Law accompanies his Pupil to Cambridge.

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degeneracy into which many of them fell is well known. Whether it be in the main true or not need not here be discussed; but it is quite clear that it would not apply to William Law. He, at any rate, was in no danger of 'sinking into a servile, sensual, drowsy parasite.' He never set himself to discover the weak side of every character, to flatter every passion and prejudice, to sow discord and jealousy where love and confidence ought to exist, to watch the moment of indiscreet openness for the purpose of extracting secrets important to the prosperity and honour of families,' &c. From his general character we might assume with perfect certainty that he belonged to neither of these classes; but, apart from this, we have the express testimony of his pupil's son, who certainly would not be prejudiced in favour of a man holding the views that Law did. In our family,' writes the historian, 'he (Law) had left the reputation of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that he professed, and practised all that he enjoined.' 2

In 1727 Law accompanied his pupil to Emmanuel College, Cambridge,3 and thus once again, under very different circumstances, entered within the walls from which he had been excluded eleven years before for conscience' sake. It would be interesting to know Law's feelings and behaviour on his return to a society of which he had once been a distinguished member. Most men look back to their old college days with affectionate regard. But we have no record whatever of Law's sentiments on this point. The 'Serious Call' was probably written, in part at least, at Cambridge, but no allusion of any kind to the University is found in that great work; and beyond a few scattered

'Macaulay's History of England, vol. ii. chap. xiv. p. 110. Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 14.

"The register of Mr. Gibbon's entry at Emmanuel is as follows: 'July 10, 1727, Gibbon, Edw., F.C. [Fellow Commoner], Alderman of London.'

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Feeble Character of Law's Pupil.

hints, to be noticed presently, Law's second stay at Emmanuel is a perfect blank to us.

Of Law's pupil little need be said. It would seem as if in the family of Gibbon force of character, like the gout in some families, passed over a generation. It is seen in a very remarkable degree in the grandfather and the grandson. The stout old gentleman who repaired a shattered fortune and an almost shattered reputation, and who earned the complimentary remark of Lord Bolingbroke, was certainly not deficient in moral and intellectual vigour; still less was the great historian. But the second Gibbon, boy and man, was a vague, purposeless, uninteresting character. His son, indeed, always spoke of him and treated him with affection and respect, and when he died paid a pious tribute to his ' graceful person, polite address, gentle manners, and unaffected cheerfulness, which recommended him to the favour of every company.' But he is obliged to acknowledge his father's weakness and inconstancy. To fritter away his time when he was a youth, and his money when he grew to be a man, seems to have been his habit. Such a character was not likely to commend itself to a man like the elder Gibbon. On one occasion Law had to interpose his good offices to prevent the old gentleman from turning his son out of doors; and at his death Mr. Gibbon enriched his two daughters at the expense of his son, because, the historian tells us, he did not altogether approve of the latter's marriage, but probably in part also because, as a man of business, he knew that money would be thrown away upon so feeble a character. It may be that Law was not exactly the man to draw out the latent faculties of a youth like Gibbon; at any rate he did not succeed in doing so.

One can hardly help speculating what might have been the result if Law's pupil had been the grandson instead of the son. There certainly were some very noble elements

Law and Gibbon the Historian.

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in the character of the historian; but, so far as Christianity was concerned, he never had a fair chance. His experiences at Magdalen College, Oxford, were not likely to give him a very exalted opinion of the established religion. M. Pavilliard, the worthy Swiss pastor who was employed to win him back from Romanism, though a man of respectable abilities and attainments, was not a strong enough man to deal with such a mind as Gibbon's. And, so far as is known, Gibbon never was brought into contact with sufficiently powerful Christian influences until he had drifted away from the Christian faith. What the influence of a Christian of real genius, as well as of intense earnestness and blameless life, like Law, might have done for him, can of course only be a matter of conjecture. On the one hand, Gibbon had little of what the Germans call 'religiosität' in his composition, and it is therefore quite possible that the austere and uncompromising character of Law's religion might only have precipitated the catastrophe which subsequently befel his faith. But then, on the other hand, if Gibbon had not a very strong sense of piety, he had a very keen relish for intellectual questions connected with Christianity; from his earliest youth he had always a hankering after religious controversy; and his enthusiastic exclamation in describing his conversion to Romanism through the instrumentality of Bossuet, Surely I fell by a noble hand,' &c., shows what a hold a powerful controversialist could gain upon his mind. No man living was more competent to gain this hold than Law; one can fancy into what ribbons he could have torn the arguments which Gibbon's boyish mind loved to frame. Gibbon's own account of the curious sort of arithmetical process by which he was reconverted from Romanism, while it shows the interest he took in such questions, shows also how crude and unformed his views were. As one reads the

4

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Law never associated with his Equals.

sad story of what a Christian cannot help calling the wreck of a noble character, one is tempted to cry 'exoriare aliquis' to lead this great but erring spirit from darkness into light. And the 'aliquis' was at hand in the honoured friend and spiritual director of the family, William Law.

Nor would the advantages of such a connexion as we have imagined between these two great men have been all on one side. It was distinctly a misfortune to Law that he never came into close personal relationship, except upon paper, with a man of real genius. John Wesley was the nearest approach to such a man who knew Law intimately; but Wesley's genius was, as we shall see presently, not at all of the kind which Law was likely to appreciate. As a rule, Law was a very Saul among his Christian brethren, intellectually taller by the head and shoulders than any of them. At no period of his life, so far as we know, did he make any friends who could converse with him on at all equal terms. He was invariably the oracle of his company, and oracles are not wont to be contradicted. This manifest superiority to his surroundings rather tended to encourage a certain peremptoriness of tone and abruptness of manner which were natural to him. Had he been brought into that intimate relationship which subsists between a conscientious tutor and an intelligent pupil, with a young man of the calibre of Gibbon, and continued the intimacy when the relationship ceased, the result might have been beneficial to him. Such, however, was not his good fortune; his lot was cast with the feeble father, not with the strong son.

Law's pupil quitted the University without taking a degree, and commenced his travels, leaving his tutor behind him in the spacious house' at Putney. The historian cannot resist a sneer at this arrangement. 'The mind of a saint is above or below the present world, and while the

Law failed to mould his Pupil's Character.

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pupil proceeded on his travels, the tutor remained at Putney;' but he does Law the justice to add, the much honoured friend and spiritual director of the whole family;' and at a later period he acknowledges his obligations to the tutor for some valuable editions of the classics and the fathers, the choice, as it should seem, of Mr. Law.' These he found in his father's study at Buriton, which was also stuffed with much trash of the last age, with much High Church divinity and politics, which have long since gone to their proper place';—possibly this' High Church divinity and politics,' which he is pleased to call trash, may also have been the choice of Mr. Law. Not a trace, however, of the influence of Mr. Law can be found in his pupil's character and after career. It is difficult to conceive a greater difference than between the life of Mr. Gibbon and the ideal life sketched by Law in the Serious Call' at the very time when Gibbon was under his charge. Law did not succeed in making his pupil even tolerant of Jacobitism; for Gibbon the historian tells us of a certain unhappy Mr. John Kirkby, 'who exercised about eighteen months the office of my domestic tutor;' and adds, 'His learning and virtue introduced him to my father, and at Putney he might have found at least a temporary shelter, had not an act of indiscretion again driven him into the world. One day, reading prayers in the parish church, he most unluckily forgot the name of King George; his patron, a loyal subject, dismissed him with some reluctance, and a decent reward.' Well might the pupil of Mr. Law show some reluctance' in punishing a man for doing inadvertently what his tutor had no doubt always done deliberately!

Law's life at Putney, which lasted at least twelve years, was by no means an inactive or useless one. Besides being busy with his pen during this period, he acted as a