I cannot be sorry to have forced Mr. Kingsley to bring out in
fulness his charges against me. It is far better that he should
discharge his thoughts upon me in my lifetime, than after I am dead.
Under the circumstances I am happy in having the opportunity of reading
the worst that can be said of me by a writer who has taken pains with
his work and is well satisfied with it. I account it a gain to be
surveyed from without by one who hates the principles which are nearest
to my heart, has no personal knowledge of me to set right his
misconceptions of my doctrine, and who has some motive or other to be
as severe with me as he can possibly be.
And first of all, I beg to compliment him on the motto in his
title-page; it is felicitous. A motto should contain, as in a nutshell,
the contents, or the character, or the drift, or the animus of
the writing to which it is prefixed. The words which he has taken from
me are so apposite as to be almost prophetical. There cannot be a
better illustration than he thereby affords of the aphorism which I
intended them to convey. I said that it is not more than an
hyperbolical expression to say that in certain cases a lie is the
nearest approach to truth. Mr. Kingsley's pamphlet is emphatically one
of such cases as are contemplated in that proposition. I really
believe, that his view of me is about as near an approach to the truth
about my writings and doings, as he is capable of taking. He has done
his worst towards me; but he has also done his best. So far well; but,
while I impute to him no malice, I unfeignedly think, on the other
hand, that, in his invective against me, he as faithfully fulfils the
other half of the proposition also.
This is not a mere sharp retort upon Mr. Kingsley, as will be seen,
when I come to consider directly the subject to which the words of his
motto relate. I have enlarged on that subject in various passages of my
publications; I have said that minds in different states and
circumstances cannot understand one another, and that in all cases they
must be instructed according to their capacity, and, if not taught step
by step, they learn only so much the less; that children do not
apprehend the thoughts of grown people, nor savages the instincts of
civilization, nor blind men the perceptions of sight, nor pagans the
doctrines of Christianity, nor men the experiences of Angels. In the
same way, there are people of matter-of-fact, prosaic minds, who cannot
take in the fancies of poets; and others of shallow, inaccurate minds,
who cannot take in the ideas of philosophical inquirers. In a lecture
of mine I have illustrated this phenomenon by the supposed instance of
a foreigner, who, after reading a commentary on the principles of
English Law, does not get nearer to a real apprehension of them than to
be led to accuse Englishmen of considering that the queen is impeccable
and infallible, and that the Parliament is omnipotent. Mr. Kingsley has
read me from beginning to end in the fashion in which the hypothetical
Russian read Blackstone; not, I repeat, from malice, but because of his
intellectual build. He appears to be so constituted as to have no
notion of what goes on in minds very different from his own, and
moreover to be stone-blind to his ignorance. A modest man or a
philosopher would have scrupled to treat with scorn and scoffing, as
Mr. Kingsley does in my own instance, principles and convictions, even
if he did not acquiesce in them himself, which had been held so widely
and for so long—the beliefs and devotions and customs which have been
the religious life of millions upon millions of Christians for nearly
twenty centuries—for this in fact is the task on which he is spending
his pains. Had he been a man of large or cautious mind, he would not
have taken it for granted that cultivation must lead every one to see
things precisely as he sees them himself. But the narrow-minded are the
more prejudiced by very reason of their narrowness. The apostle bids us
“in malice be children, but in understanding be men.” I am glad to
recognise in Mr. Kingsley an illustration of the first half of this
precept; but I should not be honest, if I ascribed to him any sort of
fulfilment of the second.
I wish I could speak as favourably either of his drift or of his
method of arguing, as I can of his convictions. As to his drift, I
think its ultimate point is an attack upon the Catholic Religion. It is
I indeed, whom he is immediately insulting—still, he views me only as
a representative, and on the whole a fair one, of a class or caste of
men, to whom, conscious as I am of my own integrity, I ascribe an
excellence superior to mine. He desires to impress upon the public mind
the conviction that I am a crafty, scheming man, simply untrustworthy;
that, in becoming a Catholic, I have just found my right place; that I
do but justify and am properly interpreted by the common English notion
of Roman casuists and confessors; that I was secretly a Catholic when I
was openly professing to be a clergyman of the Established Church; that
so far from bringing, by means of my conversion, when at length it
openly took place, any strength to the Catholic cause, I am really a
burden to it—an additional evidence of the fact, that to be a pure,
german, genuine Catholic, a man must be either a knave or a fool.
These last words bring me to Mr. Kingsley's method of disputation,
which I must criticise with much severity;—in his drift he does but
follow the ordinary beat of controversy, but in his mode of arguing he
is actually dishonest.
He says that I am either a knave or a fool, and (as we shall see by
and by) he is not quite sure which, probably both. He tells his readers
that on one occasion he said that he had fears I should “end in one or
other of two misfortunes.” “He would either,” he continues, “destroy
his own sense of honesty, i.e. conscious truthfulness—and
become a dishonest person; or he would destroy his common sense,
i.e. unconscious truthfulness, and become the slave and puppet
seemingly of his own logic, really of his own fancy.... I thought for
years past that he had become the former; I now see that he has become
the latter.” (p. 20). Again, “When I read these outrages upon common
sense, what wonder if I said to myself, 'This man cannot believe what
he is saying?'“ (p. 26). Such has been Mr. Kingsley's state of mind
till lately, but now he considers that I am possessed with a spirit of
“almost boundless silliness,” of “simple credulity, the child of
scepticism,” of “absurdity” (p. 41), of a “self-deception which has
become a sort of frantic honesty” (p. 26). And as to his fundamental
reason for this change, he tells us, he really does not know what it is
(p. 44). However, let the reason be what it will, its upshot is
intelligible enough. He is enabled at once, by this professed change of
judgment about me, to put forward one of these alternatives, yet to
keep the other in reserve;—and this he actually does. He need not
commit himself to a definite accusation against me, such as requires
definite proof and admits of definite refutation; for he has two
strings to his bow;—when he is thrown off his balance on the one leg,
he can recover himself by the use of the other. If I demonstrate that I
am not a knave, he may exclaim, “Oh, but you are a fool!” and when I
demonstrate that I am not a fool, he may turn round and retort, “Well,
then, you are a knave.” I have no objection to reply to his arguments
in behalf of either alternative, but I should have been better pleased
to have been allowed to take them one at a time.
But I have not yet done full justice to the method of disputation,
which Mr. Kingsley thinks it right to adopt. Observe this first:—He
means by a man who is “silly” not a man who is to be pitied, but a man
who is to be abhorred. He means a man who is not simply weak and
incapable, but a moral leper; a man who, if not a knave, has everything
bad about him except knavery; nay, rather, has together with every
other worst vice, a spice of knavery to boot. His simpleton is
one who has become such, in judgment for his having once been a knave.
His simpleton is not a born fool, but a self-made idiot, one who
has drugged and abused himself into a shameless depravity; one, who,
without any misgiving or remorse, is guilty of drivelling superstition,
of reckless violation of sacred things, of fanatical excesses, of
passionate inanities, of unmanly audacious tyranny over the weak,
meriting the wrath of fathers and brothers. This is that milder
judgment, which he seems to pride himself upon as so much charity; and,
as he expresses it, he “does not know” why. This is what he really
meant in his letter to me of January 14, when he withdrew his charge of
my being dishonest. He said, “The tone of your letters, even
more than their language, makes me feel, to my very deep pleasure,”—what? that you have gambled away your reason, that you are an
intellectual sot, that you are a fool in a frenzy. And in his pamphlet,
he gives us this explanation why he did not say this to my face, viz.
that he had been told that I was “in weak health,” and was “averse to
controversy,” (pp. 6 and 8). He “felt some regret for having disturbed
me.”
But I pass on from these multiform imputations, and confine myself
to this one consideration, viz. that he has made any fresh imputation
upon me at all. He gave up the charge of knavery; well and good: but
where was the logical necessity of his bringing another? I am sitting
at home without a thought of Mr. Kingsley; he wantonly breaks in upon
me with the charge that I had “informed” the world “that Truth
for its own sake need not and on the whole ought not to be
a virtue with the Roman clergy.” When challenged on the point he cannot
bring a fragment of evidence in proof of his assertion, and he is
convicted of false witness by the voice of the world. Well, I should
have thought that he had now nothing whatever more to do. “Vain man!”
he seems to make answer, “what simplicity in you to think so! If you
have not broken one commandment, let us see whether we cannot convict
you of the breach of another. If you are not a swindler or forger, you
are guilty of arson or burglary. By hook or by crook you shall not
escape. Are you to suffer or I? What does it matter to
you who are going off the stage, to receive a slight additional daub
upon a character so deeply stained already? But think of me, the
immaculate lover of Truth, so observant (as I have told you p. 8) of '
hault courage and strict honour,'—and (aside)—'and not as
this publican'—do you think I can let you go scot free instead of
myself? No; noblesse oblige. Go to the shades, old man, and
boast that Achilles sent you thither.”
But I have not even yet done with Mr. Kingsley's method of
disputation. Observe secondly:—when a man is said to be a knave or a
fool, it is commonly meant that he is either the one or
the other; and that,—either in the sense that the hypothesis of his
being a fool is too absurd to be entertained; or, again, as a sort of
contemptuous acquittal of one, who after all has not wit enough to be
wicked. But this is not at all what Mr. Kingsley proposes to himself in
the antithesis which he suggests to his readers. Though he speaks of me
as an utter dotard and fanatic, yet all along, from the beginning of
his pamphlet to the end, he insinuates, he proves from my writings, and
at length in his last pages he openly pronounces, that after all he was
right at first, in thinking me a conscious liar and deceiver.
Now I wish to dwell on this point. It cannot be doubted, I say,
that, in spite of his professing to consider me as a dotard and
driveller, on the ground of his having given up the notion of my being
a knave, yet it is the very staple of his pamphlet that a knave after
all I must be. By insinuation, or by implication, or by question, or by
irony, or by sneer, or by parable, he enforces again and again a
conclusion which he does not categorically enunciate.
For instance (1) P. 14. “I know that men used to suspect Dr.
Newman, I have been inclined to do so myself, of writing a whole
sermon ... for the sake of one single passing hint, one phrase, one
epithet, one little barbed arrow which ... he delivered unheeded, as
with his finger tip, to the very heart of an initiated hearer, never
to be withdrawn again.”
(2) P. 15. “How was I to know that the preacher, who had the
reputation of being the most acute man of his generation, and of
having a specially intimate acquaintance with the weaknesses of the
human heart, was utterly blind to the broad meaning and the plain
practical result of a sermon like this, delivered before fanatic and
hot-headed young men, who hung upon his every word? That he did not
foresee that they would think that they obeyed him, by becoming
affected, artificial, sly, shifty, ready for concealments and
equivocations?”
(3) P. 17. “No one would have suspected him to be a dishonest
man, if he had not perversely chosen to assume a style which (as
he himself confesses) the world always associates with dishonesty.”
(4) Pp. 29, 30. “If he will indulge in subtle paradoxes, in
rhetorical exaggerations; if, whenever he touches on the question of
truth and honesty, he will take a perverse pleasure in saying
something shocking to plain English notions, he must take the
consequences of his own eccentricities.”
(5) P. 34. “At which most of my readers will be inclined to cry:
'Let Dr. Newman alone, after that.... He had a human reason once, no
doubt: but he has gambled it away.' ... True: so true, etc.”
(6) P. 34. He continues: “I should never have written these pages,
save because it was my duty to show the world, if not Dr. Newman, how
the mistake (!) of his not caring for truth arose.”
(7) P. 37. “And this is the man, who when accused of countenancing
falsehood, puts on first a tone of plaintive (!) and startled
innocence, and then one of smug self-satisfaction—as who should ask,
'What have I said? What have I done? Why am I on my trial?'”
(8) P. 40. “What Dr. Newman teaches is clear at last, and I see
now how deeply I have wronged him. So far from thinking truth for
its own sake to be no virtue, he considers it a virtue so lofty as
to be unattainable by man.”
(9) P. 43. “There is no use in wasting words on this 'economical'
statement of Dr. Newman's. I shall only say that there are people in
the world whom it is very difficult to help. As soon as they are
got out of one scrape, they walk straight into another.”
(10) P. 43. “Dr. Newman has shown 'wisdom' enough of that
serpentine type which is his professed ideal.... Yes, Dr. Newman is
a very economical person.”
(11) P. 44. “Dr. Newman tries, by cunning sleight-of-hand
logic, to prove that I did not believe the accusation when I made
it.”
(12) P. 45. “These are hard words. If Dr. Newman shall complain of
them, I can only remind him of the fate which befel the stork caught
among the cranes, even though the stork had not done all
he could to make himself like a crane, as Dr. Newman has, by
'economising' on the very title-page of his pamphlet.”
These last words bring us to another and far worse instance of these
slanderous assaults upon me, but its place is in a subsequent page.
Now it may be asked of me, “Well, why should not Mr. Kingsley take a
course such as this? It was his original assertion that Dr. Newman was
a professed liar, and a patron of lies; he spoke somewhat at random,
granted; but now he has got up his references and he is proving, not
perhaps the very thing which he said at first, but something very like
it, and to say the least quite as bad. He is now only aiming to justify
morally his original assertion; why is he not at liberty to do so?”
Why should he not now insinuate that I am a liar and a
knave! he had of course a perfect right to make such a charge, if he
chose; he might have said, “I was virtually right, and here is the
proof of it,” but this he has not done, but on the contrary has
professed that he no longer draws from my works, as he did before, the
inference of my dishonesty. He says distinctly, p. 26, “When I read
these outrages upon common sense, what wonder if I said to myself,
'This man cannot believe what he is saying?' I believe I was wrong.” And in p. 31, “I said, This man has no real care for truth. Truth for
its own sake is no virtue in his eyes, and he teaches that it need not
be. I do not say that now.” And in p. 41, “I do not call this
conscious dishonesty; the man who wrote that sermon was already past
the possibility of such a sin.”
Why should he not! because it is on the ground of my
not being a knave that he calls me a fool; adding to the words just
quoted, “[My readers] have fallen perhaps into the prevailing
superstition that cleverness is synonymous with wisdom. They cannot
believe that (as is too certain) great literary and even barristerial
ability may co-exist with almost boundless silliness.”
Why should he not! because he has taken credit to
himself for that high feeling of honour which refuses to withdraw a
concession which once has been made; though (wonderful to say!), at the
very time that he is recording this magnanimous resolution, he lets it
out of the bag that his relinquishment of it is only a profession and a
pretence; for he says, p. 8: “I have accepted Dr. Newman's denial that
[the Sermon] means what I thought it did; and heaven forbid“
(oh!) “that I should withdraw my word once given, at whatever
disadvantage to myself.” Disadvantage! but nothing can be
advantageous to him which is untrue; therefore in proclaiming
that the concession of my honesty is a disadvantage to him, he thereby
implies unequivocally that there is some probability still, that I am
dis_honest. He goes on, “I am informed by those from whose judgment on
such points there is no appeal, that 'en hault courage,' and
strict honour, I am also precluded, by the terms of my
explanation, from using any other of Dr. Newman's past writings to
prove my assertion.” And then, “I have declared Dr. Newman to have been
an honest man up to the 1st of February, 1864; it was, as I shall show,
only Dr. Newman's fault that I ever thought him to be anything else. It
depends entirely on Dr. Newman whether he shall sustain the
reputation which he has so recently acquired,” (by diploma of course
from Mr. Kingsley.) “If I give him thereby a fresh advantage in this
argument, he is most welcome to it. He needs, it seems to me,
as many advantages as possible.”
What a princely mind! How loyal to his rash promise, how delicate
towards the subject of it, how conscientious in his interpretation of
it! I have no thought of irreverence towards a Scripture Saint, who was
actuated by a very different spirit from Mr. Kingsley's, but somehow
since I read his pamphlet words have been running in my head, which I
find in the Douay version thus; “Thou hast also with thee Semei the son
of Gera, who cursed me with a grievous curse when I went to the camp,
but I swore to him, saying, I will not kill thee with the sword. Do not
thou hold him guiltless. But thou art a wise man and knowest what to do
with him, and thou shalt bring down his grey hairs with blood to hell.”
Now I ask, Why could not Mr. Kingsley be open? If he intended still
to arraign me on the charge of lying, why could he not say so as a man?
Why must he insinuate, question, imply, and use sneering and irony, as
if longing to touch a forbidden fruit, which still he was afraid would
burn his fingers, if he did so? Why must he “palter in a double sense,”
and blow hot and cold in one breath? He first said he considered me a
patron of lying; well, he changed his opinion; and as to the logical
ground of this change, he said that, if any one asked him what it was,
he could only answer that he really did not know. Why could not
he change back again, and say he did not know why? He had quite a right
to do so; and then his conduct would have been so far straightforward
and unexceptionable. But no;—in the very act of professing to believe
in my sincerity, he takes care to show the world that it is a
profession and nothing more. That very proceeding which at p. 15 he
lays to my charge (whereas I detest it), of avowing one thing and
thinking another, that proceeding he here exemplifies himself; and yet,
while indulging in practices as offensive as this, he ventures to speak
of his sensitive admiration of “hault courage and strict honour!” “I
forgive you, Sir Knight,” says the heroine in the Romance, “I forgive
you as a Christian.” “That means,” said Wamba, “that she does not
forgive him at all.” Mr. Kingsley's word of honour is about as valuable
as in the jester's opinion was the Christian charity of Rowena. But
here we are brought to a further specimen of Mr. Kingsley's method of
disputation, and having duly exhibited it, I shall have done with him.
It is his last, and he has intentionally reserved it for his last.
Let it be recollected that he professed to absolve me from his original
charge of dishonesty up to February 1. And further, he implies that,
at the time when he was writing, I had not yet involved
myself in any fresh acts suggestive of that sin. He says that I have
had a great escape of conviction, that he hopes I shall take
warning, and act more cautiously. “It depends entirely,” he says, “on
Dr. Newman, whether he shall sustain the reputation which he
has so recently acquired” (p. 8). Thus, in Mr. Kingsley's judgment, I
was then, when he wrote these words, still innocent of
dishonesty, for a man cannot sustain what he actually has not got;
only he could not be sure of my future. Could not be sure! Why at
this very time he had already noted down valid proofs, as he thought
them, that I had already forfeited the character which he
contemptuously accorded to me. He had cautiously said “up to
February 1st,” in order to reserve the title-page and last three
pages of my pamphlet, which were not published till February 12th, and
out of these four pages, which he had not whitewashed, he had
already forged charges against me of dishonesty at the very time
that he implied that as yet there was nothing against me. When he gave
me that plenary condonation, as it seemed to be, he had already done
his best that I should never enjoy it. He knew well at p. 8, what he
meant to say at pp. 44 and 45. At best indeed I was only out upon
ticket of leave; but that ticket was a pretence; he had made it forfeit
when he gave it. But he did not say so at once, first, because between
p. 8 and p. 44 he meant to talk a great deal about my idiotcy and my
frenzy, which would have been simply out of place, had he proved me too
soon to be a knave again; and next, because he meant to exhaust all
those insinuations about my knavery in the past, which “strict honour"
did not permit him to countenance, in order thereby to give colour and
force to his direct charges of knavery in the present, which “strict
honour” did permit him to handsel. So in the fifth act he gave a
start, and found to his horror that, in my miserable four pages, I had
committed the “enormity” of an “economy,” which in matter of fact he
had got by heart before he began the play. Nay, he suddenly found two,
three, and (for what he knew) as many as four profligate economies in
that title-page and those Reflections, and he uses the language of
distress and perplexity at this appalling discovery.
Now why this coup de théâtre? The reason soon breaks on us.
Up to February 1, he could not categorically arraign me for lying, and
therefore could not involve me (as was so necessary for his case), in
the popular abhorrence which is felt for the casuists of Rome: but, as
soon as ever he could openly and directly pronounce (saving his “hault
courage and strict honour") that I am guilty of three or four new
economies, then at once I am made to bear, not only my own sins, but
the sins of other people also, and, though I have been condoned the
knavery of my antecedents, I am guilty of the knavery of a whole
priesthood instead. So the hour of doom for Semei is come, and the wise
man knows what to do with him;—he is down upon me with the odious
names of “St. Alfonso da Liguori,” and “Scavini” and “Neyraguet,” and
“the Romish moralists,” and their “compeers and pupils,” and I am at
once merged and whirled away in the gulph of notorious quibblers, and
hypocrites, and rogues.
But we have not even yet got at the real object of the stroke, thus
reserved for his finale. I really feel sad for what I am obliged
now to say. I am in warfare with him, but I wish him no ill;—it is
very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never
seen. It is easy enough to be irritated with friends or foes,
vis-à-vis; but, though I am writing with all my heart against what
he has said of me, I am not conscious of personal unkindness towards
himself. I think it necessary to write as I am writing, for my own
sake, and for the sake of the Catholic priesthood; but I wish to impute
nothing worse to Kingsley than that he has been furiously carried away
by his feelings. But what shall I say of the upshot of all this talk of
my economies and equivocations and the like? What is the precise
work which it is directed to effect? I am at war with him; but
there is such a thing as legitimate warfare: war has its laws; there
are things which may fairly be done, and things which may not be done.
I say it with shame and with stern sorrow;—he has attempted a great
transgression; he has attempted (as I may call it) to poison the
wells. I will quote him and explain what I mean.
“Dr. Newman tries, by cunning sleight-of-hand logic, to prove that I
did not believe the accusation when I made it. Therein he is mistaken.
I did believe it, and I believed also his indignant denial. But when he
goes on to ask with sneers, why I should believe his denial, if I did
not consider him trustworthy in the first instance? I can only answer,
I really do not know. There is a great deal to be said for
that view, now that Dr. Newman has become (one must needs
suppose) suddenly and since the 1st of February, 1864, a
convert to the economic views of St. Alfonso da Liguori and his
compeers. I am henceforth in doubt and fear, as much as
any honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may
write. How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning
equivocation, of one of the three kinds laid down as permissible by
the blessed Alfonso da Liguori and his pupils, even when confirmed by
an oath, because 'then we do not deceive our neighbour, but allow him
to deceive himself?' ... It is admissible, therefore, to use words and
sentences which have a double signification, and leave the hapless
hearer to take which of them he may choose. What proof have I, then,
that by 'mean it? I never said it!' Dr. Newman does not signify, I
did not say it, but I did mean it?”—Pp. 44, 45.
Now these insinuations and questions shall be answered in their
proper places; here I will but say that I scorn and detest lying, and
quibbling, and double-tongued practice, and slyness, and cunning, and
smoothness, and cant, and pretence, quite as much as any Protestants
hate them; and I pray to be kept from the snare of them. But all this
is just now by the bye; my present subject is Mr. Kingsley; what I
insist upon here, now that I am bringing this portion of my discussion
to a close, is this unmanly attempt of his, in his concluding pages, to
cut the ground from under my feet;—to poison by anticipation the
public mind against me, John Henry Newman, and to infuse into the
imaginations of my readers, suspicion and mistrust of everything that I
may say in reply to him. This I call poisoning the wells.
“I am henceforth in doubt and fear,” he says, “as much as any
honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may
write. How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning
equivocation? ... What proof have I, that by 'mean it? I never said
it!' Dr. Newman does not signify, 'I did not say it, but I did mean
it'?”
Well, I can only say, that, if his taunt is to take effect, I am but
wasting my time in saying a word in answer to his foul calumnies; and
this is precisely what he knows and intends to be its fruit. I can
hardly get myself to protest against a method of controversy so base
and cruel, lest in doing so, I should be violating my self-respect and
self-possession; but most base and most cruel it is. We all know how
our imagination runs away with us, how suddenly and at what a
pace;—the saying, “Caesar's wife should not be suspected,” is an
instance of what I mean. The habitual prejudice, the humour of the
moment, is the turning-point which leads us to read a defence in a good
sense or a bad. We interpret it by our antecedent impressions. The very
same sentiments, according as our jealousy is or is not awake, or our
aversion stimulated, are tokens of truth or of dissimulation and
pretence. There is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in
the wards of a lunatic asylum, and that, when he pleaded his cause to
some strangers visiting the establishment, the only remark he elicited
in answer was, “How naturally he talks! you would think he was in his
senses.” Controversies should be decided by the reason; is it
legitimate warfare to appeal to the misgivings of the public mind and
to its dislikings? Anyhow, if Mr. Kingsley is able thus to practise
upon my readers, the more I succeed, the less will be my success. If I
am natural, he will tell them, “Ars est celare artem;” if I am
convincing, he will suggest that I am an able logician; if I show
warmth, I am acting the indignant innocent; if I am calm, I am thereby
detected as a smooth hypocrite; if I clear up difficulties, I am too
plausible and perfect to be true. The more triumphant are my
statements, the more certain will be my defeat.
So will it be if Mr. Kingsley succeeds in his manoeuvre; but I do
not for an instant believe that he will. Whatever judgment my readers
may eventually form of me from these pages, I am confident that they
will believe me in what I shall say in the course of them. I have no
misgiving it all, that they will be ungenerous or harsh with a man who
has been so long before the eyes of the world; who has so many to speak
of him from personal knowledge; whose natural impulse it has ever been
to speak out; who has ever spoken too much rather than too little; who
would have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been wise enough to
hold his tongue; who has ever been fair to the doctrines and arguments
of his opponents; who has never slurred over facts and reasonings which
told against himself; who has never given his name or authority to
proofs which he thought unsound, or to testimony which he did not think
at least plausible; who has never shrunk from confessing a fault when
he felt that he had committed one; who has ever consulted for others
more than for himself; who has given up much that he loved and prized
and could have retained, but that he loved honesty better than name,
and truth better than dear friends.
And now I am in a train of thought higher and more serene than any
which slanders can disturb. Away with you, Mr. Kingsley, and fly into
space. Your name shall occur again as little as I can help, in the
course of these pages. I shall henceforth occupy myself not with you,
but with your charges.