CHAPTER XXXII GOLDWIN SMITH, 1892-1910 ergo Quintilium perpetuus sopor Now on Quintilius broods the burden drear Of sleep unending! When shall Modesty, And Justice' sister, proud Integrity, And naked Truth, find one his peer? HORACE, Odes, I. xxiv. Translated by John ALTHOUGH my brother Henry had been acquainted with Goldwin Smith for many years, it was not my fortune to meet him until I went to Toronto in 1892. Mrs. Hertz was good enough to write, and thus I became known to him immediately on my arrival. I may relate his reasons for crossing the Atlantic as he gave them to me in confidential moments. He decided to go to America in 1864, as the Civil War appeared to be drawing to a close, in order to form an estimate of the situation and to report to Bright, Cobden and other sympathisers with the North during the struggle. He spent about three weeks with Grant at his headquarters before Richmond, and he was present when the city was taken. Smith returned to Oxford and the duties of his professorship of History in the autumn of 1864. In 1866 he resigned his chair on account of a serious domestic calamity. His father, a retired physician, met with a railway accident, which resulted in mental derangement. The idea of having the patient cared for in an institution for the insane was repugnant to Goldwin Smith, and no other member of his family being available for the duty of attending upon his father, he undertook it himself. For nearly two years he never left his father's side. Then, having urgent occasion to go to the north of England on business connected with an estate for which he was trustee, he left him for two days. During his son's absence Dr. Smith committed suicide. Goldwin Smith glozes over this tragedy in his Reminiscences, merely mentioning the fact of his father's death and the distress it occasioned him. My belief is that it had a profound effect upon his mind, and that he never fully recovered from it. I have no doubt that he lived in fear that under some strain his mind might also give way, and that he might destroy himself in a moment of aberration. He never actually put this fear into words, but I gathered it from various signs. The tragical event left Goldwin Smith with ample means and no occupation, for his place had been filled in Oxford and no position of a similar character was open to him in England at the time. At this juncture Andrew D. White offered him the Chair of History in the then newly-established Cornell University. This he accepted, and came to America. The burden of elementary teaching was, however, rather irksome; and in 1871 he left Cornell, and went to Toronto, where he had some relatives. There he married and spent the rest of his life, returning for some years annually to Cornell to deliver a course of lectures. When I left England opinions varied about Goldwin Smith. There were warm admirers like Mrs. Hertz, who forgave him even when he differed upon vital things; and there were others who forgave him nothing. The Home Rulers detested him for his Unionist sympathies, and the Imperialists for his separatist views on the Canadian question. Nor was there any unanimity about him in Canada. In 1892 there were still echoes of the Annexation movement, and there were some who refused to act with Goldwin Smith on any committee for any purpose, or even to meet him at dinner. A member of the Senate of the University of Toronto resigned because that body proposed to confer upon Goldwin Smith an honorary degree. For some time after I made his acquaintance he continued to entertain the view that the union of Canada and the United States was a historical necessity. He thought that the great lines of communication must run north and south, and that this circumstance must draw the two countries together. On this ground he opposed the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and predicted that it would never make "grease for its wheels." I never could agree with him on this point, although I found many of his criticisms upon Canadian men and affairs very just. The fact is that neither in the United States nor Canada do the great lines of communication run north and south. Agriculture and industry are parallel on both sides of the boundary, i.e., the agricultural regions in Canada lie parallel to the similar regions in the United States; so do the industrial regions. Since excess of agricultural products must be exported, the main lines of communication must run from the regions where these are produced to the coasts, and industrial products must be sent into the agricultural regions by lines running westward and not southward or northward. On other than economic grounds the division of the continent between the two peoples is very natural. They are in many respects similar people; they have the same primary origins, and they have the same admixture of foreign races. There is much coming and going, especially among the commercial and industrial groups. Yet the peoples are distinct. Canada has retained a certain touch with Europe which the United States had lost through the Revolution, and this touch involves a point of view and a current of interests different from those which characterise the United States. Although I do not know that Goldwin Smith ever wholly abandoned the idea that the eventual union of the two countries was a historical necessity, I do not think that, in his later years, he looked upon such a union as an unqualified advantage. He regarded with great misgivings the growth of Imperialism in the United States, and disapproved of the Spanish-American War because he thought that it was the outcome of that Imperialism. These reflections led him to be at least less insistent than he had been upon the advantages of annexation. During many years Goldwin Smith was in the habit of promulgating his political views in weekly articles in newspapers to which he lent financial assistance. He thus occupied himself chiefly in journalism; and when from time to time he wrote a book, the style of his books was coloured by his predominant occupation. Indeed, Goldwin Smith was a good writer for weekly periodicals—a good Saturday Reviewer in short-rather than an essayist or a historian. He did not write speedily enough for journalism in the strict sense; but he wrote too speedily for permanent literary fame. With all the respect I entertained for him, and the affectionate regard I have for his memory, I am unable to regard him as a historian. He had plenty of patience, but he exercised it upon polishing his periods rather than in previous meticulous research. For this reason, although his historical writings are brilliant and interesting, they cannot be regarded as contributions to history. Goldwin Smith, if I may so put it, was not addicted to thought. His mind grasped readily impressions of facts as they struck him; but he was not used to abstract thinking, and rarely worked out implications and reactions. He made his first appearance in journalism in the Saturday Review. He was fond of saying, "Why, I was at the biggin o't," the only Scots phrase I ever heard him use. As is well known, the founders of the Saturday Review were Beresford-Hope, who supplied the money, although it paid from the beginning, and |