3. DID WORDSWORTH DEFY THE GUILLOTINE? By 4. SOME IDEALS OF RECONSTRUCTION. By Martin G. 5. THE HAUNTS OF THE RAVEN AND BUZZARD. By 7. OLD ENGLISH FURNITURE. By Bohun Lynch - 9. THOUGHTS ON THE NATION'S EDUCATION. By 9. Oxford, Cambridge, and Literature 10. A Survey of the Countryside THE QUARTERLY REVIEW No. 491.-JANUARY, 1927. Art. 1.-A GREAT TYPE AND A GREAT TIME: 1. Henry Chaplin, A Memoir. By the Marchioness of Londonderry. Macmillan, 1926. 2. A Hundred Wonderful Years. By Mrs C. S. Peel. Lane, 1926. MR HENRY CHAPLIN, fortunate beyond most men in his life and its circumstances, has found posthumous good fortune in his biographical memoirs. Several have collaborated in its production, but we may regard Lady Londonderry, his daughter, as the editor and perhaps writer in chief, and she has brought to this labour of love, on behalf of a very lovable subject, the devotion to be expected and a literary gift which is rather surprising. If the ideal of art be to conceal art, then we might add that the ideal of biographical art is to conceal the biographer. We may accept that as the rule, in spite of the ever glorious exception of Boswell. The first business of the biographer, after bringing his leading figure into the limelight, is, however, to see that no interference on his own part intercepts the light. That is an effacement which Lady Londonderry has wonderfully achieved. We are hardly aware of her presence throughout the book. We see no pulling of strings, hear no creak of mechanism; and the outcome is that she gives us a very living figure of her father. Even if the subject of this memoir had no sympathetic interest for us, Lord Chaplin as a type is bound to arrest intelligent attention, because he was so typical and so exceptionally representative of a century that has Vol. 248.-No. 491. passed. That is much to say, but not too much. He was typical not only of a time that has gone but of a time that never can return. I have referred to him as Lord Chaplin. But it is not in the least as a Lord (to be precise, his title was Viscount) that we have to think of him. He was The Squire'; and not even or only 'a squire.' The definite article alone fits him. The King might make a lord, but no king can ever make an English squire, least of all a squire like Mr Chaplin. He was the Squire, representative of a great tradition, of a great social fact that since he went has ceased. Such a man can never be again, because the conditions which made him possible have gone. Mr Chaplin-I like to think of him so, far better than as Viscount-was more than typical, for he was an example of the type at its very highest and most perfect. There has never been another Squire quite like him. We have to look on him as the apotheosis of the Squire. He was not without some of the limitations of the type. There was a world of art, music, literature, largely hidden from him. It is true that he did read 'Jorrocks' with keen appreciation to his children, if that is to be literary. Let us leave it so. If he were not of artistic taste and temperament, he was far more formidable of intellect than are most of his class. If all had been his equals, the gentlemen of England would not have needed Disraeli to speak for them in the House of Commons. Mr Chaplin was a fine forcible speaker of the robust Tory type, a remarkably good letter writer. Of the many letters that Lady Londonderry has given us in this admirable memoir every one is good. And he had the industry to write at length. Some of the best of these letters are those that he wrote to his children. You may see in them the human heart of the man and his warm sympathy with children, as well as his knowledge, probably instinctive and gained without a thought, of what would interest them. Try as we might, we could not find a quality of the typical English squire lacking in Mr Chaplin. He had one quality perhaps in addition-a love of deer-stalking. But he might justify this. His mother was a Scotswoman, niece of no less a man than the famous stalker |