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As for history "Whatever may be the use of this sort of composition in itself and abstractedly," says Walter Bagehot, "it is certainly of great use relatively and to literary men. Consider the position of a man of that species. He sits beside a library fire, with nice white paper, a good pen, a capital style every means of saying everything, but nothing to say.
But Montesquieu and Blackstone, in their treatment of this point, had their eyes upon the legal fictions, and were blind to the real machinery which was working under them. They gave elegant expression to what the late Mr. Bagehot called the "literary theory" of the English Constitution. But the real thing differed essentially from the "literary theory" even in their day.
The ultimate decision, however, is probably less affected by the Under-Secretary's minute than by the oral advice of a much more important personage, the Permanent Head of the office. It would be beyond my present scope to discuss the composition and powers of the permanent Civil Service, whose chiefs have been, at least since the days of Bagehot, recognized as the real rulers of this country.
The real social forces of the time found there no channels of activity; and the difference between De Lolme and Bagehot is the latter's power to go behind the screen of statute to the inner sources of power. The basis of revolutionary doctrine was already present in England when, in 1762, Rousseau published his Contrat Social.
As the legally accredited representative of the sovereign, as the recognized head of society, he represents what Bagehot has aptly styled "the dignified part of our constitution," which has much value in a country like ours where we fortunately retain the permanent form of monarchy in harmony with the democratic machinery of our government.
Gibbon. Texts: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by Bury, 7 vols. Criticism: Essays, by Birrell, in Collected Essays and Res Judicatae; by Stephen, in Studies of a Biographer; by Robertson, in Pioneer Humanists; by Frederick Harrison, in Ruskin and Other Literary Estimates; by Bagehot, in Literary Studies; by Sainte-Beuve, in English Portraits. See also Anton's Masters in History.
Among his other writings may be mentioned Essays, Theological and Literary , Modern Guides of English Thought , and Contemporary Thought and Thinkers , which were more or less reprints or expansions of his work in periodicals, and a memoir of Bagehot prefixed to an ed. of his works. Scientific writer, s. of an assistant master in a public school, was b. at Ealing.
It could not be said of them, as Bagehot said of Shakespeare: "He puts things together, he refers things to a principle; rather, they group themselves in his intelligence insensibly around a principle;...a cool oneness, a poised personality, pervades him." But in these men there is no cool oneness, no reasonable soul, and so they miss the central unity of life, which can give unity to literature.
And if the man in the market-place chances to be a prophet, his message is safe from assault. No laughter can silence him, no ridicule weaken his words. Carlyle's grim humour was also drilled into efficacy. He used it in orderly fashion; he gave it force by a stern principle of repression. Bagehot puts it "in platoons." He had some measure of mercy for folly.
The deductive character of this Scottish literature prevented it from having popular effect, and therefore from weakening the national superstition, from which Scotland, even to-day, has been unable to shake herself free. The English Constitution Walter Bagehot was born at Langport in Somerset, England, Feb. 3, 1826, and died on March 24, 1877.
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