Emigration,' 'Investments for the Working
Classes,' 'The Modern Exodus;'--these were not themes to be dealt with
by the facile journalist, standing on one foot. Mr. Greg always showed
the highest conception of the functions and the obligations of the
writer who addresses the public, in however ephemeral a form, on topics
of social importance. No article of his ever showed a trace either of
slipshod writing or of make-believe and perfunctory thinking. To compose
between four and five hundred pages like these, on a variety of grave
subjects, all needing to be carefully prepared and systematically
thought out, was no inconsiderable piece of work for a single pen. The
strain was severe, for there was insufficient stimulus from outside, and
insufficient refreshment within his own home. Long days of study were
followed by solitary evening walks on the heights, or lonely sailing on
the lake. In time, visits to London became more frequent, and he got
closer to the world. Once a year he went to Paris, and he paid more than
one visit to De Tocqueville at his home in Normandy. I remember that he
told me once how surprised and disappointed he was by the indifference
of public men, even the giants like Peel, to anything like general views
and abstract principles of politics or society. They listened to such
views with reasonable interest, but only as matters lying quite apart
from their own business in the world. The statesman who pleased him
best, and with whom he found most common ground, was Sir George
Cornewall Lewis.

Like most men of letters who happen to be blessed or cursed with a
prudential conscience, Mr. Greg was haunted by the uncertainty of his
vocation. He dreaded, as he expressed it, 'to depend on so precarious a
thing as a brain always in thinking order.' In every other profession
there is much that can be done by deputy, or that does itself, or is
little more than routine and the mechanical. In letters alone, if the
brain be not in working order, all is lost. In 1856 Sir Cornewall Lewis,
who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, offered Greg a place on the
Board of Customs, and he accepted it. Yet, as he said, he did so 'with
some loathing and great misgiving.' Five years earlier he would have
entered upon it with eagerness, but in five years he was conscious of
having made 'sad progress in that philosophy whose root is idleness,
indulged freedom, and increasing years.' To James Spedding he wrote on
the 24th of May