right, but he never seemed to realise that the growth of the agitation was in a large measure directly due to a persistence continued too long and carried too far in the policy of governing India from Whitehall. It was a policy of his which I once ventured to criticise with some sharpness, and it is worthy of note that in a long letter which he did me the honour to address to me on the subject of my article-it was a review of his volumes of reminiscences-Lord Morley, while approving some things and challenging others, passed over this criticism in silence.

The attraction which, for all these temperamental reasons, men of action exercised over him was noted long ago by one of his most intimate friends, Lord Acton. The public is prone to think of Lord Morley as a stern moralist and a lofty idealist. How much that sternness and that loftiness was tempered by the magnetism of success will appear from the conversations recorded below. He was the last man to apply moral standards as a test of political action, a point on which he and Acton differed profoundly. His three great heroes in 19th-century politics were, with occasional deviation of view and always excepting 'Mr G.,' whom with a kind of filial affection he always placed apart, Disraeli, Bismarck, and Cavour, all of whom might fairly be described as nothing if not realists. It goes without saying that, autocratic in administration though he was, he was often indecisive in issues of policy. The author of the essay on 'Compromise' could not have been otherwise, for in the sphere of action one has always to compromise with one's opinions. He could justify compromise in others-as in the case of Disraeli, Bismarck, and Cavour; his difficulty was to justify it in himself. On such occasions he went through torments of doubt and indecision. On one occasion, after giving his vote in the Cabinet against an earlier opinion of his own, he tossed a screw of paper across the table to Lord Haldane, who, on opening it, discovered these words: 'If I were "Honest John," falsely so called, could I do this?' And nowhere, as will presently appear, did this consciousness of responsibility press upon him so painfully

* In the Nineteenth Century' for January 1918.

as when, in the years of retirement, he tried to disengage himself from all complicity in the foreign policy of the Cabinet in the years immediately preceding the War.

If this dualism of character is the clue to Lord Morley's political eccentricities it is no less the key to his attitude on religion. In an appreciation of his literary works which he was good enough to think adequate and just, I once wrote that one is sometimes tempted to think that if Mill was the saint of rationalism, Lord Morley is its mystic, so true it is that as he has said of Rousseau, when any type is intense it seems to meet and touch its opposite.' Much might be quoted in support of this thesis from his earlier writings in which his attitude often approximates most nearly to that of Renan, the Renan of whom it was well said that he unites the unction of the priest with the dialectic of the grammarian. Repugnant to him though religion was as an affair of dogma, it had a profound attraction for him as an act of faith. I recall a conversation with him at a luncheon party at Flowermead, on Jan. 6, 1921, at which Mr Birrell was present. We had all been discussing a volume I had given him as a Christmas present, Mr Lytton Strachey's 'Eminent Victorians,' and the conversation turned to Manning and Newman.

MR BIRRELL. I don't like Strachey's view of Newman as a kind of ineffectual dove; Newman had talons.

J. H. M. Yes, but what a compelling charm!

LORD MORLEY. Well may you say that. If I had been at Oxford in the days of the Oxford movement, I think I should have joined him.

For religion as une affaire de goût personnel, as Renan called it, he had nothing but respect, provided it sprang from an indwelling grace of conviction. There are many passages in his writings in which he dwells with a kind of fervour on the beauty of holiness; he once said to me, I can't define holiness, but I know it when I meet it-I was always conscious of it when I encountered Mrs Spence Watson.' He used to tell with rare enjoyment a delightful story of Lord Ripon, who was a Roman Catholic, and himself as guests at Hawarden:

Things were going critically in Ireland just then. The

evening of our arrival dinner had no sooner ended than Mr Gladstone, taking a silver candlestick in each hand, invited us to follow him to the library. He preceded us in silence. When we arrived there he invited us to sit down, placing one candlestick at Ripon's elbow and one at mine. He then bowed majestically and retired. No word had passed his lips. I looked at Ripon and Ripon looked at me. We debated the mystery. Ripon thought bad news from Ireland. I knew not what to think. At that moment there fell on our ears the strains of the evening hymn in the drawing-room, and we understood. Mr G. had given us a kindly excommunication.'

Sir Algernon West has somewhere commented on a parting greeting from Lord Morley-'God bless you'and has speculated as to its significance. Such speculation is idle; Lord Morley remained an agnostic to the end of his days. There were elements of contradiction in his views about these things as there are in most men's, and it may be well that in his case, as in that of Renan, the plaintive importunities of childhood's memories were sometimes very strong. I only recall that one memorable day (June 25, 1912) at the Privy Council Office, after a long talk about his forthcoming rectorial address at Manchester about which he was much concerned, for public speaking had become a great effort to him, he held my hand long as we parted, and, as I turned away, whispered, 'Pray for me.' In the last two years we talked much on this subject, and on one occasion, at the end of 1919, he opened his heart more fully than he had ever done. Much of that conversation cannot be recorded here, but the King of Terrors never numbered him among his subjects. I quoted the majestic passage from his favourite Latin poet in which Lucretius speaks of men's unreasonable fear of Death as the cause of all the hasty rivalries, cupidities, and treacheries of man's existence. But how true!' he exclaimed, and went on to speak of the gradual decay of the belief in personal immortality except for what he called 'the puerile curiosity' of the spiritualists. Things were very different,' he added, when I first assumed the editorship of the "Fortnightly" and was thought audacious in opening its pages to W. K. Clifford and Huxley. Fitzjames Stephen used to say I was taking great risks when I spelt "God"

with a small "g," though whether he meant here or hereafter I don't know.' As for progress, what signs of it are there now? And all we Victorians believed in it from the Utilitarians onwards.'

Of his literary work he has been his own critic in his 'Recollections,' and by no means a too indulgent one. When Messrs Macmillan decided at the end of 1920 to publish an edition of his 'Collected Works' there ensued a correspondence between him and me, some extracts from which the reader may be pleased to have as throwing new light on his own estimate of his literary career. had been asked by the Times' to write the leading article for the 'Literary Supplement' on the subject of the new edition, and in sending me some advance proofs Lord Morley wrote inter alia:

6

I

' . . . I only trust you not to let friendship stand in the way of justice. . . . The most serious of the first triplet is "Compromise," which is being modified somewhat in the new version, but without, I hope, losing any of the salt and savour that made an attraction of it when it first came out. Personally the only one on which I look with any sort of favour is "Cromwell"; but an author's preference after all proves nothing, does it? I would give a good deal for a talk with you one of these days. Let not your next visit to this country be so much of a transitory flight. But I admit that our country is now too distracted to be over-cheerful for a man of balanced mind.'

When the review appeared he wrote a letter, dated Feb. 12, 1921, which is so full of self-revelation that I quote it at some length, omitting, as far as possible, the all too kind passages in which he refers to him to whom it was addressed:

"I got the "Times" for Thursday the 10th. I took it eagerly in hand, read your article, re-read and felt more and more well pleased and warmly appreciative. . . . I need not say how many points your penetrating obiter dicta stir in my mind, and in some I feel faintly controversial, but I am well content to leave [them] for a later day, and an answer face to face in our own country. On one or two, my remarks on your remarks would be suggestive supplementals. For instance, you say that the key to the unity of so miscellaneous a collection is a passion for truth-and what estimate could place a man on a higher or more splendid pedestal,

whether he be lawyer, statesman, divine, or other man in a front place? For myself I would fain add passion for Freedom and passion for Justice? Don't think me vain if I covet the whole trinity of them. I cannot trust myself to speak of your signal liberality. . . . The space and the prominence of place given to you by your Editor have been well justified by the serious attention that you have devoted to an author who has always from his earliest days done his best to handle serious things in a serious fashion. . . .

I have said that Lord Morley's characterisations of his colleagues would make a piquant and disturbing volume, but nothing would induce me to write it. There would be too many wigs on the green. He was a man of warm affections but he was intensely and shrewdly critical of all his colleagues except Lord Haldane and Mr Birrell, the two whom, without doubt, he liked best and of whom he certainly, in the days of his retirement, saw most. Lord Haldane, the friend of forty years, was one of the few friends to whom his doors were never closed and of him he always spoke with resolute admiration and deep affection. Lord Morley often described him as the most loyal of friends,' he admired his intellect and respected his character, and above all that quality of his which endeared a man to him more than any other-his kindness of heart. Mr Birrell endeared himself to Lord Morley by his witty and urbane conversation, his large humanity, and his love of letters. Of the others he was much more critical. Something must be allowed for a certain playful mischievousness in this in which there was more than a hint of Voltaire's prescription for a pleasant old age. All these sallies I omit. But it is not illegitimate to recall two remarkable prophecies he made to me the Sunday after the declaration of war, one of them destined to prove remarkably true, the other remarkably false. Of Mr Asquith he then predicted, 'Mark my words, he is not the pilot to weather this storm'-a prophecy remarkable in its foresight in that the subject of it was then at the zenith of

• On a encore, en viellissant, un grand plaisir qui n'est pas à négliger, c'est de décompter les impertinents et les impertinentes qu'on a vus mourir, les ministres qu'on a vu renvoyers et le foule des ridicule, qui ont passé devant les yeux.'-Voltaire to Madame du Deffand (Faguet's Voltaire' p. 229).