A LESSON TO MEMOIR WRITERS.
Some Early Impressions. By Leslie Stephen. (The Hogarth Press. 4s. 6d.)
This wise, tranquil, and beautifully written book is so unas- suming as to give rise to the fear lest it may be swamped by contemporary literature of far less value. To give a complete impression of a lifetime in less than two hundred pages is something of a tour de force, and onethat could have been accom- plished only by a man of extended experience in the profession of letters. Mid-Victorian .Cambridge needed an apologist of the late Sir Leslie Stephen's calibre, and we have here a most entertaining glimpse of the rationalists who were, if not antagonistic, at least patronizingly amused by the antics of Newman and the Oxford Movement. Religious doubts apparently did not trouble Cambridge round about 1860. " Individuals might belong to what were then called the High, Low, or Broad parties ; but their differences did not form the ground fir any division in University politics." We may be pardoned for considering their activities slightly trivial when we learn that typical of the date was Bishop Colenso, who proved to his own satisfaction that certain' statements made by the authors of the Pentateuch led to the conclusion that priests must eat over eighty-eight pigeons a day ! The writer gives an amusing picture of the rise of Evolutionism and Bible criticism round about 1860. The followers of Darwin and of what is known as " modern enlightenment " in general have always found a happier and more congenial home at Cambridge than at the sister Univer- sity, and some may consider this a matter for congratulation. Granted that the Oxford Movement as a social activity is out of date, as a contribution to the world's store of quiet romance and spiritual beauty it reaches a height never yet attained at Cambridge, where Science, that hard and bright- eyed lady, goes. hand in hand with a cold variety of literary style.
In selecting anecdotes that will best give us the impression of some well-known figure Sir Leslie Stephen was a past master. He makes us know such men as J. S. Mill and Carlyle as though they were memories to us as well as to himself. What could be more revealing than his picture of Mill passionately defend- ing a medicos:re disciple whom someone had attacked—or that of Carlyle's Johnsonian annoyance at being introduced to a bore ? The number of " eminent Victorians " to whom he pre- sents its in this way is indeed amazing ; here are some of the notable characters who race through his pages : Isaac Tod- hunter, Whewell, Clerk Maxwell, Henry Sidgwick, Sir Walter Besant, Kingsley, "Tom" Hughes, Carlyle, J. S. Mill, Lowell, Abraham Lincoln, Thackeray, Ruskin, and many others.
Most interesting of all, perhaps, is the account of the author's experience of editorship. Having contributed to the Saturday Review, then in possession of a remarkably brilliant staff, he became for some time editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, which he eventually left in the hands of Sir Sidney Lee, to take over the Cornhill Magazine. Experience of this kind leaves little to be discovered in the domain of journalism, and the scraps of information imparted to us on the subject are !most entertaining.
But it is the smooth wisdom of the book which is the most astonishing thing about it. Out of the plenitude of his knowledge of life and of men the author gives us a picture of an age such as a younger man could never have done. The sobriety of it all I He never once pushes his own charming personality in the reader's face, and there is none of that hectoring, insistent tone with which so many modern writers of memoirs bring individualism into disrepute.
EDWARD SACKVILLE WEST.
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