Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/673

Rh HELPS 639 had not health sufficiently robust, even if he had possessed the ambition, to achieve them, he was recognized by the ablest of his contemporaries there as a man of superior gifts, and likely to make his mark in after life. They showed this by electing him as a member of the Conversazione Society, better known as the Apostles, a society which had been established in 1820 for the purposes of discussion on social and literary questions by a few young men attracted to each other by a common taste for literature and specula tion. A body which in its early days included the names of Charles Buller, Frederick Maurice, Richard Chenevix Trench, Monckton Milnes, Arthur Hallam, and Alfred Tennyson had in it every element to make its gatherings delightful as well as useful. To be elected into its limited circle was a distinction of which Arthur Helps was prourl then and to the close of his life ; and, familiar as he was with the best and most intellectual society of his time, the social hours passed year by year with the Cambridge Apostles were always counted by him among his happiest, both in anticipation and in remembrance. In the discussions of these and later days Helps may have found the suggestions for the dialogues of the Friends in Council, in which his genius appears at his best. But his first literary effort, which appeared under the title of Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd in 1835, the year lie took his B.A. degree, assumes a very different but scarcely less ambitious form, that of a series of aphorisms upon life, character, politics, and manners. As a rule, such things are only valuable when they come as the fruits of wide experience and matured thought. Still in this volume are to be found passages which may take their place beside the sayings of Vauvenargues, Chamfort, and other masters of aphorism of the second rank, and are quite equal in quality to the many pithy quotable sayings scattered through Helps s later works. Soon after leaving the university, where he had estab lished many valuable friendships, Arthur Helps became private secretary to Mr Spring Rice (afterwards Lord Monteagle), then chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Melbourne s administration. This appointment he filled till 1840, when he went to Ireland as the private secretary of Lord Morpeth (afterwards earl of Carlisle), then the chief secretary of state for Ireland, where he remained until his principal left Ireland in 1841, on the Government pass ing from Lord Melbourne into the hands of Sir Robert Peel. In the meanwhile (28th October 1836) Helps had married Miss Bessy Fuller, a young Irish lady. He was also appointed one of the commissioners for the settlement of certain Danish claims which dated so far back as the siege of Copenhagen ; but with the fall of the Melbourne adminis tration his official experience closed for a period of nearly twenty years. The character which he had established for himself by his tact, sagacity, and business habits was not, however, forgotten by his political friends. And combined as these qualities were with an admirable manner which invited confidence while it repelled intrusion, and with a reticence and discretion on which absolute reliance could be placed, his fitness for official life was unmistakable. When therefore the clerkship of the Privy Council became vacant in 1860, on the resignation of the Hon. W. L. Bathurst, he was recommended for the appointment by his old friend Lord Granville, who knew that for ability, tact, and discretion it could not be in safer bands. ^Duringhis early official career Helps cultivated literature with varying success. His Essays ^oritten in the Intervals of Business, published in 1841, and his Claims of Labour, an Essay on the Duties of the Employers to the Employed, publishei in 1844, continue to interest, and are likely to keep their place in well-selected libraries. But two plays, King Henry the Second, an Historical Drama, and Catherine Douglas, a Tragedy, both published in 1843, have no particular merit. Neither in these, nor in his only other dramatic effort, Oulita the Serf, published in 1858, a work far superior, however, to his earlier efforts of the same kind, are to be found the sense of dramatic situation and move ment, the sharp outlines and contrast of character, or the fitness and concise force of diction which alone justify the selection by an author of the dramatic form as the vehicle for his thoughts. Helps possessed, however, just enough dramatic power to give life and individuality to the dialo gues which he introduced with excellent effect to enliven many of his other books. His first effort in this direction was in Friends in Council, a Series of Readings and Dis course thereon, published in 1847 and 1851. The plan of this book seems to have been suggested by a passage in Bacon s essay Of Discourse, which appears as the motto of it. &quot; It is good in discourse and speech of conversation to vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of questions with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest; for it is a dull thing to tire, and, as we say now, to jade anything too far.&quot; The variety and conflict of opinion, the play of character, the flashes of humour, got by submitting the formal essays on social and moral questions which made the staple of these volumes to be criticized and pulled to pieces by the imagi nary personages, who, under the names of Milverton, Elles- mere, and Dunsford, grew to be almost as real to Helps s readers as they certainly became to himself, gave a special charm to a book which, by its richness of suggestion, its sweetness of tone, and beauty of style, made for its author a high and enduring reputation. The same expedient was resorted to for the discussion of the ideas of social and philanthropic improvement on which Helps s mind was always at work, in a second series of Friends in Council, published in 1859, and again in Conversations on War and General Culture, published in 1871. The old familiar speakers, with others added, also appeared in his Rcalmah, and finally in what certainly must always rank as the best of its author s later works, Talk about Animals and their Masters, published in 1873. The subject of slavery was one which had a peculiar fascination for Helps. A long essay is devoted to it in the first series of Friends in Council. This was subsequently elaborated into a work in two volumes published in 1848 and 1852, called The Conquerors of the Neiv World and their Bondsmen. Helps s interest in the subject led him into further investigations into the history of the conquest of America by the Spaniards, and he went to Spain in 1847 for the special purpose of examining the numerous MSS. bearing upon the subject at Madrid. The fruits of these researches were embodied in an historical work based upon his Conquerors of the Neiv World, and called The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery and the Government of Colonies. This appeared in four volumes during the years 1855, 1857, and 1861. No pains were spared by its author to secure the most scrupulous accuracy as to the facts with which he dealt, He had found, as most inquirers into the sources of history have found, that this accuracy is rarely to be met with in accepted histories. On this point he was determined that he should not be open to censure ; and so anxious was he that fact should not be coloured or distorted by imagination that he deliberately resisted the temptation to use the picturesque method of treatment by which other writers on the same subject have secured popularity. The success of this work with the public was injured by other peculiarities. History, like fiction, will not bear to be written with an obtrusively moral purpose, as this book was written. Its merits in a literary point of view were also diminished by the author s tendency to suspend the onward movement of the narrative,