BOOKS.

MEMOIRS OF 'JAMES HOPE-SCOTT.* Tam book is the tentative at a memorial of the great Parlia- mentary barrister who married Charlotte Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott's grand-daughter,—a man of very great and various powers. But it is only a tentative, for no adequate memorial, under the actual circumstances of his life, has been really possible. If we were asked to give a good instance of the distinction between " substance " and "attributes," we should illustrate it by the distinction between the character which must have- underlain Mr. Hope-Scott's life, and the manifesta- tions of that life given us in these volumes,—in which, by the way, the one great deficiency which might have been (as we suppose) supplied, in a portrait. The book is a good book. There is no unreal talk in it about the subject of the biography ; the biographer himself hardly appears in it at all ; and we have no -doubt that as much has been done to give the reader a just impression of Mr. Hope-Scott as it was possible for the writer to give. We have the sketches of him drawn by two very great men, Cardinal Newman and Mr. Gladstone, both beautiful, both genuinely tender, both evidently true. We have many facts -which verify the truthfulness of these sketches. We have some -diaries and many letters, and the story of a great many actions showing Mr. Hope-Scott's extraordinary power of work, facility of resource, nobility of aim, generosity of deed, and delicacy of feeling. But from the beginning to the end we feel that this is the attempt to catch the image of a man who never left the image of himself impressed adequately upon his outward life, and who was, if you take him as a whole, in a sense far truer than that in which the Agnostics apply these words to the Deity himself, " unknown" if not unknowable. We say, in a far truer sense than that in which these words are applied to God, because the Christian's image of God,—Jesus Christ,—is in no sense at -all unknown and unknowable, except in this, that all which the Christian recognises as so lu minously and vividly defined in Christ, is yet but a faint shadow of that which he really believes his Lord to be. But Mr. Hope-Scott was unknown, and at least to his actual friends unknowable, in a very different sense from this. His reserve, his fastidiousness, his detachment from the chief aims of his life, his coolness and superficial nonchalance, his genuine humility, all combined to make him a man who did not interpret himself to the world, who did not impress himself upon

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Memoirs of Tames Hope-Scott of Abbotsford, Q a, with Selections from his Correspondence. By Robert °ruby, M.A. 2 vols. London : Murray.

the world, as the greater heroes and saints have done, but who, in some sense, gave up the straggle to affect the world powerfully on the subjects which most deeply interested and moved himself- The only condition under which Mr. Hope-Scott, as we read him, could have been really painted for us, would have been this,—that he should have bad some friend as devoted to him as was Mr. Badeley, and with the special genius for portraiture of Boswell and Carlyle combined, who might have supplied, by the help of imaginative sympathy, some of the deficiencies which Mr. Hope- Scott's own unambitious nature, and perhaps some secret failure of vitality at points where it might most have been expected to overflow, caused in his power of interpreting himself to the world. That Mr. Hope—afterwards Mr. Hope-Scott- was a most fascinating man, the concurrent testimony of all who knew him asserts. That he had a radiance of his own, Which gave life to his conversation, and which drew every one towards him, universal tradition, as well as the evidence of all his friends, affirms. That as a man of the world, as a pleader and a barrister, he was a great power, every one knows. Nothing can be more remarkable than the evidence as to his commanding qualities at the Parliamentary bar ; this, indeed, the complaint made of his imperturbable presence of mind alone proves. It is said of him that if the Palace of Westminster had been on fire, he would coolly have asked the instructions of the Committee whether he should continue his argument till the fire reached that portion of the building, or stop at once. But all this vitality was not expressive of his true life. Somewhere or other there was a separating film between him and the world in which be chiefly lived. Partly, perhaps, it was that as a follower of the High-Church movement and subsequently as a Roman Catholic, he was compelled to be much guided by others on questions on which it was impossible for him to form a confident judgment of his own, and that the diffidence which this consciousness caused, kept him from throw- ing himself heart and soul into the chief interest of his life. But this, though it no doubt explains why he purposely kept aloof from a great part of life, is not sufficient to clear up our diffi- culty. Even on quite other matters and in the earlier part of his life, the reader feels this strange sense that the man is partly held in reserve, that there is a good deal of him not expressed in the letters and conversations and actions in which all of him that is expressed at all appears. Here, for instance, is a passage, in a letter from his intimate friend and devotee, Mr. Badeley, concerning Mr. Hope's expressed intention to give up the law,— which he did not give up, after all,—that seems to us most characteristic of the inscrutability of a part of his character :—

" After all, is there not some lurking indisposition to a regular, settled course of occupation, and might not a fair trial bo at least worth the making ? Your book on which you are now engaged is, of course, a merely temporary concern ; when that is done, surely such an experiment as I have suggested will be valuable, if not almost necessary. Many of your friends seem to wonder, not only at what yon are doing, but at what you are going to do ; and though to me, from knowing my feeling for you, and that, to a certain extent at least, I enjoy your confidence, they do not make many remarks or ask many questions, I can see that they have a latent notion that all is not right, that you are placing yourself in a somewhat false position, and by withdrawing yourself from occupations of a more fixed and definite kind, are per- haps forming theories of speculative utility, or putting yourself out of the reach of those things which might ultimately best serve both yourself and society. Under all these circumstances, and feeling for you the most entire affection that one friend can entertain for another, I have for some time been intending thus to open my heart to you. I am aware that much, if not all that I have said, may appear irk- some, if not utterly worthless. As you told me to-day that your purpose has been long settled, I can scarcely anticipate that you will pay the least attention to anything I have ventured to express. Per- haps in this, as in other matters, it would be more for the happiness of yourself and those around you if your resolutions were formed, I will not say with less determination, but with more deliberation and reliance on the opinions of others. But this is not for me to dictate, and I am willing to hope that you will at least give me credit for the motive which has prompted me to say thus much. if I cared less for you I should have been silent, but I should not have satisfied either my heart or my conscience if I bad not once for all expressed this. o me if I have either teased you or gone beyond the line which strict propriety would have drawn; the subject is one of moment to you, and the beneficial influence which your friendship has bad upon one (for I can safely say that no person ever had an equal influence with me) makes the suggestion of this conscientious advice in some measure a debt of gratitude. And now I will close the letter and the subject ; you need not fear that I will worry you further; and it is only from a very strong sense of positive duty, as well as of esteem and affection for you, that, after what you said

• this morning, I could have presumed thus far."

Combine this with what Mr. Gladstone says of his friend in the very fine and finished study which he sent to Miss Hope- Scott after her father's death, and our readers will at least understand something of the apparently separating film drawn between Mr. Hope-Scott's mind and the mind of his most intimate friends :—

" I have just spoken of your father as the man on whom I most re- lied ; and so it was. I relied on one other, also a remarkable man, who took the same course, at nearly the same time ; but on him most, from my opinion of his sagacity. From the correspondence of 1838 you might suppose that he relied upon me, that he had almost given himself to me. But whatever expressions his warm feelings combined with his humility may have prompted, it really was not so ; nor ought it to have been so, for I always felt and knew my own position beside him to be one of mental as well as moral inferiority. I cannot remember any occasion on which I exercised an influence over him. I remember many on which I tried ; and especially when I saw his mind shaken, and, so to speak, on the slide. But these attempts (of whioh you may possibly have some written record) completely failed, and drove bim into reserve. Never, on any one occasion, would he enter freely into the question with me. I think the fault lay mach on my aide. My touch was not fine enough for his delicate spirit. But I do not conceal from you that I think there was a cer- tain amount of fault on his side also. Notwithstanding what I have said of his humility, notwithstanding what Dr. Newman has moat truly said of his self-renouncing turn, and total freedom from ambi- tion, there was in him, I think, a subtle form of self-will, which led him, where he had a foregone conclusion or a latent tendency, to in- dulge it, and to refuse to throw his mind into free partnership with others upon questions of doubt and difficulty. Yet I must after all admit his right to be silent, unless where he thought he was to receive real aid ; and of this he alone could be the judge."

Add to these comments by intimate friends, that even as regards the practical purposes of his life, Mr. Hope-Scott appears to have frequently lost heart, and not carried them out.

He never published his intended work on the Oxford Colleges. He never carried out his intention to leave the Bar and go into

the Church, as he had openly declared his intention to do, with the hearty consent of his father. He declared his intention never to marry, and yet he married twice. He gave up his practice at the Bar and resumed it again. There was certainly

something in him which dissatisfied him with himself in a sense very different from that in which every good man is dissatisfied with himself,—something which made him dis- trustful as to the most important of his own resolves. He seems to have felt a deep hesitation as to the fitness of some of his most cherished purposes, which prevented him from embarking himself fully in them. Some of those who knew him describe his air as more than touched with nonchalance, the air of one who did not engage himself deeply in the ordinary events of life. Doubt- less, this was partly due to his spiritual "detachment" from life.

But partly also it was due to something of distrust or dissatis- faction as to his own part in it, something of reluctance to exert his brilliant powers for his own highest purposes even as freely as he exerted them for a great railway case. Great as his efforts were when he was fully satisfied with the cause for which he was working—as, for example, when he had to show cause why the Cathedral revenues of England should not be mulcted for the increase of the poorer livings of the Church—he seems to have been seldom satisfied with his own fitness for any of his own higher purposes, even including really unreserved friendships. At least, it is clear that he threw himself into no friendship—with the exception, perhaps, of his friendship for Dr. Newman—with the same unreserve with which his friends threw themselves into their friendship for him. And yet he was magnificent in his generosity, de- voted beyond measure in his tenderness to others, self-forgetful in his charity, unremitting in his industry for all explicit engagements. What he doubted apparently was his qualifica- tion for those higher efforts in which he would not engage himself. He hesitated and drew back when it came to deciding on his own fitness for the work of a clergyman. He hesitated and drew back when it came to carrying out the plan of a book on which he had been at work for years. He hesitated and drew back when it came to exchanging full and free confidence with intimate friends on the deepest matters of the inward life. Apparently there was a sort of warning instinct in him,—or was it rather a sort of condensing chamber in his mind, where a fastidious criticism reduced the moral steam in him to a few drops of cold water P—which made him desist from many of his highest tasks, not because they were difficult, or involved self-sacrifice, for in that he was affluent, but because he had shivering fits of doubt

as to his own adequacy to them. That was the reason, we take it, why he kept even his most intimate friends at a measurable distance from his inmost thoughts,—as it was also the reason why he recoiled from the duties of a clergyman;

and from the attempt to explain or justify to others his great religious change. He would nurse invalids at any sacrifice to- himself. He would give away thousands. He would spare any time for the minutest criticism of any friend's work in which he was interested. Bat when it came to surrendering the last reserves- in friendship, or embodying the highest thoughts of his nature in his profession, he shrank back, whether wisely or unwisely we shall never know.

Deeply interesting as these volumes are, they convey not so much the vivid picture of a great character, as the positive certainty that a great character was there,—behind the scat- tered indications by which it is suggested. A distinct picture of the character we never get. We see a man distinguished and fascinating in the highest degree, high-bred in every act of life, equal to almost any self-sacrifice except the sacrifice of reserve, playful and dignified, somewhat nonchalant in manner, of "unconcern and sangfroid perfectly irritating," yet deeply imbued with the highest purposes and convictions ; seemingly devoid of ambition ; religious, ascetic, and possibly even a little superstitions, if superstition means a tendency to justify the extension of faith to regions to which faith cannot properly extend ; affectionate without passion, and poetical without the. higher imagination ; but yet at bottom an enigma; a mind not known as a whole through all its brilliant manifestations,.

— a character in many aspects unknown and to his actual com- panions unknowable. Such is the brilliant James Robert Hope

— afterwards Hope-Scott—as these volumes represent him,—the- parliamentary barrister for the mere name of whose advocacy the richest companies eagerly contended,—for many years the master of Abbotsford, the man who slowly followed Dr. Newman into, the Roman Catholic Church, and who died accepting as anima the dogma of Papal infallibility. Never was there a man of so. mach power whose mind seemed so much hidden behind the veil of an inscrutable and ineffable reserve,—a reserve wholly devoid of shyness, and even playfully conscious of its own power.