Littell's Living Age/Volume 135/Issue 1739/Samuel Warren
SAMUEL WARREN
BORN, 1807 — DIED, JULY, 1877.
On the 29th July died Samuel Warren, the author of "Ten Thousand a-Year" and the "Diary of a Late Physician." Although it is now many years since any contribution from his pen appeared in the columns of this magazine, his fame is so much bound up with Blackwood that we feel sure our readers will sympathize with us in an attempt to give expression to our sorrow and our sense of loss. His place has for years stood vacant in the circle of authors, but his name is as familiar to the present generation of readers as to that which laughed and wept with him in turn, while the passages of the "Diary" and the fortunes of Tittlebat Titmouse were first passing through these pages. His family has sustained a heavy affliction; but it is tempered to them by the sympathy, not merely of those to whom he had personally endeared himself, by his kindness of heart and devoted friendship, but of all who have read his fictions, — for no one ever read Samuel Warren's books without conceiving a liking for the author. To us his loss is especially painful, for he was almost the last of a distinguished circle of coadjutors, whose connection with "Maga" in the earlier half of this century shed a mutual lustre over themselves and on us. The pride which he took in his connection with this magazine, so frequently expressed in his writings, was as gratifying to us as it was honorable to him; and we feel a sad pleasure in now recalling the chief incidents of his literary intercourse with us.
Samuel Warren was born in Denbighshire in 1807, the son of a Wesleyan clergyman, who afterwards took orders in the Church of England. He studied medicine in Edinburgh for some time, but, changing his mind, he went to London and began to read for the bar. It was while still a student in the Inns of Court that he commenced his literary career, and his first introduction to our pages cannot be more fittingly told than in his own words, in the preface to the fifth edition of the "Diary of a Late Physician," published in 1837: —
The first chapter of this "Diary" — the "Early Struggles" — was offered by me successively to the conductors of three leading magazines in London, and rejected, as "unsuitable for their pages," and "not likely to interest the public." In despair, I bethought myself of the "great northern magazine." I remember taking my packet to Mr. Cadell's in the Strand, with a sad suspicion that I should never see or hear anything more of it: but at the close of the month I received a letter from Mr. Blackwood, informing me that he had inserted the chapter, and begging me to make arrangements for immediately proceeding regularly with the series. It expressed his cordial approval of the first chapter, and predicted that I was likely to produce a series of papers well suited for is magazine, and calculated to interest the public. It would be great affectation in me, and ingratitude towards the public, were I to conceal my belief that his expectations have been in some degree verified by the event. Here I wish to pay a brief and sincere tribute to the memory of my late friend, Mr. Blackwood. I shall ever cherish it with respect and affection. I have this morning been referring to nearly fifty letters which he wrote to me during the publication of the first fifteen chapters of the "Diary." The perusal of them has occasioned me lively emotion. All of them evidence the remarkable tact and energy with which he conducted his celebrated magazine. Harassing as were his labors at the close of every month, he nevertheless invariably wrote to me a letter of considerable length, in style terse, vigorous, and accurate, full of interesting comments on literary matters in general, and instructive suggestions concerning my own papers in particular. He was a man of strong intellect, of great practical sagacity, of unrivalled energy and industry, of high and inflexible honor in every transaction, great or small, that I ever heard of his being concerned in. But for him, this work would certainly never have been in existence; and should it be so fortunate as to live, I wish it ever to be accompanied by the tribute I here sincerely and spontaneously pay to the memory of my departed friend, William Blackwood.
So full of deep and varied experience and knowledge of life was the physician's "Diary," that Mr. Blackwood naturally concluded it must be the work of a man of mature years. What was his surprise, then, when a bright-looking young man of two or three and twenty introduced himself as the author. "Bless me," exclaimed the astonished editor, as he glanced at the glossy black curls of his visitor, "I had thought your hair must be as grey as my own!" It was in August 1830 that the "Diary" began, and it was carried through the magazine at intervals during the next seven years, until a work of greater ambition began to occupy his mind. The merits of the physician's "Diary" were speedily acknowledged. The profession was indignant at the breach of etiquette implied in the publication of records of practice, and its journals anxiously sought to discover the offender. Month after month fresh passages were eagerly expected, were critically scanned when published, and not unfrequently made the subject of warm newspaper discussion. It does not appear that any suspicion was excited regarding the reality of the author's assumed profession, until circumstances brought about a revelation of his personality. Although the popularity of the "Diary" was so great as to insure success for any other work from the same pen, Warren's next venture was also at the outset an anonymous one. The first chapter of "Ten Thousand a-Year" appeared in the magazine of October 1839, and at once excited a powerful interest, which was not exhausted until all that there was to tell of the fortunes of the Aubreys and of the career of Titmouse had been revealed. The time was one when no novel not of intrinsic strength and merit could have held its ground. Some of the greatest masters of English fiction were then before the public, and both genius and power were needed, not to beat but to keep neck-and-neck with them in the race. The public were not slow to find many faults with "Ten Thousand a-Year." Some cavilled at the characters, many at the political bias, a good few at the plot, but all were impressed and all were interested. The success which attended the appearance of the story as a separate work was not at all impaired by its previous serial publication, and the hold which it then took upon the public has never up to the present moment relaxed.
The anonymity was now no more; and the hand of the author of "Ten Thousand a-Year" was easily traceable in many papers contributed to these pages down to a period of about twenty years ago. These sketches, now collected in a volume of "Miscellanies," are still read with great interest. As chips from the workshop in which the "Diary" and "Ten Thousand a-Year" were constructed, they naturally possess a strong claim on the critic's attention; and he will not fail to recognize in them the germ of many incidents which Warren has turned to good account in his great fiction. The same power of extracting dramatic effect out of ordinary judicial processes, which holds us spell-bound while the court is deciding the fate of the Yatton property, is displayed to great advantage in the sketch, "Who is the Murderer?" and in others of a similar character, which have proved a mine of wealth to subsequent novelists of the sensational school. Many writers of fiction could be pointed to who are largely indebted to Warren's works for their knowledge of the bar and the courts. A series of papers reviewing Townsend's "Modern State Trials" furnish a very readable account of some of the more remarkable causes célèbres prosecuted by the crown during the present reign. The treason of the Welsh rioters; Oxford's attempt to assassinate the queen; the murder of Mr. Drummond, Sir Robert Peel's private secretary, by M'Naughton; the trial of Humphreys, the claimant of the Stirling peerage, whose case is described at length under the title of "The Romance of Forgery;" the trial of Lord Cardigan by his peers for duelling; and the cases of O'Connell and Smith O'Brien, are all told in a manner that happily blend the acumen of the skilled lawyer with the vivacity and picturesqueness of the novelist. The last of his works that we shall notice, "Now and Then," was reviewed in Blackwood of February 1848, when an attempt was made to do justice to the lofty purpose, the dramatic power, and the exquisite pathos of the story of Adam Ayliffe. It is less ambitious in conception than "Ten Thousand a-Year," and is characterized by far less striving for effect than we meet with in that novel; but to our mind it possesses a sweetness and a softening influence that mere literary art could hardly have given it, and that could have sprung only from a pure mind feeling deeply for human distress. The fame that these works had secured him was sufficient to satisfy his literary ambition; his legal duties naturally claimed his first care; and his contributions to the magazine grew more infrequent, until at last he stood aside, and the pages which his writing had so often adorned knew his pen no more. Such in brief outline is the story of Samuel Warren's literary life. It would be incomplete without some reference to his professional career. After practising for some years under the bar as a special pleader, he was called by the Inner Temple in 1837. Notwithstanding the mark which his novels had made for him, his progress was not rapid. He had to bear the full share of disappointment that falls to the lot of most lawyers, and to practise that patience which he had so forcibly preached in his fictions. Men accounted for this by the time-honored superstition that when a barrister begins to dabble in literature, his chances of professional success are altogether thrown away. Warren consoled himself with the more flattering belief that the attorneys were revenging themselves on him for the severe picture which he had drawn of their practices in his account of the firm of Quirk, Gammon, and Snap. We believe the real reason to be one more honorable to his character. Possessing, as he did, a high sense of the dignity of his profession, he not only did not resort to the common expedients for securing business, but did not even make such advances as are sanctioned by professional usage toward those who had the distribution of work. But if the Quirks and Gammons of the profession made him the object of their spite, he was more than compensated by the esteem in which he was held by the worthier members of the profession. Such men as Follett, Talfourd, and Pollock, Fitzroy Kelly, Grove, and Barnes Peacock, were his personal friends and admirers; and though no doubt they made quiet jokes at the way in which he bore his literary honors, they loved and respected him as a colleague. He went the Northern Circuit, and if none of those splendid chances which sometimes lift a man at one stroke from obscurity to wealth and professional advancement presented themselves to him, a still more propitious fortune gave him an opportunity of winning for himself a place in the first rank of the authors of the day. His law books, which had met with fair success, showed that amid the greater attractions of literature his professional studies were not being neglected. In 1851 he was made a queen's counsel, and became a bencher of his inn, of which he subsequently acted as treasurer. The return of the Conservatives to power in I852 gave his friend Mr. Walpole, the home secretary, an opportunity of recognizing Warren's merits in the way that was most agreeable to his feelings, and he was made recorder of Hull. We cannot doubt that the office was a congenial one, and that Warren spared no pains to augment the dignity and character of his bench; and we can easily suppose that his charges to the grand jury would be very fine addresses in point of law as well as in point of rhetoric. In 1853, on the occasion of Lord Derby's installation as chancellor of the university, he was made an honorary D. C. L. of Oxford, along with Lord Lytton, Sir Archibald Alison, and Professor Aytoun, his fellow contributors to the magazine. He was returned to Parliament for the burgh of Midhurst in 1856, and continued to sit for that place until he vacated his seat in 1859.
His Parliamentary career does not call for many remarks. His self-consciousness was, perhaps, against his success in the House; perhaps he felt that he had already achieved too great triumphs to be content to submit to the novitiate which has to be undergone before a member can take his place as a party leader. But he left pleasant recollections behind him in the Commons, and a popularity which was not bounded by the ministerial benches. When the offer of a mastership in lunacy was made to him by Lord Derby in 1859, it was not accepted without some natural regrets for the attractions of a Parliamentary career, and the possibilities which he was leaving behind him. But prudence came to his assistance, and he accepted an office which he of all men, by his psychological experience, his keen perception of character, and his unswerving conscientiousness, was so well qualified to fill. And thus was partially fulfilled the vaticination which had been spoken of him by Sir George Rose: —
Though envy may sneer at you, Warren, and say
"Why, yes, he has talent, but throws it away;"
Take a hint, change the venue, and still persevere
And you'll end as you start with "Ten Thousand a-Year."
That in his new office he was a valuable public servant, doing his work with zeal and fidelity, we know well; and it does not speak little for the man that he should have devoted himself to the labors of an unostentatious office, nor allowed himself to be distracted from his duties by work which would have kept his name more prominently before his public.
Of Warren we are almost tempted to say that we are never so conscious of the novelist as when he is penning a law treatise, or of the lawyer as when he is moulding the structure of one of his novels. But if he has not left so lasting a mark upon the literature of the bar as upon that of his country, few of its members have done more to vindicate its honor, or to elevate its professional standards. Almost the only occasions when he really dips his pen in gall are when he has to deal with those who lower its position by their lives, or abuse its forms in their practice. But not only has he painted for us the character of Mr. Toady Hug that all may take warning by him, but he has presented the aspiring lawyer with some noble ideals like that of the attorney-general in "Ten Thousand a-Year." The respect which he invariably shows for the bench, and the zealous care which he exercises to assert its dignity, by his representations not only of the justice of its decisions but of the exemplary lives and characters of those who occupy it, deserve to be kept in honorable remembrance. The fact that his sketch of Lord Widdrington is more or less a portrait, does not detract from the skill with which it had been executed, or make us less proud that it can be said of the English bench this man was of it. And where shall we go for a nobler, a more touching picture of a struggle between justice and mercy, of the strivings of a lenient mind charged with the execution of stern decrees, than in the description of the chief justice in "Now and Then," when he is appealed to for a respite to Adam Ayliffe?
No critic is likely to do justice to the works of Samuel Warren who fails to see that he has to do with a moralist as well as a novelist. A generation less acquainted with the rules of literary art, used to apply to their books the simple test, "whether they made one wiser and better." Antiquated as this criterion may appear to some, we cannot forbear applying it to Warren's novels. A great novelist has it even better in his power than a great preacher to justify to men the ways of the Almighty; and Warren never for a moment loses sight of the responsibility which the exercise of his genius imposes upon him. He thinks it no shame to confess that his fictions are written with a purpose. And the lessons which he teaches, when once learned, will not easily be forgotten. Is there any reader whose moral nature is so unimpressionable that he or she can lay down "Ten Thousand a- Year" without the feeling that they have been listening to a great preacher who has expounded the weighty text of human life as it had rarely ever been expounded before? What lessons of patient, hopeful endurance under unmerited reverses do we not learn from the story of Aubrey? Could deceit and hypocrisy be shown in all their native loathsomeness and with their terrible consequences more forcibly than in the career and ending of Gammon? How close is the acquaintance we make with suffering, both mental and physical, each in its many-sided and painful aspects, in the "Diary of a Late Physician"! And who can read that noble story of the peer and the peasant in "Now and Then," without a deep feeling of the overruling power of God's providence over the mutable condition of human society — a power that puts down the mighty from his seat and exalteth the humble and meek?
Impressed as he was with the responsibility of exercising his powers for a higher object than the mere amusement of his readers, it is not strange that he would not trim his sails to catch the popular breeze. The free vent which he gave to his political convictions excited hostility and prejudice against his works which nothing but their rare literary merits could have overtopped. "Ten Thousand a-Year" especially has been stigmatized as a "Tory novel." We would be doing an injustice to his memory if we either disavowed or apologized for the fact. He was not one of those who would allow the text, "Fear God: honor the king" to be divided. His conservative principles were a part of his religion; and some of the most prominent of his creations owe their pre-eminence to this combination. A very natural objection has been taken to "Ten Thousand a-Year," that its art is all of a partisan character — that the Tories are all demi-gods and angels, and the Whigs for the most part incarnations of vice and vulgarity. There may be some justice in this allegation, but the complaint has not lowered the place of the novel among the classics of English fiction. To form a just estimate of this charge, we must consider the society which "Ten Thousand a-Year" seeks to portray. The estate of Yatton is lost and won amid the furious agitations which preceded the first Reform Bill. The stirring politics of the day penetrated everywhere, and leavened the tone and feelings of society to an extent which the present generation has some difficulty in conceiving possible. Even amid the excitement of the trial of the great case of "Doe dam. Titmouse vs. Jolter," Mr. Quicksilver, one of the counsel for the "lessor of the plaintiff," employs the intervals in court to pen an article for a Radical review. A novel of English life during the reign of the fourth William without any allusion to the political aspects of society would have been like the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out. Mr. Titmouse, launched into politics under the auspices of Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap, naturally came into contact with the dregs of the Radical party, just as naturally as the best and most cultivated representatives of the Tory side are found in alliance with a man of Mr. Aubrey's refinement and position. And the partisan cast thus incidentally given to the book is of little account when we remember that a deeper motive than a purpose purely political underlies the whole. Atrociously grotesque as some of the Parliamentary caricatures unquestionably are, we doubt if they will appear as extravagant to the present generation as they did to that which read "Ten Thousand a-Year" for the first time in these pages. The Irish patriot who "showed infinite pluck in persevering against shouts of order from all parts of the house for an hour together," and his allies Mr. Phelim O'Doodle and the Och Hubbaboo, are not the only legislators whom Warren had a prophetic prescience that the "Great Bill for Giving Everybody Everything" would introduce into Parliament. But he would be a bigoted Whig indeed whose party prepossessions would not allow him to enjoy the pungent sarcasm and the wild humor which enter so largely into the descriptions of Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse's legislative career.
Of the "Diary of a Late Physician," it has been said that it betrayed a far more intimate acquaintance with the affections of the heart than the diseases of the body. But so fully does Warren's intense sympathywith suffering cover his limited command of medical experience, that we are hardly sensible of any shortcoming. The field which the "Diary" covered was then afresh one, and to the favor with which it was received was due the host of fictions cast in the form of professional experiences that speedily followed it. Probably none of his contemporaries could have played the rôle of the kind-hearted, philanthropic physician, who, not unacquainted with misfortune himself, has learned to hold out a helping hand to the miserable. His deep knowledge of the human heart, and his compassion with distress whether bodily or mental, enabled him to feel quite at home when dealing with the cases of those who were either expiating the consequences of their sins or were suffering from the unmerited harshness of a cold world. No one is likely to read the "Diary," however hurriedly, without perceiving that the author has probed each passion and dissected every feeling before settling in his own mind the parts which were to be allotted to them in the action of the plot. Mr. Warren was a psychologist in days when psychological inquiry was less a requirement of the novelist's art than at present. The story of the period depended for its success less upon the study of character than upon novelty of plot and energy of action, and we do not hesitate to trace the part which mental analysis now occupies in fiction in some measure to the influence which the delicate studies in the "Diary" soon began to exercise upon literary taste. Since the days of Richardson, scarcely any English novelist had studied human nature with the same minuteness and care, or had given the same attention to the proper co-ordination of the affections with the requirements of literary art; and, like Richardson, Warren not unfrequently falls into the mistake of making his readers a party to his analytical investigations, instead of placing merely the results before them. But though the detailed exposition of feeling which characterizes so prominently all Warren's novels may be occasionally pushed to such a length as, in the case of a less-gifted writer, might run the risk of impinging on the reader's patience, it tends greatly to preserve the illusion of naturalness and probability which we never miss from his creations. In this way the passages from the "Diary" come to have all the vraisemblance of a real record of medical experience. So powerfully is the mental side of suffering delineated, that we scarcely notice that its physical aspects receive a somewhat slight treatment. But though with our knowledge of the authorship, we can detect professional trippings, we must still wonder at that fulness and diversity of medical knowledge which were sufficient to impose upon the faculty of the day.
It would be superfluous on our part to recall the testimony which particular passages of the "Diary" bear to the literary powers which Warren had matured at that early age. In treating of a book so universally read, the critic has no need to refer to the evidence on which his judgment is based. Yet we cannot help feeling that we are arousing pleasant as well as tender recollections in the minds of old readers of Maga, when we mention some of the more striking scenes in which the physician took part. Who that has read "The Scholar's Deathbed" will ever forget the painful picture of a life unable to divest itself of its ruling passion for thoughts befitting the verge of the unseen world? The miserable termination of the "Man about Town's" career, with the loathsome picture of the grosser vices and their punishment, does not take a less-firm hold of the memory; and there is probably no "passage" in the whole of the "Diary" that better illustrates Warren's power of securing the whole of his intended effect: without entering upon descriptions from which the sensitive mind might be in danger of revolting. "The Statesman," which seems to mix up so strangely the stories of Canning and Castlereagh, and in which we can hardly distinguish between what is taken from history and what comes from the imagination, is another sketch which the mention of the "Diary" will at once bring back to the remembrance of those who have read it. Another paper, "The Martyr Philosopher," in which Warren deals with a subject that always presented a powerful attraction to his genius — the effects of unmerited misfortune upon a pure and noble mind — is one of the finest specimens of vivid description combined with pathetic power that he has left behind him. He himself tells us, with pardonable pride, in his preface to one of the later editions of the "Diary," how an excellent nobleman, since dead, was so much interested in this paper that he wrote to the conductor of this magazine, asking permission to reprint it, at his own expense, for circulation among the upper classes of society. But what need have we to discuss individual stories, when the whole of the "Diary" itself bears a far stronger testimony to his literary genius, high purpose, and warmth of heart, than it would become us to offer to one whose fame is so closely bound up with our own? It will suffice to say, that the "Diary" at once took a high place, not in our own literature alone, but with American and Continental readers, to whom reprints and translations speedily introduced it; and this position it has continued to maintain amid the many inducements which contemporary literature holds out to make us forget the works of preceding generations.
In "Ten Thousand a-Year," next to the interest of the plot, to which Warren gave so much thought and study, the powerful cast of characters constitutes its most notable feature. Amid a larger crowd of actors than we generally meet with in the pages of a single novel, there is hardly one whose outlines are not filled in with sufficient distinctness, even if only by a few graphic dashes of the pen, to give it an individuality and lifelikeness that retain a firm hold of the reader's recollection. There is a host of lay figures who, like the Toady Hugs, Smirk Mudflints, and Dismal Horrors, are simply brought on the scene by way of interlude between the graver business of the piece, to be ignominiously kicked off it; there are many sketches from contemporary life, in the fidelity and justice of which the world has had no difficulty in identifying the originals; but there are also a number of creations that offer ample attestation to Warren's powers as a delineator of character. Of these we can only notice two, which are beyond question his masterpieces. Exception is frequently taken to the portrait of Aubrey as a strained ideal, whose virtues are pushed to an excessive and improbable degree, and whose patience under his tribulations seems so unnatural, that the reader is apt to lose his own patience in his behalf. Those who go away with this impression can hardly have understood the principles upon which Aubrey's character has been formed. It is not merely to serve as a foil to the worthlessness and selfishness of Tittlebat Titmouse that Aubrey has been endowed with virtues that may appear at first sight to be superhuman. The oft-quoted lines of Horace, which supply a motto to the novel, indicate the keynote in unison with which the chords in Aubrey's character have been struck. The author's design was to show that a mind regulated by principle, refined by philosophy, and fortified by the teachings and the hopes of Christianity, had in itself resources against any change of fortune. And how well he has done so! If the heroism and patience and gentleness of Aubrey are unnatural it is surely a matter of deep regret; and we rejoice to think that English society, with all the hollowness and imperfection that are laid to its charge, can afford many proofs that Warren has not conceived a character too ideal for human nature.
If either of the characters is over-strained, it is that of Gammon. Such a Satanic combination of lofty intellect and daring purpose, with deceit and baseness, had hardly before been depicted in prose. And as with Satan, the character of Gammon is pushed to a point where we are attracted, instead of repelled, by its hideous proportions. When contrasted with the sordid, grovelling rascality of Quirk, and the petty chicanery of Snap, the smooth and easy-flowing guilt of Gammon seems almost venial; and it is not until we remember that it is his directing mind keeps these tools at work, that we are able to view him with the reprobation which he deserves. However despicable and worthless Tittlebat Titmouse may seem, we must always remember that he had Gammon for his evil angel, and that it would have been utterly impossible even for a better man to have turned out well under such a master. And it is not until Gammon is brought into contact with a mind so pure and noble as that of Aubrey that the full loathsomeness of his nature stands revealed. As in the case of Aubrey his whole strength had been derived from his firm convictions of religious truth, so the character of Gammon forcibly illustrates the effects of the absence of any guiding principles higher than self-interest an expediency. So irresistible is his villany that we cannot help being fascinated by it; and Warren himself seems to have fallen in some degree under the spell of his own creation, for he provides him with a termination to his career at once more dignified and dramatic than that vouch- safed to his wretched associates. We would have been glad, if the limits of this notice had allowed of it, to forget the career of Gammon in the recollection of Kate Aubrey, Dr. Tatham, and the other pleasant characters met with in "Ten Thousand a-Year." Our regrets are, however, the less that the reader will readily learn to love and appreciate these for themselves.
Outside his family and the wide circle of his friends, there is no place where Warren's loss will be more marked than in the Temple Church. In the benchers' seats he was one of the most familiar figures; and as a member of the choir committee he took a great interest in improving the vocal service — a task which his delicate ear for music well qualified him to discharge. The allusion made by Dr. Vaughan, the master of the Temple, on the Sunday after his death, was as well merited as it was appropriate, and must have gone at once to the hearts of the audience. Those who only saw the outside of Warren's character must have been little able to appreciate the serious depth of his nature and the vein of sincere piety that lay within; but we who knew and loved him well, can testify from our hearts to the truth of the reverend master's tribute to the memory of our dear old friend, with which we may be permitted to close this imperfect notice. Speaking of the deaths of Mr. Ward Hunt and Mr. Warren, Dr. Vaughan said: —
"Many things conspire to make the word to-day vocal. It is a parting day. It is a closing service. "Who knoweth what a day may bring forth?" how much more a period of thirty days, or of sixty? But our last services of this season are services of mourning. Two chief men have fallen in our Israel — to-day the dirge is our music. One of these was less to us than to the country. His funeral oration was spoken in Parliament. Long years ago he forsook law for politics; his renewed connection with us was but a compliment to the statesman. Such a connection is honorable to both parties — it dignifies the man, it strengthens the society.
"But the other lost friend was a very part of this 'house.' You know how he loved it! This church has never looked the same since he left it — left it, not knowing that it was forever, on the eve of last Christmas. Who shall replace him in that seat, where we can see him still — that grey head, that keen eye, that fixed, that rapt devotion? Some of his last thoughts were with us — he is gone where there is 'no temple.'
"He was a man of mark in his generation. The memory of my boyhood goes back to the intense interest, the curious mystery, of his first work of fiction, combining so strikingly his two educations — the training of the physician, and the training of the lawyer. Honors fell thick upon him in that brilliant seed-time; he would have been more than man if they had not — just a little — elated him. His genius was less to us than his character. The servants and officers of this house can tell how kind he was. I can tell. He leaves behind him in his house those who hallow — who almost idolize — his memory; well may they! These things are too sacred for public mention. I may but tell in one last word, how gently, how lovingly, he sank gradually to his rest, amidst thoughts and looks, all of peace, all of blessing. Two days ago it was given me to speak the last words over him in his beloved son's village churchyard, where love will still survive him, as he lies waiting for 'the great Easter'!"