The Life and Times of John Wilkins Part 4

The pa.s.sage is inaccurate both in grammar and in facts, but it is valuable as evidence of the venomous party spirit prevalent in the seventeenth century,--a spirit to which we can easily rise superior, we whose station, property, life, do not depend on the triumph of this or that opinion. In Oxford at least we do not now say such things about each other. But in another place Wood takes a less unfavourable view of Wilkins' character, and uses about him the politest language at his command. "He was a person of rare gifts, a noted theologist and preacher; a curious critick in several matters; an excellent mathematician and experimentalist, &c.; and I cannot say that there was anything deficient in him but a constant mind and settled principles."

This is an outline of the facts and opinions about Wilkins which have come down to us. What are we to think of him?

Unquestionably there lies against a man who prospered under Cromwell and Charles II., and was a favourite of both, a presumption of excessive pliancy, of too much readiness to adapt himself to his environment, of time-serving, if you like, and insincerity. It cannot be proved that he was not a Vicar of Bray, the t.i.tle which at once suggests itself.

Tolerance, geniality, and charity are virtues which have their own defects, and some measure of austerity is one of the ingredients of a perfect character. It has been said of Wilkins that two principles determined his career: a large tolerance of actions and opinions; a readiness to submit himself to "the powers that be," let them have been established if they might. These are the marks of a wise man, and of a man supremely useful in times of bitter hatred and uncompromising revenge: they are not the marks of a hero or a martyr.

Wilkins was in fact a Trimmer. It may be said of him what has been said by Mr Herbert Paul of a more famous Trimmer, Lord Halifax (not our Lord Halifax), that "he was thoroughly imbued with the English spirit of compromise, that he had a remarkable power of understanding, even sympathetically understanding, opinions which he did not hold." Wilkins hated persecution, and that hatred nerves a Trimmer to defend unpopular persons and unpopular causes, as he did in his College and University and Diocese. Toleration has a courage of its own equal to that of fanaticism, and more useful and intelligent. It is now an easier and a safer virtue than it was two hundred and fifty years ago: it is not popular now; it was odious then, and men were impatient with those who took no side, or changed sides for reasons good or bad.

Macaulay--who never knew a doubt, whose way was clear and easy in the struggles of his day, when reform and free trade in corn were obviously desirable and necessary--writes with contemptuous severity of the profligacy of politicians from the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover. "One who in such an age is determined to attain civil greatness must renounce all thought of consistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midst of mutation, he must always be on the watch for the indications of a coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment for deserting a falling cause. He has seen so many inst.i.tutions from which much had been expected produce mere disappointment, that he has no hope of improvement. There is nothing in the state which he could not, without a scruple, join in defending or destroying." Compare with these scathing words his estimate of the character of Halifax, the Whig: "The most estimable of the statesmen who were formed in the corrupt and licentious Whitehall of the Restoration. He was called inconsistent because the relative position in which he stood to the contending parties was perpetually varying. As well might the Polar Star be called inconsistent because it is sometimes to the east and sometimes to the west of the pointers. To have defended the ancient and legal const.i.tution of the realm against a seditious populace at one conjunction, and against a tyrannical government at another; to have been the foremost champion of order in the turbulent Parliament of 1680, and the foremost champion of liberty in the servile Parliament of 1685; to have been just and merciful to the Roman Catholics in the days of the Popish Plot, and to the Exclusionists in the days of the Rye House Plot; this was a course which contemporaries, heated by pa.s.sion, and deluded by names and badges, might not unnaturally call fickle, but which deserves a very different name from the late justice of posterity." More than one British statesman, Tory, be it observed, as well as Whig, needs and deserves a defence like this. Alter names and dates, and it will serve as a vindication of Wilkins' deficiency in a "constant mind and settled principles." Therefore the paradox is true that a Trimmer may be a man of firmness and courage; one who is bold enough to make many enemies and few friends; who has convictions of his own, but by a power of sympathy, one of the rarest and highest mental, half moral, half intellectual, qualities, can understand opinions which he does not hold; understand and pardon, as the French say.

Whether Wilkins' tolerance was of the exalted kind, or alloyed by an admixture of that other tolerance which is no better than indifference and opportunism, it is impossible to say, for we do not know enough about him to p.r.o.nounce a judgment. Our data are scanty and incoherent, scattered about in diaries and memoirs written by persons of different stations and opinions. This much is certain, that Pope, Aubrey, Sprat, Evelyn, Pepys, Tillotson, and Burnet speak of him with affection and respect: one note runs through all their eulogies, that he was universally beloved; yet he was not one of those nonent.i.ties whom now we style amiable persons, but a man of character and power.

As a loyal son of the College, the writer is prepared to maintain that a Vicar of Bray could not have won love and admiration in his College, his University, and in his Diocese, and in a larger world than these; nor have been "laudatus a laudatis viris." It is more rational to believe that Wilkins was a good and wise man, who accepted the situations in which he found himself placed, and made the best of them, being more solicitous to do good than to preserve consistency, that most negative of virtues. Let him be judged by his best, as men are most fairly judged, and by another good criterion, the times in which he lived,--times of perpetual change, confusion, and perplexity.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] See Mr Pearson's instructive and amusing article on "The Virtuoso"

in the 'Nineteenth Century,' November 1909.

[4] This is an abbreviation of the pa.s.sage in Burnet's 'History of his Own Time,' vol. i. p. 272. First edition.