Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/384

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TAIREN—TAIT, A. C.
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logician, an artist who saw and depicted what he saw in vital and glowing language. From the artist we get his essay on La Fontaine, his articles on Balzac and Racine, and the passages on Voltaire and Rousseau in the Ancien Régime. Moreover, not only was Taine an artist who had not escaped from the influence of the romantic tradition, but he was by his very method and style a romanticist. His emotions were deep if not violent, his vision at times almost lurid. He sees everything in startling relief and sometimes in exaggerated outline, as did Balzac and Victor Hugo. Hence his predilection for exuberance, strength and splendour; his love of Shakespeare, Titian and Rubens; his delight in bold, highly-coloured themes.

Taine’s influence was great, and twofold. On his own generation it was considerable; during the epoch in which he lived, while a wave of pessimism was sweeping over French literature, he was the high priest of the cult of misanthropy, in which even science was held to be but an idol, worthy of respect and devotional service, but not of faith. In its turn came the reaction against positivism and pessimism, and an attempt at spiritual renascence. Around a man so remarkable as Taine a school is certain to form itself; Taine’s school, which was one of positivist doctrines, rigid systems and resigned hopelessness, was equally certain to produce at some time or another a school of determined opponents to its doctrines and system. If, therefore, the tone which pervades the works of Zola, Bourget and Maupassant can be immediately attributed to the influence we call Taine’s, it is also the influence of Taine which is one of the ultimate causes of the protest embodied in the subsequent reaction.  (M. Ba.) 

Bibliography.—The official life, H. Taine, sa vie et sa correspondance, was published in 3 vols. in 1902–8 (Eng. trans, by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire, 1902–8). His friend, M. E. Boutmy, published an appreciative study of Taine’s philosophy in his Taine, Scherer, Laboulaye (Paris, 1901). See also A. Sorel, Nouveaux essais d’histoire et de critique (1898); Gabriel Monod, Les Maîtres de l’histoire (Paris, 1894); Emile Faguet, Politiques moralistes au XIXᵉ siècle (Paris, 1900); P. Lacombe, La psychologie des individus et des sociétés chez Taine (1906); P. Neve, La philosophic de Taine (1908); and especially Victor Giraud, Essai sur Taine, son amore et son influence, d'apres des documents inedits (2nd ed., 1902); V. Giraud, Bibliographic de Taine (Paris, 1902). A comprehensive list of books and articles on Taine is given in H. P. Thieme’s Guide bibliographique de la littérature française de 1800 à 1906 (Paris, 1907). More recently, Taine’s historical work has been adversely criticized, especially by A. Aulard in lectures delivered at the Sorbonne in 1905–6 and 1906–7 (Taine, historien de la révolution française, 1907), devoted to destructive criticism of Taine’s work on the French Revolution.


TAIREN, or Dairen (Russian Dalny), a free port created by the Russian government and opened to foreign trade in 1901, situated on the Central Manchurian railway, and thus one of the Pacific termini of the Trans-Siberian railway. It stands at the head of Talien-wan Bay, on the east side of Liao-tung peninsula, in Manchuria, about 20 m. N.E. of Port Arthur. The harbour is roomy, easy of entrance, and free from ice all the year round. The town is situated along the front of the harbour and occupies the slope leading up to the hills at the rear. It is designed to accommodate 30,000 inhabitants and is separated from the Chinese quarter by a large natural park. The climate is temperate and healthy. Tairen is provided with wharves to accommodate the largest ocean steamers, the wharves having a vertical face with 28 ft. depth at low water. The area of the port is 132 acres, and the inner harbour is protected by a stone and concrete breakwater 5950 ft. long. At an early period in the Russo-Japanese war (28th of May 1904), Dalny was occupied by the Japanese after slight resistance.


TAIT, ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL (1811–1882), Anglican divine, archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Edinburgh on the 21st of December 1811. His parents were Presbyterians, but he early turned towards the Scottish Episcopal Church, and was confirmed in his first year at Oxford, having entered Balliol College in October 1830 as a Snell exhibitioner from the University of Glasgow. He won an open scholarship, took his degree with a first-class in literis humanioribus (1833), and became fellow and tutor of Balliol; he was also ordained deacon (1836) and priest (1838), and served the curacy of Baldon. Rapid changes among the fellows found him at the age of twenty-six “the senior and most responsible of the four Balliol tutors.” The experience gained during this period stood him in good stead afterwards as a member of the first Oxford University Commission (1850–52). He never sympathized with the principles of the Tractarian movement, and on the appearance of Tract XC. in 1841 he drafted the famous protest of the “Four Tutors” against it; but this was his only important contribution to the controversy. On the other hand, although his sympathies were on the whole with the liberal movement in the university, he never took a lead in the matter. In 1842 he became an undistinguished but useful successor to Arnold as headmaster of Rugby; and a serious illness in 1848, the first of many, led him to welcome the comparative leisure which followed upon his appointment to the deanery of Carlisle in 1849. His life there, however, was one of no little activity; he served on the University Commission, he restored his cathedral, and did much excellent pastoral work. There too he suffered the great sorrow of his life. He had married Catharine Spooner at Rugby in 1843; in the spring of 1856, within five weeks, five of their children were carried off by virulent scarlet fever. Not long afterwards he was consecrated bishop of London on the 22nd of November 1856, as successor to C. J. Blomfield. His translation to Canterbury in 1868 (he had refused the archbishopric of York in 1862) constituted a recognition of his work, but made no break in it. His last years were interrupted by illness and saddened by the death in 1878 of his only son Craufurd, and of his wife.

If Blomfield had almost remodelled the idea of a bishop’s work, his successor surpassed him. Tait had all Blomfield’s earnestness and his powers of work, with far wider interests. Blomfield had given himself zealously to the work of church-building; Tait followed in his steps by inaugurating (1863) the Bishop of London’s Fund. He devoted a very large part of his time at London in actual evangelistic work; and to the end his interest in the pastoral side of the work of the clergy was greater than anything else. With his wife, he was instrumental in organizing women’s work upon a sound basis, and he did not a little for the healthful regulation of Anglican sisterhoods during the formative period in which this was particularly necessary. Nor was he less successful in the larger matters of administration and organization, which brought into play his sound practical judgment and strong common-sense. He was constant in his attendance in parliament, and spared no pains in pressing on measures of practical utility. The modification of the terms of clerical subscription (1865), the new lectionary (1871), the Burials Act (1880) were largely owing to him; for all of them, and especially the last, he incurred much obloquy at the time. The Royal Commissions on Ritual (1867) and on the Ecclesiastical Courts (1881) were due to him, and he took a large part in the deliberations of both. Probably his successor (see Benson, E. W.) was brought into closer relations with the colonial churches than Tait was; but the healthy development of the Lambeth Conferences on the lines of mutual counsel rather than of a hasty quasi-synodic action was largely due to him.

On the other hand, Tait was not successful in dealing with matters which called for the higher gifts of a ruler, and especially in his relations with (a) the liberal trend in modern thought, and (b) the Catholic revival, (a) As regards the former, he was himself not a little in sympathy with it. But although well-read, he was no scholar in the true sense, and had neither the knowledge to feel sure of his ground nor the theological insight to perceive the real point at issue. His object in dealing with questions of faith, as in dealing with the ritual question, was primarily a practical one: he wished to secure peace, and obedience to the law as he saw it. Consequently, after his sympathies had led him to express himself favourably towards some movement, he frequently found himself compelled to draw back. He expressed a qualified sympathy with some of the writers of Essays and Reviews, and then joined in the censure of it by the bishops (1861). The same kind of apparent vacillation was found in his action in other cases; e.g., in the Colenso case