SIB STAFFORD NORTHOOTE ON YOUTH.
friRE is something touching in the evident relief with which Sir Stafford Northcote reverted on Wednesday to the studies of his youth. A Balliol man, who took a First- class in Classics, besides taking a Third in Mathematics, he has never lost his keen interest in the subjects of his college studies, and the evident avidity with which he caught at the title given to Edinburgh, "the Modern Athens," as an excuse for giving the students of that University a dissertation on some of the greater themes discussed in ancient Athens, almost constitutes a sufficient excuse, if one be needed, for his Conservative politics. For as the great thinker on whom he dwelt so well on Wednesday says, in another part of the same book from which he quoted, "What is ancient seems, in a certain sense, akin to what is natural ;" which is, we take it, another way of saying that the Conservative party are the party of "the natural man," and that it takes some- thing of an audacity which is not quite natural—call it preternatural or supernatural, as you will—to break through those bonds of custom and habit which cling to the ancient ways as ivy clings to the mouldering wall. However, whether -it be from a Conservative leaning towards the natural in the form of what is time-honoured, or whether in reality, as we suspect, there is more of the scholar in Sir Stafford North- tote than there is of the political combatant, his Rectorial address on Wednesday had certainly more of swing in it than any address of his daring recent years,—if we except at least the equally skilful dissertation on "Nothing" with which he gratified literary Exeter a week ago. Indeed, he gave the im- pression of realising what Matthew Arnold meant when he .declared that,—
" There was shed On spirits that had long been dead, Spirits dried up and closely furled, The freshness of the early world."
Sir Stafford Northcote quoting Aristotle's "Rhetoric," Sir Stafford Northcote comparing Grote and Thucydides to the advantage of the latter, Sir Stafford Northcote hinting his preference for the noblest heroine of Sophocles over the noblest heroine of Shakespeare, appeared to be ten times as much at home as Sir Stafford Northcote comparing the Budgets of the Conservatives with the Budgets of the Liberals, or contrasting the statesmanship of the Afghan and Zulu wars with the statesmanship of the Egyptian Expedition and the Transvaal Treaty. It was evidently a real delight to him to figure to himself for a moment the Scottish youth as in some sense representing the young men who flocked to hear Demosthenes speak and Aristotle lecture, and to encourage them to train themselves for political life by reading what Demosthenes had to say of Alexander, what Thucydides had to say of the warm which Athens had been worsted, and by importing into the politics of the present day the politics of the age of Pericles or of Nicias and Clean. And surely he was quite right when he encouraged young men to mingle the politics of the present with the politics of the past. It may be true that the politics of undergraduates are not in the highest degree serious. But the more serious they are,—so long as they do not prevent them from giving the strength of their day to study,—the more serious will be their study too. You can hardly get a young man who is not deeply interested in the present to be deeply inter- ested in the past, for, after all, the past needs even more interpretation by the light of the present, in order to become intelligible at all, than the present needs of interpretation by the light of the past. It is remarkable enough that Sir Stafford Northcote should have quoted Aristotle's characterisation of youth, without the slightest criticism on its evident bias towards the side of youth,—not less remarkable even than the fact that Aristotle felt that bias. In itself, one would suppose that a great Con- servative could not share the sympathy with youth, which even Aristotle admits to be rash and irritable, still more that such a Conservative as Sir Stafford Northcote would not share it, for he is always groaning under the necessity of curbing the rash and irritable youth of his own party. Indeed, it is remarkable enough that the calm and cautious Aristotle himself should have had so little sympathy as he seems to have had with the calmness and caution
of age,—that he should have been so vexed as he was by its tendency to qualify all its conclusions with " perhapses" or " probablys," and should have reckoned as pusillanimity the caution that old men have derived from the constant experience of failure. We suspect that both in Sir Stafford Northcote and in the great Greek thinker, the indulgence felt for the faults of youth and the dislike felt for the scrupulosity of age must have been due to the well-known tendency to sympathise with complementary qualities, the natural admiration felt for a dash and ardour of which the critic had but little trace in himself. And yet that can hardly be the whole explanation. We are sure that if Sir Stafford Northcote had gone into the contrast drawn by Aristotle between youth and age, he would have sharply criticised Aristotle's description of the latter, at least if it could be regarded as applicable to our modern world. But may it not be that in the Greece of that day there was really much less to be said for age as compared with youth than there is now,—that age was really more cal- culating, more sordid, more pusillanimous, had less in it of sober magnanimity, of enterprising caution, of generous equa- nimity than it has now ? Certainly it does seem that the genius of the ancients lost more in losing youth than the genius of the moderns. Almost all the great men of the Old World were great by their gifts, hardly any great by their use of experience. More of the genuine enthusiasm of youth seems to have exhaled as life went on, and less of the disciplined self- forgetfulness of age seems to have accrued, in the old days, than in the new. His not the greatest of the world's re- ligions really taught men, to some extent, to husband much of their enthusiasm for the end of their life, and to give to that enthusiasm a graciousness and tolerance which it never could have had in the beginning. Certainly, the heroes of antiquity were almost always young men, while the heroes of our own days are apt to be old men. The selfishness which Aristotle unhesitatingly ascribes to the old is usually now regarded as belonging more naturally to the young, and as belonging to them for the very reason that experience has not enabled tliem to interpret, and enter into, the hearts of others. But if that be true, that means that experience is regarded by the best observers of the present day as enlarging not only the range, but the depth of sympathy, instead of as Aristotle regarded it—namely, as adding only to the panic of self-love. We suspect that in the youth of the world, youth seemed less selfish than age, only because it was less cautious and calculating ; but that in the present day the caution and calculation of age have diminished rather than in- creased the intensity of self-love, and have greatly increased, if not the intensity, at least the practical depth of the disin- terested sympathies. We wish Sir Stafford Northcote had added to his delightful review of the Aristotelian analysis of youth, his own estimate of the accuracy of that analysis, as judged both by the ancient and the modern experience. We suspect that Aristotle over-praised, youth and over-depre- ciated age, even in his own time ; but that the over-praise and over-depreciation, which may have been but little in excess of the truth in that day, are enormously in excess of the truth in this.
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