of Sterling in life and thought appears to have
been a vacillating impulsiveness, while in letters his production, small
in bulk, is anything but strong in substance or form. But, like some
other men who do not, in the common phrase, "do much," he seems to have
been singularly effectual as a centre of literary friendship and
following. The Sterling Club included not merely Tennyson, John Stuart
Mill, Carlyle, Allan Cunningham, Lord Houghton, Sir Francis Palgrave,
Bishop Thirlwall, who all receive separate notice elsewhere, but others
who, being of less general fame, may best be noticed together here.
There were the scholars Blakesley, Worsley, and Hepworth Thompson
(afterwards Master of Trinity); H. N. Coleridge, the poet's nephew,
son-in-law, and editor; Sir Francis Doyle, afterwards Professor of
Poetry at Oxford, the author of some interesting reminiscences in prose,
and in verse of some of the best songs and poems on military subjects to
be found in the language, such as "The Loss of the Birkenhead," the
"Private of the Buffs," and above all the noble and consummate "Red
Thread of Honour"; Sir Edmund Head, Fellow of Merton and
Governor-General of Canada, and a writer on art (not to be confounded
with his namesake Sir Francis, the agreeable miscellanist, reviewer, and
travel writer, who was also a baronet and also connected with Canada,
where he was Governor of the Upper Province at the time of the Rebellion
of 1835). There was Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a keen scholar and a
fastidious writer, whose somewhat short life (1806-63) was chiefly
occupied by politics; for he was a Poor-Law Commissioner, a Member of
Parliament, and a holder of numerous offices up to those of Chancellor
of the Exchequer and Secretary of State. Lewis, who edited the
_Edinburgh_ for a short time, wrote no very long work, but many on a
great variety of subjects, the chief perhaps being _On the Influence of
Authority in Matters of Opinion_, 1850 (a book interesting to contrast
with one by a living statesman forty-five years later), the _Inquiry
into the Credibility of the Ancient Roman History_ (1855), and later
treatises on _The Government of Dependencies_ and the _Best Form of
Government_. He was also an exact verbal scholar, was, despite the
addiction to "dry" subjects which this list may seem to show, the author
of not a few _jeux d'esprit_, and was famous for his conversational
sayings, the most hackneyed of which is probably "Life would be