William Shakespeare - "Romeo und Julia"

Stewart Edward White - "The Gray Dawn"

Lydia Howard Sigourney - "Man of Uz, and Other Poems"

Harriet S. Caswell - "Stories and Sketches"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Victorian Worthies

G >> George Henry Blore >> Victorian Worthies



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Transcriber's note:

The reader will encounter the use of [=a] as an attempt to
preserve the author's use of a lower case "a" with macron
and [=i] as lower case "i" with macron.






VICTORIAN WORTHIES

Sixteen Biographies

by

G. H. BLORE

Assistant Master at Winchester College







'We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on
Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world's
business, how they shaped themselves in the world's
history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they
did;--on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and
performance.'--CARLYLE.



Humphrey Milford
Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow New York Toronto
Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta
1920
Printed in England
at the Oxford University Press




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION: THE VICTORIAN ERA
1. THOMAS CARLYLE. Prophet
2. SIR ROBERT PEEL. Statesman
3. SIR CHARLES NAPIER. Soldier
4. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. Philanthropist
5. LORD LAWRENCE. Administrator
6. JOHN BRIGHT. Tribune
7. CHARLES DICKENS. Novelist and Social Reformer
8. LORD TENNYSON. Poet
9. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Parish Priest
10. GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS. Artist
11. BISHOP PATTESON. Missionary
12. SIR ROBERT MORIER. Diplomatist
13. LORD LISTER. Surgeon
14. WILLIAM MORRIS. Craftsman
15. JOHN RICHARD GREEN. Historian
16. CECIL RHODES. Colonist
INDEX




PREFACE


Some excuse seems to be needed for venturing at this time to publish
biographical sketches of the men of the Victorian era. Several have been
written by men, like Lord Morley and Lord Bryce, having first-hand
knowledge of their subjects, others by the best critics of the next
generation, such as Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Clutton-Brock. With their
critical ability I am not able to compete; but they often postulate a
knowledge of facts which the average reader has forgotten or has never
known. Having written these sketches primarily for boys at school I am
not ashamed to state well-known facts, nor have I wished to avoid the
obvious.

Nor do these sketches aim at obtaining a sensation by the shattering of
idols. I have been content to accept the verdicts passed by their
contemporaries on these great servants of the public, verdicts which, in
general, seem likely to stand the test of time. Boys will come soon
enough on books where criticism has fuller play, and revise the
judgements of the past. Such a revision is salutary, when it is not
unfair or bitter in tone.

At a time when the subject called 'civics' is being more widely
introduced into schools, it seems useful to present the facts of
individual lives, instances chosen from different professions, as a
supplement to the study of principles and institutions. There is a
spirit of public service which is best interpreted through concrete
examples. If teachers will, from their own knowledge, fill in these
outlines and give life to these portraits, the younger generation may
find it not uninteresting to 'praise famous men and our fathers that
begat us'.

It seems hardly necessary in a book of this kind to give an imposing
list of authorities consulted. In some cases I should find it difficult
to trace the essay or memoir from which a statement is drawn; but in the
main I have depended on the standard Lives of the various men portrayed,
from Froude's _Carlyle_ and Forster's _Dickens_ to Mackail's _Morris_
and Michell's _Rhodes_. And, needless to say, I have found the
_Dictionary of National Biography_ most valuable. If boys were not
frightened from the shelves by its bulk, it would render my work
superfluous; but, though I often recommend it to them, I find few signs
that they consult it as often as they should. It may seem that no due
proportion has been observed in the length of the different sketches;
but it must be remembered that, while short Lives of Napier and Lawrence
have been written by well-known authors, it is more difficult for a boy
to satisfy his curiosity about Lister, Patteson, or Green; and of Morier
no complete life has yet been published.

I am indebted to Mr. Emery Walker for assistance in the selection of the
portraits.

Three of my friends have been kind enough to read parts of the book and
to give me advice: the Rev. A. T. P. Williams and Mr. C. E. Robinson, my
colleagues here, and Mr. Nowell Smith, Head Master of Sherborne. I owe
much also to the good judgement of Mr. Milford's reader. If I venture to
thank them for their help, they are in no way responsible for my
mistakes. Writing in the intervals of school-mastering I have no doubt
been guilty of many, and I shall be grateful if any reader will take the
trouble to inform me of those which he detects.

G.H.B.

WINCHESTER,

_April 1920._




LIST OF PORTRAITS


Thomas Carlyle
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.

Sir Robert Peel
From the painting by J. LINNELL in the National Portrait Gallery.

Sir Charles Napier
From the drawing by EDWIN WILLIAMS in the National Portrait Gallery.

Lord Shaftesbury
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.

Lord Lawrence
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.

John Bright
From the painting by W. W. OULESS in the National Portrait Gallery.

Charles Dickens
From the painting by DANIEL MACLISE in the National Portrait Gallery.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.

Charles Kingsley
From a drawing by W. S. HUNT in the National Portrait Gallery.

George Frederick Watts
From a painting by himself in the National Portrait Gallery.

John Coleridge Patteson
From a drawing by WILLIAM RICHMOND.
(_By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._)

Sir Robert Morier
From a drawing by WILLIAM RICHMOND.
(_By kind permission of Mr. Edward Arnold._)

Lord Lister
From a photograph by MESSRS. BARRAUD.

William Morris
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.

John Richard Green
From a drawing by FREDERICK SANDYS.
(_By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._)

Cecil Rhodes
From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.




INTRODUCTION

THE VICTORIAN ERA


We like to fancy, when critics are not at our elbow, that each Age in
our history has a character and a physiognomy of its own. The sixteenth
century speaks to us of change and adventure in every form, of ships and
statecraft, of discovery and desecration, of masterful sovereigns and
unscrupulous ministers. We evoke the memory of Henry VIII and Elizabeth,
of Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, of Drake and Raleigh, while the gentler
virtues of Thomas More and Philip Sidney seem but rare flowers by the
wayside.

The glory of the seventeenth century shines out amid the clash of arms,
in battles fought for noble principles, in the lives and deaths of
Falkland and Hampden, of Blake, Montrose, and Cromwell. If its nobility
is dimmed as we pass from the world of Shakespeare and Milton to that of
Dryden and Defoe, yet there is sufficient unity in its central theme to
justify the enthusiasm of those who praise it as the heroic age of
English history.

Less justice, perhaps, is done when we characterize the eighteenth
century as that of elegance and wit; when, heedless of the great names
of Chatham, Wolfe, and Clive, we fill the forefront of our picture with
clubs and coffee-houses, with the graces of Chesterfield and Horace
Walpole, the beauties of Gainsborough and Romney, or the masterpieces of
Sheraton and Adam. But each generalization, as we make it, seems more
imperfect and unfair; and partly because Carlyle abused it so
unmercifully, this century has in the last fifty years received ample
justice from many of our ablest writers.

Difficult indeed then it must seem to give adequate expression to the
life of a century like the nineteenth, so swift, so restless, so
many-sided, so full of familiar personages, and of conflicts which have
hardly yet receded to a distance where the historian can judge them
aright. The rich luxuriance of movements and of individual characters
chokes our path; it is a labyrinth in which one may well lose one's way
and fail to see the wood for the trees.

The scientist would be protesting (all this time) that this is a very
superficial aspect of the matter. He would recast our framework for us
and teach us to follow out the course of our history through the
development of mathematics, physics, and biology, to pass from Newton to
Harvey, and from Watt to Darwin, and in the relation of these sciences
to one another to find the clue to man's steady progress.

The tale thus told is indeed wonderful to read and worthy of the
telling; but, to appreciate it fully, it needs a wider and deeper
knowledge than many possess. And it tends to leave out one side of our
human nature. There are many whose sympathies will always be drawn
rather to the influence of man upon man than to the extension of man's
power over nature, to the development of character rather than of
knowledge. To-day literature must approach science, her all-powerful
sister, with humility, and crave indulgence for those who still wish to
follow in the track where Plutarch led the way, to read of human
infirmity as well as of human power, not to scorn anecdotes or even
comparisons which illustrate the qualities by which service can be
rendered to the State.

To return to the nineteenth century, some would find a guiding thread in
the progress of the Utilitarian School, which based its teaching on the
idea of pursuing the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the
school which produced philosophers like Bentham and J. S. Mill, and
politicians like Cobden and Morley. It was congenial to the English
mind to follow a line which seemed to lead with certainty to practical
results; and the industrial revolutions caused men at this time to look,
perhaps too much, to the material conditions of well-being. Along with
the discoveries that revolutionized industry, the eighteenth century had
bequeathed something more precious than material wealth. John Wesley,
the strongest personal influence of its latter half, had stirred the
spirit of conscious philanthropy and the desire to apply Christian
principles to the service of all mankind. Howard, Wilberforce, and
others directed this spirit into definite channels, and many of their
followers tinged with a warm religious glow the principles which, even
in agnostics like Mill, lent consistent nobility to a life of service.
The efforts which these men made, alone or banded into societies, to
enlarge the liberties of Englishmen and to distribute more fairly the
good things of life among them, were productive of much benefit to the
age.

Under such leadership indeed as that of Bentham and Wilberforce, the
Victorian Age might have been expected to follow a steady course of
beneficence which would have drawn all the nobler spirits of the new
generation into its main current. Clear, logical, and persuasive, the
Utilitarians seemed likely to command success in Parliament, in the
pulpit, and in the press. But the criterion of happiness, however widely
diffused (and that it had not gone far in 1837 Disraeli's _Sybil_ will
attest), was not enough to satisfy the ardent idealism that blazed in
the breasts of men stirred by revolutions and the new birth of Christian
zeal. In contrast to the ordered pursuit of reform, the spirit of which
the Utilitarians hoped to embody in societies and Acts of Parliament,
were the rebellious impulses of men filled with a prophetic spirit,
walking in obedience to an inward voice, eager to cry aloud their
message to a generation wrapped in prosperity and self-contentment. They
formed no single school and followed no single line. In a few cases we
may observe the relation of master and pupil, as between Carlyle and
Ruskin; in more we can see a small band of friends like the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the leaders of the Oxford Movement, or the
scientific circle of Darwin and Hooker, working in fellowship for a
common end. But individuality is their note. They sprang often from
surroundings most alien to their genius; they wandered far from the
courses which their birth seemed to prescribe; the spirit caught them
and they went forth to the fray.

The time in which they grew up was calculated to mould characters of
strength. Self-control and self-denial had been needed in the protracted
wars with France. Self-reliance had been learnt in the hard school of
adversity. Imagination was quickened by the heroism of the struggle
which had ended in the final victory of our arms. And to the generations
born in the early days of the nineteenth century lay open fields wider
than were offered to human activity in any other age of the world's
history. Now at last the full fruits of sixteenth-century discovery were
to be reaped. It was possible for Gordon, by the personal ascendancy
which he owed to his single-minded faith, to create legends and to work
miracles in Asia and in Africa; for Richard Burton to gain an intimate
knowledge of Islam in its holiest shrines; for Livingstone, Hannington,
and other martyrs to the Faith to breathe their last in the tropics; for
Franklin, dying, as Scott died nearly seventy years later, in the cause
of Science, to hallow the polar regions for the Anglo-Saxon race.
Darkest Africa was to remain impenetrable yet awhile. Only towards the
end of the century, when Stanley's work was finished, could Rhodes and
Kitchener conspire to clasp hands across its deserts and its swamps: but
on the other side of the globe a new island-empire had been already
created by the energy of Wakefield, and developed by the wisdom of
Parkes and Grey. In distant lands, on stricken fields less famous but no
less perilous, Wellington's men were applying the lessons which they had
learnt in the Peninsula. On distant seas Nelson's ships were carrying
explorers equipped for the more peaceful task of scientific observation.
In this century the highest mountains, the deepest seas, the widest
stretches of desert were to reveal their secrets to the adventurers who
held the whole world for their playground or field of conquest.

And not only in the great expansion of empire abroad but in the growth
of knowledge at home and the application of it to civil life, there was
a field to employ all the vigour of a race capable of rising to its
opportunities. There is no need to remind this generation of such names
as Stephenson and Herschel, Darwin and Huxley, Faraday and Kelvin; they
are in no danger of being forgotten to-day. The men of letters take
relatively a less conspicuous place in the evolution of the Age; but the
force which they put into their writings, the wealth of their material,
the variety of their lives, and the contrasts of their work, endow the
annals of the nineteenth century with an absorbing interest. While
Tennyson for the most part stayed in his English homes, singing the
beauties of his native land, Browning was a sojourner in Italian palaces
and villas, studying men of many races and many times, exploring the
subtleties of the human heart. The pen of Dickens portrayed all classes
of society except, perhaps, that which Thackeray made his peculiar
field. The historians, too, furnish singular contrasts: the vehement
pugnacity of Freeman is a foil to the serene studiousness of Acton; the
erratic career of Froude to the concentration of Stubbs. The influence
exercised on their contemporaries by recluses such as Newman or Darwin
may be compared with the more worldly activities of Huxley and Samuel
Wilberforce. Often we see equally diverse elements in following the
course of a single life. In Matthew Arnold we wonder at the poet of
'The Strayed Reveller' coexisting with the zealous inspector of schools;
in William Morris we find it hard to reconcile the creative craftsman
with the fervent apostle of social discontent. Perhaps the most notable
case of this diversity is the long pilgrimage of Gladstone which led him
from the camp of the 'stern, unbending Tories' to the leadership of
Radicals and Home Rulers. There is an interest in tracing through these
metamorphoses the essential unity of a man's character. On the other
hand, one cannot but admire the steadfastness with which Darwin and
Lister, Tennyson and Watts, pursued the even tenor of their way.

Again we may notice the strange irony of fortune which drew Carlyle from
his native moorlands to spend fifty years in a London suburb, while his
disciple Ruskin, born and bred in London, and finding fit audience in
the universities of the South, closed his long life in seclusion amid
the Cumbrian fells. So two statesmen, who were at one time very closely
allied, present a similarly striking contrast in the manner of their
lives. Till the age of forty Joseph Chamberlain limited himself to
municipal work in Birmingham, and yet he rose in later life to imperial
views wider than any statesman's of his day. Charles Dilke, on the other
hand, could be an expert on 'Greater Britain' at thirty and yet devote
his old age to elaborating the details of Local Government and framing
programmes of social reform for the working classes of our towns.
Accidents these may be, but they lend to Victorian biography the charm
of a fanciful arabesque or mosaic of varied pattern and hue.

Eccentrics, too, there were in fact among the literary men of the day,
even as there are in the fiction of Dickens, of Peacock, of George
Meredith. There was Borrow, who, as an old man, was tramping solitarily
in the fields of Norfolk, as earlier he wandered alone in wild Wales or
wilder Spain. There was FitzGerald, who remained all his life constant
to one corner of East Anglia, and who yet, by the precious thread of his
correspondence, maintained contact with the great world of Victorian
letters to which he belonged.

Some wandered as far afield as Asia or the South Seas; some buried
themselves in the secluded courts of Oxford and Cambridge and became
mythical figures in academic lore. Not many were to be found within hail
of London or Edinburgh in these forceful days. Brougham, the most
omniscient of reviewers, with the most ill-balanced of minds, belongs
more properly to the preceding age, though he lived to 1868; and it is
from this age that the novelists probably drew their eccentric types.
But between eccentricity and vigorous originality who shall draw the
dividing line?

Men like these it is hard to label and to classify. Their individuality
is so patent that any general statement is at once open to attack. The
most that we can do is to indicate one or two points in which the true
Victorians had a certain resemblance to one another, and were unlike
their successors of our own day. They were more evidently in earnest,
less conscious of themselves, more indifferent to ridicule, more
absorbed in their work. To many of them full work and the cares of
office seemed a necessity of life. It was a typical Victorian who, after
sixteen years of public service, writing a family letter, says, 'I feel
that the interest of business and the excitement of responsibility are
indispensable to me, and I believe that I am never happier than when I
have more to think of and to do than I can manage in a given period'.
Idleness and insouciance had few temptations for them, cynicism was
abhorrent to them. Even Thackeray was perpetually 'caught out' when he
assumed the cynic's pose. Charlotte Bronte, most loyal of his admirers
and critics, speaks of the 'deep feelings for his kind' which he
cherished in his large heart, and again of the 'sentiment, jealously
hidden but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable
Thackeray'. Large-hearted and generous to one another, they were ready
to face adventure, eager to fight for an ideal, however impracticable it
seemed. This was as true of Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and all
the _genus irritabile vatum_, as of the politicians and the men of
action. They made many mistakes; they were combative, often difficult to
deal with. Some of them were deficient in judgement, others in the
saving gift of humour; but they were rarely petty or ungenerous, or
failed from faint-heartedness or indecision. Vehemence and impatience
can do harm to the best causes, and the lives of men like the Napiers
and the Lawrences, like Thomas Arnold and Charles Kingsley, like John
Bright and Robert Lowe, are marred by conflicts which might have been
avoided by more studied gentleness or more philosophic calm. But the
time seemed short in which they could redress the evils which offended
them. They saw around them a world which seemed to be lapped in comfort
or swathed in the dead wrappings of the past, and would not listen to
reasoned appeals; and it would be futile to deny that, by lifting their
voices to a pitch which offends fastidious critics, Carlyle and Ruskin
did sometimes obtain a hearing and kindle a passion which Matthew Arnold
could never stir by his scholarly exhortations to 'sweetness and light'.

But it would be a mistake to infer from such clamour and contention that
the Victorians did not enjoy their fair share of happiness in this
world. The opposite would be nearer the truth: happiness was given to
them in good, even in overflowing measure. Any one familiar with
Trevelyan's biography of Macaulay will remember with what fullness and
intensity he enjoyed his life; and the same fact is noted by Dr. Mozley
in his Essay on that most representative Victorian, Thomas Arnold. The
lives of Delane, the famous editor of _The Times_, of the statesman
Palmerston, of the painter Millais, and of many other men in many
professions, might be quoted to support this view. In some cases this
was due to their strong family affections, in others to their genius for
friendship. A good conscience, a good temper, a good digestion, are all
factors of importance. But perhaps the best insurance against moodiness
and melancholy was that strenuous activity which made them forget
themselves, that energetic will-power which was the driving force in so
many movements of the day.

How many of the changes of last century were due to general tendencies,
how far the single will of this man or that has seriously affected its
history, it is impossible to estimate. To many it seems that the role of
the individual is played out. The spirit of the coming era is that of
organized fellowship and associated effort. The State is to prescribe
for all, and the units are, somehow, to be marshalled into their places
by a higher collective will. Under the shadow of socialism the more
ambitious may be tempted to quit the field of public service at home and
to look to enterprises abroad--to resign poor England to a mechanical
bureaucracy, a soulless uniformity where one man is as good as another.
But it is difficult to believe that society can dispense with leaders,
or afford to forget the lessons which may be learnt from the study of
such noble lives. The Victorians had a robuster faith. Their faith and
their achievements may help to banish such doubts to-day. As one of the
few survivors of that Victorian era has lately said: 'Only those whose
minds are numbed by the suspicion that all times are tolerably alike,
and men and women much of a muchness, will deny that it was a generation
of intrepid efforts forward.' Some fell in mid-combat: some survived to
witness the eventual victory of their cause. For all might be claimed
the funeral honours which Browning claimed for his Grammarian. They
aimed high; they 'threw themselves on God': the mountain-tops are their
appropriate resting-place.




THOMAS CARLYLE

1795-1881

1795. Born at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, December 4.
1809. Enters Edinburgh University.
1814-18. Schoolmaster at Annan and Kirkcaldy. Friendship with Edward
Irving.
1819-21. Reading law and literature at Edinburgh and Mainhill.
1821. First meeting with Jane Welsh at Haddington.
1822-3. Tutorship in Buller family.
1824-5. German literature, Goethe, _Life of Schiller_.
1826. October 17, marriage; residence at Comely Bank, Edinburgh.
1827. Jeffrey's friendship; articles for _Edinburgh Review_.
1828-34. Craigenputtock, with intervals in London and Edinburgh;
poverty; solitude; profound study; _Sartor Resartus_ written;
reading for _French Revolution_.
1834. Cheyne Row, Chelsea, permanent home.
1834. Begins to read for, 1841 to write, _Cromwell_.
1834-6. _French Revolution_ written; finished January 12, 1837.
1837-40. Four courses of lectures in London. (German literature, _Heroes_.)
1844. Changes plan of, 1845 finishes writing, _Cromwell_.
1846-51. Studies Ireland and modern questions; _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, 1849.
1851. Choice of Frederick the Great of Prussia for next subject.
1857. Two vols. printed; 1865, rest finished and published.
1865. Lord Rector of Edinburgh University.
1866. Death of Mrs. Carlyle, April 21.
1867-9. Prepares Memorials of his wife; friendship with Froude.
1870. Loses the use of his right hand.
1874. Refuses offer of Baronetcy or G.C.B.
1881. Death at Chelsea, February 5; burial at Ecclefechan.

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