ART. VI.-The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton. By T. WEMYSS REID. Two Volumes. London, 1890.

N undertaking to write a Life of Lord Houghton, Mr. T. had before him a task of

dificulty.

There was an almost entire absence of the materials which enable a biographer to produce an exciting or a stirring narrative. The events connected with either the public or the private career of Richard Monckton Milnes were not such as lend themselves readily to dramatic treatment. Only a few fragments of his own conversation have been preserved, and of his conversation with others there is but a slight and accidental record. He appears to have kept no diary or commonplace book worthy of particular mention. Some stray jottings here and there are all that he left behind him, besides a desultory correspondence, considerable in extent, but less varied and valuable than might reasonably have been looked for. There are letters from many distinguished persons, but few of them possess remarkable interest. Some of Carlyle's are thoroughly characteristic, but so many of his letters of much the same kind have been published during the last few years, that these additions to the mass will scarcely attract special attention. Their chief interest consists in the insight which they afford into the character of Lord Houghton himself. A mere enumeration of the names of Lord Houghton's correspondents would naturally give rise to expectations of great treasures, but little if anything of that kind will be found in these volumes. As a rule, the letters to him are of a pleasant and friendly nature-nothing more. The bill of fare is most tempting, but the dishes when they come up have very little on them. In his later years, Lord Houghton himself was not a good correspondent, and, indeed, it became exceedingly difficult to read a single line of his handwriting. A friend once received a letter from him which, so far as could be gathered from a word here and there, appeared to contain a request of some little urgency. But the meaning of the note could not be ascertained by any exercise of ingenuity. Upon requesting Lord Houghton to explain it, he returned another copy in what he was pleased to call a 'printed' state, but the only drawback was that the print was more illegible than the writing. Nothing remained but to make a rough guess at his wishes. This, or something like it, was always occurring between himself and his friends. It seems that the printers who charged half-a-crown a sheet extra for Dean Stanley's 'copy' required fifty per cent. extra to set up Lord Houghton's. We cannot say that it was too

much.

much. The letters of the Duke of Wellington in his old age, those of Lord Brougham, and some parts of Sir Walter Scott's handwriting, were not to be deciphered without much study and patience. But we have received specimens of Lord Houghton's bewildering communications which surpassed them all. Mr. Wemyss Reid tells us that at the General Post Office, among other curiosities of the same kind exhibited there, is one of the envelopes addressed by Lord Houghton. That it reached its destination is looked upon as one of the greatest instances of acuteness which the Post Office itself is able to furnish. There can be no doubt that this carelessness, or, perhaps, the sheer inability to make characters with a pen which anybody else could interpret, is one of the causes of the comparatively slight value of the correspondence which his biographer has had to assist him in his work. It is difficult to carry on communications of this kind when on one side they are all but illegible. Moreover, there seems to have been a tendency on the part of Lord Houghton's friends not to enter too seriously into the discussion of any subject with him. He was regarded as a man of society, and even those who knew him well were apt to approach him in that spirit, and rarely in any other. That, undoubtedly, did a great injustice to his real character and abilities, but he had gradually fallen into the habit of doing an injustice to them himself, and the world cannot be expected to trouble itself further than to accept a man in the part he chooses to play. The higher side of Lord Houghton's nature, or the true measure of his capacities, was known to few, and towards the last he seemed himself to take a pleasure in ignoring their existence. That he should be valued chiefly as a man who knew every body, and who was always ready to make his knowledge useful to others, is not altogether surprising.

Of such materials as were at his disposal, Mr. Wemyss Reid has made the best. We have no reason to doubt that he has published everything which was really of public interest and importance in Lord Houghton's papers, so far as the limits of propriety and good taste permitted. Throughout the work, he has displayed sound judgment, right feeling, and unfailing tact. So far as we are able to form an opinion, he has printed nothing which he ought to have omitted, and omitted nothing which he ought to have printed. He has avoided everything which could possibly inflict needless pain upon any member of the large circle of Lord Houghton's friends and acquaintances. He has edited the letters with care, yet, as we should presume, without undue severity. The narrative portions of his memoir are interesting and sufficient, and there is scarcely a passage in the two

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volumes which any friend of Lord Houghton would wish to see struck out. In that respect, the work presents a satisfactory contrast to some biographies of greater pretensions, which have been published within recent recollection. Lord Houghton does not figure in these pages as a greater man than he really was, but his memory has not been sullied, and the inevitable failings of human nature have not been ruthlessly dragged into the light by his biographer. We have the truth, but Mr. Wemyss Reid has not sought to tear down the curtain of private life altogether, and to tell the world all that he could find out concerning the flaws in the character of his dead friend. It is not every friend of the dead who has shown so much discretion.

The keynote to Lord Houghton's character is accurately struck in the few words which closes his biographer's introductory chapter. He was 'the kindest and truest of friends.' It is in that light that all who knew him well will ever remember him. The late Mr. W. E. Forster-probably the most ill-used man who ever served a political party-once referred to Lord Houghton, then Richard Monckton Milnes, in these words:'I have many friends, who would be kind to me in distress, but only one who would be equally kind to me in disgrace, and he has just left the room.' Mr. Forster never fell into disgrace; but when the Liberal party and its writers in the press were combining together to drive him out of the Irish Secretaryship, it would have been well for him and for the country if he had possessed in the Ministry a friend as staunch as Lord Houghton. As it was, he was bitterly assailed and calumniated by some who were aiming to become his successors, and he was deserted by the colleagues who ought to have stood by him to the last. He was deliberately sacrificed for the Kilmainham Treaty, which was 'engineered' for Mr. Gladstone by that very Captain O'Shea of whose domestic affairs the world has heard so much. 'Beware of paying blackmail to sedition,' was Mr. Forster's warning cry to his colleagues, when the O'SheaParnell Treaty was being ratified. He was laughed at or abused then, but possibly there may be some now who see cause to wish that his wise and manly advice had been followed. To the last, Lord Houghton remained faithful to him. As we shall presently see, Lord Houghton himself was not well adapted for the career of a 'politician,' and perhaps it was for that reason, among others, that he never cultivated the art of betraying his friends. There was scarcely any limit to his good nature and kindly feeling. Walking one day into the Athenæum Club, while an election was going on, he happened to observe upon the list the Vol. 172.-No. 343.

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name of a friend who had been some years abroad, and who was not much known in his own country. He soon discovered that this friend's interests were entirely unrepresented, and he at once took them in hand. He posted himself in the room, and never left it till he had canvassed every one he knew for the absent candidate. In small things or in great, he would make the most strenuous exertions for those who had gained his esteem. Mr. Reid has not told us what proportion of his income he spent in works of benevolence, but it must have been very large. To men of letters especially, his heart was ever open. It was not his money that many of them wanted or desired, but he very often had the power, and always the dis position, to smooth difficulties out of their path, to abridge the period of struggle, or to utter the encouraging word which some times enables the flagging spirit to persevere. Mr. Wemyss Reid tells us that 'little as he liked letter writing, he was constantly writing to make the names of unknown journalists and men of letters known to the leading writers of the day. If he knew that one of these humbler friends of his was going to any city abroad, he would, unsolicited, forward to him a batch of introductions to the most notable personages in the place! Doubtless there were some who made a bad return for these or still greater services, and that fact may have inspired the cynical reflection which occurs in one of Lord Houghton's letters 'As one gets on in life, one of the most annoying reflections is the little good one has done by what people call benevolence in fact, how little man can be benefited by others.' There is, of course, a certain degree of truth in this remark, but there never was a man to whom it was less applicable than to Lord Houghton himself. He could not fail to be aware that he was regarded with feelings of the deepest gratitude and veneration by many who, as Mr. Reid suggests, were never destined to emerge from obscurity, as well as by others who afterwards became distinguished in the world of letters or in public life.

Lord Houghton's sympathy with men of letters may have arisen in some degree from the fact that at heart he was a man of letters himself. We fear that his writings are not much read in these days, but in spite of the political ambition which at one time kept a fast hold upon him, it was fame in literature that he most desired. It pleased him greatly to hear any of his ballads or lighter pieces sung; and some years ago he was much delighted at the great popularity secured for his 'Strangers Yet,' by a new setting from a composer who, for the time, had a wonderful success, and who assumed the name of Claribel.' Mr. Wemyss Reid tells us that Lord Houghton was walking one

day

day in London with a friend, when he stopped for a moment and listened eagerly to a singer whose voice had reached him. He ran off to find the wandering minstrel, and presently returned beaming with delight. The man had been singing his own well-known song, 'I wandered by the Brookside.' He used to say that a short poem or ballad was the surest passport to immortality. A hymn was better than either, and he instanced 'Rock of Ages' as a case in point. That this hymn will last we do not doubt; but of the many thousands by whom it is used, how many could tell the name of the author? Lord Houghton had a great admiration for it, and considered it one of the most truly devotional pieces ever written. Newman's Lead, kindly Light,' was, he maintained, and with justice, a poem, and not a hymn; and whereas 'Rock of Ages' is sung at some time during the year in almost every place of worship where the English language is spoken, poetical works, however beautiful in character, are confined to the knowledge of comparatively few.

Lord Houghton himself will be remembered as a writer chiefly by two or three songs. To the younger generation, his Palm Leaves' is an unknown book; yet many of his contemporaries looked upon it as a poem destined to preserve his fame green for at least a century or two to come. Mr. Wemyss Reid is inclined to think that there is still a possibility, that Lord Houghton's neglected poems will 'regain their hold upon the ear of the reading public, and will keep his name alive long after the memory of his brilliant life of social success has passed away.' We should be glad to share this hope, but the calm and placid current of Milnes's verse is little likely to take the fancy of the age in which we live. No one will deny that Byron was an infinitely greater poet than Milnes, and yet he is now comparatively little read. Southey, Rogers, Campbell-they are all fading out of sight, if not out of recollection. Campbell's wonderful lyrics will doubtless last, but who reads the Pleasures of Hope,' or 'Gertrude of Wyoming'? The Battle of the Baltic, Lochiel's Warning,' 'Hohenlinden,' and 'Ye Mariners of England' are worth all the rest, from a popular point of view, that Campbell ever wrote. Rogers left nothing of the same kind behind him, and he is a mere shadow in the world of letters. Lord Houghton will fare better, mainly on account of what he called his short pieces.' His prose works were chiefly intended to meet the demands of the hour, and, with the exception of his 'Monographs,' few of them will be found even in a good library. He was a valued contributor to these pages, but his articles were necessarily

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