Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/185

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JOHN MORLEY.
171

was the first editor. He worked with a will, and soon became known to those whose business it is to gauge intellectual capacity. In 1863 he joined the staff of "The Saturday Review," on which he remained for five or six years. During that period he had for collaborateurs three of the most formidable intellectual gladiators in England; viz., Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Sir William Vernon Harcourt, and Sir Henry Maine.

"Tis heavy odds against the gods
 When they will match with Myrmidons."

But Mr. Morley was equal to the occasion. Many of his "Saturday Review" articles were characterized by striking originality of thought and fearlessness of expression. One in particular, entitled "New Ideas," made so deep an impression on Mr. John Stuart Mill, that he wrote to a friend anxiously inquiring who the author might be; and thus were laid the foundations of a lifelong friendship of no ordinary intimacy and reciprocal esteem. I know hardly any thing finer in prose than the reverence, without obsequiousness, which pervades Mr. Morley's article on the death of Mill. It is the very poetry of a manly sorrow. "The nightingale which he longed for fills the darkness with music, but not for the ear of the dead master: he rests in the deeper darkness where the silence is unbroken forever. We may console ourselves with the reflection offered by the dying Socrates to his sorrowful companions: He who has arrayed the soul in her own proper jewels of moderation and justice and courage and nobleness and truth is ever ready for the journey when his time comes. We have lost a great teacher and example of knowledge