The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• List of Illustrations.
• Errata.
• The Works and Life of Walter Bagehot, Volume X
• Chapter I.: Introductory.
• Chapter II.: Langport and Its Surroundings.
• Chapter III.: Home and Family.
• Chapter IV.: Early Education.
• Chapter V.: University College.
• Chapter VI.: An Interregnum.
• Chapter VII.: Paris.
• Chapter VIII.: Author and Banker.
• Chapter IX.: Engagement and Marriage.
• Chapter X.: “the Arches” and London.
• Chapter XI.: India.
• Chapter XII.: “the Economist”
• Chapter XIII.: “the English Constitution.”
• Chapter XIV.: “physics and Politics.”
• Chapter XV.: “lombard Street.”
• Chapter XVI.: “economic Studies.”
• Chapter XVII.: Tributes From Contemporaries.
• Errata For Index.

CHAPTER VI.

AN INTERREGNUM.

Thus ended the days at University College. Bagehot left Dr. Hoppus and took lodgings in Great Coram Street. Intellectual and moral philosophy were the subjects he then took up for special study, being those in which he wished to take his M.A. degree. Mr. Hutton notes in his memoir, however, that “Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth, Coleridge, Martineau, and John Henry Newman, all in their way, exerted a great influence over his mind, and divided, not unequally, with the authors whom he was bound to study—that is, the Greek philosophers, together with Hume, Kant, J. S. Mill, and Sir William Hamilton—the time at his disposal”.

Mr. Hutton was at Heidelberg in 1847 studying theology, and falling in love with Miss Mary Roscoe. Walter missed him greatly. He returned to England in September, 1847, to study at the Manchester New College. Dr. Martineau was at that time the head of theological learning at the College, and accessible Liverpool was the residence of the Roscoe family. He writes to Bagehot: “I shall certainly not go in for my M.A. next time, perhaps not for two or three years. I have little or no time to spare for extra reading, and if I had every day vacant, I might as well talk of beating you, as of confuting a Chinese on a metaphysical question in his own language. Martineau’s lectures on Moral Philosophy are very splendid, even more able than I hoped. He is lecturing now on Necessity and Causation.”

The following, from among many letters, may be quoted to show the kind of discussions which Bagehot and Mr. Hutton carried on in their correspondence with one another:—

“6 Great Coram Street,
20th September, 1847.

“My dear Hutton,

“I have left your letter so long unanswered, that I fear you will have forgotten the points which you told me to write about. I concur with you in thinking, that minds not self-conscious must be comparatively deficient in aspiration in the sense of being but little occupied with the future state of their own minds. I do not know exactly how far to agree with you about J. H. N.’s (John Henry Newman) personal character. I rather doubt his having less than the average of self-consciousness. Do not you unconsciously take Martineau as the standard whose self-consciousness is many million sizes above that of ordinary mortals? I do not think F. W. N.’s (Francis W. Newman) much, if at all, below the average: he (and his brother perhaps also) has quite enough to make him a much better metaphysician than he is: but it seems to me, that perhaps owing to over-activity and restlessness of mind both the Newmans combine with a great facility of analysing to a certain extent, a great disinclination (and almost an inability) to analyse further. Also I think he is quite imaginative enough to realise futurity or anything else as definitely as he pleased. I am not sure that he does want aspiration (much at any rate) in the sense of not desiring to do his duty better. Martineau’s aspirations very often amount to wishes for harder or higher duties than those which he has at the time: and these M. would not think it right to indulge; he would think it his duty to put forth his strong will and drive them off. To finish about Newman, I do not think his want of self-consciousness can be the reason for his wanting precise moral convictions. Arnold, who was not self-conscious at all scarcely, had very precise notions of duty. I think in Newman’s case the reason is that his intellect is more subtle than his sense in discriminating: he can conceive finer shades of feeling and motive than his conscience will confidently estimate.

“As to the peaceful nature of Protestantism. I only meant that it repudiated the characteristic work of the Catholic military ages; viz. the organised living authority to be obeyed in all points of faith and practice; the notion of ‘an oracle’ is essential to a positive Revelation; and I do not imagine that the Protestant belief in this is to be accounted for from the circumstances of a period but simply from the truth of the doctrine. If by the construction of the human intellect truth has an advantage on the whole, we need only seek in social circumstances for the sources of error. I have just read (in a charge of Archdeacon Manning’s) rather a good sentence on ecclesiastical history. ‘The world persecuted the church in the beginning; espoused her in the middle ages; is disowning her now.’ It must have been an immense gain in the middle ages that all their systematised thought was Christian and spiritual. Ever since Hobbes in England, there has been a systematic unchristian philosophy constructed by men of this world (i.e. men who have not much cultivated the moral sense); and one picks up scraps of this in one’s infancy, and it takes much trouble to be rid of them. There was much worldliness in the middle ages no doubt, but there seems to have been no organised philosophy to keep it in countenance. However, anyone who can understand Hume, will not be in a hurry to believe any irreligious philosophy. The choice for a man is whether he will believe in God and duty, or whether he will believe nothing. I agree with you quite in saying that the Saint’s Tragedy is deficient in severity of moral feeling. Does not this amount to saying that there is a Germanism about it; I mean is not this the point in which the German character is defective; a severe discrimination as to voluntary acts? There is (as it seems to me, but I am a poor judge) a rich overflow of feeling, but a want of strictness in the details of action. Please to answer this. I am inclined altogether to disbelieve the thesis which the Saint’s Tragedy is to prove about celibacy. I think it may be held, that the highest life is an imitation of Christ’s not only in its spirit but in its characteristic circumstances. For perhaps these circumstances comprise the maximum of opportunities for self-denial and for a form of action that will morally improve mankind.

“About celibacy I think St. Paul argues satisfactorily that it is essential to an absorption in the highest end of human action: this is undoubtedly the teaching religion in such a manner as effects a diminution of sin among mankind. This cannot be the unremitting pursuit of anyone who is a member of a family. Daily and secular cares will lay hold on a large fraction of human life; to follow in the highest manner our Lord’s earthly profession, we must be, as He was, homeless. There is an important principle which seems to me to qualify this. It is that no man should begin to put down the disinterested part of his original nature, unless he has thoroughly put down the selfish and the unnatural; it would be an awful thing, and yet it must have happened often, after conquering the affections to succumb to the appetites. The affections are the best aids in what may be called the inevitable sphere of human action; while necessary duties are neglected, it is sin to dispense with any aid in getting through them, and to undertake harder ones beside. To those who have to lead a secular life, marriage is, I suppose, in the majority of cases, an assistance in the performance of duty; it is necessary to keep a strong habitual feeling of disinterested affection (in the case of most men) toward existing persons whom they habitually see, and it is very difficult to do this in the case of friends, because they are dispersed so widely and have such different spheres of duty. You know Arnold’s saying, that a family, or religious intercourse with the poor, was necessary for an Englishman. I think it might with pains be generalised into a complete view of the subject. About divine self-denial I think we quite agree. I only meant that it ought to be kept consistent with the truth that the manner of virtue depends on the unitedness of the mind in point of active motive, and the greatest strain of executive. I like the second verse of your hymn. The first and third not so well; they strike me as written under the orders of your will. Nobody but Newman can contract with his imagination for a supply of verses. I send you some of mine which are gloomy and I fear dull.”

To William Roscoe Bagehot writes:—

Mr. Hutton writes:—

About this time Bagehot writes:—

“My dear Hutton,

“I came to Town last Monday, and have been intending to write before, but have not fancied that I was able. When I received your last letter, I intended to write to you an invective against your remarks on Judaism in it; but owing to delay my wrath has in great measure evaporated. The view of the character of God contained in it seems to me in the main coincident with the Christian, bearing somewhat the same relation to it that the grand does to the sublime. What you say of the Patriarchs seem to me to come to this much only: that notwithstanding particular acts of meanness or grossness or cowardice, men who are on God’s side in the great conflict between good and evil, and are in earnest on His side are in His favour, and therefore His friends. If you grant this, and it is difficult for a Christian to deny it, there is no difficulty in believing the view which the Old Testament takes of such men as Abraham or David. I have sometimes thought that anthropomorphism (if the word is to retain its usual offensive sense) ought to be defined as the attributing to God any peculiarity of human nature not essential to our conception of perfect holiness; and perhaps it ought to include the taking this our conception as an accurate result, and not as an approximation more or less distant from the result. As, however, there are other names for this last form of irreverence, this much abased need not perhaps be stretched to include it. There are obviously two ways of holding the doctrine that man is God’s image, one the Greek of fashioning the Gods on the exact model of interesting and attractive men; and the other that of the Christians, and according to their light of the Jews, viz. the imputing to man the faculty of obtaining and in part also the possession of moral attributes resembling those of God so far as what is finite can resemble what is infinite. And the first is perhaps the most winning form of anthropomorphism. I have read Newman’s book on the Jews and think it very dull and poor. What does Martineau think of it? I do not like to speak evil of a book of Newman’s, but I cannot speak well of this one. There is no appreciation of the poetry or the religion of the Jews, nor of the great characters in the history.”

Walter Bagehot and Mr. Hutton were in those days amusing themselves by writing verses which they sent to one another to criticise. Mr. Hutton writes of verses by Bagehot: “I admire exceedingly your two shorter pieces, the other not so much; it is cold imagination, and not graceful. You seem fond of idiots, there’s a good deal about them. I have seldom read a finer verse than the first four lines beginning:—

• Since dull-eyed Love with idiot haste
• O’er human graves has restless paced,
• Musings have soothed at evening hour,
• As woman’s words man’s world-worn power.

“There is something of a far deeper sense of weariness and over-taxed will than I think you ever felt, or at least expressed, till lately in the two exquisite lines:—

• Since labours’ weary curse began
• To dog the steps of anxious man.

“Your imagination is, I think, something like Gibbon’s description of his own, ‘rather strong than beautiful,’ and it is in the sublimer half of poetry that you excel most, not in the beautiful half. I admire both pieces far more than anything I have read of yours before.”

Other verses which Walter Bagehot wrote about this time betoken moods of profound melancholy, such as the following:—

• As an idiot mother prowling
• For a lost and roaming brood;
• As a wild hyæna howling
• For her foul and cankered food;
• So ravenous pain strays scowling
• Round lean life’s banquet crude.

• SONNET
  
  on your (Mr. Hutton’s) speaking of “causeless melancholy”.

• • The highest spirits deepest sorrows claim,
  • The noblest destinies are tinged with fear;
  • To sadden careless instinct Jesus came,
  • From gladdest eyes to draw the scalding tear.
  • No pain is causeless; o’er God’s mightest sons
  • Two angels Grief and Guilt divide their sway;
  • He who affliction’s icy tempest shuns
  • Must tread a path where fouler breezes stray.
  • The heavy steps of sad repentance lie
  • Along the burning sands by passion spread,
  • But they who shrink not from a wintry sky,
  • High o’er the Alps of sinless sorrow tread.
  • The pilgrim bent Messiah’s land to gain
  • Must pass a desert, or a mountain chain.

April, 1848.

Bagehot writes to Mr. Hutton: “I send you Roscoe’s criticism on my poems which will amuse you. I like both your sonnets, but the Pauline one the best; as the Star (which is he?) is in your personal equation and not in mine. Isn’t it rather a petty form of fire worship? Also is not

• Cluster around thee every smile and sigh
• Spring from affections mocking times control,

rather a large consignment of feeling to send on so distant a voyage? Does not the attraction (or the attractiveness at least) vary directly as the square of the distance? I met your family (i.e. your sisters and your eldest brother) at the Torrington Square Roscoes. And I told them in a moment of temporary insanity that you seemed in good spirits; your last letter being awfully dismal. I hope I’m not a moral agent at times. I often say the exact contrary of what I should know very well, if I thought the least, in a calm tone of utter conviction.”

At no time, it would appear, was Walter Bagehot more painfully confronted with the insolvable mystery of his home trouble than in the years between his college life and his final decision to leave London and turn his energies to business. This decision, it will be remembered, he was advised by his mother to take in 1845. In his essay on “Hartley Coleridge,” he quotes Keats’ words in the Preface to Endymion, which, judging from his poems and passages in his letters, partially describes the phase he was at this time passing through. “The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick sighted.”

Much might be written on the effects produced by contact with insanity; on the depressing reaction on the nervous system following the excitement, tension, and anxiety caused by it; of the distorted and exaggerated view many of the ordinary, commonplace circumstances of life are apt to take while the mind is suffering from such contact. Moreover, it creates a sort of double life. The habit of having always to exercise caution and discretion, always to have to look out for danger signals, while hiding what is uppermost in the thoughts, creates a condition in which the natural impulses get wired in by a hedge of reserve, and which prevents a free happy expansion natural in temperaments such as Walter Bagehot’s. The uninitiated understand so little, the sore is so acutely sensitive, that an instinctive shrinking arises from challenging the best-intentioned sympathy. It is a painful subject, but in attempting a biography, sins of omission count as no less immoral than sins of commission. By omitting existing conditions of mind and circumstance, inadequate impressions must necessarily result. Walter Bagehot started in life with as high spirits, as healthy a temperament, and as sound an understanding as any human being ever possessed, and it is lamentable to trace how directly and indirectly his health and buoyancy were undermined by the pain, wear, and stress of the family calamity, by “The dark realities which are, as it were, the skeleton of our life, which seem to haunt us like a death’s head”. Although he weathered each storm that arose with affectionate discretion and courage, the cloud was ever there, hanging over his life, dimming the play of sunlight on it, suppressing that causeless, exultant happiness to which his natural temperament was prone, and which is the kindliest favour the fates can tender to youth.

Living alone in lodgings Bagehot felt the weight of this dark reality in its most depressing form. While at University College the companionship of other students suited his sociable leanings; and study under professors such as De Morgan, Long, Malden, and Hewitt Key, acted as an intellectual stimulant. When at home, though the agitations might be more acutely disturbing, there were alleviations not found in the lonely lodgings in Great Coram Street. The devoted affection and wise counsel of his father, the charm of his mother’s personality, Herd’s Hill, which he loved, and the beauty of his native country, all tended to give a less cruel aspect to the tragedy; whereas the loneliness of his life in London accentuated it. The London he was then living in was an ugly London to him. He was keenly sensitive to the visible as connected with the invisible, and there was nothing in the London in which he then dwelt to feed, as at Herd’s Hill, the leisure moments with the soothing delights of colour and atmosphere: nothing outward to uplift the spirits after the day’s work, no visible stimulus to the poetic and spiritual aspirations which had been his from childhood. In after days, referring to this dreary time, he said he ought to have had a horse to ride, “that would have mended matters”. Bagehot nevertheless would have scorned the idea of allowing himself to become a victim of anything approaching despair. “If you would vanquish earth, you must invent Heaven,” he writes in his essay on Macaulay. “His real strength,” as he said of Hartley Coleridge, “was in his own mind,” and the force of his own mind was his defence against spectral scares, while he was already beginning to feel “the excitement or origination” as a stimulant against depression. From his father he inherited a singularly level-headed sense of duty, and strength of will to follow what conscience dictated. He was fully alive to the sensitiveness of his brain. “Though it be false and mischievous to speak of hereditary vice,” he writes in the Hartley Coleridge essay, “it is most true and wise to observe the mysterious fact of hereditary temptation. Doubtless it is strange that the nobler emotions and the inferior impulses, their peculiar direction or their proportionate strength, the power of a fixed idea, that the inner energy of the very will, which seems to issue from the core of our complex nature and to typify, if anything does, the pure essence of the immortal soul, that these and such as these should be transmitted by material descent, as though they were an accident of the body, the turn of an eye-brow, or the feebleness of a joint, if this were not obvious, it would be as amazing, perhaps more amazing than any fact which we know; it looks not only like predestinated, but even heritable election. But, explicable or inexplicable, to be wondered at or not wondered at, the fact is clear, tendencies and temptations are transmitted even to the fourth generation, both for good and for evil, both in those who serve God and in those who served Him not.” Walter Bagehot was well aware that his nerves were sensitive and excitable, that his imagination often swept him off the solid groundwork, and that he could not, like his father, maintain the same patient equanimity of temperament in meeting the difficulties at home. He felt a sympathy with Wordsworth who used to say that he was “frequently so rapt into an unreal transcendental world of idea, that the external world seemed no longer to exist in relation to him, and he had to convince himself of its existence by clasping a tree or something that happened to be near him”. Mr. Hutton says that Walter Bagehot had “the visionary nature to which the commonest things often seemed the most marvellous, and the marvellous things the most intrinsically probable,” and he himself writes in “The First Edinburgh Reviewers”: “A clear, precise, discriminating intellect shrinks at once from the symbolic, the unfounded, the indefinite. The misfortune is that mysticism is true. There certainly are kinds of truths, borne in as it were instinctively on the human intellect, most influential on the character and the heart, yet hardly capable of stringent statement difficult to limit by an elaborate definition. Their course is shadowy; the mind seems rather to have seen than to see them, more to feel after than definitely apprehend them. They commonly involve an infinite element, which of course cannot be stated precisely, or else a first principle, an original tendency, of our intellectual constitution, which it is impossible not to feel, and yet which it is hard to extricate in terms and words.” These vaguer, mystical truths Walter Bagehot brought into the compass of his sense of reality. His imagination gave him the power so to pierce the mist that he could convey definitely in his writings the sense of the indefinite. His imagination carried him far into dreamlands, into the attitude of “Shakespeare’s greatest dreamer, Hamlet,” into the philosophic speculations of Kant. “How,” discusses Kant, “is Nature in general possible?” But Bagehot’s imagination also brought him back on to firm ground. He discerned how disastrous is the result to those who indulge in feeding only on the pleasant pastures of dreamland. Of these he writes: “What is to fix such a mind, what is to strengthen it, to give it a fulcrum. To exert itself, the will, like the arm, requires to have an obvious and a definite resistance, to know where it is, why it is, whence it comes, and whither it goes.” Life had to be lived, and to live it well was Bagehot’s aim. Very favourite words of his were Shelley’s:—

• Lift not the painted veil
• Which those who live call Life.

Bagehot’s melancholy sonnets were written for himself and his friends, whereas the public was given matter of quite a different character. He entered the arena of authorship by two articles for the Prospective Review, which was then edited by his friend William Roscoe. The first alluded to in Mr. Hutton’s letter was on Currency, written in 1847, the second, also for the Prospective, on John Stuart Mill, in 1848. He writes to Mr. Roscoe: “I am come to London in September to read Law and write a review of John Mill’s Pol. Ec. for the Prospective. I have got a great reverence for my own virtue in consequence, and am in immense danger of doing nothing now I am here; one lives to reward merit. The fates seem to think or feel differently, however, as I am in much trouble about John Mill, who is very tough, and rather dreary. I am trying to discuss his views about the labouring classes. Most of his peculiar views come in there, and the subject is of more interest than any other that I could select. The theory of population is in an unpleasant state, and it is very difficult to find sure ground upon it. . . . It would be a charity to write to me, for London is dull, even to me, who am always a solitary animal.”

After the article appeared, Mr. Hutton writes from Berlin: “I was much interested in your review of Mill. I didn’t think, however, it was as able as your article on the Currency, and I find Martineau thinks so too. It follows Mill so much. I am sorry you don’t blow up Mill more. I should have thought there was more room for it, as to his theories respecting the future of the working classes, which you do allude to, but not at any length. The doctrine he urges so much about population I dislike extremely.” Again referring to it, Mr. Hutton writes in another letter: “Your hatred to your article is quite possible; it is extremely clever, and will, I am sure, be very much admired. I only said you could write a better, but if I had read it first in the Prospective without knowing by whom it was, I should have been astonished and delighted with it.”

To his mother Walter wrote cheerfully from London, never dwelling on his moods of depression. He chose subjects likely to amuse her, and interest the best part of her mind, though when he thought he might avert a crisis in her malady, he wrote without any reserve concerning it.

In December, 1847, he writes: “Mr. Stanley, Arnold’s Biographer, has just brought out a volume of sermons and essays on the Apostolic age. I admire the sermons exceedingly. Mr. Stanley is a little man with grissly black hair, and piercing black eyes that look like a Jew’s; very singular and clever looking. I went to a queer party at Newman’s (Mr. Frank Newman, then Head of University Hall) a night or two ago. He manages a party worse than anybody I ever saw. A good many ladies and a good many gentlemen, but none of the gentlemen knew any of the ladies except Mr. Newman, and one gentleman who, being married, vigorously fought shy of his own wife. All the ladies worked dismally in a meek way; and the men talked politics and metaphysics in another room, Newman peering through the folding doors at the ladies, being afraid, I suppose, they would make a rush and swamp his proof ‘that all philosophy began in nonsense’. I have been there once or twice before; but none of the parties was so queer as this one. The last time he talked to Smith Osler (there were about twenty people there) and myself, leaving the rest to shift for themselves.”

From Oxford, while staying with his friend Constantine Prichard, Fellow of Balliol College, Bagehot writes:—

“My dear Mother,

“I am afraid the family will be wroth with me for not writing; but the philosophers take up so much of one’s time and tire one so during the rest of it that really not writing is excusable. Prince Albert has just been exhibiting himself here in the Ethnological Section of the Association. Dr. Prichard and Chevalier Bunsen, and Dr. Latham went off about Ethnology, languages, ancient Egypt, etc., which the Prince tried hard to look as if he understood, but did not succeed completely. He was attended by Sir R. Inglis, who contrives to look knowing very well, and attends the sections as diligently as any philosopher of them all, though he most likely does not know much more about the matter than persevering ladies who sit all day in the Mathematical Section. Mr. Laverrier and Mr. Adams (the rival calculator of the position of the new Planet Neptune) are the great philosophical attractions. Mr. Adams is the best to look at a good deal, as Laverrier is a yellow-haired pink little man with invisible eyes, and no expression of face at all. Dr. Faraday is here, and gave a statement that they can now by recent discoveries turn diamonds into coke, but it does not seem that they can turn them back again; so that the jewellers will not suffer. Sir J. Hirschel is the most interesting of the physical philosophers, and I think the most attractive mentally of them all. The most interesting Oxford man whom I have met here is Mr. Stanley, the writer of Arnold’s life. He is a son of the Bishop of Norwich whom I met at his rooms at breakfast the other morning. Ehrenberg the great animalcule finder is there; he looks rather like a squashed animalcule himself. The Bishop of Oxford preached yesterday at St. Mary’s, the University Church. It happened curiously that yesterday was the day for an old bequest sermon on pride and the vanity of human knowledge; so that the physical philosophers kicked it in. The sermon was a good one on the whole, though too rhetorical for the Tractarians here who like plainness of speech. The Prichards are staying at Wallingford, and come in daily. The doctor slid off the platform during the rush of Prince Albert to a neighbouring corner. Bunsen’s speech was to a considerable extent an eulogism on the Doctor’s Book. Ethnology is only a subsection of the British Association. You seem to doubt a little whether you shall come on Tuesday, to-morrow, in your last letter. However, I mean to return to-morrow, and to go to Hampstead in the evening to receive you. Possibly something very attractive may turn up here, and I may stay, but it is not likely at all.

“Believe me,
Yours obediently, though in great haste,

“Walter Bagehot.”

Again from Oxford, while paying another visit to the Prichards, Bagehot writes:—

“My dearest Mother,

“I reached Oxford in perfect safety on Monday evening. The Prichards were all well and expecting me. They seem fitted in very nicely here, much better than they ever were in London. I am going to stay here till to-morrow Friday, as I am going to dine at Oriel with one of the fellows there who is a great logician and very ugly to the eyes. The only great gun whom I have seen here that was new to me is Mr. Sewell, the moral philosopher and High Church divine. I cannot say I much admire his books, but he is indisputably a capital talker, not much like a divine but with some shrewdness and a good deal of terrestrial knowledge and a large fund of clever stories. He was the life and soul of a dinner party given to the Coleridges to which I was admitted.”

Walter had studied the philosophy of Kant with great interest. He writes to his friend, Sir Edward Fry, in May, 1846: “I have been reading some of Kant the founder of the modern school of Metaphysics in Germany and France. He appears to me to have been a man of preternatural acuteness, no little confidence in himself, to have been very fond of the complexities of an artificial system, and to have been defective in the power of diffusing simplicity over a subject by the constant application of master-truths. However, he has greatly advanced study of mental philosophy, and to anyone who wishes to cultivate the power to acute discrimination his works may be recommended as constantly requiring the exercise of that faculty. It is a great pity that he had so little power of explaining his meaning. His vast and barbarous terminology is enough to terrify any Englishman but one who, like myself, is a fanatical devotee in the service of metaphysics.”

Mr. Hutton writes in his memoir: “Walter Bagehot took the gold medal in Intellectual and Moral Philosophy with his Master’s degree in 1848, in reading for which he mastered for the first time those principles of political economy which were to receive so much illustration from his genius in later years”. Bagehot’s and Mr. Hutton’s endeavours at this time to thresh out various points in theology and morals, were often started by the views held by Newman and Martineau. Mr. Hutton still retained the attitude of a pupil inspired by Walter Bagehot’s superior genius. “I think you are right that it is impossible to conceive moral evil ever totally exterminated from a free world, there can only be a partial approach to it, leaving a constant quantity always there; at least so it seems to me. I recollect our first talk about an emotional God very well, and the exact place in the New Road where it took place; that is one of the many examples in which I have begun by violently contesting your opinions and learning to believe them at last. I believe I owe more to you in matters of philosophy and faith than to any number of individuals under the sun, Martineau perhaps excepted, but even here I am very doubtful.”

Dr. Prichard died on 23rd December, 1848, at the age of seventy-two. Of him and his family, excepting always his Uncle and Aunt Reynolds, Walter Bagehot had seen more than of anyone outside his college life, both during the Bristol and London days. Through his son Constantine, Bagehot was first introduced to Arthur Clough, who resigned his fellowship of Oriel College, Oxford, in November, 1848. Francis Newman, having vacated the post of Principal of the University Hall, London, Mr. Clough was elected to it. Bagehot had expended time and money in establishing this Hall for residence in connection with University College, and it was through his and Mr. Roscoe’s exertions that Mr. Clough was offered the Headship.

Walter Bagehot’s health had broken down while he took his M.A. He was in so weak a state that he had to lean on a friend’s arm when he went up to receive the gold medal. He revived at Herd’s Hill, and returned to London in November, 1848, to read Law in the Chambers of Mr. Hall, afterwards Vice-Chancellor Sir Charles Hall.

It was during the two following years, when Arthur Clough held the post of Principal of University Hall, that Walter Bagehot and he saw most of each other. Mr. Hutton writes that Arthur Clough was “the man who had, I think, a greater intellectual fascination for Walter Bagehot than any of his contemporaries”. Those who believe in inherited racial refinement and who take an interest in tracing it, would find if they did so that Arthur Clough and Walter Bagehot had alike that peculiar kind of refinement which nothing else appears to be able to confer; but on further inspection they might also have traced the influence of a class to which their nearer ancestors belonged, an influence which was advantageous, expanding, as it did, their view of life in various directions. Both their families were of ancient lineage, owners for many generations of large landed estates, the Cloughs in Wales, and the Bagehots in Gloucestershire, while both their more immediate ancestors had become merchants and bankers. Both, to use Walter’s own words describing Clough, were men “of great honesty and moral courage, with an immense deal of feeling”. Still, Arthur Clough appears hardly to have been the right man in the right place as Principal of University Hall. Mr. Hutton writes: “Bagehot did what he could to mediate between that enigma to Presbyterian parents, a College head who held himself serenely neutral on all moral and educational subjects interesting to parents and pupils except the observance of disciplinary rules, and the managing body who bewildered him and were by him bewildered. I don’t think either Bagehot or Clough’s other friends were very successful in their mediation, but Bagehot at least gained in Clough a cordial friend, and a theme of profound intellectual and moral interest to himself, which lasted him his life, and never failed to draw him into animated discussion long after Clough’s own premature death; and I think I can trace the effect which some of Clough’s writings had on Bagehot’s mind to the very end of his career.”

What fascinated Bagehot first in Arthur Clough, was his singularly fine and fastidious taste in all moral and intellectual questions, combined with an “immense amount of feeling,” and a pure and unselfish nature. Clough scrupulously refused to admit that anything could be admitted as certain so long as his mind was conscious of any flaw in the entire proving of it. As he writes: “Action will furnish belief; but will that belief be the true one? This is the point you know.” It was a mind for ever weighing the pros and cons of every opinion, idea and belief, allied to singularly positive and intuitive instincts, while the poet’s power in him could cast a charm over all his wavering uncertainties. Such a nature was an ever-fertile field of speculative interest to Bagehot. His poetry had a fascination for him; but while fully alive to, and sympathising with, Clough’s perception of the mazes which entangle a mind in search for certainty—a mind at the same time sensible of the many-sided aspects truths can take—Walter Bagehot could emerge from the tangle into clear daylight, whereas Arthur Clough apparently remained in the dim twilight. Both started from the same disputable premises, but while Arthur Clough’s judgment at the end remained suspended, Walter Bagehot brought the issue to a definite conclusion. An undetermined result sufficed for the poet, but did not suffice for the philosopher. Bagehot’s mind worked with a force and an impetus which carried it through most problems. He had, to use his own words, “the latent impulse and ‘secret vigour,’ the invisible spirit which can only be demonstrated by trial and victory”. We find these words in the article Bagehot wrote after Mr. Clough’s death in the National Review, 1861, entitled “Mr. Clough’s Poems”. In describing Clough’s class of mind he further writes: “There are, however, some minds (and of these Mr. Clough’s was one) which will not accept what appears to be an intellectual destiny. They struggle against the limitations of mortality and will not condescend to use the natural and needful aids of human thought. They will not make their image. They struggle after an ‘actual abstract’. . . . You do not know how to describe these ‘universal negatives’ as they seem to be. They will not fall into place in the ordinary intellectual world anyhow. If you offer them any known religion they ‘won’t have that’; if you offer them no religion they will not have that either; if you ask them to accept a new and as yet unrecognised religion they altogether refuse to do so. They seem not only to believe in an ‘unknown God,’ but in a God whom no man can ever know. . . . Mr. Clough’s fate in life had been to exaggerate this naturally peculiar temper. He was a pupil of Arnold’s; one of his best, most susceptible and favourite pupils,” and Bagehot proceeds to prove that Dr. Arnold’s teaching was bad for him. “He required quite another sort of teaching; to be told to take things easily; not to try to be wise over much; to be ‘something besides critical’; to go on living quietly and obviously, and see what truth would come to him. Mr. Clough had to his latest years what may be noticed in others of Arnold’s disciples, a fatigued way of looking at great subjects. It seemed as if he had been put into them before his time, had seen through them, had been bored by them, and had come to want something else.” Whatever Arthur Clough was or was not, however, he fascinated Walter Bagehot, and the two years in London when Mr. Clough was Principal of the University Hall, were made more bearable to Bagehot through constant companionship with him. Their friendship continued to the end of Mr. Clough’s life. He had never cared for his work at University Hall, and resigned his post as Head in 1852, and offered himself as a candidate for the Principalship of a College at Sydney, but did not obtain it. Having formed a close friendship with Emerson during his visits to Europe, he left England for Boston in October, 1852. During his term of office at University Hall, “he gradually,” writes his sister, Miss Clough, “formed some new and valuable friendships, among these his acquaintance with Mr. Carlyle was one of the most important”. Another, certainly, was that with Walter Bagehot.

After reading Law for six months with Mr. Hall, Bagehot changed his work and studied under Mr. Quain, afterwards Mr. Justice Quain, with whom in after years he continued very friendly relations. All kinds of study had a certain attraction for Walter Bagehot. He liked—to use his own words—“to play with his mind,” and nearly every study, however difficult, took the form of an interesting game to him. At no time in his life does he seem to have come to a dead wall, or to an obstacle over which he could not vault, or round which he could not steer. It was never irksome to him to exercise the ingenuity and fertility of his brain. But, though liking both Sir Charles Hall and Justice Quain personally, the study of law per se had no attraction for him. In a sense it seemed to him a waste of time—it occupied without satisfying. It necessitated incessant attention and yet he did not feel it as sustaining or stimulating food. Though the days seemed crammed with work, there was a vacancy which left him a prey to depression. While the tide of life flowed apparently vigorously he found himself at times turning somewhere out of its rushing current, into a sort of back water in whose dreamy calm things were reflected, things belonging to the “truths whose course is shadowy,” which “involve an infinite element,” and “cannot be stated precisely”. While studying law he felt these calmer, higher—half thoughts—half instincts, were being starved. The fine fabric of his brain was being usurped without being fully utilised.

Mr. Roscoe, the friend Bagehot saw most constantly at this time, likewise felt no enthusiasm for law as a profession, and early abandoned it. He gave the reasons why he did so in a letter to Mr. Hutton,1 reasons which he doubtlessly fully discussed with Bagehot in conversation.

In March, 1851, Bagehot writes from Herd’s Hill:—

“My dear Roscoe,

“Would you be so kind as to look for me at ‘Rex V., The Churchwardens of Crossley,’ 5 Adolphus and Ellis, page 10, and send me an account thereof. The point for which I want it, is of this sort. Under the 59 George the 3rd, chapter 134, churchwardens have a power to mortgage church-rates to obtain any sum they deem necessary for the repairs of the church, Vestry, Bishop and Incumbent thereto assenting. Now, some of my family being bankers, have been weak-minded enough to lend £1,000 or so, on such a security without requiring anybody to be personally liable. Everybody in the parish has quarrelled with everybody, and the security is not forth-coming. By the deed of mortgage the money was to be paid by six instalments beginning in ’46. In fact they only paid the first instalment and the first year’s interest and then quarrelled and the vestry or majority thereof refused to make any rate and the churchwardens and minority made one which they can’t get paid and the validity of which is being contested up at Wells in the Spiritual court. This was in ’48 and since then they have made no rates whatever, and the mortgagees have had nothing. They now imagine that it would have a good moral effect, if they went for a mandamus to the churchwardens to make the rate. Montague Smith whose opinion they took rather throws cold water on them and seems to say that the aforesaid case decides that each instalment should be paid annually when due and that the mortgagee loses his money, if he does come that very year for a mandamus to get a rate made, and if possible collected. I confess this strikes me as monstrous. I can understand that Lord Denman may have held, say as against a parishioner, that the proper mode of managing the parochial business was to make and levy annual rates to discharge annual liabilities, but I can’t fancy that a mortgagee is to lose his money unless he applies to Q.B. the very moment it becomes due. John Lord Campbell will look at that, I think. In this very case the mortgagee simply waited because the validity of the rate actually made being contested, they thought it useless to compel others to be made in the same form. They may be wrong in this very likely but I can’t think they deserve on that account to be mulcted of their money. No rates could now be made except by mandamus as the parish churchwarden sticks out and refuses, but I think the farmers would pay a rate that the Q.B. directed to be made. I should therefore be immensely obliged if you would tell me about this ‘anomalous’ case which seems to me very hard, as I rather back up my family to go for a mandamus on the general principle of going ahead when you have the moral merits with you and also on Notteram’s rule ‘Bagehot always recommends proceedings’. It is a happy case altogether, they got one suit on for judgment in the Bishop’s court when the Defendant maliciously died and of course the suit abates and it will take several years apparently to work another up to the same critical point. Brilliant system altogether church-rate law. I recommend Main’s being sent in for a mandamus and hope to carry it. I believe (this case excepted) they would win and there does not seem to be anything even in the objections taken to the rate which has been made, but it isn’t easy to get the money for all that—so out of the suavity of your disposition tell us about Lord Denman’s decision. He muddled a good deal in his time. I shall be up this day week, and have settled to go into equity. I couldn’t live cheerfully down here, and though I regret immensely that I ever opened a law book, I must stick to London now come what may, and I am sure of enough to live on, in any case.

“Ever yours,

“W. Bagehot.

“I am responsible for some delay in sending you the account of Violenzia, for which I apologise. My old landlady had a really profound idea that it was too big for foreign postage.”

Violenzia was a tragedy Mr. Roscoe had written. He was abroad at this time and Bagehot and Hutton undertook to correct proofs and see the publisher for him.

From Great Coram Street, Bagehot writes:—

“My dear Roscoe,

“I send you the final proofs of Violenzia. I received yesterday from R. H. H. (Mr. Hutton) the Preface which I have sent to Parker. I read it with much interest and like the Sonnet and what you say of the play, exceedingly. I suppose it is true and it is certainly excellently said; but I altogether object to the introduction of Kossuth and the Hungarian refugees. I can’t see that they have anything to do with the matter in hand. If it appeared on affidavit that Ethel was a Magyar, and the king an Austrian, no doubt there would be a connection, and I would strongly advise the introduction of this link. And seriously I think a dedication—still more a dedication requiring an argumentative defence—should have some reference to the matter in hand, and this plainly has not, and will strike readers, at least it did me, with alarm and consternation. Moreover you can’t afford space enough to give the real reasons for your opinion, and I doubt whether it is very accordant with that superexcellent taste for which you, —, —, to give a more obiter dictum on a point whereon the public mind is so divided. This should only be done when the writer has shown, by his familiarity with kindred topics or otherwise that he knows more of the matter than his readers. Now it does not appear from this play that you know anything about Hungary, it does appear that you know a good deal about women, but perhaps there is no necessary connection in these cognitions. I don’t think opinions of this sort much affect the public, there is a national feeling against convictions which a man is very eager to express, they are to be suspected.

“Yours ever speaking plainly,

“W. Bagehot.”

[1 ] “I have been thinking of my relinquishment of the Bar, and with more satisfaction, and more real conviction of the wisdom of the step, than I ever had before. I sincerely desire to lead a religious life, I would say I earnestly desire, but so far I have not advanced. But I have a profound conviction that to be in all things a child of God is the highest and ultimate object of life. All modes of life are to be looked at simply with reference to this object. I am far from thinking that a man ought to neglect the duties and opportunities of life, or even the higher pleasures which grace it; but a man must seek such a mode of life as in his own individual case will most surely and safely make these things the stepping-stones to the highest end. My objections to the Bar are these: my health is so far from strong, that there is every probability that it would give way entirely under the unremitting exertions that a life at the Bar, if successful, would require. My memory is so feeble, and my power of accumulating knowledge so limited, and requires such express and repeated exertions to yield any fruit, that a lawyer’s life would require from me a still more complete devotion and absorption than it does from the ordinary mass of successful practitioners. I see no adequate object to be gained by so complete a devotion. I once thought I might exercise a personal influence on those immediately around me, that I might find in being a ‘religious lawyer’ the highest and noblest usefulness. It was an ambition fondly cherished. Must I say now it was above my strength, above my nature? Must this be one of those great visions of youth which fade in the growing day of life? It might have been made a reality, or I might at least have died while striving to give it reality. It is no longer possible. I want energy and spring to cope with the labours, difficulties, and trials of a lawyer’s life. I dare not put myself under temptations in which I feel too conscious I should fail. I could not master the business sufficiently not to be exposed to the temptation to petty untruthfulness in pretending to know more than I did; sometimes I might sacrifice from incapacity interests entrusted to me. My vanity I dare not trust, nor my indolence; and even granting the latter subdued, there is real want of strength and stamina. Were it otherwise, had I been faithful to my old aspirations, I see far greater difficulties in it than I once did. . . . In fine, I dare not face the temptations. I should be obliged, if I wished for any success, to devote my mind so completely, that it would be narrowed to one thing; and I fear the religious meditation which I so absolutely need, if I am to emerge into light, would never be attained.”