It is a touching proof how not many years may sever old and fast friends, which you may find in Keble's Life: in the record how Newman and he met at Keble's door, and neither recognised the other. Newman tells us he did not know Keble, and Keble asked Newman who he was: which question he answered by presenting his card. I think it was not ten years since they last had met. It is very sad and strange.

There are many more things one would wish to say: but in treating such a subject there is a temptation to go too much to personal experience. And that must not be. So let me tear up some notes I had made, of other things to be said, and behold them consume away in this little fire. Let it be said, summing up matters, that looking at even a hale well-preserved gray-headed old individual, the thing I cannot help thinking of him just at present is, how time and change have gradually alienated him from old things and old associates: self-concentred him: left a great chasm all around him: isolated him: left no one really near him: left him alone. If his wife is dead, or if he were never married, he is lonely as though in the midst of the great Atlantic. His professional friends

and his club friends may like him well enough: but who is fool enough to fancy that club friends and professional friends will care much when he dies? There is in truth a gulf between you and such. His children are remote, even though dwelling in the same house. His own youth, and early manhood, and the main toils and interests of his life, have receded into dim distance, and look spectral there. Life tends to converge upon himself, and his own physical comforts: and it is very wretched to come to that. Wherefore, my friends, let us keep close together! It is a blessing to have some one so near you, that you may tell (sure of attentive sympathy) all you do, all you wish and fear, all you think, in so far as words suffice to tell that. And from such a one you will hear the same. It is not selfishness or egotism that prompts such confidence: it is the desire to counterwork that increasing alienation, which in the latter years tends to estrange us from others, to throw us in upon ourselves, to make us quite alone. Keep as near as you will, there is still an inevitable space between: a certain distance between you and your best friends in this world.

A. K. H. B.

with those which he brought. He has given additional fullness of meaning to Shaftesbury's vague hints and inconclusive snatches at thought; and though he may be personally conscious of the difference between the germ and the full development, his readers may find it difficult to detect the real Shaftesbury thus overlaid with modern theory. Yet Dr. Spicker brings high authorities for attributing some greater value to Shaftesbury than we generally allow. Hettner, for example, calls him one of the most important phenomena of the eighteenth century. Not only the English, he says, but all the greatest minds of the period-Leibnitz, Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Wieland, and Herder-drew the richest nourishment from his pages; and he extends to all his writings Herder's enthusiastic description of The Moralists as a dialogue almost worthy of Grecian antiquity in form, and far superior to it in contents. Have we, indeed, been entertaining an angel unawares? Dr. Spicker, of course, quotes the old example of Shakespeare, and once more assures us that we never recognised the value of our national poet until his significance was fully revealed to us by German critics. There is, however, a marked difference between the cases. Shakespeare, though our German friends may choose to forget it, was the object of our national adoration long before he became the idol of the whole world. Our enthusiasm was almost as unqualified in the days of Garrick and Johnson as now, and Pope reveals what was the popular creed even in his day, when he speaks of

Shakespeare, whom you and every play

give a reason for it. But if Shaftesbury is to be raised to a lofty place in our Walhalla, the enthusiasm has to be created as well as explained. In such questions the vox populi is very nearly infallible. When critics declare that an author does not deserve the neglect which he receives, the admission of the fact is generally more significant than the protest. When, as sometimes happens, we find a man being still refuted a century after his death, we may be pretty sure that he said something worth notice; and, inversely, when we find that nobody cares to refute him, it is tolerably safe to assume that he had no genuine vitality.

In considering, however, the value of this appeal against the verdict of posterity, we must admit that there are certain reasons, besides his intrinsic want of merit, which may account in some measure for his neglect. They are reasons, too, which are more likely to repel a native than a foreign reader. The feeling of annoyance which generally causes a student to put down the Characteristics with a certain impatience is more or less due to defects, which would be less perceptible to a German, especially to a German endowed with the natural robustness of literary appetite. Shaftesbury suffered under two delusions, which are unfortunately very common amongst authors. He believed himself to possess a sense of humour and a specially fine critical taste. Whenever he tries to be facetious he is intolerable; he reminds one of that painful jocosity which is sometimes assumed by a grave professor, who fancies, with perfect truth, that his audience is inclined to yawn, and argues, in most unfortunate conflict with the truth, that such heavy gambols as he can manage will rouse them to the smiling point. The result is generally depressing. Yet Shaftesbury