By H. B. CHARLTON

(Reprinted from the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. vii.,
No. 3, August 1923.)

A LIST of Vaughan's writings is a very inadequate tribute to his
memory; for he was greater than they. As the bulkiest of them
are scholarly contributions to learning, they do, of course, reveal
the quality of his mind; but they provide only hints of the other
elements so richly mixed in him. His shorter and less formal
writings, however, give fuller play to more temperamental features.
And so in a way, the natural bent and the full-grown manner of
the man may be discerned in a survey of the scholar's books.
There is the rhetorical sweep, the broadest generalisation, the
widest denunciation: but there is, too, the habitual scruple in the
act of judgement, which came to him as much from instinctive
honesty as from critical training. There is the passion for the
speculative ideal; but it is disciplined by a fervid awareness of
brave sublunary things. There is the underlying sense of rigid
justice; but it is tempered by an overflowing stream of human
kindness. And neither side of these potentially conflicting attri-
butes is more Vaughan than the other.

His qualities gained by their complements. His rhetoric never
dazzled his intelligence: rather, it illumined remoter regions for
further intellectual exploration. The high, dry light of reason
was in its turn filtered through those warmer tones, without which
it distorts the natural object as does a flash-light portrait. But
whilst others more competent must assess the gain to Vaughan's
thought from the many-sided humanity of the thinker, the lay
philosopher can at least discern the fitness in his finding his most
satisfying occupation with political theories. For in no other
domain do interests which are abstract and concrete, speculative
and practical at once, approach more closely to each other. Nor,

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