A PUBLISHER'S PILGRIMAGE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2399, 22 February 1900, Page 59

A PUBLISHER'S PILGRIMAGE.

(By "S. K. R.." in Sunday Sun.)

A 000k like Mr Kegan Paul's " MemoTie-- "' commonly attracts two kinds of readers: those avlio like lo know what the writer has to «ay about the people and the incidents which have a place in his life. and those who think there is nothing comparable in inteivst to the development of a soul. Mr Piai l is unusually v. ell equipped as an antohiographcr. He is just over years old, and has known most people worth knowing during the la't halt centuiy. He has been by turns parson, pedagogue, and publisher ; Churchman. Pocitlvist, and Catholic. His pilgrimage therefore has not been ordinary, arfu his circumstances have been fortunate. His memories are most agreeably written, in just that temper. which appeals to the reader of personal reminiscences. There are many stories, many of them all told with a quiet enjoyment. If one imi«sL confess to disappointment, it will be, 1 think, in regard to the spiritual autobiography, which is much less living and profound than should be the story of one who has gone almost the whole round of faith and unfaith. I. Externally, Mr Kegan Paul's life could scarcely have been less eventful. He was "born hi Somerset, in 1828, his father being a clergyman of the Church of England, and a West Indian slave owner. We get curious glimpses of the church customs of that epoch. "As very few of the congregation could i read, the services were almost entirely confined to a duet between the parson and the clerk. The Communion Table was a plain four-legged piece of carpentry^ without a cover, such ' as might have stood in our kitchen ; tha whole service, when there was no Communion, was read in the desk ; the Holy Communion was administered about four times a year, but always on Good Friday, as well as Easter Sunday ; the surplice w 7 as a pure white gown, unrelieved by any stole or scarf. My father's reading of the prayers was grave and dignified, his doctrine old-fashioned and orthodox, his sermons moral essays far over the heads of his congregation, his parochial ministrations above the average of those days.'' As a pendant to this one may cite the description 01 the state of things which Mr J Paul himself found when he entered on the work of his first curacy at Great Tew — Lord Falkland's village in Oxfordshire — so late as 1851. " The manner in which the services had been performed had been a scandal for many years, and in days of revived interest in church matters there was a cry for reform all through the neighbourhood. The scenes which took place in the church were almost incredible. The wine at the Communion was put on the table in a black bottle, and on one occasion the cork had not been drawn. Mr Bell, the vicar, turned to the intending communicants as they knelt at the rails, and asked, " Has any larly or gentlemen a corkscrew? "' This implement having been obtained (I fancy from the publichouse opposite, where stimulants Avere occasionally procured for the aged curate during the sermon), the service proceeded. 11. After some time spent at a school — a place of quite inhuman savagery — at llininster, he was sent to Eton. The chapters dealing with that famous school in the forties are perhaps the most entertaining in the book. Mr Paul is very gentle in his treatment of the masters and quite lenient in his description of the school customs. The younger reader will not be disposed to look on them with quite such tolerant eyes. The impression one gets is that however much may be said against the public .schools of these days, they are institutions of a totally different order from the schools of 50 years ago. Mr Paid, went up to Oxford in 1846. He entered Exeter College, where Fronde was JVLlow and Lecturer. The Senior Tntor~was William Sewell, to whom ..belongs the honour of having burnt Froude's book, '* The Nemesis of Faith," one day during lecture, " Sewell," says Mr Paul, " was one of the ! most entertaining and clever of men, so far as cleverness is consistent with egregious folly." He had once held the chair of Moral Philosophy in the university, and in one of his lectures was said to have drawn proofs of revealed religion from natural phenomena in a very conclusive fashion. After speaking of the Trinity of the Divine nature, and pointing out how there are three primary colours, three notes in a I musical chord, three le.ives in a trefoil, etc., I he turned to the Unity and said : " There is one sun, there is one moon, there is jOne multitude of star's ! " "Of all the men I have ever known, possessing any ability at all," adds Mr Paul, "he was the most inaccurate, the most erratic, end he was, therefore, the worst possible tutor."' Few lectures at Oxford in those days, our autobiographer thinks, were more than mere dry bones, of scholarship, though occasionally they afforded matter for laughter afterwards. He remembers a tutor at New College reproving a man who had translated a familiar biblical word as "stomach" thus — " I think, Mr , that ' belly ' is perhaps ;> more solemn word ! " Mr Paul adds one more to the heap of stories about the late Master of Balliol. " What> is the reason, Mr Palgrave," Dr Jowett asked the future Professor of Poetry in a ,viv? voce examination, " that the Church of England rejects the Apocrypha?" "J suppose," answered Palgrave, " because there are so many odd stories in it." " Oh,"' said Jowett. "if that were the reason, 'l should Ihink she would go further and reject rv good deal more." 111. Mr Paul made some eminent friends at Oxford. At that time the influence of Newwan had waned. Pus'ey was too much of a recluse to be a very strong power. Carlyle was certainly^ the strongest intellectual force ot work. In Mr Paul's own life Kinjjslay counted fov most at this period,. :

The tvo men met in 18-.9 mci iinnudititcly grew intimate. "To young men sj.ill iji cuur-jO o£ foimation,"' Mr Paul writes. '" this coruscating person, 10 years older than (,ursclvii 1 :, but young in mind, and a born lender of men. ci'r.w .is a kind of lovr-lation. We had neA'or :net onyonc like irtn, nor. indeed, have J cvei miicc ciicoimtpi'ed anyone f-o impressive to the young. What was most attractive lo me, and of eouihc not to me alone, Ava& that this man, so vaiied in knowledge and so brilliant in talk, athletic in habits and frame, a firstrate horseman, keen spoilsman, good quoit player, was also a^anan of praypr aiul piety, filled with a personal, even passionate, love to Christ, whom he realised as his Friend and Brother in a fashion almost peculiar to the Saints."

It was Kinsley's influence which determined Mr Paul to take orders, no! withM,Hiding the indeterminate character ol his belief. He called hims-elf a very broad high churchman. Politically he was an extreme Kndical, a Republican, and a Socialist ; and such, apparently, he has remained. He went first as curate to Great Tew, as already mentioned ; next to Bloxham, near Banbaiy. Aftervt arcls he travelled abroad in the capacity of tutor, went back to Kton as "conduct, or explain, and was, appointed a master in oo'ege. In 1862 Mr Paul became vicar of Stui minster, Dorset. Then followed the break up of his religious faith, the resignation of his living, and his entry into business as a publisher with Mr Henry S. King, of Cornhill. His life as publisher brought him into friendly relations with nearly all the famous people in London literary circles. He has much agreeable gossip about them, but we may not linger over this period. IV. Mr Paul joined the Catholic Church on the day after Cardinal Newman's death in 1890. He had been successively a High Churchman, a very Broad Churchman, a kind of Agnostic, and a Positivist. One who has gone along so various a road, and has lived, moreover, in intimacy with some of the moulders and masters of thought, ought to have something good to say about his spiritual history to other voyagers 011 the wide ,sea. Curiously, and unfortunately, what should be by far the most interesting part of these " Memories ' is really of least importance. Clearly, Mr Paul has always been in a measure independent and inquiring. No less clearly, however, was he predtslined to find what he calls " the end of wandering " where he has found it. Instinctively one puts the question to one in Mr Paul's position : " What set of reasons or circumstances persuaded you, after so much far voyaging, to accept this as the haven where you would be?" On the nature of the answer depends the significance of his experiences for other seekers. There is nothing dubious in Mr Paul's answer. For general educative influences he gives the ''Imitation of Christ" and the writings of Newman. That is intelligible. Next, and above all, " the overwhelming evidence for modern miracles." Listen: " A study of Pascal's life, when I was engaged in translating the ' Pensees,' directed my special attention to the cura of Pascal's niece, of a lachymal fistula, by the touch of the Holy Thorn - pre served at Port • Royal Next in importance came the miracles of Lourdes. . . . Ido not mean, especially in the former case, that these facts proved any doctrines ; that the miracle of the Thorn made for Jansenist teaching, or those at Lourdes for the Immaculate Conception ; but rather, that the Thorn must, from its effects, have been one that had touched the Sacred Head, thai the spring at Lourdes could only have had its healing powers by the gift of Gud, through our Lacly." This is not a controversial article. I am concerned with the literary aspects of MiPaul's autobiography, and in no sense ambitious of deciding between the creeds which have received his allegiance in turn. But the passage just quoted is extremely illuminating. It indicates the inherent bias of a mind which for fomething like 40 years was engaged in probing ami sifting the ideas upon which all religions are built, and could then submit itself to the sovereignty of the ancient Church through conviction by a Holy Thorn and a Holy Well. The attentive reader of Mr Paul's life will not miss the links in the chain. There was the same disposition in the child Avho found his Catholic sympathies awakened by the uncompromising Protestantism of the c" fr Iron's stories of that epoch, as in the man who turned for peace to Auguste Comte, and finally to the church without which Comte and Positivism would never have been. Throughout there is the same tendency : the will and the wish to believe, to find rest in the bosom of authority. This, of course, is not a criticism of Mr Paul's logic ; .still less is it a criticism of his book. It is but an indi< ation of the reason why the interest of Mr Paul's progress from faith through unfaith on to a more abiding faith will seem merely personal and individual to any who have travelled along other ways by other lights.