JOHN, VISCOUNT MORLEYAN APPRECIATION AND SOME REMINISCENCESBY JOHN
H. MORGANPREFACE A WORD as to the origin and purpose of the follow
ing pages. Three out of the four chapters dealing exclusively with
Lord Morleys published works were written, and duly appeared in
periodicals, in his own lifetime. They were fortunate in winning
from him words of commendation, and he at one time expressed a
desire for their republication. One of them Chapter VII. was,
indeed, as is ex plained on page 62, to have been the startingpoint
in a common literary venture of his and mine. So much may be said
by way of excuse, if excuse be needed, for their republication in
the present book, The three chapters of reminiscences stand on a
different footing. They were written and, in the case of two of
them, published some months after Lord Morleys death, and would
probably never have been written at all, had I not been impressed
by the onesided and partial character of the many appreciations
written by others after that mournful event. And by partial I mean
either idolatrous or iconoclastic. Untempered I except the
felicitous study by Mr. Birrell which appeared in the pages of the
Empire Review, a study by an intimate friend which maintained an
admirable equipoise of judgment.Neulogy was followed, as was
perhaps inevitable, by intemperate blame. There has been too much
of both. It seemed to me that the time had arrived for one who had
the privilege of belong ing to the inner circle of his friends to
try to hold the balance even between the two extremes, and to
attempt to show him as he really was. Some of those who knew him
best are good enough to think I have succeeded. His nephew and
executor, Mr. Guy Morley, haswritten to me, with a kindness of
which I am only too sensible, to say that the result is a most just
and friendly portrait of the original. If I had had any doubts, and
I have had none, as to the propriety of these two chapters, his
words would be with me, for obvious reasons decisive. With Lord
Morleys private life I have not dealt at all. Had I done so, I
could, as I have said in the pages that follow, have told a tale of
singular devotion, a tale of one whose whole life was a noble
comment on the text, Bear ye one anothers burdens, and who, living,
fulfilled the law of Christ. But this is an appreciation, not a
biography. It is, however, an appreciation suffused with personal
reminiscence. Oblivion blindly seat tereth her poppy, and there may
be some who will be glad to have these recollections before the
memory of him who recollects has begun to fade. I have followed
Lord Motleys own practice in the obituary essay he wrote upon his
friend and master, John Stuart Mill, and in his Life of
Gladstonenamely that of reproducing conversa tions with the subject
of my discourse, for it is in a mans conversation, as in his work,
that, in the words of Ruskin, you find him to the uttermost or not
at all.
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