The biography before us is a model which cannot be too closely followed by any one who in time to come shall be privileged to have a subject for his pen at all resembling, or approximating to, the character and career of this extraordinary man. The editor was himself rarely privileged for his work in the quality of his materials, and he has shown an admirable skill in their use. His chapters begin with the statement of dates, facts, incidents of a biographical or local character, marking the life-periods, the external relations and positions of Mr. Robertson, and are then substantially made up of his correspondence. We can recall now no collection of letters which can be compared with these for comprehensiveness of matter, felicity of diction, and elevation of tone and sentiment, in discussing alike the commonplace and the loftiest themes of didactic and spiritual religion, under the most vitalized and intense dealing with it in our modern life. If we should utter all we have felt, as we have lingered as if entranced over many of these pages, we should fail of carrying with us those who, not having yet read them, would, after their perusal, pronounce our encomiums inadequate. Mr. Robertson's life was a short one, covering only thirty-seven years. There was nothing conspicuous in the sphere of it. He held only the lower offices of his clerical profession. Yet we believe we can say, without exaggeration, that no one member of that profession, from its bishops down to its curates, with perhaps the single exception of Dean Stanley, has so wisely divined or so ably presented as he did the modifications which must be made in the popular dispensation of religion through the Church, if it is longer to expect a hearing, or even its present show of tolerance, from those who share the average intelligence of the age.
This man, who so nobly, and with a rare consistency of character and life, fulfilled the office of a minister of the Prince of Peace, seems all along to have had a heart divided by its first love for a military life and service. Many readers will find a puzzling problem in reconciling themselves to this fact, as it shows tokens all through his career that the preference of his youth was also that of his experienced manhood. His honored father still survives him as a Captain in the Royal Artillery, retired from service. Three brothers in the military service also survive the preacher. He was brought up, as he often writes, in camps and barracks, and loved no sound as he did the boom of artillery. It was a grievous cross to his cherished inclinations, when he was sent by parental authority to the University. Being there, he had no misgiving as to the choice left him for life. He gave himself heart and soul to the ministry, and that, too, under views of doctrine and duty, to be followed out in its discharge, amazingly unlike those to which the free, expanding, and grandly independent growth of his own rare powers finally led him. Would he have been the same heroic, conscientious, and devout man as a soldier that he was as a minister? the reader will more than once be prompted to ask over these pages. He would have been a splendid example of heroism and chivalry in any cause which his conscience could have espoused. But if military orders had constrained his loyalty in behalf of some of the infamous predatory outrages which English arms have of late years visited upon India and China, could a man such as he was have retained his commission? His letters give abundant proof that his ecclesiastical superiors had no prerogative sway over his conscience. How could he have borne the constraints of subordination in following a flag which recognizes no scruples of distinctions between right and wrong when it rallies its champions? However this might have been, certain it is that all the grand imagery of the battle-field and the fight, of spear and breastplate, shield and sword, of soldierly manliness and fidelity, by which St. Paul symbolizes the warfare of life, and the armor of those who would come off conquerors, is literally and gloriously realized in Mr. Robertson's course and in himself. He was a soldier of the sublimest type,—a bold, earnest, self-denying, effective, and high-souled battler of the worst foes of man, and the gentle, kindly, loving defender of the weak, the unfriended, the wronged. He his wishes which left him free to fight the enemies of truth and righteousness.
During his student-life at Oxford his mind seemed to have been held in a balance by his affections between those who had committed themselves respectively to the Tractarian and the Evangelical parties. The solution which he was to work out for himself of any real perplexities involved in the issue between them was to lead him clear of both of them. His own devoutness and sincerity, aided no doubt by the domestic and social influences of his early religious training, set him forward, in the first experimentings as a curate, as an earnest disciple of the "evangelical" fellowship. He made a faithful trial of its principles and methods. His reading and his self-training, his standard of fidelity, and the tone and style of his ministerial work, were all dictated by the teaching of that school. He outgrew it, and cast aside all that belonged to it: he came utterly to detest and loathe its characteristic peculiarities. Ever remaining heartily loyal, as he believed, in essential doctrinal conviction, and in practical conformity, to the Church of England, he allowed himself a range of liberty within the terms of its formulas, which left him, as he felt, not only unfettered, but also quickened by the inspiration of a freedom restrained by no other bounds than those of humility and reverence. His power of apprehension, his skill in analysis, his keen sagacity and penetration in detecting the kernel of truth through all husks and integuments, made him the most facile of critics, as well as one of the most trustworthy interpreters of conflicting theories. His magnanimity and catholicity of spirit gave him an almost preternatural comprehensiveness of sympathy with minds and consciences struggling in opposite directions for satisfaction. He engaged himself upon all the freshest problems which the critical, scientific, and radical restlessness of our age has opened. We believe that professional experts, and even the foremost pioneers in the new fields which have thus been opened, will find valued help, either of cheering encouragement, or of wise, restraining caution, in his passing comments on their materials or methods. He was wholly free of that conceit and superciliousness of temper by which most of the rash and blatant empirics of "advanced thought" manage to disgust the slow and conservative makeweights of moderation. If we should attempt to express in a single phrase the charm and loftiness of Mr. Robertson's personal and representative manifestation, we should say, that he, more than any other man of the age, was the saint of the new liberalism, even of the extreme radicalism. More than any other conspicuous man who had cast aside and spurned the old traditionalisms of credulity, ignorance, and prejudice, he consecrated free-thinking. For each single negation he offers a positive belief, or a tenable ground of belief, which substitutes an efficient and quickening tenet for a faith such as will satisfy and sanctify. Of course he shocked and startled many, but none through flippancy or irreverence. He was capable of a holy indignation, and even occasionally, it would seem, of bitterness of tone, when he knew, by a divining spirit which no sham or hypocrisy could blind, that he was challenged not in the interests of truth, but of falsehood. Like all great and searching souls, he had a dark shadow of melancholy often cast over him. He is another witness to us of a well-certified truth, that deep thoughts, while they are in process, not in repose, are sad thoughts. What sort of friends he had, and by what tenacity of love, reverence, and gratitude he held them, and how the delicate ties which bound them to his heart were felt by him as inspirations to fidelity in such lofty trusts, a score of letters in these volumes will touchingly illustrate. As we have been enjoying their perusal with a rare delight, we have anticipated the same experience as multitudes around us will share in.
The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke. Revised Edition. Vols. I.-III. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.
It is interesting to know that Burke was not really accounted among the attractive orators of his day, and that people had a habit of going out of Parliament when he rose to his feet. It illustrates the compensations of time, atoning to the literary man for the immediate superiorities of the public speaker. Fox said, that, the better a man spoke, the harder it usually was for him to compose; and that brilliant orator now lingers only as a name, while his laborious adversary still holds his own in literature, and resumes his career in this admirable American edition.
It shows the intellectual comprehensiveness of our people, that they are ready to be taught by this great man, so resolute an opponent of our most fundamental ideas. Everything that American institutions affirm Burke denied, except the spirit of truth and faith which alone give any institutions their value. Grattan said of him, that, so great was his love for arbitrary power, he could not sleep comfortably on his pillow, unless he thought the king had a right to take it from under him. He demonstrated to his own satisfaction that it was far more congenial to the human mind to yield to the will of one ruler than of a majority, and stated it as a "ridiculous" theory, that "twenty-four millions should prevail over two hundred thousand." Regarding it as the very essence of property that it should be unequal, he could conceive of no safeguard for it but that it should be "out of all proportion predominant in the representation."
Yet, so vast were his natural abilities, his acquirements, and his aims, that he is instructive even as an antagonist, and has, moreover, left much that can now be quoted on the right side of every great question. If he can also be quoted on the other side, no matter. For instance, Buckle claims for him, that "he insisted on an obedience to the popular wishes which no man before him had paid, and which too many statesmen since have forgotten." Yet Burke himself boasted, at the time of his separation from Fox, that he was "the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election, rejected the authority of instructions from constituents, or who in any place has argued so fully against it."
Songs of Seven. By Jean Ingelow. Illustrated. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
The sweet female singer who has been so warmly welcomed of late in England and America deserves to be "illustrated." "Songs of Seven" is one of her best pieces, but not her best. The "High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire" is certainly worthy of the special honor here accorded to the "Songs of Seven"; and we are somewhat surprised at the selection, by her American publishers, of these particular verses for illustration.
The wood-cuts in "Songs of Seven" vary materially, and are not in harmony throughout. Some are of the first order of excellence, while some are weak and inadequate. Nearly all the square blocks show artistic thought and skill, and really illustrate the poem. Those by another hand (the artists' names are not given) betray paucity of mind, as well as uncertain fingers.