CHAPTER VII.

THE HISTORY OF PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE ADOPTED AS THE SUBJECT OF A DRAMA.-PROPOSAL OF A NEW EMPLOYMENT WHICH DOES NOT TAKE EFFECT.-MISS VILLIERS.

ANNO DOM. 1828-29. ANNO ÆT. 28-29.

In the spring of 1828 I was meditating another drama; and Southey, after dissuading me from founding one upon the story of Patkul, suggested that of Philip Van Artevelde, which I at once adopted, writing, on March 9:

"I have finished Artevelde's story in Barante. A play could not develop the character from first to last, or comprise the story, unless it were, like Wallenstein, divided into parts. The first part should conduct him from obscurity to his conquest of Bruges-everywhere the fairest, and at the latter point the brightest, of his history. And the second part might bring him from the splendor of his first achievement through the consequent moral changes to his death. I agree with you that there are fine materials for an historical drama."

And ten days later I wrote that "Philip Van Artevelde" was begun; without much notion, probably, at that time that six years would be required to complete it.

But my official tasks were heavy for some of those years, if not for all; and I find from a letter to Southey in September, 1828, that I meditated taking upon myself new labors, which would have put poetry out of the question:

"The proposal which is now made is that I should re

tain my present office under the colonial secretary of state, and give my spare time to another member of the cabinet, my income being raised to £1200 a year. Beyond this accession to my income my new employer says he promises nothing, and should hold himself perfectly clear in honor and in everything else if he did nothing for me; but he adds that, if circumstances favored it, his object would be to cultivate a close alliance and undertake the structure of my fortunes.' Perhaps that is a structure which (if raised at all) is more likely to be the work of my own hands than of any other person's; but he or any man is welcome to carry the bricks and mortar. think it likely that this arrangement will be concluded, and then farewell to Philip Van Artevelde and all other my recreations! For heavy will be the burden I shall have taken up! I shall have nothing but the objects of political life to repay me, and I must cultivate the sort of ambition which gives them their value."

I

There are traces here of a spirit of pride and self-assertion which I had not then learned to be as alien as I afterwards knew them to be from a pure and genuine spirit of independence. In a letter to my father I adverted to the proposed employment as one which, "if it led to any advancement, would lead me into the line of life of a political adventurer without private fortune, which I know and see is a hard, anxious, and unquiet life, and I think a life of more excitement than any except those of an actor or of a highwayman. On the other hand, advancement has of course its charms with me as with other people, though I do not occupy myself with doubtful prospects of it, or dwell upon them, or care so much about them as that their removal would give me a moment's concern."

...

The negotiation came to nothing, and Van Artevelde went on his way.

But my father had misgivings as to the division of my powers between business and poetry, quoting the example of a person [name illegible] of whom it was said he might have been a good poet if he had not attempted to be a statesman, and a good statesman if he had not attempted to be a poet; and he expressed a hope that I would only take poetry as a pleasant change in the application of my powers, and not let it engross them at the expense of my health or the real business of life. His chief solicitude was about my health, which was far from strong; and he was by no means ambitious for me, or desirous that I should aim at a political career.

He may probably have thought that I was unfitted for such a career by other wants than the want of health; and if so he was not altogether wrong. Mr. Gladstone, I was told the other day, says of me that "I had wanted noth- ́ ing but ambition to have been a great man;" meaning, no doubt, great in the way that he is great himself, politically. I think there were more things wanting. I might have done well enough as a subordinate and co-operative politician, but I was unfitted to be a political leader in such times as those in which my lot was cast. In respect of organic politics I have always been of a sceptical turn -a man of uncertain opinions, and rather glad not to have occasion to form any. Such a man, if he be but moderately conscientious, must be unfitted for projecting great organic changes in complex politics, or for taking any high command in a battle for them. If I regarded the Reform Bill of 1832 as justifiable, it was not with sanguine expectations of the result, and only because there might be more danger in doing nothing or doing less. It is true that I was prepared to act with any amount of vigor and intrepidity on the question of West Indian' slavery; but that was one of the simplest of all questions

of organic change. I was thoroughly conversant with the dangers and horrors of the system in existence, and though I was not wholly free from doubts as to what might ensue upon emancipation, I could have no doubt that whatever else it might be, it would be better than what it supplanted.

But if my father formed a just estimate of my disqualifications for political life, he probably saw no sufficient reason for believing (have I myself the belief even now? I suppose I have, or I would not now be writing this autobiography) that I would be one of the few who attain to permanent celebrity as a poet.

I did not defend my course upon any such ground: if I thought it so defensible, which I can only have done in a doubtful way, for my forecasts have never been sanguine or positive, I suppressed my thoughts, and only answered that no doubt I should be a worse man of business for being a writer of poetry, and the worse poet for being a man of business; but that as writing plays was the only pleasure in which I indulged, I was enabled to despatch my business regularly and competently in the main; adding, "If I were more devoted to business I should probably grasp more of it into my own hands which is properly belonging to others; but my own share, considered in the widest extent of what can be called mine, would not be otherwise dealt with than it is now. What I do I very seldom do incompletely; for I have always had an aversion to incompleteness in anything. If I were to go into society, or to do anything else but despatch business and write plays, I could not get on certainly with both. But I read almost nothing and go nowhere. Ask my cousin, too [meaning Miss Fenwick], and she will say, that if I have an imagination it was meant to be exercised."

This habit of "going nowhere" was not altogether sat

isfactory to my mother, especially as there was one exception. "I wish you could tell us," she had said, "of any pleasant new acquaintances. You will grow old without variety, and if the Villiers family disappoint you, or be separated from you by the events of life, then you will have no intimates at all; and it is always bad to keep to one set of acquaintances; your thoughts and your opinions become contracted, and it forms a prejudiced mind; and then, to avoid that, people assume a kind of allowance for other opinions that they call candor; but it does not deserve the name; it is more frequently a piece of deceit, and instead of producing the delightful effect of truth upon an honest mind of another way of thinking, it gives a strong, muscular sensation of the right arm, that might produce a box on the ear, but for the habit of control."

No doubt what was in my stepmother's mind was that I had been passing two or three years in much intimacy with one young lady, and with one only; that this one was attractive to all the world, and, as she would know from the descriptions of her in my letters, could not but be peculiarly so to me; and that it was highly improbable that the consequences would be favorable to my happi

ness.

Her mother had become a great friend of mine. I frequented Kent House continually, and when the London season was over and the family left town, Mrs. Villiers and I kept up a weekly correspondence. She was a woman of a strong and ardent nature, but also a woman of the world; and neither she nor I could have thought of a nearer connection as possible, except in certain contingencies of worldly advancement not likely to occur at any early period. I had been brought up in what she would think poverty. I had no objection to it, and I was