[British Critic, April 1842]
The author on whose character and writings we are now proposing to remark, Mr. Davison, may be considered as an instance of the operation of a mysterious law which is often witnessed in the course of history. It is surely mysterious, considering what the world is, how it needs improvement, and moreover that this life is the appropriate time for action, or, what is emphatically called in Scripture, work, that they who seem gifted for the definite purpose of influencing and edifying their brethren, should be allowed to do so much less than might be expected. For instance, no one certainly, it must be admitted, can pretend to measure the effect produced by as much as Mr. Davison has been appointed to say and to do; still, left to ourselves, we are apt to grudge that the powers of such a mind as his have not had full range in his age and country, and that a promise of such high benefits, should, owing to circumstances beyond man’s control, have been but partially accomplished. Here is one of the most original thinkers of his day, deep, serious, reverential, various, suffered to end his course, as it may be called, prematurely; absorbed moreover during the greater part of it in employments which, though sacred in their nature and honoured by a special blessing, and zealously fulfilled by him, yet apparently might have been left to those who had not his particular endowments; and, as the consequence of those employments, stinted in his apprehension and possession of dogmatic knowledge, so that what he has written is rather true in principle and admirable in sentiment, than complete in system. Here is a man of the cast of Hooker and Butler, fitted to be a doctor of the Church, yet confined pretty much to the contemplation of the first principles of Christian doctrine, and allowed but once or twice to give utterance to the truths on which he lived, and to manifest the flame which burned unceasingly within him.
Of course in such cases we may rest quite secure that all is ordered according to the most perfect wisdom, though we do not understand it. But what deserves notice in the case before us is, that the bent and temper of Mr. Davison’s own mind did but concur in and carry out this external disposition of things, which we have been noticing, as if within and without one Agent was present, or as if his inner man was instinctively resigning itself to his outward destination. At the time of his death, the common report was that he had ordered all his manuscripts to be destroyed; and in the Preface to the present collection it is pointedly observed that “nothing hitherto unpublished appears in it.” We also learn from the Preface that the same feeling has operated to the maintenance of an almost absolute silence about the author’s history. It professes to give “the few brief notes of his life, which those who are entrusted with his Remains feel to be all that they are permitted here to set down. A Memoir greatly more detailed, and so far more satisfactory, might very easily have been compiled. But in this, and in many like particulars, the wishes of those who survive have given way to their decided conviction of what his would have been.”—P. iii.
Moreover, if we may continue our remarks on this subject, it would appear as if there were something even in the outward bearing and demeanour of this revered person, which answered the same purpose of concealing from the gaze of the world what he was. We do not write as being his friends or acquaintance; he was of a generation before us; we do not write as if in apology or explanation; but we write as thinking him a man of a great mind, and as feeling, we cannot deny, some curiosity and pleasure in contemplating an instance, the more interesting because not uncommon, of the secresy and solitude in which great minds move, as if, like our Lord’s forerunner, they would not force themselves on the world, but were bidding it, if it thought worth while, to “go out into the wilderness” after them. In the Preface to these Remains, it is observed of their author, that “perhaps his whole character might be cast in a mould of severer goodness than this age could easily endure,“—p. v., reminding us of the plaintive distich, “Few were the admirers of Thucydides, son of Olorus.” “They that wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses.” We can conceive such an one, epicurean or academic, refined, fastidious, accomplished, indolent, spending an aimless life amid society and literary leisure, falling in with the subject of these remarks, and shrinking from the reality of mind which he could not appreciate, and disgusted with the staidness or abruptness which he could.
The confessions of such a man of the world, small in the midst of his endowments and advantages, have lately got abroad. “I saw D. the other day in town,” he says: “it is quite astonishing that with such an understanding and such acquirements, his manners should be entirely odious and detestable. How you could live with him without hating him, I do not understand. Clever as he is, there must be some great defect in his mind, or he would try to make himself a little more sufferable.”—Letters, p. 58. Of course such a judgment can give pain to no friend of the subject of it. Probably Lord Dudley was very offensive in his own way, and found his match. Of course he would have no perception that this was the case; and feeling that he had been struck by something very hard, would consider, not that he had himself impinged, but that he had been assailed. Certainly men of reverential and religious tempers are apt to hide themselves from those who are not worthy of them; nay, it must be confessed too, they often put on a very rough jacket for their special benefit. The above record then on the part of a man, whom with all his estimable points few persons will take as an authority, is not one which deserves dwelling on for its own sake; yet it may be taken, not without profit, as a specimen of the judgments, so often found in history, so often at this day, which the world forms of those who are endeavouring to live within the veil, and to view things as He views them who sees all things as they really are. Men of cultivated minds consider great divines or great philosophers merely in an intellectual point of view, and think they have a right to be admitted at once to their familiarity, when they meet them. They have no objection to exclusiveness, when talent and education, or again when wealth and station, are made the tickets of admission; but they are very much disgusted, when they find the exclusiveness conducted on quite another principle, when the brotherhood of mind or the talisman of good society avails them nothing, and when they find themselves without, not within, the privileged circle. Till this “odious” and “insufferable” reserve is introduced, they will bear with a great deal in the way of difference, singularity, or, as they call it, even error of opinion. A man, for instance, to take what principally meets our view at this time, may go a great way in Catholic opinions, and will be allowed to say and do what would be considered monstrous in another, if he does but conform himself to the existing state of things, adopt the tone of the world, take his place in the social body, and become an integral member, and a breathing and living portion, and a contented servant, of things which perish. But if he will not put an establishment or a philosophy in the place of the Church, if he will not do homage to talent as such, or wealth as such, or official eminence as such, then he is out of joint with the age, and not only his words, but his look and his air, are like a pail of cold water thrown over every man of the world whom he meets. Thus, to instance the phenomenon in an extreme case, Hume, as is well known, said he never fell in with a religious man who was not melancholy.