THE HINTONS: FATHER AND SOX. 



185 



rent to Nonconformists who knew their own 

 minds. Referring to the volume just published 

 for an account of this and some other matters, 

 we may mention that Howard Hinton had a nu- 

 merous family, and that this had to be considered, 

 and was considered all round, in the "schooling" 

 arrangements. At sixteen years old, James went 

 to a situation, as cashier, in the establishment 

 of a clothier in Whitechapel. While there he 

 was painfully and permanently impressed with 

 what he saw of the life of the poor, and especially 

 the life of the vicious poor, both men and women. 

 In later life he used language of considerable 

 effusion about these impressions ; and when we 

 read it, we must remember that he had the tem- 

 perament of a Shelley, and did not always see 

 things in true perspective, or in their actual 

 colors and proportions. But there is abundant 

 evidence that, though not precocious as a scholar, 

 he was remarkably precocious in quickness and 

 force of ethical sympathy. 



" Me, who am as a nerve o'er which do creep 

 The else unfelt oppressious of this earth," 



are lines of Shelley's which James Hinton might 

 well have applied to himself. And there is no 

 doubt that his Whitechapel " experiences " (to 

 use a word which is compendious, if wrong) 

 staid with him, and taught him much. 



When he was at school, James Hinton was a 

 good, devout boy, attentive as a scholar, but 

 fond of the play-ground, and a particularly good 

 runner. He had at one time a very active and 

 retentive memory, so that he never had to get a 

 lesson by rote ; but we are told that on coming 

 in from a game at cricket one day he discovered 

 that he had lost this exceptional faculty. He 

 never could tell how ; he had, says his biographer, 

 " a sense of goneness " (an American phrase), 

 and that was all. From that time forward his 

 memory was simply good, not extraordinary. Of 

 course it was always strong, for half the work 

 of a good brain is accomplished in virtue of a 

 superior recollecting power. But the verbal ex- 

 actitude and facility seem to us to have acted 

 in after-life in a very intermitting manner. His 

 quotations, when inaccurate, are somewhat drolly 

 so. For instance, in "Man and his Dwelling- 

 Place," he quotes one of Mr. Matthew Arnold's 

 poems as follows : 



" From the ingrained fiishion 

 Of this earthly nature, 

 Which mars thy creature, 

 From grief which is but passion, 

 Good Lord, deliver us ! " 



All his books furnish abundant proofs of wide 



reading, and all the reminiscences of others' work 

 are conscientious. The above is simply an error 

 of form. But his biographer quotes a short poem 

 addressed to his wife, which is so good that one 

 might be tempted to say, in haste, the writer had 

 in him the making of a poet. We are told that 

 this was the only poem he ever wrote. And it 

 may be the only complete whole ; but the lines 

 at page 288 of " Man and his Dwelling-Place " 

 look very much as if they were his own. They 

 are a little awkward ; and his gift of expression 

 appears to have been capricious and fluctuating 

 to the last degree. When he is engaged in purely 

 scientific exposition — when he writes as a mor- 

 phologist — or when he writes at the white heat 

 of ethical passion, he is clear, as well as beauti- 

 fully eloquent. " The Mystery of Pain " is, for 

 the most part, exquisitely good, as writing ; and 

 often musical. The first portions of " Life in 

 Nature," again, are excellent. Every now and 

 then he breaks out in divine epigram — there are 

 instances in these memoirs. But too often he is 

 tedious, involved, and almost inconceivably dry. 

 He writes in " The Mystery of Pain " that his 

 utterance had been " stammering " all through. 

 But compare it with " Man and his Dwelling- 

 Place," and the latter portions of " Life in Na- 

 ture ! " Evidently, as we have hinted, his gift 

 of speech was alternately that of a prodigal's 

 favorite and that of a miser's pensioner. 



For a short time James Hinton was a clerk in 

 an insurance office in the City ; and at about this 

 time, when he was eighteen or nineteen years of 

 age, he began to study a great deal. His very 

 miscellaneous curriculum included German and 

 — Russian ! His letters to his sister Sarah at 

 nineteen or twenty exhibit much precocity in the 

 matter of ethical, literary, and even practical 

 soundness. Their gravity, their caution, their 

 thoroughness, their length, and their dryness, 

 are alike surprising. The intellectual accent al- 

 ways reminds us of his father. 



Of all these letters, the most remarkable are 

 those to the young lady whom he ultimately mar- 

 ried — Miss Margaret Haddon — a name that will 

 be very familiar to old Devonshire Square friends. 

 Such love-letters were surely never written to a 

 girl by a lover before or since. William God- 

 win's to Miss (" Canterbury Tales ") Lee are 

 odd enough ; but these beat them. Of course, 

 we take it for granted that the "love" is left 

 out ; but, for all that, we find the lady, once at 

 least, suggesting to her metaphysical correspond- 

 ent that he should tell her a little more about 

 himself. Hinton remarks that this is very natu- 



