The Rev. Samuel Palmer, who had known Howard for thirty years, appended to a sermon, preached on the occasion of his death, some account of his life and career. But this, as well as several anonymous contributions to magazines, and a brief anonymous life which appeared at the same time, can be considered only in the light of materials for the future biographer.
The task lay still open, and Mr Baldwin Brown, barrister-at-law, undertook to accomplish it. He appears to have had all the advantages a biographer could desire. He had conversed with the contemporaries and friends of Howard, and with his surviving domestics—an advantage which no subsequent writer could hope to profit by; he was put in possession of the materials which the Rev. Mr Smith and his family, intimate friends of Howard, had collected for the very purpose of such a work as he was engaged on; Dr Brown, professor of theology at Aberdeen, another intimate friend of Howard, transcribed for him, from his commonplace book, the memoranda of conversations held with Howard, and committed to writing at the time; and, above all, he was furnished with extracts and memoranda from diaries kept by Howard himself, and which fortunately had escaped the general conflagration to which the philanthropist, anticipating and disliking the curiosity of the biographer, had devoted his papers. Several influential men amongst the Dissenters interested themselves in obtaining information for him; and the list of those to whom he expresses obligations of this kind, occupies two or three pages of his preface. Mr Brown was himself a man of religious zeal—we presume, from his work, a Dissenter: he could not fail to appreciate the religious aspect of Howard's character. As a lawyer, he was prepared to take an interest in the subject of his labours—the reformation of our prisons and our penal laws. Thus he brought to his task many peculiar advantages; and the work he produced was laborious, conscientious, and very valuable. Unfortunately, Mr Baldwin Brown was a dull writer, by which we here imply that he was also a dull thinker, and his book will be pronounced by the generality of readers to be as dull as it is useful. Notwithstanding the attractive title it bears, and the many interesting particulars contained in it, his biography never attained any popularity. It was probably read extensively amongst the Dissenters, to whose sympathies it more directly appeals than to those of any other class of readers; but we think we are right in saying that it never had much circulation in the world at large.
More parsonic than the parsons, our lawyer-divine can resist no opportunity for sermonising. The eloquence of a Dissenting pulpit, and that when it is but indifferently supplied—the tedious repetition, and the monotonous unmodulated periods of his legal text-books—these combine, or alternate, through the pages of Mr Brown. Yet those who persevere in the perusal of his book will be rewarded. He is judicious in the selection of his materials. He presents us with the means of forming an accurate conception of Howard; though, in so doing, he seems to reveal to an attentive reader more than he had well understood himself.
Tedious or not, this is still the only biography of Howard. A Mr Thomas Taylor has written what appears to be an abridgment of the work. His book is more brief, but it is still more insipid. What notion Mr T. Taylor has of biography may be judged of from this, that he thinks it necessary, in quoting Howard's own original letters, to amend and improve the style—preserving, as he says, the sense, but correcting the composition. He is apparently shocked at the idea that the philanthropist should express himself in indifferent English, even though in a hasty letter to a friend.
Very lately Mr Hepworth Dixon, whose work has recalled us to this subject, has presented us with a life of Howard. It cannot be said of Mr Dixon's book that it is either dull or insipid; it has some of the elements of popularity; but we cannot better describe it in a few words than by saying that it is a caricature of a popular biography. Its flippancy, its conceit, its egregious pretensions, its tawdry novelistic style, are past all sufferance. It is too bad to criticise. But as, in the dearth of any popular biography of Howard, it has assumed for a time a position it by no means merits, we cannot pass it by entirely without notice. For, besides that Mr Dixon writes throughout with execrable taste, he has not dealt conscientiously with the materials before him. His notion of the duty of a biographer is this—that he is to collect every incident of the least piquancy, no matter by whom related, or on what authority, and colour it himself as highly as he can. Evidently the most serious preparation he has made, for writing the life of Howard, has been a course of reading in French romances. It is with the spirit and manner of a Eugene Sue that he sits down to describe the grand and simple career of Howard.
Mr Dixon has not added a single new fact to the biography of Howard, nor any novelty whatever, except such as he has drawn from his own imagination. Nor does he assist in sifting the narrative; on the contrary, whatever dust has the least sparkle in it, though it has been thrice thrown away, he assiduously collects. That he should have nothing new to relate is no matter of blame; it is probable that no future biographer will be able to do more than recast and reanimate the materials to be found in Brown and Aikin. But why this pretence of having written a life of Howard from "original documents?" We beg pardon: he does not absolutely say that he has written the Life of Howard from original documents—the original document, for there is but one, may apply to the "prison-world of Europe," of which also he professes to write. This "earliest document of any value connected with the penology of England," which, with much parade, he prints for the first time, relates to the state of prisons before the labours of Howard. Impossible to suppose, therefore, that Mr Hepworth Dixon meant his readers to infer that, by the aid of this document, he was about to give them an original Life of Howard.
Let us look at Mr Dixon's preface—it is worth while. It thus commences:—
"Several reasons combined to induce the writer to undertake the work of making out for the reading world a new biography of Howard; the chief of them fell under two heads:—
"It lay in his path. Years ago now, circumstances, which do not require to be explained in this place, called his attention to the vast subject of the prison-world."
We must stop a moment to admire this favourite magniloquence of our author. Howard wrote a report on the state of prisons; Mr Dixon writes on nothing less than the prison-world of Europe! He heads his chapters—"The Prison-world of the Continent," "The Prison-world of England." If Mr Dixon, in his patriotic labours, should turn his attention to the nuisance of Smithfield market, he would certainly give us a treatise on "The Butcher-world of Europe," with chapters headed, with due logical gradation, "The Butcher-world of England," and "The Butcher-world of London."
"It lay in his path," was one reason why he wrote his biography. "It needed to be done," was the other. We agree in the last of these reasons, whatever demur we make to the first. A more popular biography than Mr Brown's would certainly be a useful book. But what can Mr Dixon mean by saying, that, "although Howard was the father of prison-science, the story of his life has hitherto been made out without reference to that fact?" Messrs Brown and Aikin were not, then, aware that the excitement of the public attention to the great subject of prison-discipline was the chief result, and the direct and ostensible aim of the labours of Howard!