ANTIPATHIES OF GENIUS—TENNYSON AND BROUGHAM.
[To via EDITOR OF THE " SPROTATOR:1
Sin,—In your issue of November 2nd it is related that, in the presence of Sir F. Wedmore, Tennyson was asked whether he liked the Russians, and gave the crushing answer that he "hated them like the deviL" Of course the poet, poet-like, was exaggerating ; but his Russophobic tendency can hardly
have been forgotten by any reader of Maud, where the Tsar Nicholas is designated as "the giant liar." Anyhow, the broad anathema reminds me that at Cannes, where Brougham towards the end of his life was the centre of gossip, it was confidently reported that, being asked by an American bishop whether in the Civil War his sympathies were with the North or with the South, be gave the too impartial reply, "Sir, I hate them both." This rejoinder is not thoroughly attested; but it is of a piece with what is told of Brougham by his kinsman, Sir E. Malet. Indeed, it can be shown in many ways that in his old age he was what Goethe would have called " dmmonic " with a vengeance—dmmonic in the unflattering sense which that somewhat vague epithet connotes to English ears. It should be explained that in this relation there was a wide difference between Tennyson and Brougham. Those who have the best right to speak about Tennyson Bay that in his domestic circle he was a model of goodness. If he heard a member of his household pass a severe judgment on an outsider, he at once put in a word for the absentee; he pleaded (in effect) that tout savoir serait beaucoup pardonner. On the other hand, the only excuse which Brougham's step- daughter could make for his social outrages was " Viel Licht, viel Schatten." It should in fairness be added that the superannuated Brougham was wholly unlike the Brougham of the Reform Bill. One cause of his deterioration was pointed out to me by Jowett : "Brougham might have been the first man in the country if he had not let himself be over- come by the blandishments of the aristocracy." This tribute is the more remarkable as Jowett with advancing years became a sort of Tory-Whig, such a halting reformer that he quoted with approval Tennyson's saying : "Things are going quite fast enough." A comment on Brougham by Bagehot may be worth quoting, as serving to explain the misanthropy of the ex-Chancellor and of others like him : "He has enough of misanthropy to be a philanthropist." Such a paradox may be compared with one by Chamfort "Whoever is not a mis- anthropist at forty can never have loved mankind." This latter saying has been well illustrated by a reference to one of, I think, Helvetius : "He who would love mankind should not expect too much from them." In fact, the phrase " love of mankind" may be used in two very different senses—zeal for human welfare and sympathy with human frailty. Those who have toiled hardest to help "men in the street" are often the least indulgent to "men in the street" for doing so little to help one another. That great genius, Swift, has been described by Macaulay as "the apostate politician, the ribald priest, the
perjured lover, a heart burning with hatred against the whole human race, a mind richly stored with images from the dung- hill and the lazar-house." From this rhetorical outburst it will be seen that not Swift only, but Macaulay was an extra good hater. It thus gives support to an old "fad" of mine, namely, that genius so enervates the organism that, like consumption, it is often a beautiful disease. The point has been well put by a high authority who held that intellectual giants are generally more or less ill-proportioned and lop-sided. Herein may be found an excuse for the wholesale antipathies and other vagaries of men of genius. It may be said of those giants with less exaggeration than of persons cursed or blessed with a more commonplace mental stature, " Quot bomines, tot
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