THE RT HON. JOHN WILSON CROKER. (From a portrait after Sir T. Lawrence, P.R.A., in the possession of Mr Murray) [To face p. 749. speech on behalf of Grattan's motion. He had long foreseen the necessity of moderate parliamentary reform, and 'was of opinion (says his biographer) that timely concessions would prevent unreasonable demands, and . . . were required alike by considerations of justice and the interests of the country.' In 1819 he drew up and presented to Lord Liverpool a memorandum enumerating thirty-three large towns which at that time sent no member to the House of Commons, and proposing that, through the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs' and other means, these towns should receive one member each, if not more. In 1830 he urged similar recommendations upon Sir Robert Peel; but he strenuously opposed the sweeping changes subsequently embodied in the Reform Act of 1832.* He supported Peel in his earlier measures of economic reform, but broke with him over the repeal of the Corn Laws. Finally, as an example of his independence of mind, it should be remembered that his connexion with this Review was eventually broken off in January 1854 because he insisted on blaming the Government for allying itself with Napoleon III in the Crimean War. Most men have now come to agree with Croker on this point. As with his political views, so also in respect of his literary attainments and his personal character, Croker has been unjustly maligned. His knowledge of literature was wide; but his literary judgment was narrow and ultra-conservative. He had a rough tongue; the controversial methods of his day were the reverse of gentle; and he expressed himself, to say the least of it, bluntly. He was, it must be allowed, a strong, even a bitter partisan; and as he never concealed his views, he made enemies, especially among the powerful. He had in particular the misfortune, or the imprudence, to fall foul of Macaulay and Benjamin Disraeli. The former has recorded in his diary † his opinion that Croker was bad, a very bad man; a scandal to politics and to 6 a It is stated in the 'Croker Papers' (ii, 198) that Croker first introduced the appellation 'Conservative' for the Tory party, in an article published in the 'Quarterly Review' in 1831. It occurs near the close of an article on The State of the British Empire,' in No. 87 (January 1831). But that article is by John Miller, not by Croker. † 'Life and Letters,' cap. xii, s.d. April 13, 1849. letters'; and Disraeli is supposed to have pilloried him as 'Rigby.' No man is exempt from prejudice and personal feeling; and those who readily assume the justice of these charges should remember that few great men have been less exempt than these two accusers. Why Mr Disraeli hated Croker so bitterly it would scarcely be worth while (says Mr Jennings) now to discuss; enough that there were reasons for it, although they were not good reasons; and we need not the evidence of Mr Croker's case to attest that Mr Disraeli paid off his personal grudges with no niggard hand.' Disraeli fancied that Croker had crossed some of his literary projects, and had attacked him in the 'Quarterly Review.' 'In reality Mr Croker had at that time never written a single line against or about him.' We may set against the son's caricature what his father wrote about the same man. To my ever kind and valued friend, the Right Hon. J. W. Croker' (writes Isaac D'Israeli in his Commen. taries on Charles I'), 'whose luminous and acute intelligence is as remarkable in his love of literature and art as it has been in the course of a long, honourable, and distinguished public life, I stand deeply indebted.' It has been represented that Croker, in retaliation for 'Rigby,' made 'a fierce, desperate, and malignant attack' on Disraeli in an article in the Quarterly,' published in December 1852. Those who repeat this assertion can hardly have read the article in question. Croker writes thus of his opponent: 'No one, of whatever political creed, can now affect to doubt or disparage the many high parliamentary qualities of Mr Disraeli. His resolute spirit has been conspicuously displayed under very extraordinary difficulties. He has combined an indomitable perseverance with great fertility of resource. In opposition he has been, and, if he does himself justice, he must again be, most formidably influential. He may yet acquire whatever he needs for the discharge of the high functions of a Minister. He has shown himself at once a brilliant orator, and, what is still rarer, a powerful debater; but he has not as yet, we think, earned the reputation of a statesman.' With Macaulay the cause of offence is clearer. In the first place, Croker had repeatedly countered him on the This floor of the House; and, on one occasion in particular, during the debates of 1832, with marked success. was more than Macaulay could stand. Knowing that Croker was about to publish his edition of Boswell's 'Johnson,' Macaulay wrote in his diary ('Life,' cap. iv): 'That impudent, leering Croker congratulated the House on the proof I had given of my readiness. See whether I do not dust that varlet's jacket for him in the next number of the "Blue and Yellow." I detest him more than cold boiled veal.' He was as good as his word. Two months later the review appeared; and Croker's jacket was thoroughly dusted. In a letter to his sister Hannah, dated Sept. 9, 1831, Macaulay writes: 'I have, though I say it who should not say it, beaten Croker black and blue.' He should have been ashamed to say it. What are we to think of a review written in this spirit? Into the merits of Croker's work we need not enter; it is sufficient to say that, with all its faults, the learning and industry which it displayed merited very different treatment.* 'Everybody is aware' (said the Athenæum') that the article was originally levelled less against Mr Croker the editor than Mr Croker the politician'; and Gladstone, many years later, when he had long been on Macaulay's side in politics, in the last article that he contributed to the Quarterly,'t remarks on the whole episode: 'There is a parliamentary tradition, sufficiently well established, that Croker assailed, and assailed on the instant, some of Macaulay's celebrated speeches on Reform, and with no inconsiderable effect. But he never mentions Croker except with an aversion which may be partially understood, and also with a contempt which it is not easy to account for. . . . It is yet more to be lamented that, in this instance, he carried the passions of politics into the Elysian fields of literature; and that the scales in which he tried the merits of Croker's edition of 'Boswell' seem to have been weighted, on the descending side, with his recollections of parliamentary collision.' ... Mr Birkbeck Hill, Boswell's latest editor, while severe on Croker's defects and blunders, says, 'I should be wanting in justice were I not to acknowledge that I owe much to the labours of Mr Croker. . . . He has added considerably to our knowledge of Johnson... he gathered much that, but for his care, would have been lost for ever. He was diligent and successful in his search for Johnson's letters,' On the 'Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay,' No. 283, (July 1876). In the second place, some eighteen years after Macaulay had reviewed Croker's Boswell,' Croker had an opportunity of retaliating with a review of Macaulay's History.' There was now another jacket to be dusted; and the dusting was done, it must be allowed, with equal gusto and with hardly less bias. Croker was human, very human; and to maintain a perfectly impartial attitude towards a man who had injured him would have required more forbearance than he possessed. Into the value of his criticisms this is not the place to enter; he certainly overstated his case, as Macaulay had done; but it does not follow that the article was what Macaulay's biographer calls it, 'a farrago of angry trash.' Croker found many faults in the History'; but he is not the only man, nor the only man of authority, who has done so. Those who have read Paget's 'New Examen '* are acquainted with some of the charges which have been proved. But let us call a better-known witness. Discussing Macaulay's account of the English Church under Charles II, Gladstone, in the above-mentioned article, says: With respect to the children of the clergy, as a general rule, Macaulay's statement. . . is no more and no less than a pure fable.' And again : 'Lord Macaulay's charges of a menial condition and its accompaniments, against the clergy of the Restoration period, generally and miserably break down. In no instance are they tolerably supported by positive evidence; in many they are absolutely confuted and annihilated. Not indeed that he was absolutely and wholly wrong in any point, but that he was wrong in every point by omission and exaggeration.' the Lockhart, writing to Croker, before the latter wrote his review, said:† 'I doubt if Macaulay's book will go down as a standard addition to our historical library, though it must always keep a high place among specimens of English rhetoric.' Sir James Stephen told Bishop Phillpotts that he had abandoned all idea of reviewing the book [in the Edinburgh'], because it was, in truth, not what it pretended to be, a history, but an historical novel.' Croker, in his article, summed up by saying that the book must be regarded chiefly as 'an Reprinted in Paradoxes and Puzzles' (Blackwood, 1874), |