commits
himself to the assertion that this is in fact what they hold and
teach--is it too much to say that such a man, whatever may be his other
gifts, has forfeited all claim to be considered capable of writing and
expressing himself with accuracy, truth, and distinctness on
theological questions? And if theological questions are to be dealt
with, ought they not to be dealt with accurately, and not loosely?

But we have lingered too long over these volumes. They are very
instructive, sometimes very elevating, almost always very touching. The
life which they describe greatly wanted discipline, self-restraint, and
the wise and manly fear of overrating one's own novelties. But we see
in it a life consecrated to duty, fulfilled with much pain and
self-sacrifice, and adorned by warm and deep affections, by vigour and
refinement of thought, and earnest love for truth and purity. No one
can help feeling his profound and awful sense of things unseen, though
in the philosophy by which he sought to connect things seen and things
unseen, we cannot say that we can have much confidence. We have only
one concluding remark to make, and that is not on him but on his
biographer. An exaggerated tone, as we have said, seems to us to
pervade the book. There is what seems to us an unhealthy attempt to
create in the reader an impression of the exceptional severity of the
sufferings of Mr. Robertson's life, of his loneliness, of his
persecutions. But in this point much may fairly be pardoned to the
affection of a friend. What, however, we can less excuse is the want of
good feeling with which Mr. Brooke, in his account of Mr. Robertson's
last days, allows himself to give an _ex parte_, account of a dispute
between Mr. Robertson and the Vicar of Brighton, about the appointment
of a curate, and not simply to insinuate, but distinctly declare that
this dispute with its result was the fatal stroke which, in his state
of ill-health, hastened his death. We say nothing about the rights of
the story, for we never heard anything of them but what Mr. Brooke
tells us. But there is an appearance of vindictiveness in putting it on
record with this particular aspect which nothing in the story itself
seems to us to justify. In describing Mr. Robertson's departure from
Cheltenham, Mr. Brooke has plainly thought right to use much reticence.
He would have done well to have used the same reticence about these
quarrels at Brighton.

XVI

LIFE OF BARO