ROBERTSON OF BRIGHTON.*

Ix the early days of the Fortnightly Review, a paper on Frederick W. Robertson appeared in that journal by a writer who had enjoyed the advantage of listening to his preaching, as well as of

reading his sermons. This estimate of a very remarkable man was suggested by the Rev. Stopford Brooke's admirable Life, which had recently been published. Twenty years have passed away since then, but it is not too much to say that the influence exercised by Robertson on thoughtful minds has lost little, if any, of its power. In some respects, it is perhaps even more potent, since the views which startled many hearers when uttered from the Brighton pulpit are now more generally accepted. The wonderful suggestiveness of the preacher exercised, no doubt, a vast influence at the time ; but when a clergyman is suspected of heresy, timid people stand aloof, and among" the old women of both sexes," as he terms them, there was either direct opposition to Robertson, or the muttered insinuations of " We could, an if we would," or "There be, an if there might," which implied more than was expressed against him. For pulpit eloquence, Joseph Sortain, who at that time preached hard by, in North Street, was no mean rival. We do not agree in the opinion of an old shoe- maker, quoted by Mr. Arnold, that Sortain " would be twenty minutes in finding fine pegs to hang his words on." With a weak and peculiar voice, he had the force of a born orator, and no man could have succeeded better in arresting attention during his short sermons. The writer of this review has heard the most distinguished pulpit orators of the day, and once or twice, at least, has listened to Robertson ; but for the eloquence that depends less on what is said than on the manner of saying it, he remembers no preacher comparable to Sortain. Audit must not be supposed from this remark that Sortain's sermons were empty wind-bags. The manner in which the speaker expended his wealth of illustration and argument on a central point, and impressed that one point on his audience, was very striking. A superficial thinker or a sham orator would not have influenced

men like Macaulay and Thackeray, like Sir James Stephen and Judge Talfourd ; but it must be admitted that while Robertson's volumes of sermons are books that retain a living power, the published sermons of Sortain, like his biography and his story of Hildebrand and the Emperor, belong to the books that are dead and buried.

Sortain laboured for thirty years in Brighton, Robertson for

not more than six, —but they were six years of such passionate energy, that he may be almost said to have compressed his life within them, and there is perhaps no man who has lived at Brighton who has left a more distinct mark upon the place. Mr. Arnold brings together several striking instances of the influence wielded by this young preacher—he died at thirty-seven —on persons of different characters and occupations. It may be new to many of our readers, though the story was told by Dean Stanley in Scribner, that travelling on one occasion from Macon to Paris, the Dean conversed with a " wild, revolutionary, un- believing surgeon," who, not knowing that Stanley was a clergy- man, asked him if he had ever known or read the sermons of

Frederick Robertson. " He had himself fallen in with a copy and been struck by them, and he was eager to know anything that I could tell him about them." The writer continues :-

" We parted at Paris ; he went to Mexico, and I have since lost all trace of him. This was one end of the scale. On the next day, in Paris, I went, as usual, to see a man whom in his best days I greatly respected and loved, Augustin Cochin, who afterwards became Prefect of Versailles in the troubles which succeeded the Franco- German War, and he died of the fatigues which in that war had fallen to his lot. He was a devout Catholic, liberal indeed, and open to all kinds of questioning about England and Protestantism, of the school of Montalembert and Father Gratry. He, on the occasion to which I refer, asked if I could tell him anything about an extraordinary preacher, whose name was Frederick Robertson. Thus, in the coarse of forty-eight hours, I had evidence of the t ffect produced in two extremes of French society, and that by an English preacher."

Mr. Arnold adds, among other proofs of Robertson's influence and popularity, that' many a clergyman overborne by parish

• Bekertson of Brighton, with some Notices of his Times and Contemporaries. By the Rev. Frederick Arnold, B.A. London : and and Downey. 1886.

duties, and unable to meet the excessive demands for sermons which is often made on him, simplifies matters by giving his people a sermon of Robertson's." The gift may prove fortunate for the people, but if it is not clearly stated that the discourse is borrowed, the act is surely an immoral one. Pity that the supposed necessity of preaching two sermons every Sunday should tempt a man to commit it !

It is time we should notice more particularly the book that has suggested these casual remarks. And the first thing that

strikes an attentive reader is the carelessness with which it is written. Mr. Arnold acknowledges his deep obligation to Mr. Stopford Brooke's Life and Letters of F. IV. Robertson, and he

refers frequently to the writer, whose name sometimes occurs five or six times in one page. In not a single instance, however, does Mr. Arnold take the trouble to spell it correctly ; Mrs. Jameson also, and Henry Melvin, come off badly, while the name of Crabb Robinson is sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly spelt. Indeed, he appears to be one of those slip-shod writers who think that, so long as they express their meaning, verbal or grammatical accuracy is immaterial. A very familiar couplet of Pope's is quoted, but not as it was written by the poet ; and what does Mr. Arnold mean by saying,—" It is very rarely that Newdigate examiners select the prize poems P " Repetition is Frequent, which may be Mr. Arnold's method of impressing a fact upon the memory, just as some of his sentences (see p. 272, for example), may have been formed, as in certain books on composition, to exercise the ingenuity of youthful students. Mr. Arnold is an Oxford man, and no doubt knows how to write his

mother-tongue, so that such proofs of carelessness as the fol- lowing seem to be inexcusable :—" It is the intense humanity of Robertson's that has been one of his highest gifts." "It will be seen that there were various opinions of Robertson's in which

those of the present writer do not at all agree." There are passages, too, which it is strange that any reader for the Press could pass, and this is the more irritating, since a book on Robertson, written in the wake of Mr. Brooke's masterly bio- graphy, must be largely dependent for the interest it excites on the style of the writer.

We do not agree with Mr. Arnold that Mr. Brooke seems hardly to have taken into account Robertson's private character, and to a great extent has lost sight of his individuality ; nor, if this defect exists in the Life, can we compliment Mr. Arnold on having removed it. His volume has a good deal in it to interest and entertain, but a careful perusal of it has not much enlarged our knowledge of Robertson, or altered our opinion of his character. Yet Mr. Arnold has spared no pains to do this remarkable man justice. He made a pilgrimage to Winchester, and talked with the clerk, who insisted that Robertson had been a soldier ; he found the lodgings in which he had lived, and apparently inspected the church books. He also visited Cheltenham, searched the church books there, and found them quite devoid of interest ; but in favour of the place and people of Cheltenham the writer has much to say which, if not always pertinent, is pleasant. From this fashionable English watering- place Robertson, as the readers of his Life know, went for a time

to Heidelberg ; Mr. Arnold has been there also, but was " unable to glean any traditions respecting him." At Brighton, it is scarcely necessary to say, he has been more successful. Not only does he gain some interesting biographical passages from Mr. Julian Charles Young's Last Leaves, a book " only too little

known," but he has conversed or corresponded with many persons who knew Robertson. We have already mentioned a man who spoke to Mr. Arnold disparagingly of Sortain, but nothing can be truer than what this shoemaker says of Robertson. It shall

be given, with some introductory matter by Mr. Arnold, who visited the octogenarian on learning that he had enjoyed some intimacy with the clergyman of Trinity chapel :- " I bad beard on good authority the following account of the com- mencement of this acquaintance. Robertson had noticed the man ; always early, always standing, always eagerly intent. Robertson ascertained that there was a single vacant sitting in the gallery, and sent his churchwarden to say tbat he was greatly pleased with his attendance and attention, and he hoped that he would accept the seat from himself. The shoemaker sent back word that as he could not afford to pay for a seat he would rather not occupy one. My shoemaker grew a little restive when I recalled this incident. He said be preferred standing. There were other people in the gallery who were not able to stand. ' I daresay, Sir, that you are under the idea that you know Robertson's sermons. You have read them, of coarse ?' I assented. ' Well, you don't know them for all that. No man could know them unless he heard them. The printed reports can tell you nothing of hie manner. And the printed reports often

omit whole passages. They do not give some of his most striking words. his words absolutely haunted you for days and days.'"

Another man told Mr. Arnold that he had, in his little parlour behind the shop, Robertson's portrait on the wall :—" Whenever he was tempted to do any trick of trade, or behave unhandsome, he would hurry into the back-parlour and look at the portrait. And then, Sir, I felt that I could not do it—that it was im- possible for me to do it.' " Other tradesmen spoke to Mr.

Arnold of Robertson with the warmest affection. There was never any man, said one of them, whom he loved so much. "Robertson had taught him all the religion he had. All the truth he had ever gained he had learned from him." The power he possessed of winning people to him was remarkable. "I would go through fire and water to serve him," said his church- warden ; and Mr. Arnold relates that he has frequently met with persons who have told him that they never missed a single

sermon.

Perhaps the freshest and most attractive chapter in Mr Arnold's book is one that has not much title to a place there. In this chapter the writer gossips about all the people that have contributed to give notoriety or celebrity to Brighton, from the Prince Regent to the well-beloved Elliot, and to the venerable James Vaughan. for whom Robertson sent upon his deathbed, but unfortunately sent in vain, for he was away from home. And he diverges to neighbouring places, in order to give an account of his conversations with Canon Mozley, to describe the late Archdeacon of Chichester, and the Bishop of that diocese. An elaborate account is also given of the Wagner family, and there is a long chapter dedicated to the memory of Lady Byron, " one of the famousest of Englishwomen." With her, as our readers know, Robertson was closely associated, and so warm was his sympathy, that he appears to have regarded her hallucinations as facts. Mr. Arnold regrets that Lady Byron's letters have never been published, and believes that the materials exist for a large volume. Lady Byron's dread of dogma led her to desire what she terms "a soft, melting, aerial boundary" between the different sections of the Christian Church,—a feminine way, truly, of escaping from difficulties. The following passage may be quoted :-

" Lady Byron had accumulated a great mass of documentary evidence, papers and letters, which were supposed to constitute a case completely exculpatory of herself and condemnatory of Byron. She placed all this printed matter in the hands of a well•known individual, who was then resident at Brighton, and afterwards removed into the country. This gentleman went carefully through the papers, and was utterly astonished at the utter want of crimina- tory matter against Byron. He was not indifferent to the eclat or emolument of editing such memoirs, bat he felt this was a brief which he was unable to hold, and accordingly returned all the papers to Lady Byron. Robertson was to have been her literary executor, and whatever may have been his views about Lord Byron, he would have been able to render full justice to the many good points and the stainless career of the illustrious wife. After the death of Robertson, the papers were handed over to another clergyman, who was then the minister of the Presbyterian Hanover Place Chapel, bat who is now beneficed in the Church of England. It is remark- able, although many years have elapsed, and the interest of the papers continues unabated, that this gentleman has not seen his way to make any literary use of them."

Mr. Arnold alludes, of course, to the• Rev. Alexander Ross, whose capacity for doing justice to the memory of Lady Byron is beyond question. A letter from this gentleman addressed to Mr. Brooke, which will be found in the Life, presents a por- trait of Robertson as vivid as it is truthful. He says justly that

his life is to be read in his sermons ; and that his great gift was that of a preacher, is admitted by Mr. Arnold, who observes that it is " a gift which in these days is thought very little of, especially by those who do not happen to possess it." By the way, in relation to the sermons, we come upon a curious illus- tration of Mr. Arnold's carelessness and inconsistency. Writing

of the well-known lady who supplied the larger portion of short- hand notes to which we are indebted for the printed volumes, he remarks on p. 255 :-

" I may here say that I have seen a letter of Mr. Robertson's addressed to this lady, in which he thanks her for the transcript of his sermons, and does not mention that he had the slightest objection to the course which she had pursued."

And on p. 305 he writes :—

" When Robertson was told that there were membersof his congre- gation who took shorthand notes of his sermons, he did not request them to discontinue the habit, for he had neither the moral nor legal right to do so, but he showed plainly that the fact gave him no interest or pleasure. The great mass of his sermons published were due to the shorthand notes of an individual lady. His acknowledgment of her labour of love was somewhat coldly given, and he had not the least idea of the weight of obligation under which this lady was laying himself, his family, and the Christian world at large."

That Robertson was himself inconsistent in the matter is probable enough ; but it is evident that Mr. Arnold writes the passage just quoted in entire oblivion of his earlier statement.

From a literary point of view, we cannot praise this desultory volume ; but at the same time, like many carelessly written books on highly interesting subjects, it contains not a little that is " worthy the reading." In endeavouring to glean information, Mr. Arnold has not failed in assiduity ; and although he has succeeded in reaping but few sheaves, readers who owe a debt of gratitude to Robertson will thank him for his labour.