Art. 10.-ALFRED LYALL.

Life of Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall. By Sir H. Mortimer Durand. London and Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1913.

I.

AFTER reading and admiring Sir Mortimer Durand's life of Alfred Lyall, I am tempted to exclaim in the words of Shenstone's exquisite inscription, which has always seemed to me about the best thing that Shenstone ever wrote, 'Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!' He was one of my oldest and best of friends. More than this, although our characters differed widely, and although I should never for a moment think of rating my intellectual attainments on a par with his, at the same time I may say that in the course of a long life I do not think that I have ever been brought in contact with anyone with whom I found myself in more thorough community of opinion and sentiment upon the sundry and manifold questions which excited our common interest. He was a strong Unionist, a strong Free Trader, and a strong anti-suffragist. I am, for good or evil, all these things. He was a sincere Liberal in the non-party sense of that very elastic word. So was I. That is to say, there was a time when we both thought ourselves good mid-Victorian Liberals-a school of politicians whose ideas have now been swept into the limbo of forgotten things, the only surviving principles of that age being apparently those associated with a faint and somewhat fantastic cult of the primrose. In 1866, he wrote to his sister—and I cannot but smile on reading the letter-'I am more and more Radical every year'; and he expressed regret that circumstances did not permit of his setting up as 'a fierce demagogue' in England. I could have conscientiously written in much the same spirit at the same period, but it has not taken me nearly half a century to discover that two persons more unfitted by nature and temperament to be 'fierce demagogues' than Alfred Lyall and myself were probably never born. In respect to the Indian political questions which were current during his day-such as the controversy between the Lawrentian and Forward' schools of frontier policy, the Curzon-Kitchener episode, and the

adaptation of Western reforms to meet the growing requirements to which education has given birth-his views, although perhaps rather in my opinion unduly pessimistic and desponding, were generally identical with my own.

Albeit he was an earnest reformer, he was a warm advocate of strong and capable government, and, in writing to our common friend, Lord Morley, in 1882, he anathematised what he considered the weakness shown by the Gladstone Government in dealing with disorder in Ireland. Himself not only the kindest, but also the most just and judicially-minded of men, he feared that a maudlin and misplaced sentimentalism would destroy the more virile elements in the national character. 'I should like,' he said, in words which must not, of course, be taken too literally, a little more fierceness and honest brutality in the national temperament.' His heart went out, in a manner which is only possible to those who have watched them closely at work, to those Englishmen, whether soldiers or civilians, who, but little known and even at times depreciated by their own countrymen, are carrying the fame, the glory, the justice and humanity of England to the four quarters of the globe.

'The roving Englishman' (he said) is the salt of English land. ... Only those who go out of this civilised country, to see the rough work on the frontiers and in the far lands, properly understand what our men are like and can do. . . . They cannot manage a steam-engine, but they can drive restive and ill-trained horses over rough roads.'

He felt and as one who has humbly dabbled in literature at the close of an active political life, I can fully sympathise with him-that when one has once taken a hand in the world's affairs, literature is like rowing in a picturesque reach of the Thames after a bout in the open sea.' Yet, in the case of Lyall, literature was not a matter of mere academic interest. His incessant study was history.' He thought, with Lord Acton, that an historical student should be a politician with his face turned backwards.' His mind was eminently objective. He was for ever seeking to know the causes of things; and though far too observant to push to extreme lengths analogies between the past and the present, he neverthe

less sought, notably in the history of Imperial Rome, for any facts or commentaries gleaned from ancient times which might be of service to the modern empire of which he was so justly proud, and in the foundation of which the splendid service of which he was an illustrious member had played so conspicuous a part. I wonder,' he wrote in 1901, 'how far the Roman Empire profited by high education.'

Lyall was by nature a poet. Sir Mortimer Durand says, truly enough, that his volume of verses, 'if not great poetry, as some hold, was yet true poetry.' Poetic expressions, in fact, bubbled up in his mind almost unconsciously in dealing with every incident of his life. Lord Tennyson tells us in his Memoir' that one evening, when his father and mother were rowing across the Solent, they saw a heron. His father described this incident in the following language: 'One dark heron flew over the sea, backed by a daffodil sky.' Similarly, Lyall, writing with the enthusiasm of a young father for his firstborn, said: 'The child has eyes like the fishpools of Heshbon, with wondrous depth of intelligent gaze.' But, though a poet, it would be a great error to suppose that Lyall was an idealist, if by that term is meant one who, after a platonic fashion, indulges in ideas which are wholly visionary and unpractical. He had, indeed, ideals. No man of his imagination and mental calibre could be without them. But they were ideals based on a solid foundation of facts. It was here that, in spite of some sympathy based on common literary tastes, he altogether parted company from a brother poet, Mr Wilfrid Blunt, who has invariably left his facts to take care of themselves. Though eminently meditative and reflective, Lyall's mind, his biographer says, 'seemed always hungry for facts.' Though he had an unusual degree of imagination, he never allowed himself to be tempted too far from the region of the known or the knowable.' The reason why he at times appeared to vacillate was that he did not consider he sufficiently understood all the facts to justify his forming an opinion capable of satisfying his somewhat hypercritical judgment. He was, in fact, very difficult to convince of the truth of an opinion, not because of his prejudices, for he had none, but by reason of his constitutional scepticism.

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He acted throughout life on the principle laid down by the Greek philosopher Epicharmus: 'Be sober, and remember to disbelieve. These are the sinews of the mind.' I have been informed on unimpeachable authority that when he was a member of the Treasury Committee which sat on the question of providing facilities for the study of Oriental languages in this country, he constantly asked the witnesses whom he examined leading questions from which it might rather be inferred that he held opinions diametrically opposed to those which in reality he entertained. His sole object was to arrive at a sound conclusion. He wished to elicit all possible objections to any views to which he was personally inclined. It is very probable that his Oriental experience led him to adopt this procedure; for, as anyone who has lived much in the East will recognise, it is the only possible safeguard against the illusions which may arise from the common Oriental habit of endeavouring to say what is pleasant to the interrogator, especially if he occupies some position of authority.

Only half-reconciled, in the first instance, to Indian exile, and, when once he had taken the final step of departure, constantly brooding over the intellectual attractions rather than the material comforts of European life, Lyall speedily came to the conclusion that, if he was to bear a hand in governing India, the first thing he had to do was to understand Indians. He therefore brought his acutely analytical intellect to the task of comprehending the Indian habit of thought. In the course of his researches, he displayed that thoroughness and passionate love of truth which was the distinguishing feature of his character throughout life. That he succeeded in a manner which has been surpassed by none, and only faintly rivalled by a very few, is now generally recognised both by his own countrymen and also which is far more remarkable-by the inhabitants of the country which formed the subject of his study. So far as it is possible for any Western to achieve that very difficult task, he may be said to have got to the back of the Oriental mind. He embodied the results of his long experience at times in sweeping and profound generalisations, which covered the whole field of Oriental thought and action, and at others in pithy epigrammatic

sayings in which the racy humour, sometimes tinged with a shade of cynical irony, never obscured the deep feeling of sympathy he entertained for everything that was worthy of respect and admiration.

Lyall had read history to some purpose. He knew, in the words which Gregorovius applied to the rule of Theodosius in Italy, that 'not even the wisest and most humane of princes, if he be an alien in race, in customs and religion, can ever win the hearts of the people.' He had read De Tocqueville, and from the pages of an author whose habit of thought must have been most congenial to him, he drew the conclusion that it was the increased prosperity and enlightenment of the French people which produced the grand crash.' He therefore thought that 'the wildest, as well as the shallowest notion of all is that universally prevalent belief that education, civilisation and increased material prosperity will reconcile the people of India eventually to our rule.' Hence he was prepared to accept-perhaps rather more entirely than it deserved to be accepted-the statement of that very astute Brahmin, Sir Dinkur Rao, himself the minister of an important native State, that the natives prefer a bad native Government to our best patent institutions.' These, and similar oracular statements, have now become the commonplaces of all who deal with questions affecting India. That there is much truth in them cannot be gainsaid, but they are still often too much ignored by one section of the British public, who, carried away by home-made sentiment, forget that of all national virtues gratitude for favours received is the most rare, while by another section they are applied to the advocacy of a degree of autonomous rule which would be disastrous to the interests, not only of India itself, but also to the cause of all real civilised progress.

The point, however, on which in conversation Lyall was wont to insist most strongly was that the West was almost incomprehensible to the East, and, vice versa, that the Western could never thoroughly understand the Oriental. In point of fact, when we talk of progress, it is necessary to fix some standard by which progress may be measured. We know our Western standard; we endeavour to enforce it; and we are so convinced that it gives an accurate measure of human moral and material