an unquestionable power in drawing and developing character, while their style is always entertaining and frequently incisive.
Bage's novels are comparatively unknown, and have not been reproduced in a collective edition. Scott reprinted three of them in the 'Novelists' Library,' and Mrs. Barbauld a fourth in the 'British Novelists.' The full list, with the respective dates of publication, is as follows:
- 'Mount Henneth,' 1781.
- 'Barham Downs,' 1784.
- 'The Fair Syrian,' 1787.
- 'James Wallace,' 1788.
- 'Man as he is,' 1792.
- 'Hermsprong, or Man as he is not,' 1796.
[Ballantyne's Novelists' Library, edited by Sir Walter Scott; Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary; British Novelists, edited by Mrs. Barbauld; and the various works of Bage.]
BAGEHOT, WALTER (1826–1877), an English economist and journalist, was born at Langport, in Somersetshire, on 3 Feb. 1826; he died at the same place on 24 March 1877. For the last seventeen years of his life he edited the 'Economist' newspaper, which was established by the late Right Hon. James Wilson during the anti-corn law agitation to represent free-trade principles. Mr. Bagehot, who married in 1858 Mr. Wilson's eldest daughter, became in 1860, on the departure of his father-in-law to India as financial member of the supreme council, the editor and manager of that journal, and continued in that position till his death. He was a considerable authority in all questions of banking and finance, and consulted by chancellors of the exchequer of both parties on such matters at critical moments; but in the literary world he was even better known for his lively, vivid, and humorous criticisms. The works published during his own lifetime were:
- 'The English Constitution,' a book used at Oxford and in more than one of the North American universities as a textbook on the subject; it has also been translated into German, French, and Italian.
- 'Physics and Politics,' an attempt to apply the princiciples of 'natural selection,' as explained by Mr. Darwin, to the explanation of the competitions and struggles of states; this volume, which is one of the International Scientific Series, has gone through four editions, and has been translated into six or seven different languages.
- 'Lombard Street,' now in its seventh edition; a study of the money market. He also published during his lifetime a volume of essays, 'Estimates of some Englishmen and Scotchmen,' now out of print, the whole of which, however, is included in either the two volumes of 'Literary Studies,' or the single volume of 'Biographical Studies,' published after his death.
Besides these works a volume on the 'Depreciation of Silver,' which discusses the causes of the fall in silver between 1866 and 1875, and which was corrected for the press by himself, appeared immediately after his death in 1877; and a volume of essays on political economy, called 'Economic Studies,' part of which had been published during his lifetime, while part was found among his papers, was published in 1880; Bagehot also published some essays on parliamentary reform, which were republished in 1883.
Langport, where Walter Bagehot was born and died, and with which he was connected both personally and by business ties during the whole of his life, is a little Somersetshire town with a 'portreeve' of its own, and a characteristically sober constitutional history. So long ago as in the reign of Edward I, Langport begged to be relieved of the onerous duty of sending burgesses to the House of Commons, for at that time sending representatives to parliament also involved remunerating them for their responsibilities, dangers, and expenses. This frugality and this rather ostentatious indifference to patriotic pretensions pleased Bagehot, who often boasted of it to his friends as a note of true political sobriety. It was at Langport that the Somersetshire bank was founded by Mr. Samuel Stuckey in the eighteenth century, and with this bank Bagehot, whose father, Mr. Thomas Watson Bagehot, had married Mrs. Estlin, a niece of Mr. Stuckey's, became early connected, and he succeeded his father as vice-chairman of the bank on the latter's retirement. Bagehot was sent to school in Bristol, where his mother's brother-in-law, Dr. Prichard, lived: and the influence of this relative, who wrote a book of great note on the 'Races of Man,' is visible enough in Bagehot's own subsequent writings. In 1842 he entered University College, London, where he became a good mathematician under the late Professor De Morgan, and read very widely in all branches of general literature. Poetry, metaphysics, and history — of which last study he never shirked what are usually thought the dry parts — were his favourite studies. The late Professor Long, who was a learned and accurate student of Roman law, as well as of Roman history, had almost as much influence over his course of studies as Professor De Morgan himself. Bagehot took his B.A. degree in the university of London, with the mathematical scholarship, in 1846, and his M.A. degree in the same university, with the gold medal in intellectual and moral philosophy and political economy, in 1848. Then he began to read law,
