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the whole campaign. He asked how it was, if he were guilty of petty larcenies, that Disraeli was prepared to give him his support in 1841. "It is still more surprising," he added, "that he should have been ready, as I think he was, to unite his fortunes with mine in office, thus implying the strongest proof which any public man can give of confidence in the honour and integrity of a Minister of the Crown." Peel's retort was perfectly fair, and might have been fairly met. It would have been easy for Disraeli to point out that the Peel of 1846 was not the Peel of 1841, whom he had been prepared to support and to serve— that in the five elapsing years Peel had sacrificed all his cherished principles and had turned his back upon the declared policy of the Tory party. Unfortunately Disraeli did not do this. Instead, he was guilty of what will always seem the most discreditable utterance of his life. He denied that he had ever asked of Peel the smallest favour. "I never shall," said he,-"it is totally foreign to my nature-make an application for any place."

Was

it forgetfulness or falsehood? Even if we take it at its worst -as perhaps we are bound to do-it is a sin which most politicians would commit with a light heart. There is always an off-chance that an incriminating letter may be lost, and in the rough-and-tumble of politics, scruples, we fear, are never too finely edged. "Let the politician," says Mr Mony

penny, "who is without sin in the matter of veracity cast the first stone."

Thus the battle had been fought with only one wrong blow on the part of Disraeli, and the discomfiture of Peel was complete. "They had trooped: all the men of metal and large-acred squires," into

the lobby hostile to their leader. Peel was left, like Napoleon after Moscow, "without his army." Artistically, oratorically, morally, the victory remained with Disraeli. We say "morally," because we quite agree with Mr Monypenny that "there is not only a moral but an intellectual integrity, and in the intellectual virtue Peel was as much the inferior of Disraeli as in the moral he was his superior." We wish that Disraeli had not made a false declaration. We cannot acquit Peel of the charge that he betrayed the lifelong convictions of himself and his colleagues. However, with Peel's retirement the organised hypocrisy was swept away, and, as Mr Monypenny says, "from the moment Disraeli had succeeded in driving Peel from office, he never uttered another offensive word against him."

Mr Monypenny has discharged his task with profound knowledge and a balanced judgment. His grasp

of politics, modern and ancient, enables him easily to unravel the threads of threads of a complex situation. His growing and proper partiality for Disraeli does not darken his sense of justice nor impair his estimate

the coldest critic of another's conduct that Parliament has known since the Cornet of Horse, Disraeli is destined presently to exchange the free courage of a light-horseman for the responsibilities of leadership.

And though the

difficulty of Mr Monypenny's task increases with its progress, he will not fall, as he has not fallen, below his opportunity.

Since these
these pages were

of Disraeli's adversaries. And position, supreme in invective, this volume increases the favourable impression of Disraeli's character made by the first. The more that is discovered of the man and his career, the more readily are we convinced of his honour and integrity. Truly of him it may be said that to know all is to know how little there is to pardon. He has been blamed, for instance, by those whose interest it was to cover him with insult, that he married his wife mainly for her money. There is no more deeply interesting chapter in Mr Monypenny's book than that in which he allows Disraeli to tell the story of his courtship and marriage. Both husband and wife come out bravely from the ordeal of publicity; and if an honourable man has been relieved of reproach, the portrait of an admirably loyal and devoted woman is well and truly drawn. Mr Monypenny leaves Disraeli at the turning-point of his career. Fierce in op- health.

in type Mr Monypenny has been overtaken, to our great regret, by an untimely death. We prefer to leave the expression of our just hope for the future as it was written, and to record that the work we have read with so keen an appreciation is not merely an excellent piece of biography, but was achieved heroically, as the crowning effort of a full life, when its author was dogged and dispirited by ill

WILLIAM BLACK WOOD.

It is with the profoundest regret that we record the death of William Blackwood, for more than thirty years the editor of this Magazine. To contributors and readers alike his death brings with it a consciousness of personal loss. How great that loss is to friends and contributors can be measured by them alone. Yet so closely bound up were his character and energies with the Magazine, which was in effect a clear expression of his tastes and preferences, that he seemed familiar to many who had never been privileged to count him among their friends or even to exchange a word with him.

Born at Lucknow in 1836, the son of a soldier, and the grandson of the founder of the publishing house, William Blackwood was educated to fill his destined place. After a sojourn at the University of Edinburgh, he spent some years at the Sorbonne and at Heidelberg, and when, in 1857, he joined the house of Blackwood, he had some knowledge of three literatures. Five years later his partnership was announced in a characteristic letter written by John Blackwood to Mrs Oliphant. "Address

your proof to Willie, here," he wrote. "I have made him a partner in the old House this week, and I hope he will keep the colours flying when his aged Uncle has grown unfit for work." In 1879 John Blackwood died, and thenceforth William Blackwood was head of the business and editor of the Magazine. How valiantly he "kept the colours flying" is within the knowledge of us all.

He came to the editorial chair in an inauspicious moment. A parliamentary compulsion to read and write had sensibly lowered the standard of literary appreciation. He was faced by the new and unforeseen competition of popular magazines which flattered the eye as well as beguiled the mind of their readers. In 1878 John Blackwood, in a retrospect, vaunted with perfect justice the supremacy of his Magazine. "The Magazine began in 1817," he wrote, "and has held its own at the head of the field ever since. Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, when at the highest wave of their popularity, all started or were employed to start periodicals, but they never touched Blackwood.'" To strive with rivals who aim at an equal height of achievement is an honourable enterprise. It is a less satisfaction to combat ad

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versaries of a lower ambition, and it is characteristic of William Blackwood that he made no concession to the shifting of popular taste. He upheld the dignified traditions of his house, he preserved unchanged the ancient policy, and it is the greatest of his triumphs that he leaves the Magazine as full of life and vigour as it was on the day when John Blackwood wrote his retrospect. Between the old and the new there is but one difference: while in John Blackwood's time all articles were anonymous, William Blackwood encouraged signing contributors. But he did not make this an occasion for trafficking in names. He did not pursue with feverish haste the idol of the moment, and it still remained the good fortune of the Magazine to make reputations, not to buy them ready-made.

The qualities of a good editor were innate in William Blackwood, and experience had vastly improved them. He was animated always by a consistent purpose. There is a continuity in the Magazine which you will hardly match in periodic literature. Alone of its kind, Blackwood' has always had a policy, guided in the path of uniformity by its skilful editor. From the principles of a sound Toryism William Blackwood never wavered. He was fierce in attack, as he was staunch in support, and he never countenanced a strange opinion or encouraged a wayward fad from a love of novelty or extravagance. And as his purpose was consistent, so it was sustained by an intellectual honesty and courage, which are rare in the world. He had no fear of speaking what he believed to be the truth. He was no lover of half measures and twisted counsels. It was not his ambition to print merely the soft answer or the amiable reproof. His policy, in brief, was a fighting policy; his intention, in which he never failed, was to see expressed in the pages of his Magazine the opinions upon life and letters which he believed to be just and right.

And he was a good editor, above all, because he understood better than any of his contemporaries the management of his staff. Where he found a contributor, he kept a friend. The relation of writer and editor is not always of the pleasantest. A lack of discipline on the one side, a hint of tyranny on the other, or, worse still, a reciprocal inhumanity, may make the position irksome, even untenable. We believe that none ever wrote an article for 'Blackwood' without willingly coming under the sway of its editor. There was never an unnecessary obtrusion of business. To write was an office of friendship, generously rewarded; an obligation was felt and acknowledged on

either side; the friendship remained firmly knit. In thus seeking a personal knowledge of his writers, William Blackwood was but following an honoured custom of his house. His uncle and predecessor eloquently explained his theory of publishing at the Scott Centenary Banquet. "Much was said," he declared, "of quarrels between authors and publishers, but he was happy to say that they were not within his knowledge; on the contrary, he could tell a very different tale. Authors had been his dearest friends and companions all the days of his life." These happy words might have been repeated with perfect truth by William Blackwood, and this truth helps us to understand the conspicuous success of his editorship.

Having made his contributors his friends, he put complete trust in them. He did not ask them to do that which did not fall within their scope. Though fertile in suggestion, he knew them to be the best judges of their own possibilities, and he always turned a ready ear to any project they might form. When he approved their work, he was most generous in appreciation. The letters which he wrote at the end of every month to his collaborators were masterpieces of their kind. He delighted to give his views concerning the current number and to invite the views of others. By this means he strengthened existing intimacies, and created a feeling of loyal co-operation which never died. And though, like the wise editor that he was, he refrained from writing himself, he saw with absolute clarity what kind of paper was suitable to his Magazine, he was a shrewd judge of literary worth, and he left his impress upon every number that was issued under his auspices.

This impress was various, like his mind. Though he entered the publishing house early in life, he was always a man of diverse interests. An intrepid sportsman, he rode to hounds for many years. He was passionately devoted to golf and cricket. A soldier's son, he had served in the Mid-Lothian Yeomanry Cavalry, and was a member of the Royal Company of Archers. Lucknow was his birthplace, and it was to India, where so many Blackwoods have found their career, that he turned always with enthusiasm. There is not one of these interests that was not conspicuous in his Magazine. The articles on sport have won the general admiration of sportsmen. No soldier need fear lest he should there find his affairs handled without sympathy and understanding. And surely there is no magazine that has painted more vividly the hardships and triumphs of Indian service than 'Blackwood,' and none that

VOL. CXCII.-NO. MCLXVI.

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