|
To Lord Rosebery's friends,
and to all lovers of good prose, it has long been a matter for regret that
it was difficult to obtain anything like a complete set of his literary and
historical addresses and occasional writings, or his consent to their
republication. Most were out of print; some had been issued only in small
private editions; some had never been rescued from the files of the daily
press.
Their author has been so good as to yield to my importunity, and permit me
to make a collection of these opuscula, he himself standing aside in
benevolent neutrality. The responsibility for the selection and for the
original importunity is therefore mine.
No speeches dealing with controversial politics have been included. A few
notes have been added, and now and then a sentence has been omitted which
had a purely local and topical application. Otherwise the chapters are
reprinted as they were first spoken or written.
JOHN BUCHAN
“One of the rarest of all
combinations,” says Lord Rosebery in an address now incorporated in these
volumes, “is that of a bookish statesman who is at the same time a man of
practical business and affairs.” His lordship is himself a remarkable
instance of this rare combination. As a Minister, he was distinguished for
his grasp of public affairs, but he was none the less a man of literary
leanings, with a wide knowledge of books and their authors and a happy
faculty of ready reference and apt illustration. An orator in the political
arena, he was equally effective in other branches of public speaking, and in
his day he was unmatched for the felicity and charm of his platform
addresses on themes outside the range of politics. Many of those addresses
and of Lord Rosebery’s occasional writings were informative in a high
degree, all of them were interesting; and it is well to have them collected
in these two volumes. The gathering of them together is the work of Mr. John
Buchan, Lord Rosebery having at last consented, on the repeated importunity
of Mr. Buchan, to the republication of his miscellanies, “he himself
standing aside in benevolent neutrality”; and the collection will be widely
welcomed by Lord Rosebery’s admirers and by many others as a fine memorial
of a cultured statesman, a literary critic of distinction, and, last but not
least, a patriotic and enthusiastic Scot.
The first volume is devoted to “Appreciations”. Lord Rosebery in his hey-day
was in great demand as an “occasional orator”—one who could be relied upon
to deliver an appropriate address on the unveiling of a statue or other
memorial to one of our great departed, or on a centenary or other
anniversary; and here we have tributes to men so different in character and
in their careers as Cromwell, Burke, Dr. Johnson, Bums, Dr. Chalmers,
Thackeray, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Salisbury. With them may be associated
Nelson, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Cecil Rhodes, tributes to whom figure in
the second volume under the general classification of “Vignettes”.
Appreciations of men so diversified as those just named, even by one so
skilled in the art as Lord Rosebery, are necessarily unequal. Perhaps the
least satisfying is that on Cromwell, which is too much occupied with the
discussion of whether the Protector was or was not a hypocrite. The fullest
and most satisfactory appreciation, to our mind, is that of Johnson, in the
course of which we have this interesting personal revelation: “I, speaking
from experience, can say that in sickness, when all other books have failed,
when Dickens, Thackeray, Walter Scott, and other magicians have been useless
to distract, Boswell’s book is the only one which could engage and detain
the languid attention of an invalid . Frank criticism of some of the
illustrissimi otherwise extolled is not wanting. For instance, Lord
Roseberry confesses that Stevenson’s “The Master of Ballantrae,” powerful as
it is, has never been a favourite of his, because the story is so utterly
repulsive — “the conflict of a scoundrel against a maniac narrated by a
coward”; and he dwells on certain defects and blemishes in Thackeray’s
“Vanity Fair” and “Esmond,” in condemnation of which, however, nearly all
critics now concur. His lordship, by the way, enunciates a canon of
criticism, not quite sound perhaps, but which will comfort many people
disturbed by the higher “ethics of criticism” propounded by some modern
writers — “One likes what one likes, and one dislikes what one dislikes”.
Grouped in the Appreciations we have also memoirs of Sir Robert Peel and
Lord Randolph Churchill, which have been already published in book form.
Here, perhaps, Lord Rosebery is at his best, due probably to the subjects
belonging to the political sphere, in which Lord Rosebery occupied such a
distinctive place, and also, in the case of Lord Randolph Churchill, to a
personal knowledge founded on intimate friendship. The estimates of the two
statesmen are just and discriminating, and they are combined with much
sagacious reflection on sundry constitutional questions, such as the working
of the Cabinet and the position and functions of the Prime Minister. Hardly
anything has been better said of Lord Randolph’s incessant attacks on Mr.
Gladstone than Lord Rosebery’s comparison of them to “an audacious
light-weight sparring up to a recognised champion”.
Lord Rosebery has had an experience which is surely unique. He has been Lord
Rector of all the four Scottish Universities and is now Chancellor of the
University of Glasgow; he has, as he himself phrases it, “lived many
rectorial lives”. His four Rectorial addresses and his address as Chancellor
of Glasgow University occupy a very large part of the second volume of the
“Miscellanies”. Although Lord Rosebery declares that “The most dismal moment
that can occur in a man’s life is the moment when he is about to deliver a
Rectorial address,” his own efforts go far to negative the presumptive
corollary that they must form dismal reading. These addresses really
constitute, in some respects, the most important and the most inspiring
sections of Lord Rosebery’s literary output, dealing, as they do for the
greater part, with various features of Scottish history and character, and
containing fervid appeals to the youth of the country. The undergraduates of
Aberdeen were the first to honour Lord Rosebery, electing him Lord Rector in
1878, when he was only thirty-one years of age. His address, delivered in
1880, dwelt on the importance of the University teaching of history,
especially of Scottish history, and deplored the fact that in all our
Scottish Universities there was then no provision for the teaching of
Scottish history—a defect, however, which has been largely remedied since.
The Edinburgh address (1882) dealt with “The Patriotism of a Scot,” and was
an argument for the preservation of the distinctive national character; the
truest patriotism of every Scot, he maintained, was to be capable and
reliable. Much the same idea—the service rendered to one’s country in
faithfully following one’s profession—underlay the Glasgow address (1900),
although its subject, “Questions of Empire,” was of much wider range. The
St. Andrews address (1911) was delivered on the occasion of the five
hundredth anniversary of the foundation of that University, and was, almost
of necessity, influenced and coloured by the anniversary note. It bears the
allusive title of “The Struldbrug” (borrowed from “Gulliver’s Travels”) and
depicts in a very graphic manner the course of Scottish history which the
first Lord Rector in 1411 would have witnessed had he been a Struldbrug and
had lived down through the centuries. Seldom, indeed, have the picturesque
episodes in Scottish history and the transformations that have taken place
in the condition of the people been so brilliantly summarised as in many
passages in this admirable address, an address which will bear more than one
reading. In his address as Chancellor of Glasgow University (1908), Lord
Rosebery reverted to the theme of “The Formation of Scottish Character,”
pleading strenuously for the cultivation of the Scottish characteristic of
self-reliance, which he contended was the heart of Scottish independence and
Scottish success. These various addresses are supplemented, in a sense, by
one on “The Union of England and Scotland” delivered to the Edinburgh
Philosophical Institute, and another on “The Service of the State ”
delivered to the Associated Societies of Edinburgh University. All these
addresses contain many eloquent passages, but, for a specimen, we content
ourselves with a few sentences from the Aberdeen address, which are as
pertinent to-day as when delivered forty years ago:—
Let me point out one more
inducement to the study I advocate. You are in the city perhaps most
calculated to give an interest to the study of those times, for surely no
place ever suffered so much for its prominence. From the time that the
Covenanting Commissioners refused to drink the cup of Bon Accord, and were
followed by Montrose with an army which slaughtered the dogs which had been
made the innocent instruments of satire, this unhappy city was compelled to
undergo as many outward changes of compliance as the Vicar of Bray or
Bobbing John of Mar. In those days the greatest seat of learning in
Scotland, it was the fate of Aberdeen, as of Leipsic, to learn that a famous
and hospitable University is no protection against siege or outrage. Your
well-sacked city, surviving the successive onslaughts of Malignants and
Covenanters and impartial Highlanders, remains a noble monument of the
stirring and perilous past of our country.
Around you learning spreads her various wares; you have but to pick and
choose. You are the generation that holds for the present the succession to
the long roll of famous men who have adorned this University. They have
handed to you the light; it is for you to transmit it. The vestal lamp of
knowledge may flicker, but it never dies; even in the darkest hours of
dormant civilisation, it found loving hands to cherish and to tend it. To
you that lamp has been given by those who have watched over it in these
ancient colleges. I hope and believe it will not wax duller in your hands,
but rather that you will show forth its radiance in whatever part of the
world you may be called upon to wield that influence which every educated
man must exercise.
Volume 1 |
Volume 2 |
