The Intellectual Prodigy of British Politics.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 12, 22 March 1911, Page 2

The Intellectual Prodigy of British Politics.

Viscount Morley, of Blackburn.

nORD MORLEY is to-day, says the “London Chronicle,” "the greatest living liberal,,” and the “London Post” sees additional reason to honour him because he is the one living Briton who has ever stood at the head of two professions. They are literature and ' statesmanship. Society has paid homage to him no less than democracy. It seems strange to the “London Tinies” that the Liberals never thought of making him Prime Minister; and, stranger still, that gifts for administration sc splendid as his should have disclosed themselves so late.

Nearly 40 years have come and gone since George Henry Lewes, who was about to resign the editorship of the "Fortnightly Review”—which he, Anthony Trollope, and the Chapmans had founded in 1865—introduced Frederick Harrison to John Morley as his successor. Morley, who was then little more than 27, relates how Harrison, in the “London Nation,” was not known to the general public outside the staff of certain journals and reviews, notably “The Saturday Review.” But Harrison can not forget, after all these years, the pride and confidence Lewes expressed in the choice of his successor, a pride and confidence fully shared by George Eliot, who was herself a contributor to the hew review and deeply interested in its success. Frederick Harrison had written,-in tho first number, and was still a constant writer; but he was doubtful, he confesses, if it were policy to exchange such a veteran as Lewes for so young an editor as Morley. “He’ll make far more of it than I ever could,” said Lew.es., in his generous way. And George Eliot, with all her belief, in the senior’s versatility, was ready to echo the same thing. The world now knows they were- right, adds Harrison hipiftelf. Half

a dozen George Henry Leweses, George Eliots, and Anthony Trollopes could not, he declares, have made “The Fortnightly” the organ it became in the fifteen years during which John Morley filled the editorial chair. “And they would have hardly succeeded in allowing a list of contributors led by such men as George Meredith, Algernon Swinburne, Thomas Huxley, and Herbert Spencer.” Even Thomas Carlyle ’ asked some of the “young lions” of “The Fortnightly” to come to see him, and admitted that there were pieces in it from time to time that spoke well for “the discerning eye of this Morley loon*.” As George Henry Lewes

said when his successor was only 27, Morley was a born editor. It was as editor that Gladstone placed him at one bound in the foremost place in his Cabinet of 1886. Stead said at the time in his “Pall Mall” extra that Morley was "the first editor in this country who has ever been made a Cabinet Minister.” He passed from his chair at .Northumber-land-street to his office in Dublin Castle and to his seat in Downing street, whieh is the official home of a British ministry. He was in due time to crown his literary and editorial career with one of the world’s great biographies, as the London "Nation” calls it—Morley’s “Life of Gladstone. No man ever made a more dramatic entrance into public life, avers the London “News” in its sympathetic study of him whom the world now knows as Viscount Morley of Blackburn, although at his birth in Blackburn itself, seventythree years ago, as a son of a surgeon he became plain John. Nothing dramatic emerges in the dry chronicles which all works of reference make of his long, career. Educated at Cheltenham College and at Lincoln' College, Oxford, he joined Lincoln’s' Inn when he was thirty-five.

His name was already known to the leterary world through hie books OB Voltaire and “ Burke. 'He"" was" fortyfive before .*■ ever he reached the House of Compions, but in’-. • few years Gladstone had him in the ministry. The announcement one mdrning that John Morley was the new Irish secretary was the first clear indication, says the London “News-,” 'of the mostmomentous departure in . policy, made in our time. It meant that Home Rule waa, the official, inspired and accepted programme of the English Liberal party. • It startled the country then. It soon became apparent that Morley was breath* . ing into the atmosphere of Britain’s public life the quality it niost lacked, “the quality,” »a-ys our 'Contemporary, “of instructed and of lofty moral fervour.” It was that quality which made Victorian polities great to the daily we quote. “There is now no one left who can use the stops of the great'political organ sublimely save Morley and he in these days uses them rarely.” Still a speech by, Morley is an event and will remain one while he survives.

Morley has never been a religious man. He passed through his Oxford life when the star of Newman had set and when the sun of Mill was high in the heavens. He regards religion, writes Algernonl Cecil in “The Monthly Review” (London), as subject to all-the pangs of dissolution. The intellectual ideals of Morley have always been Voltaire and Mill and he. even contemplates with melancholy wonder the ages of belief, as “the too short ages of conviction and self-, sufficience.” Tone,, temper and habit of. mind are all conveyed by Morley’s style. He has long been renowned as the one politician whose writings prove the adage that the style is the man; “No'one can lay down any book of his without being braced, stimulated, deepened, without being more conscious of the nobility of life, above all of The nobility of Morley’s life.” His manner is always French’ in its lucidity, always English in its reserve — “admirably suited to the needs of modern oratory, but possessing a certain stateliness of motion which reminds us that the grand manner is not altogether dead.” There is a world of light? upon Morley’s character in the circumstance that to him Lucretius is the first of poets. “What are we to make of a British politician,” asks the London “Post,” “whose favourite poet is Lucretius?” But to the writer in “The Monthly Review” Morley reflects himself in hifl beloved Latin master whose distinguishing characteristic is a certain kind of noble pride and positive assertion of his. own opinions. The popular reading of his keen, cold, intellectual features has stood Morley, in good stead, says the London “Standard,” with a democracy which respects character. Yet are there veterans in Bohemia, who still remember him as X gay and* genial companion. Eyen when his reputation had been established as a man of letters and as an interpreter, of radical doctrine he did not turn his back upon the pleasure of the town. Tn the long years of intimate association with Joseph Chamberlain it is safe to say that the conversation did not turn exclusively on party tactics and the epigrams of Voltaire.” Of the literary standards in vogu< among the well-to-do classes in both England and the United States, Morley, loves to speak in terms of contempt. HO heartily agreed with the late Edwin Lawrende Godkin that the Anglo-Saxon! world is infested with quack essayists, quack philosophers, quack novelists, quack poets and quack reviewers. Alonei among the great editors of the world he concedes the justice of the complaint, according to the London "Post,” that literary honours go, like kissing, by, favour. He once professed distrust of the powers of a poet whose work, he was told, appeared in all the leading periodicals of England and America. “Hia limitations,” said Morley, “must be innumerable.” It is a rather lonely domestic lifd that Viscount Morley, as he has become, leads in the softtitde of the splendid library of his London home. His passion, apart from books and politics, is the dog. He owns some splendid spaniels and they are to him the companions of his walks. He insists that womefil should take an active part in politics’, the suffragette claiming him, rightly off wrongly—it is not very apparent which —as a champion of their cause. H< loves the rose, the violin and the symphonies of Beethoven and next to the land that has sb honoured him he lovef France.'