where it rolls through realms of metaphysic darkness, as to many a sailor metaphysic realms must be, there is no want of guiding lights that gleam upon the headlands. 4. He had a genius for criticism, and that of the nobler sort that honors while it disapproves and creates while it destroys. It was, indeed, no trifling circumstance to be brought before his tribunal, and one who sustained there his examination well needed to have no dread of Rhadamanthus. There was a justice that gave the full meed of recognition, but which with the feeble theory or the inconsequential reasoning dealt inexorably. Often his criticism suggested the glacier, radiant in sunshine and sending irrigating streams down the valleys, yet grinding the very boulders into powder. In his critical labors he aimed at two results: a clear presentation of an author's teaching in which its limitations must of course appear, and a large view of its relations. With respect to the former his method was simple: he seized upon some pivotal idea, and by that, its absolute worth and the success of its application, was the work justified or no. Such criticism, executed in his thorough fashion, is most helpful, and after following the ramifications of some treatise, the student may turn to him as the ship out of reckoning may hail a passing voyager. A venerable sage once testified that of all his reading of Plato, the Platonic writings included, Mr. Martineau's discussion in the Types of Ethical Theory had yielded the most luminous view of him. It is, however, in the relations he opens before us that most have found his criticism especially helpful. The average Briton, type of human nature in more senses than one, easily magnifies his island to the proportions of a continent, to all intents and purposes he may think it the world; and dwellers in Nepaul may doubt whether above their Himalayas is any height worth mentioning. Our infinite is apt to be practically that beyond the limits of which we do not see. Mr. Martineau never minimized his islands, but he had the knack of embracing island and embosoming ocean in one view. He never depreciated his mountains, but, at whatever height, saw the blue dome above them, and the measureless vacancy around them. When the Philosophy of evolution first beamed upon us, and to our bewildered sight seemed to take all things within its embrace, Mr. Martineau, surveying its boundaries, showed us a bordering infinity which its very genius excluded from its embrace.1 Perhaps we still believed in Evolution, but he verily compelled us, in seeing it, to see also more. Turn to his splendid critique of Sir William Hamilton, a planetary man, shown in all his planetary proportions; yet shown in a heaven of ideas in which is space for a million orbs as large. 5. He was a born polemic, and there was in him a forward eagerness in this kind of warfare. He was apt at fence; his attack, had it not been of the kind to be coveted, had certainly been dreaded. In intellectual combat no man was ever more observant of the chivalries; indeed he was in controversy our knightly Bayard. 6. But how of his literary style?- for while royalty in homespun is royal, we yet like to meet our king in kingly attire. And it is in kingly attire that we meet Mr. Martineau. We may like to vary the cut in some particulars, and change a decoration here and there, yet the material of the robe is unmistakably Tyrian purple. It is a unique style, and a passage of Shakespeare is hardly more easy to distinguish than a passage of Martineau. Not only is it unique, it is profoundly personal. As Schopenhauer would say, it is a "physiognomy," not a "mask." Respecting no other can be more safely 1 "Science, Nescience, and Faith," in Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, vol. iii. quoted the dictum, "The style is the man." As a unique style is almost sure to do, it has drawn the reproach of being far sought and artificial. Yet its characteristic features, as met in sermon or essay, appear also in his letters, his extempore talk, his conversation; and whoever will give adequate account of it must take his very soul into the reckoning. As a "physiognomy" it is only luminous. from an inward light. It is not the grand style, like that of Frederic H. Hedge. It is, however, a full style; his sentence is a golden beaker flowing to the brim. What he aims to express may be the smaller part of what he conveys; allusion, metaphor, open how many side-lights of detaining suggestion. He is not especially sententious; he does not deal largely in aphorisms; yet few writers tell so much that they do not say. It is, too, a poetical style. The "faculty divine" was not given him, but the "vision" was; and in no meagre degree it ruled his utterance. All readers of him observe an habitual cadence in his sentence, as if dictated by an interior rhythm. Within him was a sensibility that felt an inharmonious structure as a poet feels a faulty measure, or a musician a discord. His language and illustration, too, make it plain that a beauty haunted him; yet is the poet within him severely ruled by the artist. In his loftiest flights he indulges in no rhapsody. It is prose that he writes, prose that his naïve poetry animates, decorates, illuminates, but leaves always prose. He is elaborate, but not diffuse; not lavish in language nor yet parsimonious; every figure is organic, every word is vital. His page betrays ever a painstaking accuracy; yet there are those who complain that he is obscure. Such might often well recall the saying of Goethe, "In the dark the plainest writing is illegible," and ask whether the obscurity is in Mr. Martineau or in themselves. To scale his heights or to descend into his depths no ordering of the pathway can make always easy. However plain the statement, there are yet thoughts that tax our thinking; and Mr. Martineau's are apt to be of them. His page is for the studious, not the indolent hour. Yet in a single aspect the complaint is not without reason; there is an obscurity that comes from his exuberance of metaphor. His metaphors are most admirable in themselves, never commonplace and always luminous, but they are sown upon his page in such profusion! They come like flashes of heat lightning, and bewilder from excess of light. Though the most serious of writers, yet not infrequent gleams of humor relieve his page. He deals little in incident, is sparing in anecdote; but a happy turn in a sentence will provoke a smile,—likewise call forth a tear. He has, too, resources of satire which he draws from not frequently. He is strong in antithesis, and his words have a knack of running together into golden sayings, which cling to the memory like passages of Emerson. It is a style wonderfully varied to express a many-sided man, the scholar and thinker who must feel the rock beneath him as he builds, and see his walls reared true; the man, too, of aspirations that want a temple and of affections that want a home; so different from that, for instance, of Herbert Spencer, also a "physiognomy," but which expresses only a clear and passionless intellection. The latter we might liken to the Bank of England, solid, massive, but on whose granite cubes we see no suggestion of a heaven or a soul. The former we might liken to the dear and venerable Abbey, built on granite foundations and its walls reared true, but also with towers and arches which tell of a various aspiration and rapture and ideal. CHAPTER IX PERSONAL FEATURES IN his figure Dr. Martineau was tall and spare. Of adipose tissue he had no superfluity. One meeting him in later years observed a slight stoop, though it seemed rather the stoop of the scholar than of the octogenarian. His features were thin, his complexion delicate. His eyes, which were "changeful blue," were not particularly noticeable until he became animated; and then his very soul seemed shining through them. His head was not much beyond the average in size, but compact, and perfect in its poise. His perceptive organs were large; his hair, always remarkable for its abundance, in later years was bleached almost to whiteness. Grace Greenwood, writing of him in 1854, spoke of his head as wearing a "classical and chiselled look," and of his features as "finely and clearly cut;" a description as true at eightyfive as at forty-nine. His personal habits were always natural and healthful. So far from being self-indulgent, his general conduct was mildly suggestive of asceticism. He was indeed no John the Baptist, to make a diet of locusts and wild honey; yet one to rule his breakfast by consideration of his morning toils, and in dining not to forget the evening hours of study and of thought. And while in his conduct we may see here the ruling of prudence, it is not difficult to believe that his simple tastes were thus satisfied. A dinner with a few friends, with moderate abandonment to its |