Essays - Benson Arthur Christopher

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Conway, the original of Lady Cardiff in "John Inglesant," was afflicted by mysterious and incurable pains in the head, and not only travelled to consult physicians, but was accustomed to assemble quacks and specialists in her house at Ragley; there More spent most of his time, and composed several books at her ladyship's special request. There, too, he met the faith-healer Greatrakes, a moody man who had lived for some time in seclusion at his own ruined castle of Capperquin in Ireland; as well as the famous Van Helmont, Baron of Austria, Quaker and physician, son of the famous chemist of the same name. This man was all that Greatrakes was not; he had considerable medical skill, and a quiet pious character. To us the union of the preacher and physician is somewhat repugnant. We take it to mean that a man supplies the gaps in his practical knowledge by the pretensions of spiritual insight; we believe him to be proficient in neither. Van Helmont, however, seems to have been a genuine man, and to suffer from an undeserved contempt. As a matter of fact the possession of keen moral insight and sympathy is one of the most powerful instruments that a physician can claim; the physical and mental constitution react so invariably, that without it a man must be at a loss; the healing art need not necessarily halt at the threshold of hypochondria.

      As I have touched on Lady Conway and Van Helmont, I may as well follow out the part that Henry More plays in that fascinating romance —John Inglesant. The life and works, down even to the style and mode of expression, of Henry More have interested and influenced Mr. Shorthouse very strongly. I have heard the conversation between John Inglesant and Dr. More, which is said to have taken place at Oulton, instanced as an admirable tour de force of Mr. Shorthouse's style. The fact is that Henry More speaks there, not in character, but actually; nearly three-quarters of the conversation being sentences and aphorisms extracted straight from More's works. It is very ingeniously done, though a little too elaborate to be lifelike when regarded as conversation.

      But the effects of Henry More's writings are traceable in several other parts of John Inglesant. In the conversation to which I have alluded, More is made to sketch what he considers to be Inglesant's character and physical constitution. He says:

      "There would seem to be some that by a divine sort of fate are virtuous and good to a great and heroical degree, and fall into the drudgery of the world rather for the good of others, or by a divine force, than through their own fault or any necessity of Nature; as Plato says, they descend hither to declare the being and nature of God, and for the greater health, purity, and perfection of the lower world."

      He goes on to describe the "luciform vehicle" in which such a soul as this is apt to display itself; and the great need of scrupulous temperance and purity to keep it undimmed.

      Now these passages are, in the places where they occur in Henry More's works, undoubtedly and in reality autobiographical: they are extracted word for word from passages where he is obviously referring to himself.

      The fact thus remains that, though Inglesant and More are represented as holding converse together, it is in reality More talking to himself – himself, that is, differently circumstanced and developed by other fortunes and influences. The figure of More was not quite romantic enough for Mr. Shorthouse, and his religious system lacked the vivid sense of the personal presence of Christ that is so marked a feature in Inglesant's career; but there is no reasonable doubt that Dr. More affords in the main outlines of his character and temperament the basis for that delicately drawn, laborious book which has made such a mark upon our late literature.

      After Lady Conway's death, More was so far identified with her family and friends, as to write a preface, in the character of Van Helmont, for her Remains. At one time he thought of abandoning his collegiate life for his rectory of Ingoldsby in Lincolnshire; he intended to settle there with some friend as curate, and spend his time in quiet parochial work and study – but the scheme came to nothing. It may be doubted whether even he would have been proof against the trials of a country rectory; at Cambridge, indeed, he had quiet as much as he wished, but he had stimulus too: at Ingoldsby he would have had enforced quiet without the stimulus.

      He was elected into the Royal Society, before its establishment by charter, in order to add lustre to it; for, though he never aimed at it, he had acquired long before his death a great reputation by his writings, which, as Mr. Chishull, the eminent bookseller of the day, said, ruled all the other booksellers in London.

      He was a very laborious writer; his works fill folio volumes, and are full of curious learning, with a strange streak of humour, descending at times to a coarseness of expression which would not be tolerated now.

      His voice, as was said, was somewhat inward, and not suited to the pulpit; and so he determined to give the world his thoughts in writing.

      The Divine Dialogues are the Mystery of Godliness and the Mystery of Iniquity; the first of these being an exhaustive inquiry, in many books, into the nature and spirit of heathen religions. It may be said at once that his method of treating the subject is unjust; he is far too anxious, in his zeal for the Truth, to attribute to them a licentious or contemptible origin and obscene or meaningless ceremonies. The "Mysteries of Eleusis," which, according to Socrates, had much symbolism of a strangely exalted type, are treated by More as both superstitious and dissolute – even Apollonius of Tyana, who, whether he existed actually or not, at least exhibits a high type of the Stoic ideal, is a solemn puppet in his eyes. When he has, then, to his satisfaction demonstrated the worthless and debasing character of these rites – which is surely to shut the eyes to the inextinguishable hunger for the holy expression of life, in worship, that has never really deserted the human race – he proceeds to bring the Christian faith upon the stage, and to show how it satisfies the deepest and highest instincts of humanity.

      But More cannot be said to have been a Christian in the sense that Thomas-à-Kempis or Francis of Assisi were Christians; he did not hunger for the personal relation with Christ which is so profoundly essential to the true conception of the Christian ideal. He was a devout, a passionate Deist; he realised the in-dwelling of God's spirit in the heart, and the divine excellence of the Son of Man. But it was as a pattern, and not as a friend, that he gazed upon Him; the light that he followed was the uncovenanted radiance. For it is necessary to bear in mind that More and the Cambridge Platonists taught that the Jewish knowledge of the mysteries of God had passed through some undiscovered channel into the hands of Pythagoras and Plato; and that the divinity of their teaching was directly traceable to their connection with Revelation. They looked upon Plato and Pythagoras as predestined vehicles of God's spirit, appointed to prepare the heathen world for the reception of the true mysteries, though not admitted themselves to full participation in the same.

      Besides these books, which are profound and logical, and composed in a style which is admirable by comparison to the ordinary writing of the times. More drilled away into some rather grotesque speculations on the subject of Apocalyptical interpretation; of this, he says, humorously, himself, that while he was writing it "his nag was over free, and went even faster than he desired, but he thought it was the right way" – and there is something pathetic indeed in the mode in which the passionate seekers after truth of those times beat their heads against the various theories of the direct communication of God with man, such as warning dreams and visions, and the face of the heavens by night. The idea is beautifully presented in John Inglesant, where the hero says to his brother, who has produced a false horoscope of himself: "I would have you think no more of this, with which a wicked man has tried to make the heavens themselves speak falsely… Father St. Clare taught it me among other things, and I have seen many strange answers that he has known himself – but it is shameful that the science should be made a tool of by designing men."

      This is said so naturally, with so simple and melancholy a faith, that it seems to me to reproduce the feeling of even the more refined and cultivated men of the time about such things in an infinitely affecting way.

      Besides these there are published letters of Henry More's, prolix for the general reader, but interesting enough if the man's own personality appeals to you: some very disappointing hymns and didactic poems, stiff and unlovely to a strange degree for so deep and graceful a writer; and many other scattered works, such as the Enchiridion Ethicum, which it is impossible to analyse here.

      More had a very facile style: he used to say that his friends had been always wanting him to go up upon a

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