judgment the better part of justice" in a Lord Chancellor under James I.), "and too rigid an adherence to rules laid down for the security of justice might sometimes, perhaps, have endangered justice itself. If he contrived in other cases that the interference should issue in nothing worse than arbitration" (i.e., a sham arbitration ending and meant to end in nothing, and enforced upon a reluctant plaintiff, compelled to give up a just decree previously pronounced in his favour)" by indifferent parties, I should not myself suppose that there was much harm done."

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III.

To pass from Mr. Spedding's distortions of Bacon to Mr. Spedding's distortions of what he is pleased to call "the latest theory about Bacon," may not be interesting to many of my readers. But as I have accused Mr. Spedding of misrepresenting my views, I am bound to spare a few lines for the disagreeable purpose of specifying some grounds for my accusation; and I can promise any one who will take the trouble to glance through this paragraph that it shall contain such a collection of misrepresentations as is rarely found in the literary controversy of our days. Here is the first. Mr. Spedding wishes to make out that I excuse and extenuate Bacon's conduct on the plea that his mind is so "gigantic." "If," Mr. Spedding, says we ask why such things should be excusable in him more than in another, we are told that his soul is so gigantic;'" and with a great parade of scrupulous accuracy, having dislocated this single epithet "gigantic" from its context, he quotes for it "p. xlv." Being naturally surprised at finding myself saying precisely the opposite of what I meant to say, I turn to p. xlv., and find the following sentence:-"It was a sin not to be justified, nor excused, nor extenuated, but to be stored up by posterity as an eternal admonition, how easy it is for a gigantic soul to make shipwreck," &c. Let me give one more instance in which Mr. Spedding has attributed to me a meaning precisely the opposite of that which I intended. Quoting in inverted commas from two passages in my introduction (pp. lvi. and xcvi.), Mr. Spedding declares that my object is to prove that Bacon does not "shake the faith of human kind in human nature.” Knowing that my object is nothing of the kind, but rather to show what Bacon was, and how the same qualities may be traced in Bacon's philosophical and moral errors, I turn to the pages referred to, and find there that Bacon (p. xcvi.) "lowered morality and shook the faith of human kind in human nature by making himself an ever memorable warning of the compatibility of greatness and weakness," and (p. lvi.) that he has "tarnished the reputation of the Bench and shaken men's confidence in humanity." Now, if Mr. Spedding would but have consistently followed out this plan of making me say the exact opposite of what I actually say, his readers, once on their guard, would have had some chance of getting

at my "theory about Bacon," by putting in a "not" wherever Mr. Spedding leaves it out, and leaving it out wherever he puts it in; but unfortunately he often represents me not as conveying a meaning opposite to my real meaning, but as conveying no meaning at all. Taking once more a single epithet, he makes me, for example, assert that Bacon is "unworldly." So I do, but with very considerable modifications and qualifications, as the following sentence will show :-" A mind unique, extraordinary, worldly it is true, but not after the common fashion of worldliness, say rather unworldly,' and I add, too, "gradually becoming enslaved by the world." I must not complain that Mr. Spedding will not see the irony implied in the phrase "the vulgar ties that connect individuals,” or in the epithet "petty," applied to the practice of vivisection. That he should appreciate my irony is more, I confess, than I have a right to expect from Mr. Spedding. But I cannot forgive the following suppression:-Attacking my view, that Bacon himself regarded his desertion of science as his principal fault—a view absolutely incontrovertible by any one who believes that Bacon was not a profound hypocrite-Mr. Spedding repeats a prayer of Bacon which I had quoted, but omits all the words in it bearing on the point to be proved: "Besides my innumerable sins, I confess before Thee that I am debtor to Thee for the gracious talent of thy gifts and graces,' and here Mr. Spedding pulls up with a convenient "&c.," not scrupling for controversial purposes to degrade the most solemn and earnest utterance that ever passed from Bacon's lips into a mere platitude. But Bacon went on to say, and I went on to quote-" which I have neither put into a napkin, nor put it, as I ought, to exchangers where it might have had best profit, but misspent it in things for which I was least fit, so as I may truly say my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage." And Mr. Spedding altogether ignores the other passage confessing "many great errors which I do willingly acknowledge, and amongst the rest this great one that led the rest, that knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than to play a part, I have led my life in civil causes." Not to weary the reader with any more instances of misrepresentation, of which I had collected a list long enough to tire any one's patience, I will conclude with one so singular that it must not be omitted. It turns on a simple English idiom-on the use of the word "to." I had said that Bacon became Chancellor with no other result than that of subserving the policy of others. Mr. Spedding is going to represent me as accusing Bacon of accepting the chancellorship with the desire of subserving the policy of others. Accordingly, after disembowelling one of my sentences as follows, "He takes his seat on the woolsack, but it is

to work, or be worked, like a tool in carrying out not his own, but another's policy," he proceeds to remark, "Now that he entered

upon his office without the desire to carry out his own policy is not credible." Let me submit the sentence as it stands in my book, and I venture to assert that not one reader of it will hesitate to say that Mr. Spedding has been grossly and unfairly careless in his misinterpretation of it. It runs thus:

"By making great people think how they should be reverenced by a Lord Chancellor if I were,' Bacon at last takes his seat on the woolsack; but it is to reverence' indeed; to cringe, to work or be worked like a tool, in carrying out not his own but another's policy; to receive the orders of Villiers, and to fawn and grovel when the Favourite is offended; to reverse illegally a just decision upon the Favourite's intercession; and finally to be degraded from his high post, without having introduced a single measure for the permanent benefit of the nation; but with the result of having tarnished the reputation of the Bench and shaken men's confidence in humanity."

Can the force of Baconian hallucination go further than this, when a writer, otherwise rational, and deserving the respect of all for patient industry and praiseworthy attempts at scrupulous accuracy, can so far misunderstand the above sentence as to suppose that it describes Bacon as desiring "to cringe," "to grovel," "to reverse a just decision," and "to be degraded from his high post?" To every one else except Mr. Spedding my meaning, I presume, is not obscure; but knowing as I do that he could not consciously misrepresent me, I am quite sure that it was, and probably still is, obscure to him, and therefore for his sake I will explain my meaning by an illustration. If, then, some future biographer of Mr. Spedding were hereafter to write of him that "after he had acquired a well-merited reputation by the production of an edition likely to remain for many years the standard edition of Bacon's Works and Letters, a very monument of patient and conscientious industry, Mr. Spedding in an evil hour turned to Baconian polemics; but unfortunately it was to become polemical in the very worst sense of the word, to exhibit hitherto unrevealed capacities for misunderstanding in a manner rarely paralleled among literary controversialists; and to expose to the world in all its weakness the hallucination under which he regarded everything directly or indirectly affecting the character of his hero"-if, I say, a sentence of this kind were ever written about Mr. Spedding, I am quite sure even he would understand that no one for a moment intended to insinuate that he desired to exhibit these mischievous capacities and to expose these strange weaknesses; but merely that this was the only result of his efforts in a controversial direction. This is my last word on Mr. Spedding's misrepresentations of my "theory," which, having no space to vindicate it here, I must leave to stand or fall on its own merits, merely claiming, as a right, that no one shall henceforth, after this exposure of Mr.

Spedding's criticism, venture to suppose that he knows anything about what I have written from what he may have read in Mr. Spedding's articles. But one word on the unusual tone pervading Mr. Spedding's criticism. In his determination to pick holes where there are no holes, Mr. Spedding occasionally lays himself discreditably open to criticism. To take no more than one instance, Mr. Spedding cannot refrain from a sneer because "in Dr. Abbott's list of the Christian virtues, 'resentment' holds a conspicuous place." Is it possible that a man of Mr. Spedding's education and acquirements can be ignorant that the author of the "Analogy of Religion" long ago set his stamp upon this virtue in his well-known discoursé on "Resentment? I had always supposed that Mr. Spedding's reading extended far beyond the narrow range indicated by academical distinctions and prescribed in old times by that University to which he and I alike belong; but if, as a Cambridge man of long standing, he may claim immunity from the exacting criticism which might demand that a man of culture should know something of the works of Bishop Butler, yet Mr. Spedding is also an honorary Fellow of that great College of which Bacon himself was once a member; and in virtue of that distinction he is bound not to be ignorant of the dictum of Dr. Whewell, that "resentment" is "a moral sentiment, given for the repression of injustice." So far am I, therefore, from being ashamed of following Bishop Butler and Dr. Whewell in giving "resentment" a conspicuous place in the list of Christian virtues, that I will frankly confess I entertain this very feeling of "resentment" at the extraordinary unfairness with which Mr. Spedding has conducted his part of this controversy. But the resentment is rather against Mr. Spedding's conduct than against Mr. Spedding. Much deference is owed, and much indulgence may fairly be conceded, to the author who has laid us all under obligations to him by the devoted labours of a quarter of a century; nor is it to be wondered at if the concentration of the attention on one subject during so many years should have slightly impaired the critical faculty and have weakened the judgment of the author. As a collector of facts Mr. Spedding is supreme, and his reputation on these grounds must always stand. so high that he ought not to be offended if, when judging of his claim to interpret the facts he has collected, we are obliged to place him below any fairly educated reader of his own great work. EDWIN A. ABBOTT,

SIR,

To the Editor of the CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.

I learned with surprise from the article in your April number by the Rev. John Hunt, entitled "Dr. John Henry Newman: a Psychological Study" (p. 764), that I had pronounced definitively upon the comparative weight of the consequences of two secessions from the Church of England, associated respectively with the names of Newman and of John Wesley.

Mr. Hunt has here and elsewhere described what he criticizes without citation or reference, and I had to search for some passage to which he might refer.

I found that, at p. 10 of a Tract on "Vaticanism," I have said of Dr. Newman's secession, "The ecclesiastical historian will perhaps hereafter judge that this secession was a much greater event even than the partial secession of John Wesley." The one event was twenty-five years old, the other a century. The one lay in the field of thought, the other mainly in that of action. I considered that only hereafter could the comparison be made: therefore I referred to it as a task possible "hereafter," and I conjectured the result under cover of a " perhaps." This conjecture, upon a development indicated as not having yet arrived, Mr. Hunt represents as a positive sentence on materials already in full possession. My present purpose is to correct a misapprehension which has led him into a misstatement.

I remain, Sir,

WELLINGTON COLLEGE,

April 2nd, 1876.

Your faithful servant,

W. E. GLADSTONE.