Chapter 31

LITERARY WORK AND INTERESTS

[Footnote: By Miss Constance Hinton Smith.]

No view of Sir Charles Dilke's life can be complete which fails to take account of his literary interests and activities. He disclaimed the title of man of letters. [Footnote: 'Except in editing some of my grandfather's papers, I never myself at all ventured into the paths of pure literature; but I have lived near enough to it and them ... to be able to enjoy.'] Except for the little memoir of his second wife, all the books he gave to the world, as well as the larger part of his periodical writing, were inspired by political, though not by party, considerations. And throughout the years of his public career the pressure of daily work inside and outside Parliament left him small leisure for reading other than that through which he kept himself acquainted with every movement, and as far as was humanly possible with every fact, that seemed to bear upon the wide range of subjects handled by him. So prodigious was his industry, however--only Dominie Sampson's adjective will serve--and so quick his faculty for detecting at a glance the quality of a book and extracting from it the pith and marrow, that even in the busiest periods of his life he contrived to keep abreast of the things best worth knowing, not only in English, but also in French literature. From the time when, by his father's death, he inherited the proprietorship of the _Athenaeum_, he exercised, through that journal, a definite if indirect influence in the maintenance of the high standards of literary honesty, accuracy, and taste in which he had been brought up. This was done partly by means of his own contributions to the paper, which covered a field which included history, travel, art, poetry, and archaeology in two languages, and partly through "his comments and suggestions on the proofs," of which Mr. C. A. Cook, a former acting editor, writes with abiding gratitude. Other newspaper proprietors have doubtless done as much to preserve uniformity of tone and principle; few, if any, have probably brought such close and unwearied care to bear upon those details in which tone is audible and principle expresses itself.

Sir Charles Dilke's attitude towards literature, like his attitude to politics and art, was peculiar to himself. He judged books, as he judged men, not by the conventional verdict of the world--in this case the world of critics--but by the quality his own mind discerned in them. His judgments, therefore, were personal judgments, uncoloured, as far as human judgments can be, by traditional respect or prejudice. This does not mean that he had no literary canons: his grandfather's pupil could hardly have left old Mr. Dilke's hands so unfurnished; but he never became the slave of a rule or the docile worshipper of any reputation, however well established. This mental freedom was partly due to intellectual courage. The humour of Lamb, for example, delights the majority of educated Englishmen: it had no charm for Sir Charles, and he was not afraid to say so. But his liberty of appreciation owed something also to the circumstances of his education. The fact that he had never been at a public school--thus missing, in the plastic years of a sensitive boyhood, the influences which make most strongly for conventionality of outlook among men of a certain class--made it easier for him than it might otherwise have been to examine literary questions with his own eyes, and not through the medium of special glasses imposed by authority. By the time he went up to Cambridge this habit of judging for himself was already formed; and although Cambridge did much to mould, she did not remake him.

The catalogue of his published writings, apart from those contributed to magazines and newspapers, is brief. It consists practically of the early book that made him famous as a political thinker, _Greater Britain_; the brilliant satire, _Prince Florestan_, published anonymously in 1874, of which he subsequently acknowledged the authorship; and the few volumes written after the close of his official career, each of which deals with large questions of public and international interest. _Problems of Greater Britain_ and _Imperial Defence_ (the latter written in collaboration with Mr. Spenser Wilkinson) were the most important of these works, which do not represent fully the literary ambition of his earlier years. There is plenty of evidence in the Memoir to show that, at the time of that journey round the world of which _Greater Britain_ was the result, he had not only formed, but had begun to carry out, several literary projects. Some of these, essays in verse, story- writing, and metaphysical speculation, belong to the category of experiment or amusement, and represent nothing more than the natural activity of a fertile mind trying its powers now in this direction, now in that. Others are more characteristic: a History of Radicalism, a Political Geography, a book to be called _The Anglo-Saxon Race_ or _The English World_, and a work on _International Law_. [Footnote: See