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in the training of our clergy. An examination of Barlow's arguments and decision in Mr. Cottington's case of divorce is especially instructive in this respect, as the case was also sent to the Doctors of the Sorbonne, who reached the same decision as the bishop. An Italian woman had obtained a decree of nullity, on the ground that she was coerced into marriage by her father, in the Archbishop's Court at Turin, and then intermarried with an Englishman. Although the Court of Arches had pronounced for the validity of the second marriage, Barlow decided that the English husband could not cohabit with her without sin. He showed that the Turin decree was not justified by the evidence, and that its validity was doubtful in this country, and concluded that the English husband ought to take the safer course of separation from the Italian wife. The arguments are set forth with great particularity and detail in his Cases of Conscience resolved, and he annexes not only the Sorbonne opinion, but those of the Oxford Professors of Divinity and other eminent English casuists. The whole is a model of the manner in which the arguments in such a case should be marshalled and the decision reached. Mr. Kirk and the American divines, Hall and Hallock, the titles of whose books are given in the list at the head of this article, have shown how casuistry may be applied and used in our modern world. On the lines suggested it should prove a study and practice of the greatest value to religion and morals. If the readers of the EDINBURGH REVIEW would like to amuse themselves with a simple case, not untimely in view of modern fashions, may I suggest the consideration of the problem whether, in the light of I Tim. ii, 9, women may wear artificial pearls in Church?

STEPHEN GASELEE

THE PERSONALITY OF JOSEPH CONRAD

WHEN

HEN Conrad died, someone who had been in his company but a few hours altogether, wrote to me: "He was, I think, the only human being I have ever met who seemed to merit the word 'great'-not in virtue of his genius, but his personality-himself."

These words, startling enough as showing the instantaneous effect he could produce upon a stranger, are nevertheless not an exaggeration. I believe that numbers of people felt like that— it was curious how in so many of the notices called forth by his death it was the magnetic personality which was dwelt upon ; and I am convinced that he belonged to the rare type of whom people instinctively say, That was an extraordinary man.

And, indeed, he was an extraordinary man. Beyond all the high genius of his creation, he had the effortless greatness of a unique personality. Almost everybody with whom he came in contact felt it, and no one felt it more than those who knew him intimately, for the fascination, being inherent, never grew less. Without a trace of the affected, he remained enigmatic to the end: his mind was both simple and complex, and it is doubtful whether anyone had ever pierced very profoundly-even friends from whom he had fewest reservations-into the isolated silences of his deep convictions.

In the last resort, personality is beyond analysis, and one cannot but suspect that when all those who knew him shall themselves have gone, a new generation will not be able to approach his books with quite that nicety of perception and sense of an inner pattern which come home to his friends as they feel his presence so vividly and mysteriously about them in each of his phrases and turns of thought.

Much will be written about Conrad in the future, and perhaps perspective will give to pure criticism a keener edge, but when even the second-hand paleness of remembrance shall be a thing of the past, surely there will be lacking that final clue, that key which seems at moments to unlock the secret of his achievement and intention and to explain all as by a flash of insight.

And for that reason I think it valuable to recover, so far as can be recovered, the faint echo of his personality, and to put on record, if one really can put on record, some picture of that spirit which lies like an enchantment upon his books and impressed those who met him with its vitality, its power, and its subtle elusiveness.

Conrad was enormously interested in all the activities of life and in all its phases. He had an abiding love of letters, but in the ordinary interpretation he was not literary-he lived in, rather than for, his books. They mirrored life for him in the integrity of his artistic conscience, and that is why a knowledge of the man seemed to clarify his pages, and why his pages could often throw a light upon Conrad. In "A Personal Record "he has written:

Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal world, rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as old as the hills. It rests notably, amongst others, on the idea of fidelity.

And elsewhere in the same book :

Even before the most seductive reveries I have remained mindful of that sobriety of interior life, that asceticism of sentiment, in which alone the naked form of truth, such as one conceives it, such as one feels it, can be rendered without shame.

These two quotations, it appears to me, reveal the essential Conrad beneath all the variations of a temperament subject to many surface contradictions, and of an individuality charged with nervous tension.

There was, at heart, a noble simplicity about his attitude towards life; but he was the least obvious of men, and it was often difficult to follow his thought through the complexity of his outer moods and the play of reminiscence upon the argument of the instant. One acquired in time a kind of intuition, and one needed it. His mind gave one the idea of being composed of a series of different planes, and in conversation he often seemed to leap from one to another--and not necessarily at all to the nearest -without a monitory word. And this is not to imply that his conversation was wayward, for it was very much to the point, but that he had the habit of viewing things from all sorts of angles, that his generosity of feeling and mental disillusionment were closely allied, and that his sensibilities were quick, plastic, and incalculable.

But when one did acquire the intuition one saw, as through a dark and mazy forest, the steady beacon of his fidelity to an idea and of that inner sobriety of which he writes. He never changed in these fundamental things, because his roots were simple and deep. In his whole conception of the universe the ideas of order and duty took first place, and this gave to his outlook an austerity of vision which was philosophic rather than moral. For the weaknesses of humanity he had compassion, but for calculated betrayals he had unbounded and savage contempt. He could be very terrible in the presence of falseness.

The shadow of suffering never left Conrad, and he was at times inaccessible and ready to misunderstand. But that was only the toxic poisoning of his long illness, a frayed condition of his system, and it meant less than nothing. The real Conrad had the most delicate tact, even to tenderness. He could put diffident people at their ease, and with his beautiful courtesy could make chance callers and old friends alike feel that never was there such a host.

He delighted in being hospitable and, though the genuine kindliness of his nature might sometimes conceal a boredom and weariness with strangers, yet the company of his friends was a perennial joy. The happiness and prosperity of those he cared for meant much to him. He rejoiced or grieved with them, he was anxious to know all about the smallest of their concerns, he would go to any inconvenience on their behalf. I have known him take journeys from Kent to London-and such journeys exhausted him of recent years to congratulate a friend on a stroke of good fortune or to comfort a friend in a time of sorrow. He was not blind to their faults, and being subject to sudden irritabilities, he could say sharp things on occasion, but in his mind their faults were always really rather trivial. They were his friends, and the cutting irony of his intelligence passed them by. He accepted them, and that was the end of it. To be accepted by Conrad was to come within the generous immunity of his thoughts.

And, in his turn, he was much beloved. If to few people friendship meant more that it meant to Conrad, few awoke in others a stronger loyalty of regard. And this was not because he was a great writer, not even directly because he had a remarkable personality, but because he had a wonderful and conquering

charm and gave out in full measure to his friends from the rich stores of his nature.

As to his private charities, the tale of them will never be known. He was naturally open-handed and the pleasure he took in having money at last was not for himself. The memory of his own good deeds he covered with a touching oblivion.

I have said that he was both simple and complex, and this statement is capable of amplification in various directions. When he was well there could scarcely have been a person easier to get on with, provided that, so to speak, the undulations of your mind kept pace with his. Otherwise you might have been lost in one plane when he was already in a second. His natural compliment to a friend was to assume that they understood one another without explanations. The assumption covered everything-the more confidential the talk, the more completely it covered it— from the books he had read and the experiences of his earlier days down to the mental processes that governed his swift and illumined brain.

But when gout was imminent or upon him he would sometimes retire into eclipsed, nerve-racked ruminations, where it was impossible to follow him, and where he seemed fearfully alone. And yet that state, also, was simple in a manner, because one knew the cause and knew one must not worry him. There was nothing to be done but wait for the attack to pass, but I have often thought that at such times he longed for release from the torture of his bodily and mental pain. Many an evening he has spoken to me of death; he felt it near and he was not sorry. He was battered and tired and his work was accomplished.

What was it about Conrad, beyond the always indefinable, that assured even strangers at first sight that they were in the presence of a commanding personality? It was, I think, the electrical feeling of his passionate vitality. His eyes, deep-set and shining within drooped lids, had the sort of light in them of eyes that glow in the dark; his movements were unceasing, like the reflections of an inner excitement; his lined face had a mobility that momentarily took on the passing humors of his thought; as to his voice, it ran from the caressing cadences of old remembrance right up to the vibrant lash of his scorn in tones so modulated and acutely right that a foreigner without a word of English would hardly have been at fault. It was his passionate force and

VOL. 241. NO. 491.

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