Page:The Education of Henry Adams (1907).djvu/180

 they became mute and useless when slavery struck them in the face. For type of these eccentrics, literature seems to have chosen Henry Reeve, at least to the extent of biography. He was a bulky figure in society, always friendly, good-natured, obliging and useful; almost as universal as Milnes and more busy. As editor of the Edinburgh Review he had authority and even power, although the Review and the whole Whig doctrinaire school had begun,—as the French say,—to date; and of course the literary and artistic sharpshooters of 1867,—like Frank Palgrave,—frothed and foamed at the mere mention of Reeve's name. Three-fourths of their fury was due only to his ponderous manner. London society abused its rights of personal criticism by fixing on every too conspicuous figure some word or phrase that stuck to it. Everyone had heard of Mrs. Grote as "the origin of the word grotesque." Everyone had laughed at the story of Reeve approaching Mrs. Grote, with his usual somewhat florid manner, asking in his literary dialect how her husband the historian was:—"And how is the learned Grotius?" "Pretty well, thank you, Puffendorf!" One winced at the word, as though it were a drawing of Forain.

No one would have been more shocked than Reeve, had he been charged with want of moral courage. He proved his courage afterwards by publishing the Greville Memoirs, braving the displeasure of the Queen. Yet the Edinburgh Review and its Editor avoided taking sides except where sides were already fixed. Americanism would have been bad form in the liberal Edinburgh Review; it would have seemed eccentric even for a Scotchman, and Reeve was a Saxon of Saxons. To an American this attitude of oscillating reserve seemed more eccentric than the reckless hostility of Brougham or Carlyle, and more mischievous, for he never could be sure what preposterous commonplace it might encourage.

The sum of these experiences in 1863 left the conviction that eccentricity was weakness. The young American who should adopt English thought was lost. From the facts, the conclusion was correct, yet, as usual, the conclusion was wrong. The years of Palmerston's last Cabinet, 1859-1865, were avowedly years of truce—of arrested development. The British system like the French, was in its last stage of decomposition. Never had the British mind shown itself so décousu,—so unravelled, at sea, floundering in every sort of historical shipwreck.