right) in toto; but at the same time maintaining that man is solely and entirely answerable for whatever evil he does: not merely that he is to suffer for it, which I could understand, but that he is answerable for it which I do not. Now this, I think, is not fair. I could not get Alfred to Rydal Mount, he would and would not—sulky one, although Wordsworth was hospitably minded towards him; and would have been more so had the state of his household permitted, which I am sorry to say is full of sickness.... By a letter from D. D. H[eath] received to-day I infer that Subscription no Bondage is out; which I shall accordingly send for. I am sorry it is not to be understood in the sense of “Killing no Murder,” which seems to me, till I be further enlightened, the only sort of construction which will make sense of it. D. D. H. looketh on this pamphlet as the final cause of the system of subscription at Oxford, and, now that the effect hath been accomplished doth heartily wish that custom may be discontinued. Euge, D. D. H.! For myself, since Alfred went, my time has been chiefly employed (that is, all my time which was not occupied in exercising the puppies) upon three several books: to wit, Ralph Esher, a sort of novel by Leigh Hunt, containing a most graceful and lively portraiture of Charles II.’s times, a good deal of rot about Truth and Love, and a good deal of metaphysics, hard to understand in parts, but in parts (to me, at least) very deep and touching. Item, Isaac Comnenus, a Play (Murray, 1827): by Henry Taylor, as Southey who lent me the book informs me; a work much in the tone and [style of] P. v. A., and though far behind in design and execution by [no means] an unworthy precursor. It has some passages as fine as anything in Philip. Item, thirdly and lastly, Basil Montagu’s Life of Bacon, a work of much labour both on the writer’s part and the reader’s, but well meant, and if not itself a good one containing all the materials necessary for a good one, which is saying a great deal. I have not read all the notes. In fact I believe they are all contained in the text. I should think that on a moderate computation, half the two volumes is a reprint of the other half, for if there are a few pages which are printed twice over, there are many half and quarter pages which are repeated four or five times. I should half like to review it.
If he had acted on his own suggestion we might not have had Macaulay’s Essay, and certainly should not have had the Evenings with a Reviewer. This is the first intimation of his interest in what was to be the work of his life. It was at this time that he made the acquaintance of Henry (afterwards Sir Henry) Taylor, the author of Philip van Artevelde, which influenced his occupation for the next six years.
“At this time,” says Sir Henry in his Autobiography, “I obtained another relief, and in obtaining it obtained a friend for life. James Spedding was the younger son of a Cumberland squire who had been a friend of my father’s in former, though I think they had not met in latter days. In the notes to Van Artevelde I had quoted a passage from an admirable speech of his spoken in a debating club at Cambridge when he was an undergraduate. This led to my making his acquaintance; and when some very laborious business of detail had to be executed, I obtained authority to offer him the employment with the remuneration of £150 a year. He was in a difficulty at the time as to the choice of a profession, and feeling that life without business and occupation of some kind was dangerous, was glad to accept this employment as one which might answer the purpose well enough, if he proved suited to it, and if not might be relinquished without difficulty and exchanged for some other. I wrote to Mr. Southey, 24th January 1836:
“‘Spedding has been and will be invaluable, and they owe me much for him. He is regarded on all hands, not only as a man of first-rate capacity, but as having quite a genius for business. I, for my part, have never seen anything like him in business on this side Stephen.... When I contemplate the easy labours of Stephen and one or two others I am disposed to think that there are giants in these days.’
“For six years Spedding worked away with universal approbation, and all this time he would have been willing to accept a post of précis writer with £300 a year, or any other such recognised position, and attach himself permanently to the office. But none such was placed at his disposal ... and he took the opportunity of the Whig government going out in 1841 to give up his employment. He then applied himself to edit the works and vindicate the fame of Lord Bacon. In 1847, on Sir James Stephen’s retirement, the office of Under Secretary of State with £2000 a year was offered to him by Lord Grey, before it was offered to me, and he could not be induced to accept it. He could not be brought to believe, what no one else doubted, that he was equal to the duties.